The stage is empty except for a pool table which Matt, mid-30’s and built with dark hair, is using to play a game of pool by himself. Adam, mid-30’s with blonde hair, enters talking on his cell phone. Matt glances at him but tries to ignore him.
Adam: So what could I have done to improve my performance? I don’t know doesn’t help me. What do you mean you just didn’t feel it? I looked intense, didn’t I? Whatever. If you’re going to be so negative maybe you shouldn’t watch the show. I don’t want to fight over the phone. I’ll see you when I get home. I’ll get home when I get home. Love you too. Bye.
Edge flips the phone closed and puts it in his pocket. He turns to Matt.
Adam: Women, huh?
Matt: Really?
Adam: What?
Matt: You’re going to complain about women to me?
Adam: Matt, don’t be a dick. I was just
Matt: Really. Women. Huh?
Adam: Yes. Women. You’re obviously busy so
Matt: Grab a stick. Let’s play some pool and talk about your women problems.
Adam: No. I wouldn’t want to impose on you.
Matt: You wouldn’t be imposing at all.
Adam: You shouldn’t be doing this now.
Matt: What am I doing?
Adam: I’ve got the belt. I’ve got the power. For the first time in your career you have a chance to make it to the main event. I can stop that.
Matt: Adam, I just want to play some pool with someone who used to be my friend. Grab a stick. I ordered a beer, we can get another, have some beers and play some pool. Talk about women issues.
Adam: You gonna crack me in the head with that stick when my back is turned?
Matt: Nah. You’ve taken worse anyway, what are you so afraid of?
Adam: Fine. You want to do it this way, let’s do it this way.
Adam briefly walks offstage then reenters with a pool cue. Matt begins racking up the balls.
Matt: Women. Can’t live with ‘em
Adam: I can’t remember the last time we hung out.
Matt: It’s been awhile.
Adam: I’ve wanted to talk to you, I mean really talk to you
Matt: Really? Me?
Adam: Yeah, you. We should get some stuff straight between us if we’re going to work together.
Matt: You’ve met Ashley, right?
Adam: Sure. You two still together?
Matt: Maybe. You trying to f*ck her?
Adam: No Matt.
Matt: You sure?
Adam: I’m letting you get away with this because I deserve it a little, but if we can’t talk as friends we need to at least speak as professionals.
Matt: Where were we? Women! Jeez. Women. They break your sac for fun and then spend all your money, right Adam?
Adam: Right Matt.
Matt: You want to break?
Adam sets up to take his shot.
Adam: Thank you. You have people fighting for you to have a program with me.
Matt: That’s wonderful! I’m honestly excited about it.
Adam: Can I count on you?
Matt: Seriously?
Adam: Can I? During our last run you tried to drop me on my head.
Adam takes his shot. They play a legit game of pool unless otherwise noted. They avoid eye contact as much as possible.
Matt: I slipped. These things happen.
Adam: You took a whole bunch of cheap shots. I started to get a little nervous about being in the ring with you.
Matt: I did the jobs. I put you over.
Adam: You tried to kill me.
Matt: You drama queen. These things happen.
Adam: That your new mantra? These things happen?
Matt: You hold on to the past for too long and your past controls you. I’m looking to the future. I’m looking to you and me making big money together.
Adam: I don’t know about that.
Matt: You too?
Adam: Me too what?
Matt: Do you have the same hearing problem as everyone else backstage? The crowd loves me. They LOVE me. I get one of the top pops in the business every time I go out there. I have one of the top selling t-shirts in the company. I’ve been having the best matches in the company these past few months. And yet people think I can’t look legitimate in the main event.
Adam: You can’t talk.
Matt: I can talk.
Adam: You’re horrible. You look more uncomfortable than Lashley when you open your mouth.
Matt: Benoit can’t speak or sell merchandise and he had a title run.
Adam: And now they don’t believe in him either. How much time did you have off and you didn’t take the time to learn how to look natural on camera?
