Chapter 1
The year was young. 2011 wasn’t even a week old as I made the hour drive from Iowa City to the Quad Cities for a Midwest Championship Wrestling (MCW) show. At the time I was a semi-pro wrestler working for various independent promotions around the state of Iowa. The promoter Scott “The Southerner” Dolquist called me earlier that day to inform me that my opponent, as he referred to him, was “a big ole Indian boy.”
When I got to the show that night, I did my usual round of shaking everyone’s hand, with the, “Hey, how are ya? Good to see ya” greetings. When I noticed a tall, heavy-set Native-American, about 6’0, weighing 340 pounds, I knew he was my opponent for the night. He was in the corner getting his gear on. Next to him stood a guy with his hands in his pockets, a well- built guy, someone you could tell spent time in the gym. An inch or two taller than me, but not near as broad shouldered. He didn’t say much as I introduced myself to them.
“Stephen Stonebraker.” I said as I extended my hand. “The All American.”
“Mercer Sage.” The Native American said back to me. “King Sage.”
We began a conversation getting to know one another. Mercer told me that they had driven all the way from Bismarck, North Dakota. A half a day’s trip no matter which way you sliced it. An awful long way to perform in front of 130 people and a $25 pay day, but that’s the life of an independent pro wrestler. We dream of the hundreds of thousands of dollars the guys in the WWE make and getting flown from town to town, to perform in front of 10’s of thousands of people. Yet, the long road trips for little to no money are often the builder of our character. We’re madly in love with what we do.
As we talked Mercer asked me if I had been an amateur wrestler due to the fact that I was wearing a University of Iowa wrestling t-shirt. I told him that I had wrestled in high school. He said he had wrestled in high school too and enjoyed working with guys who had legit wrestling backgrounds. I responded that I did too, but I was also a theatre guy and liked my matches to have plenty of showmanship & creativity.
“I do a lot of theatre.”
That’s when I found out there were now three things Mercer Sage & I had in common. Pro wrestling, amateur wrestling & theatre. Mercer confessed to me that he hoped to one day go out to Hollywood and take a real shot at making it as an actor. I told him that I too hoped to one day go to Hollywood and while I would give it a go as an actor, my real dream was to make it as a writer. That’s when the guy in the black leather jacket finally spoke.
“You’re a writer?” He said to me.
“Well yeah…” I answered. “A wanna be anyway.”
“You written anything?”
“Oh yeah. Novels, novellas, screenplays…”
“You’ve written screenplays?”
“Yeah.”
At that precise moment, Jason Janes became a huge part of my life.
Over the next few minutes I came to find out that Jason Janes dreamed of one day being a Steven Spielberg or an Ivan Reitman the same way I dreamed of one day being a John Hughes or an Eric Roth. His goal in life was to be a director. When he saw me, the vision was born. I’d write the film, he’d direct it.
He told me all about himself. What resonated with me the most was that he had grown up in small town, Illinois as I had in small town, Iowa, in an area where he felt out of place as no one seemed to share his passion. Want to talk college football while getting wasted over a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon? Take your pick. The whole town is available. Want to discuss ideas for a new television series? Want to say how you’d tackle the sequel if hired to write one? Tell the waiter you’ll take a table for one, because where either one of us grew up, you’re sitting alone.
Jason and I exchanged phone numbers & emails as he told me that he had attended Southern Illinois-Edwardsville & he had been working in post production editing ever since. He asked me to send him some of my work.
I don’t usually run into many people that are interested in anything that I’ve written. I was so excited to send him something that as soon as I got home, I sat at that computer screen until I knew the message had been sent. I sent him a copy of a novella I had written that I originally entitled “The Best of Friends”. Reworking the title to better fit the narrative, I renamed it “What Really Happened to Aric”? A short mystery/suspense. A little over 30,000 words.
“I know talent when I see it.” Jason said to me after reading. “You have talent.”
He then proceeded to tell me everything he enjoyed about the novella and everything he disliked about it. He thought I had a strong sense of characters and that I had a good flow. He thought my greatest weakness was the ending. I had to agree with him on that. I built up the suspense and mystery to such a high level without brainstorming on how I was going to resolve it. I rewrote that ending about thirty-three times and I never came to a satisfying conclusion. I wonder sometimes if my struggle with writing endings has to do with how my life has turned out. I’ve had an assortment of dreams and ambitions, all of which are novels of their own. I’ve been disappointed with the endings to nearly all of them. Most of the stories in my life have dissatisfying endings. That maybe is why I have such trouble in writing them.
