Axton Gunn Vs. Jonathan Willis

        We are wild!
            We are like young volcanoes!
        We are wild; Americana, exotica
            Do you wanna feel a little beautiful, baby?

    The dulcet tones of Patrick Stump sing from Axton’s phone in the middle of the night, shoved under his pillow on a charge cable. Axton Gunn wakes with a jolt, immediately scrunching up his brow in frustration as he paws for the device. Rolling onto his back, he squints blearily at the screen to see he’s getting a video call from…

    … his eyes open fully and he sits up, blankets falling around his bare waist as he answers the call almost too eagerly with a clumsy thumb.

    “Mom…! Hey…”

    “Axton! Were you asleep? I’m so sorry!”

    “It’s one in the morning, mom. Haha.”

    “I thought it was eleven in LA; I figured you would still be up. Where are you?”

    “Baltimore.”

    Axton rubs the sleep from his eyes, smiling through the drowsiness. The woman on the video call looks surprised and apologetic; her jet black hair is pulled back into a messy bun, her brow knit over dark eyes and her mouth drawn into a flat line. Her complexion is visibly darker than Axton’s, though he clearly shares her nose and cheeks.

    “I’m so sorry Ax, I had no idea. I thought your tour was cancelled and you’d be home.”

    “Mmm… something came up. I’m in Maryland. And I’m awake now, so stop fussing.” Despite the sleepy crack in his voice, he’s glowing, looking down at his phone screen with a deep warmth in the dark. “How are you, mom? Are you still in Japan?”

    She nods, her expression softening a bit. “For a while. I know I haven’t reached out in a while, baby--I’m sorry. With the way things are right now…”

    “Don’t worry about it.”

    “Well… how’s my baby boy?”
    
    “Baby man, mom.”

    “Baby man.”

    They both laugh. Axton slumps back onto his pillows, holding the phone above his head.

    “I’m doing ok. I found something else to do this year since I can’t tour.”

    “Yes?” His mom looked confused. “And you’re in Baltimore now because…?”

    “I impulse-joined a pro wrestling fed.”

    “... Axton.”

    “Yeah.”

    “I thought you were going to surprise me with something really strange, like maybe you finally joined the circus, you little clown.”

    Ax snorts a laugh, rubbing his face with his free hand.

    “Well… it’s wrestling, mom. You know how that goes. I flew to Baltimore, dropped my not-really-ex on his head, pissed people off, but we made up and now we’re not really not-exes anymore. Also I started a club with matching jackets, and also I’m helping a new friend come to terms with his identity, and I met a fan who became a Champion last week, and also it’s too cold here and I need to get a thicker sweater.”

    “You wanna run all that by me again but… slower?”

    “Hehe.”

    As Axton entertains his mom with stories of his exploits so far with Carnage, he starts to feel himself warming up; feeling less anxious. Something in him settles. It’s not long before half an hour has passed and the topic has gently shifted into softer, more personal things; Axton’s active thoughts about goings-on return to the surface.

    He sighs.

    “Hey mom… I know I never really asked you this… but what was--what was going through your head when I came out?”

    “Oh, I…”

    Axton’s mother looks pensive, drumming her fingers on the desk she’s sitting at.

    “I wasn’t surprised at all the first time, Ax. I thought you were a tomboy, I guess, and I just wanted you to be happy being yourself. I thought it was beautiful that you just had so much love in you that you couldn’t limit yourself by boys or girls… you had so many crushes. It was too sweet. I never wanted you to think of that part of yourself as anything less than beautiful.”

    “And the other time?”

    She wilts, her eyes glazed for a moment.

    “I was scared for you, baby.”
    
    Axton’s heart twists into a knot. He swallows.

    “You were scared for me…?”
    
    “I wanted to do anything I could to make things easier on you. I wanted to make sure you didn’t need to worry if you ever wanted surgery or hormones or anything, anything at all… but the one thing I couldn’t control was how other people would treat you. And I was scared for you, when I was away, when I couldn’t be there to protect you. My biggest regret is not being there to hold you when you were hurt.”

    “Mom…”

    Axton smiles, his eyes glazed and wet.

    “It’s OK. You know… just knowing that you had my back, even after the battles were over? That was enough. I’m glad you were there.”

