“I’m pissed…”
[Gravedigger sits against a tombstone, his head rested back.]
“At myself.”
[His melancholy reverberates.]
“I wanna sit here and talk about what it means to be a man. That’s what I thought I was. Not just any man, either, but a man of conviction. I would never claim to be morally superior; I’ve done too much bad shit to survive to believe that. But when push came to shove, I always considered myself a fucking man.”
[He shakes his head.]
“Yet CJ Thorpe put me down in the ground, on my own patch… like a fucking child.
Any grave but my own… my words, not his. MY words. The words of a man who thought himself capable of standing up to be counted. Those are the words of naivety, of insincerity, of hubris and idiocy. Those are the words of a child, as proven by the fact that despite saying it, I ended up six feet underground.”
[Gravedigger stands up, turning around to face the headstone. He reveals a bottle of whisky in his hand.]
“I’ve always considered myself a man – not always a man of my word, it’s true. But a man, none the less. I’ve had to be since I was a boy. I had to be a man when I wasn’t mentally or physically developed enough to be one. I didn’t have a choice in the matter. The streets took my adolescence and distributed them on any cock, crack dealer and corner it could or that wanted it. My youth was stolen from me. I had to grow up and become a fucking man.
At least I thought I had.
But nothing in this world is capable of making a man feel more like a boy than when someone else kicks his fucking ass.”
[The headstone reads his own name; the grave? One he was in just last night.]
“I wanna tell you how to be a man, Destructo Boy. I wanna tell you how to grow the fuck up and do what you say you’re gonna do, but last week I said I was gonna become OSW World Heavyweight Champion and today, I stand before a grave that was dug for me and I was put into like a fucking child.
So, who am I to tell you how to be a man? Who am I to tell what it takes to be one? I thought I had it all figured out but seemingly, I’m just as lost as you.”
[Gravedigger takes a sip of his drink and tosses the glass against the headstone.]
“We both saw defeat at Bad Blood… we both know what it’s like to be made to feel like a boy. I guess that makes our match a coming of age contest, doesn’t it?
And I can’t say any grave but my own anymore, that just doesn’t make sense.
But I do know where all the bodies are buried…
What’s one more?”