Jason explained to me that his job in Bismark, North Dakota was coming to an end. I told him I was sorry to hear that, but he explained to me that it was simply the nature of his business. He had moved around a lot. Since first getting work in the industry, he had had jobs in various locations including Chicago, Illinois, Rochester, New York and Palm Springs, California.
“Jobs in my line of work usually last one or two years.” He explained to me. “Three if you’re lucky. Once the gig is up, you look for a new one. Lots of moving around.”
At the time I was working for Yellow Cab out of Iowa City. I usually worked a 12-15 hour shift, five nights a week from 6:00 a.m. to as long as they needed me in the morning. Back in those days 2:45 a.m. to about 5:30 a.m. was slow and boring. Some nights I wrote. Some nights I read. Some nights I slept. Other nights I would just sit there and wonder what I could have done differently in my life to have ended up where I wanted to be, rather than sitting in a Crown Victoria with 200,000 miles inhaling the exhaust fumes on a freezing cold February night.
I don’t know if many could match the fire and determination I had as a kid. At the tender age of 12 years old, I was over at my friend Chris Thompson’s house watching John Carpenter’s “Halloween” for the first time. Upon watching Donald Pleasence’s mesmerizing performance as Dr. Sam Loomis, it was then and there that I realized that I must dedicate my life to the art of story-telling. I wasn’t sure of the exact medium I would use: novels & novellas, stage plays, screenplays, perhaps another form. I didn’t care. I felt that I had within me the ability to create the type of stories people would want to read or watch—that I had a gift.
In seventh grade I made up my mind what I was going to do. I was going to work hard at everything I did and I had my life planned out moment for moment. I was going to do well in junior high and high school, go to college, go to grad school and then head out to Hollywood to give it a shot. I’m not sure if I ever saw myself as the type to go out there and make it huge. I don’t know if I ever dreamed that big. The idea of going out and being the writer of blockbuster hit films, living in a $10,000,000 home never entered my imagination. Instead I saw myself as the struggling type, the one with a thousand tries, nine hundred-ninety nine of them where I found myself empty handed. Yet there would be that one. That one time where I got a one line role on an HBO series. That one time when I got to write episode seven of season five. Maybe I would have gone out to Hollywood and today be among some of the most creative minds in the business. Maybe I’d have gone out there, fallen straight on my naïve ass and came crawling back to Iowa on my hands and knees. I say most likely I would have landed somewhere in between. I may not have the killer cutthroat instincts or the ability to play the political game of kiss-ass in order to get ahead. Yet I can’t see someone with my work ethic and passion leaving without at least getting something worth holding on to.
My life didn’t turn out that way at all. I was no valedictorian. I was no salutatorian. There were kids far more intelligent than me in Sigourney High School’s graduating class of 2004. Pure will saw me finish 13th out of 52 kids. A fitting number for such an anomaly as myself. Thirteen has always been a number people have seen and treated differently. How appropriate that it is where I ended up with a 3.3 GPA and a 20 on my ACT. I wasn’t getting into Grinnell College or the University of Chicago, but I could get into quite a few colleges.
I had been a mediocre amateur wrestler in high school. In fact, mediocre is probably being kind. I had never qualified for the state tournament and my overall career record was 65-70. Nevertheless I had letters from Lawrence College in Wisconsin, Ellsworth Community College & the University of Dubuque asking me to join their teams as a walk-on. I imagine that this probably had something to do with my passion, dedication and work ethic. Although it never translated to success on the mat, I had a work ethic second to no one. I was always the hardest worker in the room. I got up every morning to run, lift or work on technique. I never missed an open gym in the summer. I attended two wrestling camps every summer. I was a member of both the Ottumwa Freestyle Wrestling Club and the Oskaloosa Freestyle Wrestling Club. Injuries, including breaking my back, tearing my left bicep, tearing my left groin and ripping up tendons near my ankle hampered my career, but truth is, I never had it together mentally. I had no confidence back in those days. My back injury kept me out of the weight room far longer than I should have been, thus causing me to be physically weaker than my opponents. I often tell people I had no strength back in those days. I mean that as much mentally as I do physically.
