Based on a true story, all names have been changed.
It was really dramatic, even if I didn’t drop-kick the guy. I mean, you don’t have to drop-kick someone for the situation to be dramatic, or cool, for that matter. I bet George Washington never drop-kicked anyone, and people still think he’s incredible.
Drop kicking wasn’t actually what I was thinking of at the beginning. I walked along the side of the road completely oblivious to the injuries I was about to receive. The road was somewhat muddy, and rocks like little islands stuck up out of the ground, making it impossible to go in a straight line, but then again, I should be thankful for the rocks because they let you walk on them, not the mud.
It was a struggle in itself to get to the martial arts class up on the hill. I had to walk through some muddy back streets, cross a main road, walk through a soccer field (if I was lucky and didn’t have to climb through a trench full of grass as high as my head), navigate more mud (which usually splattered my legs), and then I’d be at the gate.
Usually, I was the last to arrive; this day was no exception. As I passed through the gate (huffing and puffing), I nodded to the security guard, who gave me a dip of the head and likely a wave. I almost felt like I knew the guy despite having said about two words to him in my entire life. He was always sitting there when I arrived at the hall, consistently nodding as I passed, and maybe saying ‘evening’ or ‘afternoon’ (to inform me of the time, or say hello, hopefully the latter).
My martial arts class began at that perfect time of the day where evening and afternoon met. You could walk around town saying ‘afternoon’ and having people respond with ‘evening’, as if they were correcting you, and then you decide to say ‘evening’ to the next guy, and he looks at you weirdly, responding with ‘afternoon’. Frustrating: yes, but not as bad as getting beaten to the ground or taking a hit to the solar plexus (both of which have happened to me; I wouldn’t suggest them).
I walked up the sidewalk steps that sprang out of the earth after the muddiest part of the road was behind me (I mean, who thought of that?). The hall was just ahead. I wasn’t sure what it was for, but it was a good place to practice when no one else was using it. The teachers rented it from a school run by the church up the hill. I’d seen desks stacked inside and found booklets about English classes inside, but it was a fair distance from the rest of the buildings, and it seemed like a strange place to take a test.
The building was a halfway point between the market below and around the bend, and the much steeper hill that led to a school run by a church next door. The hall was open to the air, just a concrete slab with a roof over it; a roughly four-foot-tall parapet ran around the whole thing to ensure the martial artists inside didn’t fall out. Pillars approximately a foot from the parapet held up the roof, tall, thick columns good for kicking if you ever wanted to practice, and didn’t mind hurting your toes.
I entered the hall, not bowing as I did, because I thought it was weird and had never done it before. The teachers of this specific type of martial arts (mao yak yan) all wore black and stood at the front of the hall. Some students (maybe half) would bow to the front as they entered. I never understood why some did and some didn’t, but I wasn’t about to bow randomly without knowing why. I did bow to the teachers at the beginning or closing of a set, but not to the hall in general. Yes, I get that I’m weird, but I didn’t like the idea of randomly bowing without knowing who or what I was respecting. I knew one guy who would enter the hall bowing repeatedly in a different direction, fist in hand.
My martial arts class was a little… well… odd. It probably didn’t help that I was in another country speaking a different language, but I found it hard to understand some teachers because they often spoke quickly and quietly.
The strangest thing was that most of the time, no one said anything, and everyone seemed to know what to do. Like, I literally would not be surprised to learn there was telepathy going on in there. They moved in perfect harmony, like they all knew what and where to do and go innately. It was actually pretty cool if it hadn’t been that I wasn’t ‘in the loop’ so to speak.
Stepping into the hall, I looked around for Caleb or Tod. Tod was the only reason I ever understood what was going on. He was a dangerous warrior, the best of his level and better than some of the ones higher than him. Tod taught me some of the first stances and skills that everyone seemed to know naturally. He didn’t come as often anymore, but when he did, I made sure to train with him.
In the time before the lesson began, everyone trained personally or in small groups all around the hall. If I couldn’t find Tod, I usually went to see if I could find Caleb.
