be fine. Just trying to make you feel bad.”
I snort a laugh before turning to watch the others spar for a moment.
They call themselves “Sam’s Bloody Dozen,” ten males and two females, all wearing black pants, sopped T-shirts, and salt-stained black belts. The “newest” has been with me for ten years, the oldest for eighteen. Each one knows that to be at this level in my school, they have to push their muscles and minds past fatigue, past exhaustion, far beyond that place where other supposedly advanced martial artist whine, “This is bullshit, I quit.”
I slap my hands together. “Okay, people. Fall in.” The couples stop immediately, bow to one another, and form into two rows.
They see me as a stern father, one with a twinkle in his eyes. Unlike my newer students in the white and colored belt classes who stutter and blush when I look at them, these veterans know, like kids in a loving family know, that their “father’s” sternness is at once bluff and genuine. I reprimand them and I give them positive strokes; I encourage them to do more when their enthusiasm wanes and I rein them in when its overabundance risks their health; I push them to find their individuality in the fighting arts and I give them subtle hints when they lose their way.
They know that I care about them in and out of the school. I’ve been there for them when they’ve lost loved ones, lost their jobs, bled through divorces, and suffered a host of other miseries. Tillie, my twenty-nine-year-old second-degree, used her skills a couple of years ago on a jerk who apparently failed to notice her muscular neck and calloused knuckles before he tried to date rape her. She did such a job on him, that while he might have fantasies of doing it to someone else, his equipment was no longer up for the task. Or as she put it, “The little guy is permanently down for the count.” His Oregon State Prison cellmate was either happy or sad to find that out.
Tillie was all bravado when she first told me how she thumped the guy inside his car and out on the sidewalk, but only her mouth was smiling as she kept shifting her weight from foot to foot and tugging on her belt ends. Being the victim of a sex crime can leave a major gouge on a person’s psyche, even when the victim is able to defend against it. But when you train at this level together, you learn when to step in and when to step out. So I went along with her play and I stepped out.
A week later, after Tillie and I had wrapped a children’s session that we co-teach, Tillie stepped in. As we cleaned up the studio I asked how things were going. The forced smile she’d been wearing all week disappeared, and she began to weep and twist her belt ends again. Not a shoulder shaking cry, but the kind where the tears creep slowly down the face, gathering pain with every inch of travel, and turning me into mush in their wake.
She didn’t answer and I didn’t push for one. We sat quietly, stretching a little, and just being together. After about ten minutes, she sucked in some air, and whispered, “He grabbed my breasts… and between my legs.” Her jaw was trembling as she talked and, after a few seconds, I was struggling to control mine. “He grabbed me so quickly and so out of the blue that it caught me completely off guard. It was our second date. I’ve known him for about a year at work, a quiet guy, attractive. I didn’t expect this and when he did it, it took a couple of seconds for it to sink into my head what was going on.” She started to say something else, but instead thinned her lips and swiped the back of her hand across her teary eyes.
Again, we sat quietly. When she hadn’t said anything after several minutes, I cleared my throat, and said that there was no way that I could relate to what happened to her and to what she was feeling. I did know that she should not blame herself for this man’s actions. He was the lowest form of vermin, a sick creep and a bully. I said that she was a wonderful young woman and I considered her a blessing in my school. I told her that she had acted as a true warrior by fighting back fiercely, conquering her assailant, and holding him for the police.
It haunted her that she hadn’t acted faster, that the guy had grabbed her before she was able to respond, that she hadn’t suspected. I tried to assure her that that was perfectly normal and that’s why it was called a “surprise attack.” But I knew that the words weren’t helping, and when she asked if we could work on a defense against the way her date had grabbed her, I was ready. I knew she was perfectly capable of defending against what he did. What I think she really wanted was to recapture some sense of control that was lost when the guy took her by surprise. What she wanted and needed was to stop the offense on its way in.
So I let her beat on me. I grabbed at her repeatedly, each time a little harder and faster than the last. She blocked my attacks easily and followed with fierce counters that landed all over my body. After half an hour, I was bleeding from my nose and the corner of my mouth, I had a bump on my head the size of a walnut, and my jammed left index finger was swelling. Tillie was feeling great and that was good enough for me.
The next day I connected her with a counselor who works with the PD and within two months she was her old self again, although my finger took about four months to heal.
My senior black belt, my oldest at forty-two and a Multnomah County sheriff deputy, went into a Seven-Eleven one night when he was off duty to buy a quart of milk. When Fred came out, he found his pregnant wife fighting desperately with a teenage street creep trying to carjack their Subaru with her still in it and his six-year-old daughter screaming in the back. Fred yanked the thief out and commenced to go rat-a-tat-tat all over his body, breaking the man’s jaw and thighbone, and inflicting a dozen knots and abrasions. Turned out that the carjacker’s old man had bucks and the mayor’s ear. Within a week, Fred was standing before the district attorney who claimed his actions were too rough on the street thug who, after all, didn’t really steal his car or his family. Fred hired a good attorney and managed to come out of the mess without a record and without losing his job, although he was ten thousand dollars poorer.
I talked with him a couple days after the incident to get his take on what happened. I was a little concerned because Fred has a temper, and although it has mellowed over the years he’s been training with me, I wanted to be sure that all the damage he inflicted on the guy was needed. I’m all about dishing out necessary force but I’m not in the business of teaching people to be assailants.
I was satisfied after talking with him that he had acted responsibly. In fact, I praised him for his restraint considering that his wife had been injured, a detail the police-hating Oregonian newspaper had omitted.
These guys have been there to help me, too. They were there for me when I got divorced in my early twenties, when my mother died in a traffic accident, when Tiff and I ended it a couple of months ago and, just recently when I was placed on administrative leave, they’ve filled in for me when I felt like lawn fudge and couldn’t bring myself to leave my house. They know that in the weeks since I fired a nine-millimeter round into that tweaker’s acne-splattered face, that some days I’m up and some days I’m down.
“Fighting positions!” I center myself in front of them, stagger my feet, and raise my fists. “Okay people, let’s get fast. We’re going to punch out as hard and fast as we can, but only half way. Half reps only. Got it?”
“Yes, sir!” they chorus.
“Don’t think fast. Think explode and fast will happen.”
“Yes, sir!”
“It was a tough class tonight but pay no attention to how your body feels; it’s all about right now, this moment, and creating energy within your mind. It’s within you and it’s dynamite, and it’s about to explode all over that big, fat, ugly imaginary assailant in front of you. Feel your energy starting to boil over, Fred? Dave, you feel it? Cathy, you see that ugly predatory beast in front of you? Good.”
“The