Matt: Well I remember a period of time when I was fired.
Adam: And when you came back we had a chance to make big money together and you cut that horrible promo. It was your chance to speak from the heart, to show everyone backstage who doubted you that you could be the complete performer you always presented yourself as. Instead you looked like a guy doing a parody of a professional wrestler giving an interview. You looked whiney and incompetent and any chance of us making serious money off of the unfortunate situation went out the window. You said you wished I got into a car crash and died. Wow! How threatening. Douche.
Matt: Mr. Professional, can we refrain from the name calling?
Adam: I’m still pissed about that.
Matt: I no longer hope you die in a car crash.
Adam: Not that, the fact that you sucked so badly. You made it public, you made my wife divorce me, you drove Amy to the point of a nervous breakdown and you destroyed any chance for us to profit from it with your weak ass interview.
Matt: I feel terrible about the entire ordeal, but your wife was the one who told me about it.
Adam: If we’re going to do this right then you need to learn how to give an amazing promo without trying.
Matt: Adam, that’s crap. My promos are good.
Adam: Listen to me. No, listen to your beloved Internet writers. You are one of the worst talkers in the business.
Matt: Everybody on myspace likes my interviews.
Adam: That’s because it’s YOUR space.
Matt: You give a good promo. You have a suggestion? Little help here so I’m not such an embarrassment?
Adam: You don’t want my advice.
Matt: Come on! Just because I sell more merch than you and get a bigger pop than you doesn’t mean I have nothing to learn from you. You are one of the greatest talkers of all time. You’re like Lincoln but a professional wrestler from Canada who f*cks his friends’ long time girlfriends.
Adam: Perfect!
Matt: What?
Adam: That. That was funny, it was real. You sounded like you were trying to insult me instead of sounding like a person trying to sound like a professional wrestler trying to insult me. Just talk like you normally do.
Matt: Just be myself? Thanks Adam, you’re a huge help. If I believe in myself is anything possible?
Adam: It’s simplistic but it’s the truth. We don’t need an acting process. No one is ever going to give us Oscars or Emmys. We need to do the bare minimum to put forth a realistic performance. All you need to do is feel what the words you are saying suggest you should feel instead of saying words to reflect how you should be feeling. Do you understand?
Matt: You’d make a horrible theater camp director.
Adam: Your first interview back you said all of the reasons you should have been hurt and angry and depressed and you showed none of it. You were a robot out there.
Matt: You ever think I was a little dead inside?
Adam: Just please try it my way. Go for the feeling before you say the words.
Matt: Seriously, you ever think that just maybe I didn’t have any feelings to share?
Adam: I don’t want you making the same mistake twice.
Matt: Don’t worry, I’m doing everything I can to keep you from my women.
Adam: I mean professionally.
Matt: And I don’t. You ruined the greatest relationship of my life while I was injured and you were married. You got me fired from a company I’d given my best years to because you were mad I told people about you f*cking Amy.
Adam: You posted it on the Internet.
Matt: You don’t get to walk away clean from a situation like that.
Adam: And you don’t get to air out my private life to a bunch of obsessed nerds!
Matt: It was my private life. Not your private life, mine. If you had stayed out of my private life this would not have happened.
Adam: That’s what
Matt: And those obsessed nerds are our greatest fans! They pay our salary, they stick around when all the other fans get bored and move on to mixed martial arts and demolition derbies. They might be more negative than the other fans but that’s because they follow us more closely.
Adam: They had no right to be involved with what happened.
Matt: Says you. I was alone, I was fired, I had nothing.
Adam: You had an offer from Jeff Jarrett.
Matt: Yay! Orlando! Yipee. You ever watch Impact?
Adam: Jason’s great on it.
Matt: THOSE are the worst fans in the business. They know two chants, TNA and This Is Awesome.
Adam: I noticed that. Jason goes on about how great they are. I like black Macho Man. He’s funny.
Matt: I want to hear Let’s Go Matt. I want to hear my name.