Caleb was here today, it appeared, but Tod was nowhere around. I clasped hands with Caleb, then began my warm-up. Others around me practiced their kicks or lay back, trying to look inconspicuous until the lesson started.
I never expected there to be so much stretching in martial arts. Ever since I was small, I’d dreamt of starting martial arts, and it had been an eye-opening experience when I finally did. In the last several months (nearly a year) that I’d been doing this program, my knowledge of martial arts and my skills had grown to a level I’d never expected, and even so, I still had more to learn. That didn’t come without grueling practice, which we ran through every week, twice a week. Today was a Thursday, a sparring day, my favorite.
I have a confession. I love to fight. When I begin to fight, I lose myself in the movements, not actually paying attention to what I’m doing as I block and strike with a ferocity that quickly makes many of my fellow white belt juniors fear me. This ‘losing of myself’ that occurs actually got me into trouble on many occasions; I had to struggle to keep myself under control and stop from hurting my fellow students.
The epiphany hit me when one guy went to spar with me, and shied away, asking me to “go slow”. It was kind of embarrassing, actually. A martial artist is supposed to have discipline, and while I always controlled my movements, never flailing or breaking stance, I couldn’t control my attitude towards the fight. When I begin to fight, it is like everything else fades, and only my opponent and I exist, as I am filled with such exhilaration that it is impossible to describe. Adrenaline coursing through me with every motion of mine exact, every blow powerful, but restrained enough. I learned to keep myself under control, though it was a constant battle within the battle. Because of how much I had to restrain myself, sometimes sparring could feel dull.
Why is it that I, who was a beginner, only a white belt nearly finished with my first year, was better than even a few white belt seniors (those white belts in their second year)? Why is it that most of my opponents required very little of me? It wasn’t that I knew the moves better than they; that was obvious from single practice, but it seemed that I was a quicker thinker, allowing my muscles to act for me and not pausing mid-fight to plan every kick. I also had Caleb, who gave me a high advantage.
Caleb was self-proclaimedly my personal trainer; he showed me things I wouldn’t have learned for another three years otherwise, practicing extra with me to help me master them. If I didn’t have Caleb, I wouldn’t be close to where I was. Caleb was pretty awesome, and I think he enjoyed having me as a student; either way, he was a great teacher. He even helped the real teachers sometimes when there were too few.
We did more warm-ups, and that is when I saw him. Yes, I’m talking about him, the guy whom I didn’t drop kick. I didn’t think anything of him at first; he seemed somewhat average. He looked mostly like everyone around me; his skin was a little lighter, but didn’t seem out of place, unlike me. He had dark eyes and lighter hair with sharp features, muscular arms, and an overall thin frame.
I don’t think he saw me until later, and I didn’t remark on him until he singled me out. It was after warm-ups and workouts, and when the sparring was beginning, that he called to me. He got my attention with a short, soft noise, called a hiss, but it sounds different than an actual hiss. A lot of people in the country I was in used it; it was a cool way to get someone’s attention from a distance.
I’ll never know why he singled me out. I mean, besides the somewhat obvious reason that I was the only American in a crowd of islanders, and the only small kid in a group of much larger boys. Almost everyone was stronger and bigger than me, which was another thing that made it weird for me to be better at sparring. I once chased a guy who was much bigger, stronger, and older than me around the ring, trying to catch him so we could spar (okay, it wasn’t quite that bad, but still!).
“Hey!” he said (I still don’t know his name to this day), “flex for me.”
I came closer. “What?”
“Flex.” He flexed. He was strong, not as strong as some of the other guys around, but still. Just like you don’t need to drop-kick someone to be George Washington, you don’t need to be a bodybuilder to be strong.
“You want me to flex?” I asked skeptically and slowly. Now, granted, we were speaking in another language, but that’s the idea of what we said.
He nodded and motioned for me to do so. I did. As I mentioned earlier, I am not impressive, not by a long shot. I flexed, and it was pathetic as usual. I also didn’t know how to flex.