    She nods, squeezing her hand into a fist.

    “But Ax… I saw how much happier you were. I noticed every day. I saw the way you looked at yourself in the mirror, how you liked the young man looking back at you a little more every day… I saw you come into yourself. So I knew it was all worth it. I knew you would have to get through some hard things, but I knew you were brave. I knew you were a fighter. I’ve never seen you back down from anything… and I don’t expect to.”

    “Yeah, you kinda raised me to be a badass.”

    “Damn right I did.”

    “… I’m glad you picked such a manly middle name for me.”

    “It has ‘Man’ in it, literally.”

    “Heh. Yeah.”

    The two of them are quiet for a moment, just looking into the camera. Axton wishes more than anything that he could just hug her. Words weren’t enough.

    “Mom… I miss you.”

    “I miss you too, Ax.”

    Axton’s chest aches. Between his mother’s military career and his busy schedule in LA, he hadn’t seen her in person for years. The video calls meant everything to him--they were tethers. Reminders that she hadn’t forgotten about him. Reminders that she never would. Even if she was always so far away, she always made the effort… and he didn’t care if that meant answering calls in the middle of the night.

    At least he gets to feel, for a little while, like he's someone’s family.

    “I’ll call you again as soon as I can, ok? You should try to get back to sleep.”

    “Yeah… hey, mom? Can I ask you a favour?”

    “Of course, Ax.”

    “I know maybe this is asking too much… but I’m here with Carnage for a year. If you could… if you could make it to just one show… it’d mean a lot to me.”

    After a moment, his mother nods, her eyes gentle.

    “I’ll try my best, Ax. I can’t promise anything… but I’ll try.”

    “Thanks, mom. Love you.”

    “Love you too, Axman.”

    “G’night.”

    The call ends; Axton lowers his hand, the phone resting on his chest. The exhaustion sets back in almost immediately, and he’s asleep, his brow lightly knit with fitful dreams.

---

    After closing time, when the evening starts to settle in over the city of Baltimore, the storefront of The Sound Garden glows with a dim blue light. It pours from the neon letters posted over the door--We Buy Sell and Trade--and floods the quiet storefront with a cool, dim fog. The cast illuminates rows of CDs and records peppered with collector memorabilia and band shirts. Outside, small spotlights lining the wall illuminate the old red sign, where the white stroke on the lettering has started to chip in places, lending credence to the shop’s story near the harbour.

    There’s only one person inside. Axton Gunn stands between the rows of records, browsing casually, sporting a black denim jacket peppered with band patches. On the front breast pocket of the jacket are two round button pins--one bearing the purple, pink and blue stripes of the bisexual pride flag, and the other with the symbol of transgender power that matches the ink on his right wrist. He grins as he picks up one of the record sleeves, admiring the album art for a moment before looking up, his green eyes meeting those of the viewer.

    “Hey.”

    He slots the record back down, brushing fingertips with nails painted black against the corners of the sleeve.

    “You know, if you know what you’re looking for, a record shop can be like a queer hall of fame.” The Rockstar smiles fondly, his eyes flickering down to the treasure trove under his hands. “The music scene has always been full of people like us. A lot of people like us became legends… household names. When I was a kid, when I got my first guitar, I used to dream about finding my albums shuffled in with these guys… used to imagine thumbing past David Bowie, George Michael, Erasure, and then seeing my own face on one of these sleeves among the greats.”

    He laughs, offering a playful shrug.

    “I’m young, I still got time. But I got competition. We’re all over the place now--Halsey, Brendon Urie, Harry Styles, Janelle Monae, Jason Mraz, Lil Nas X, Frank Ocean… heh! I could stand here all night rhyming off names. I think that’s awesome. We’re able to be more present and more open about ourselves now more than ever.”

    His expression sobers a bit; he’s still smiling, but it’s with a certain wistfulness.

