I Been Thinking About It

I BEEN THINKING ABOUT IT Filed transcript. Submitted by "Toxic Waste" Rancid to the STRIFE media coordinator's office in the days following Behind Closed Doors 9. Recorded on a handheld phone camera. Vertical orientation. The federation's editorial team has again declined to release the video on production-quality grounds. The audio transcription has been filed for the record at the contributor's insistence. ———————————————— [Audio begins with the hum of industrial dryers. The location appears to be a laundromat, empty, sometime deep in the night. Fluorescent lighting, one tube strobing at the far end. RANCID is sitting on a folding table meant for clothes. There is a visible bruise across the left side of his face and a line of butterfly closures above his eyebrow. He is eating something out of a paper bag. The grin is present before the first word is.] RANCID: Heeeey. Hey. It's me. I'm back. They said I could file another one if I stopped calling the office. So. Here I am. Filing. RANCID: You all watched it. I know you watched it. Main event. Me and the Irishwoman. Sixteen minutes and change, and then the lights went red — real nice touch with the lights, whoever does the lights, I want you to know somebody out here appreciates you — and then I was looking up at the ceiling of the hex and the ref was slapping the mat next to my head. One. Two. Three. Hey. RANCID: And I was laughing. You saw that too. Everybody's been asking about that. The guy from the office asked about that. A kid at the gas station asked about that. Why were you laughing, Rancid. What's funny, Rancid. You lost, Rancid. [He sets the bag down. Leans toward the camera. The strobing tube at the far end flickers.] RANCID: Okay. So. Last time I lost, I told you all I did zero thinking about it. Match happened. Tacos. Over it. That was true. That was completely true. RANCID: This time I been thinking about it. I been thinking about it for days. I can't stop thinking about it. And I'm gonna tell you which part, because it's not the part you think. RANCID: It's not the finish. Finish was great, by the way. She caught me out of the air like a door closing. No notes. It's not the finish. RANCID: It's the bat. RANCID: I swung the bat. You saw me swing the bat. Beautiful bat. And every single person I have ever swung anything at, in every room I have ever been in — the barbed wire ring outside Tijuana, the basement in Detroit, the parking lot behind the second parking lot — every one of them did one of two things. They got out of the way, or they got hit. Two options. Whole career. Two options. RANCID: She picked a third one. She stepped INTO it. She put her arm up — the taped one, the one she got ready before the show, before she ever saw me — and she took my best object on the one spot on her whole body where it couldn't buy me anything. On purpose. She CHOSE it. She decided where I got to hurt her. [He sits back. For a moment the grin changes into something quieter and more attentive, which is worse.] RANCID: Nobody's ever done that. You understand what I'm telling you? Fifteen years of rooms, my rooms and her rooms, and I have never once stood across from somebody who was not, somewhere down in the wiring, a little bit afraid of me. She wasn't. Not for one second of sixteen minutes. She hit me like I was a Tuesday. RANCID: Do you know how long I been waiting to meet somebody like that? [Long laugh. It runs. One of the dryers buzzes and stops.] RANCID: So. Anyway. I hear the two of them are gonna do it now. Her and the one with the rules. At the big one. One on one, nobody else in the room, door shut. They been writing each other LETTERS, did you all know that? Letters. Envelopes. I got one guy who won't pick up barbed wire because of a thing that happened to him, and one lady who takes bat shots by appointment, and they're gonna lock themselves in the hex together and have a conversation about lines. RANCID: I think that's the funniest thing this federation has ever booked, and I am including the time they hired me. RANCID: And I'm gonna watch it. I want to be real clear, office, since I know you're transcribing this — watch. That's all. I'm gonna watch it the way you people watch me. Because one of two things comes out of that cage when it's over, and I want to see which. Either the line holds, or the line don't. And whichever one walks out — [He points at the camera with whatever he's been eating.] RANCID: — they know where to find me. I'm not going anywhere. Somebody else gets me next, sure. Haven't picked who. Maybe they pick. Doesn't matter. That's the beautiful thing about me. I'm like the runoff stream. I don't need an invitation. I just need a slope. RANCID: Oh — and Irishwoman. If you're reading this one. They tell me you read everything. RANCID: Good fight. Best I ever lost. Bring the arm guard next time. Won't matter. [He crumples the paper bag, drops it on the folding table, and slides off. The camera catches the strobing tube one more time on the way down.] RANCID: Bell rings. Hey. [The recording ends mid-laugh.] ———————————————— [End transcript.]