My Dad took the offer from Ellsworth and threw it in the trash. He saw going to community college as an insult. To him community college was for the kids in high school that didn’t work hard enough to improve their grades. It was for the kids who spent the weekend partying and drinking instead of studying. For me to go to a community college would in his opinion be a slap in the face. It’d be throwing away all the years of hard work I had put in.
Frankly, I had no interest in wrestling in college. With as much as I love the sport and with as much passion as I have for the sport, that comes as a surprise to everyone who knows me on a personal level. The first thing people think of when they think Stephen Stonebraker, is wrestling. My name is synonymous with the sport. I’m not even 1/100th as good of a wrestler as Bob Uecker was a baseball player, but he’s the closest analogy I can come up with. Although at Sigourney, there were kids even on my team, far superior on the mat, I’m still the first name many think of when they think of wrestling. I’m not sure if that’s admirable or depressing.
It was a conversation with my theatre teacher Ms. Murtaugh, which led me to the decision that it was time to move on from wrestling. She said to me in a conversation that if I put forth the kind of effort into theatre that I had put into wrestling, she could see me really getting somewhere with it. I figured, what the hell? Why not? I had exhausted myself as a wrestler. I mean maybe I would have finally found myself on the mat. I can’t completely dismiss that possibility but it the realms of plausibility it wasn’t likely. I wasn’t going to be a NAIA qualifier or an NAIA All American. I didn’t have World or Olympic aspirations. I modestly accepted that and left the mat for the stage.
Unfortunately my college experience turned out to be a nightmare. As an 18 year old kid, I thought at the time I was making one of the wisest decisions of my life, choosing to go to Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. Looking back now as a 35 year old man, I laugh at how utterly ridiculous my decision was. Although Northwestern College had a distinguished reputation for its theatre department, the real reason I chose to go there had nothing to do with that. At that time in my life I was severely depressed, suicidal and extremely unhappy. I concluded that I deserved to feel this way, otherwise I wouldn’t. I couldn’t come up with any reasons though. I had a period of time in my life when I was young where I had been a pain in the ass for my mother and step-father, but that had been many years ago.
Throughout all of junior high and high school, I had been the ideal kid. Even though my Dad was extremely hard on me and often made me feel like shit, I had done about all I could to please him and make him happy. I’m not saying I succeeded, but I’ll fight anyone to the death that says I did anything other than my best in an attempt. I was a good student. I treated everyone with kindness and I did my best to be a good man. As much as I racked my brain as to why I felt as low as I did, hours upon hours, days upon days, I couldn’t come up with anything.
That’s when I wondered if maybe the problem was that I wasn’t close enough to God. Maybe the reason why I felt so hated and felt so worthless was because I wasn’t a good enough Christian. I mean I went to church. I wore a medallion of St. Christopher around my neck. I prayed and thanked God every night. I didn’t know what I was missing, but I figured that I had to be missing something. That’s the only reason I went to Northwestern College, one of Iowa’s most religious institutions. I thought it would bring me closer to God.
It had the polar opposite effect on me. My depression got worse. My suicidal thoughts got worse. The two and two-thirds years I spent at Northwestern were the darkest days of my life. There were good people there. I can name them. I’m not about to say there weren’t. Yet the love, understanding and acceptance I had been searching for wasn’t there. Instead I was met with a lot of intolerance, hatred, bigotry, alienation and excommunication. It got to the point I couldn’t take it anymore. I experienced one horrific event after another, until I came to the realization that I was going to do one of two things: I was either gonna go find a bridge to jump off of or I was going to leave Northwestern College.
I think it’s obvious as to the choice I made. At the beginning of April, a little more than a month shy of ending my junior year, I left Northwestern College. An act my father has never forgiven me for. He’s never taken the time to listen or at least attempt to understand why I had to leave. He made up his mind without knowing anything of how I felt or why I felt that way, that I could have easily finished up my junior year and then went back a final year to get my degree. I can’t say for sure whether I forgive him for that or not.
I took sixth months off in an attempt to get myself back together before I enrolled in classes at Indian Hills Community College. Seeing that Northwestern College was $24,000 a semester, I laughed and cried at the same time. Had I actually gone to a community college instead of attending a private, four-year school, I would have never gotten into the financial mess that ended up ruining my credit. I finished up my degree, now in History at Buena Vista University’s satellite campus in Ottumwa, Iowa.