    “On the other hand… it doesn’t really make it easier, sharing that part of yourself. There’s still a lot of backlash out there. A lot of opposition… a lot of people who are gonna treat us different. It’s happened to all of us. Not everybody embraced Freddy Mercury when he came out, and hell--even today a lot of folks think he was gay. Dude was bi as hell. He had a lot to struggle with around that. More recently, people like Adam Lambert had to keep that truth under the hood during his run on American Idol, because he knew it would hurt his votes if people knew. He couldn’t be true to himself on TV, and had to wait to come out after the competition was over… Mika, with his awesome breakout single Grace Kelly, had a hell of a time with it. A preacher dad and a traditional mom who expected a picture-perfect nuclear family for him? That’s rough. He wrote a fantastic album about it, but it hurts to listen to it sometimes… there’s so much pain in it. For some of us music is a cathartic release of that frustration we can’t talk about otherwise. That’s why I wrote Skin and Ink, and Raw Heart, among others.”

    Axton rubs his arm with a sheepish smile.

    “There’s a lot of X-factors, you know? It can feel like a huge risk. And I think that’s something a lot of people overlook. Even if you know you’ve got a safety net waiting for you at the bottom of the drop, making that jump can be the scariest thing you’ll ever do. It’s not landing that’s scary. It’s the falling. It’s the scrapes and bumps on the way down. It’s the unpredictable tumble.”

    The musician sighs, meandering down the aisle with his hands behind his head.

    “I guess I’ve been thinking about that a lot. I made my jumps a ways back, but I haven’t forgotten how it felt. I’m a sucker for a thrill, but nothing ever made me so nervous. It takes iron guts and a steel spine. That’s why I admire you, Jon.”

    Axton looks to the camera with a smirk.

    “Shitty circumstances or not, what you did at Chaos 100 was brave as fuck. It’s incredible how just a few words can completely change how a person sees you. and you told the whole Legion at once. Every single person watching. You shifted the world around yourself. You decided to move the pieces with your own hands! You took that power and you made it yours. That’s… heh. Dude, that’s badass as hell. And the whole time we were rocking the show after that--while I was fighting alongside my boys Dom and Seb in that cyclone of highs--I couldn’t stop thinking about how incredible that was. Not only did you drop that bomb without flinching, but you got right into the ring afterward and put on a show that had everybody screaming on their feet. But, I dunno… maybe they were screaming on their feet because you were up against real star power.”

    He winks, leaning on the shelf at the end of the isle. Piled up near his shoulders are stacks of brand new SKULL FRACTURES t-shirts displayed for sale, and a signed copy of the album propped up in a display case.

    “I can’t wait to take you one on one, Jon. You fought harder and shined brighter than both of your tag partners combined last time. They were nothing but background noise--Eli Goode is a whiny has-been who never really was, and Hampton is a joke, getting really old, who never deserved the weight on his waist he stole from Dominick. Jon? You made yourself into a star. Honestly, I think you’re the goddamn bravest, toughest, most Relentless son of a bitch in Carnage. You’re a powerhouse. You’re a dark horse. You’ve got style, edge, strength, nerve… heart. It looks like I got my wish, in the end--because I couldn’t help but wish the whole time that it was just you and me.”

    Axton breaks into a grin, closing a fist and pressing it into his opposite hand, cracking his knuckles.

“That’s why, when I win, it’s gonna be even sweeter. It’s gonna be proof that I can take on the best that Carnage has to offer and come out with the gold. It’s gonna show the Legion, it’s gonna show my haters, my friends, my enemies, that I belong here beside the elite. That I’m not just a pretty boy with a guitar. I can match the best blow for blow. I’m fire on a mic and I can read anybody for filth--dare me, go ahead. That I’m not just an angry punk. I’m motivated and I know what fuels me. I have reasons for what I do that aren’t so one-dimensional. I’m not some rich asshole kid from LA. I’m a man who came from a low rung on the ladder, disadvantaged by my circumstance as a queer, trans, native dude, and despite that I still had the will and the work ethic to push my way up through every barrier to get where I am. I’m not gonna let anybody belittle or minimize what that means to me, or frankly, to any other marginalized person kicking their way to the top in this company--you know who you are. And Jon, you better know for damn sure that includes you.”

    The humour temporarily gone from his voice, the fire of his will taking its place, he looks on with intense eyes that match his tone.

    “You’re family now, Jon. You’re one of us and I’ll defend you to the death. But at Chaos? You better bring it. Because I’m not gonna hold back.”

    Axton smirks with hunger now, lowering his arms and dropping his thumbs into the pockets of his Lucky jeans.

    “And if you manage to beat me?”

    One last wink.

    “Drinks on me.”

---