BBQ Ben

Diary

Before the wars dried up like old teriyaki glaze, Ben trained under a master who swore the tetsubo and the chopstick came from the same disciplined spirit, one for war, one for rice, both demanding a steady wrist and a stronger will. His friends started calling him Poundmax somewhere between his third bludgeoning victory and his tenth bowl of yakitori, and the name stuck harder than sauce on a grill grate. These days the discipline mostly shows up when he is flipping skewers over an open flame at 2am, aped on somebody's shady ramen-coin presale, insisting the smell of charcoal and weed is basically meditation if you squint. He still drills his club swings every morning, or he means to, until the smoker needs tending or the floor on his skewer-themed NFTs dips and he needs to stress-eat an entire chicken to cope. Poundmax will tell you, mouth full, chopsticks in one hand and bruises on his knuckles from the other, that a true warrior masters two things in life, and he is still only halfway there on the sobriety front.