Having $500 worth of student loans to pay back every month, having no money in the bank and having difficulty finding any jobs that paid more than $10 an hour, there was no way I was headed to California anytime soon. The idea of going to graduate school had come up and I had been accepted. Yet already $48,000 in debt, I realized getting a master’s degree was going to do me little to no good. The idea of adding another $64,000 on top of it wasn’t something I wanted to do.
That was something that I could talk to Jason about. No one else, because no one else understood what I was going through or what I felt. Everyone else in my life had never gone to college or they had gone to college and it worked out for them. I wanted to scream as loud as I could that I wished I had never gone to college or I wished I had only gone to community college and called it good. Had I not gone to college or went somewhere cheaper, I probably could have saved up and headed out to California when the realms of possibility were still within my grasp. It’s almost as if my life may have turned out better had I not worked as hard. Had I not done the right things and made what I felt were the right decisions. Jason understood that, whereas no one else did.
I had also changed dramatically from a belief point of view. It wasn’t that I completely dismissed the idea of the Christian God being real, it’s simply that I stopped believing that it was an absolute certainty. I stopped allowing abusive, bullying and manipulative types to tell me that their version of God was the right one. I knew plenty of people who believed in a loving God, one who wasn’t all about hating anyone and everyone who was different. What made their version of God any less worthy than those who believed in a God that was all about Hell, brimstone and fire? I also looked at the possibility of other beliefs being real. I spoke with Jews, Muslims and a variety of different people who believed a variety of different things. This included Atheists. The possibility of there being no God, struck me as plausible as there being a God. Maybe there was a God and none of us knew what he/she was like and all of these religions we had come up with were because we weren’t getting answers and we as a species can’t accept the fact that there are some things that we don’t know. I came to find out that when I stopped being afraid of examining who I was and what I believed, and I took the time to look inwardly at who I truly was, agnostic seemed to fit best.
Even then I wasn’t crazy about the term. I liked the “unsure” and the “belief that it cannot be known” in reference to a higher power, deities, an afterlife and the purpose of our existence. That appealed to me. Yet what I hated about the term Agnostic is that it often had a connotation of, “Don’t care” in association. Simply because I don’t find myself in allegiance to an absolute certainty, doesn’t mean that I’m not curious as to the answer, whatever it may be, if it is indeed out there.
I’ve found most people are only interested in discussing what it is that they believe and they find themselves upset and hostile if you have anything to offer other than agreement. Even within those that seem to have the same beliefs. Matter of fact, I have seen more dissention among Christians themselves than I ever have with Christians and people of other beliefs. The nastiest of verbal confrontations I have witnessed have often been between two different sects.
A lot of Christians who speak to me in depth upon hearing my views, often think I’m simply a lost soul wandering out in the darkness who will eventually find my way into the light. A lot of Atheists I speak with think I’m simply one of them, but I don’t have the balls to admit in a Christian dominated society that there is no God and it’s all a bunch of bullshit.
Again, this is where Jason comes in. Not only could I openly and freely talk to him about my dreams as a writer and my frustrations of going to college, I could also share with him my beliefs. I’ve found only a select handful of people that I can open up to in terms of religion. Jason was one of them.
He himself was what he described as a Pantheist. He had his own definition, different than what you’ll find via Webster. He came off more of an Atheist and in some regards a Misotheist. We often spoke for hours on end of how the American society often mistook Misotheism for Atheism. We even shook our heads at how a Hollywood motion picture had depicted Atheists as if they hated God. How can someone hate something that they don’t even believe exists? No, Atheists don’t hate God. Misotheists do.
If dreams and our lack of religion weren’t enough for Jason and I to discuss in the wee hours of the morning, we also had a lot in common when it came to women. We both knew we were a bit on the weird side, but neither of us thought we or the other was that overt. We both saw ourselves as well as one another as decent looking, with at least some physical attributes. Yet neither of us had much luck with women. Ironically enough, and I can’t say this about very many men, Jason was one of the first times in my life where I knew a guy that was less successful with women than I was. If anyone I went to high school ever reads this, they’ll probably fall over in shock at the thought. Yet, that is the way it was. My luck with women wasn’t good, but Jason’s luck with women seemed to be non-existent.