Adam: They should have set up base in an area with more passionate and cleverer fans. Philly’s always good, but I bet they could have pulled it off in a Cleveland or a Detroit.
Matt: So all I had was an opportunity to work in front of the worst fans in the country for much less than I had been making. If I hadn’t of told the fans what happened they never would have chanted my name when you and Amy went to the ring. They never would have put the two of you together to be booed simultaneously.
Adam: But you wouldn’t have been fired if you had kept your mouth shut.
Matt: I’m pretty sure they still would have fired me. Johnny Ace was looking for an excuse.
Adam: I’m not going to say the guy doesn’t think you’re shit.
Matt: I told the world, which was my right as the person who was wronged, and I got my job back, I got a raise, and I got a chance to legitimately and I got to work a semi-main event program with you.
Adam: What were you about to say? You got a chance to hurt me?
Matt: I was completely professional in that ring.
Adam: You took some shots. You made some mistakes you don’t normally make.
Matt: You alive?
Adam: Yes.
Matt: Then stop whining. If I didn’t post what happened on the Internet I’m begging Jarrett for a job at pennies on the dollar.
Adam: You messed up Amy’s head.
Matt: We talk. We’re fine.
Adam: Are you fine or cordial?
Matt: Amy’s never going to be a friend of mine ever again. Neither are you. It’s not so much that I trusted you and you betrayed me as it was that your affair came out of nowhere. It hadn’t been long since Amy and I were at your wedding. Your life was going great. I was injured and you were getting a main event push. You had a beautiful wife at home. Everything I had wished for myself was falling into place for you. I took pride in that.
Adam: You took pride in my success?
Matt: We built each other in this business. The four of us, me, my brother, you and Jason were going to be the next generation of stars because of the foundation we laid with one another. I’m not going to say I wasn’t jealous seeing you make it first, but it pretty much affirmed in my mind that my time would come. I was happy for you. They started my push against Glen and then I needed surgery.
Adam: Happened to me too.
Matt: So I’m at home watching you have all this success and cheering you on and then your wife finds those f*cking text messages.
Adam: She sure did.
Waitress enters with beers. She’s around 21 and beautiful. Matt takes out his wallet.
Matt: Took you long enough.
Waitress: Sorry for the wait. We’re pretty full with wrestling guys tonight. I saw you had a friend join you so I brought you a second beer.
Matt: Thanks probably saved us another fifteen minute wait.
Adam: Be nice to the lady.
Waitress: That’s okay.
Matt: It shouldn’t take fifteen minutes to get a beer.
Adam: I’d say go to the bar and get one yourself, but that would mean that Adam looks at the Waitress’ name tag Julie here wouldn’t be serving us, and you are doing a fine, fine job.
Waitress: Thank you.
Adam: You know who I am?
Waitress: I don’t watch wrestling.
Adam: That’s okay. My name is Adam. You think I’m hot?
Matt: Great question. How much do I owe you?
Adam: I’m having an important conversation here.
Waitress: I wouldn’t call you hot.
Adam: That hurts.
Waitress: You’re very attractive, you’re just not hot. You’re pretty. You’re a pretty boy with muscles.
Adam: I like that.
Waitress: Your friend is hot.
Adam: That’s Matt. He’s okay, I mean, a couple of beers in me and I’d f*ck him.
Matt: Don’t be so modest. This guy f*cked me plenty.
Adam: That’s a little inside humor.
Waitress: You two look different than a lot of the other wrestlers.
Adam: I’ll take that as a compliment.
Matt: Here’s a ten. Keep the change.
Adam: What are you doing after this?
Waitress: Sorry beautiful, I’m going home to my husband.
Matt: Seriously, that won’t stop him. What are you doing after this?
Adam: You motherf*cker.
Matt: I’m telling you, date this guy on the side. Just don’t text him. He doesn’t know how to delete text messages.
Waitress: I don’t cheat on my husband.
Matt: This is a world wrestling champion! From what I’ve been told he is a quick yet sensitive lover. He’s got money, a few ex-wives, no kids, has to be about a decade and a few years older than you. Perfect sugar daddy.
Adam: He’s kidding. I respect your marriage.
Matt: I’m just boiling down two hours of working against your resistance here. Amy made it clear to me that this guy doesn’t accept no for an answer.
Waitress: A little flirting is part of the job, but you two are starting to make me uncomfortable.
Adam: Could you bring us two shots of Jack and take your time with it?
Waitress: I’d rather you ordered it from the bar.
Adam: Twenty buck tip to make up for this.
Waitress: No more hitting on me, okay?
Adam: I promise.
Matt: His word is his bond.
Waitress exits. Adam glares at Matt, who after a beat returns to playing pool.
Adam: That was uncalled for.
Matt: You would have kept going for it, wouldn’t you?
Adam: Of course not.
Matt: It makes no difference to you. You have no respect for the sanctity of a relationship.
Adam: You want the absolute truth?
Matt: Sure, why not?
Adam: I like sticking my cock in pussy Matt. Call it a hobby.
Matt: It’s more than that. You’re addicted to sex with multiple women and you’re addicted to commitment. That’s a problem right there.
Adam: Thanks Sigmund, but I see a shrink.
Matt: Why my girl? Why Amy?
Adam: There was no ring around her finger.
Matt: You know there might as well of been one.
Adam: I was attracted to her for years. FOR YEARS. She was with you and you two were going to get married so I did nothing. Then you’re home nursing an injury and I realize I love her. And Matt, I do love her. Maybe you would have been able to bottle your feelings up but I go for it. I don’t fight what I feel, especially when it comes to love. If it makes you feel better to paint me in your mind as a Himbo, by all means go for it. But I loved her and deep down she loved me.
Matt: Then why didn’t she break up with me?
Adam: Amy loved you.
Matt: Why didn’t you fight for her? As soon as word got out you two stopped and you tried to convince Lisa not to divorce you.
Adam: I didn’t want a divorce. I loved Lisa.
Matt: That’s a lot of love. Why couldn’t the two of you let us go before you started f*cking? Even during that time?
Adam: The heart wants what it wants.
Matt really looks at Adam.
Matt: Fine! Really, outstanding! I’m a big boy. Relationships sometimes end, people fall in love with others. I get that. I respect that. Amy dumps me without telling me why and keeps f*cking you in secret, I’m sad but we’re still friends. Amy dumps me for you, I’m heartbroken but one day I forgive you. You two screw in a passionate one night affair and I find out about it, I’m pissed as hell and maybe I end it with Amy and pick a fight with you but one day I forgive you. You two sleep together countless times and realize you’re in love and for some reason Amy decides to not break up with me and let’s me find out like a fool, then you bitch about my response and I get fired from the job that was my f*cking LIFE you can understand that I’ll never forgive you. You took away my dream girl and my dream job. You put your “cock†in my girlfriend while I was injured. After all the work we put in to get to the top of the company, you already there and me about to join you, and I’m not sure I can enjoy it because it’d mean working with you. I don’t want you to misunderstand me Adam. Feelings were raw when I first came back and we worked with one another. Accidents happened. There won’t be anymore accidents. I’ve noticed you go out of your way from time to time to put me over a little. That spot during your entrance to the Royal Rumble was a little boost for me. It’s nice of you, even if you don’t realize you’re doing it, and I appreciate it. I’m still working to be where you’re at, but I no longer begrudge your success. I no longer want you to die in a car crash. But I will never, ever forgive you for what you did to me. That doesn’t mean we can’t work together, it just means we can’t have a friendly game of pool.
Adam: We’re having one now.
Matt returns to the game.
Matt: This isn’t friendly.
Adam: No. It’s not, really.
Matt: I know how simple it is for you to cut an amazing interview. You fake emotion very well. Words come to you easily. I can’t do that. But I do enough well that I shouldn’t be passed over for a main event spot. And I’ve done enough for the company that I’ve earned at least a short world title reign.
Adam: Maybe.
Matt: And please don’t you do me any favors thinking I’ll forgive you. I’ll appreciate it but I’ll never forgive you, and I don’t see myself doing too many favors for you in the near future.
Adam: I understand, but you forgot something about me Matt.
Matt: What’s that Adam?
Adam: I’m a really nice guy.
Matt: You’re right. I didn’t even take that into consideration.
Adam: Yeah, I definitely could have been a better friend to you, especially when it came to Amy, but I’m a really decent human being.
Matt: You ruined my life.
Adam: Not on purpose.
Matt: You had to have some idea what would happen.
Adam: Nope. I was following my heart and my penis. You can call me whorish and selfish but never malicious. Johnny Ace fired you and I didn’t feel right about it. And the little nice gestures I’ve been doing in the ring? They’re not so you’ll forgive me, I’m doing them because it’s the nice way to go about our professional relationship.
Matt: You’re a prince.
Adam: I am a superb human being who likes to f*ck a little much. You’re a job obsessed commitment-phobe.
Matt: I’m not afraid of commitment.
Adam: I’ve proposed to two women. You with the love of your life for around, what was it, three to five years, you couldn’t pop the question?
Matt: The timing wasn’t right.
Adam: You
Matt: This is a conversation that Amy and I have had. I don’t need to have it with you.
Adam: I’m glad the two of you made up.
Matt: She was an important part of my life. Still is.
Adam: Yeah, well, at least I know she cares more about me than you.
Matt: Well, you did have sex with her last, but we have a relationship which
Adam: I’m her number three friend on myspace. You’re four.
Matt: Say it isn’t so.
Adam: It’s true. Matt, I think it would be a real thrill for the fans if you’d be my myspace friend.
Matt: Sure. I’m not putting you in my top five thousand though.
Adam: I’m putting you in my top 8. You’re going between Jenna Jameson and some chick in a red cross bikini.
Matt: Perv.
Adam: See? I’m a likable, nice guy. I screwed up, I really did. I’ve apologized, I’ve made amends for it and
Without warning Matt bashes his pool cue into the table. It breaks in half. Matt continues to bash the end of the pool cue he’s holding into the pool table for a good ten seconds. He then throws the cue to the ground and storms off stage. He quickly walks back on with another cue.
Matt: Did anyone see that?
Adam: I didn’t see. I was staring at a psychopath with a stick.
Matt: Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen. What were you saying?
Adam: I think I said I’ve made amends before you went nuts.
Matt: Yeah. That was it. I’m going to forfeit the game and leave before I actually do break this f*cking stick over your head.
Adam: We were making progress. Don’t leave all pissy.
Matt: You didn’t make amends. You buried me. You continue to bury me, and if I get the privilege of working a program with you I will continue to be buried. I will never be completely comfortable working here because the guy who f*cked the girl I would probably be married to today is considered about twenty times more important than me.
Adam: When you lay it all out like that
Matt: There’s a lot that’s right with my life now, including a possible world title push. I deserve that recognition. I deserve that money. I got the people behind me. I put in the time and work and personal sacrifice.
Adam: Great! What do you want from me?
Matt: What I’m entitled to! The world title and you to, I don’t know, get killed in a car crash.
The waitress enters with the shots. Adam throws a bill on the tray and takes the shots.
Adam: Thanks gorgeous.
Waitress: I have a name.
Waitress exits. Adam hands a shot to Matt.
Matt: I don’t want it.
Adam: Come on, toast with me.
Matt: I don’t want to.
Adam: To my death via car crash. May it be, at the very least, satisfying for you.
Matt: I f*cking hate you.
Adam: Just keep it professional in the ring buddy.
Matt: You can count on me bitch.
The two men drink their shots and slam the glasses on the pool table.
Blackout.
The End.