He laughed, like a quiet chuckle to himself. I didn’t get what was so funny. I’d never boasted of having Dwyane Johnson’s muscles. He slid both feet out ahead of him, ceasing the stretch he’d been doing as we spoke. “That’s what I thought.”
“What did you think?” I asked warily.
“If you were to fight against me, I would win.” He said this rather… dramatically, I guess. In a strange way, but then again, the whole encounter was bizarre. I was almost like he’d rehearsed this. Going to this martial arts course was eye-opening in more ways than one. I learned more about the culture here (and didn’t understand even more) than anywhere else. This was one of those ‘I have no clue what on earth is going on’ moments. Maybe he was just being weird; maybe, according to his culture, everything he was saying made sense.
Maybe aside, I didn’t know what to say. Was he remarking that I was weaker and less trained than most people here? Was he subtly asking me how I often won if I were not as strong as he’d thought? I haven’t a clue.
Note here, there was no clear winner in any fight. The person in the center of the ring with the two fighters didn’t lift one’s arm and declare a champion. And no one kept track of points. Usually, however, there was a general consensus that one person was the victor, even if it was unspoken. You could feel it in the air, maybe in how one fighter walked back confidently and the other kind of slunk out of the ring. The winner was usually the one who spent less time getting hit.
I blinked at the boy a few times, confused, and then kind of shrugged it off. People will be people, I guess, not that it didn’t secretly needle me. One of the teachers called for us to circle up, and the fighting began. The blood in my veins pumped faster, and I got somewhat jittery. I couldn’t wait. There was no fancy equipment in this class. In fact, there was no equipment at all. When we sparred, we did it on concrete surrounded by a circle of all our classmates. Falls could be painful, I knew that from experience.
I went to sit down and stopped. A space sat next to the boy who’d just spoken with me, and I had a choice. The teachers usually paired up people sitting next to each other to fight if they were of the same belt level; he was equal to me. If I sat down next to him, I could fight him and see how good he was, but something about him was a little scary; the confident way he’d claimed to be better than me was unsettling. I made a choice, probably a bad one, and I sat down next to him.
“You want to do this?” I asked in my most menacing way, and he just grinned at me, even more unsettling.
Caleb sat down on my other side, grinning his head off. He said nothing, but I got the message; he wanted me (his student) to win and was excited I had just challenged the other guy. The first pair of kids went up fighting the way they usually did, slowly, hesitantly, afraid of what the other might do, and forgetting their training in the ring. Even so, they did well for beginners. My first dozen fights were terrible, probably worse than these. We all applauded them, and suddenly, before I’d had any more time to freak out and doubt my decision, I was up in the middle of the ring.
Before I could register, the fight had begun; he attacked. He was by far the most ferocious and powerful opponent I have ever faced. And I loved it. I attacked with everything I had, striking, kicking, and punching, all in the patterns Caleb had shown me. I used every skill I’d learned to drive him back in all the ways that worked on everyone else.
The boy was nonplussed. He struck out at me, driving me back to the circle’s edge, laying into me harder than any other opponent I’d fought. This wasn’t normal. Usually, they tell us to hold back and not hit as hard in a fight, and I tried my best to hit as lightly as possible, even with this kid. Either he had no scruples about beating me up, or he was strong enough that these blows counted as light for him.
Another punch, another kick, I fell back again. I desperately fended him off, but I wasn’t good at defense; my best strategy is to attack my attacker before they can figure that out. When someone punched me, I tried to block, but I invariably messed it up. I could never figure out how he managed to stop my blows. And when I did land one on him, he seemed not to notice, like I was a gnat poking him on the arm.
The rest of the fight blurred before my eyes. I stopped holding back at all, and I honestly can’t remember what I did. I gave him a good fight, I hope. With a final strike, he knocked me to the floor and pulled back. The time was almost up, and he was evidently winning, even if no one kept track. My whole body burned from his hits; I only hoped he felt the same.
My breath came in pained as I crouched at the ground. It felt like an eternity, but it was less than a few seconds, because if I’d taken too long to get up, the teacher running the fight would have paused and come to look at me. I looked to the side. Saw his face, confident and cocky, grinning his head off. He knew he’d won, and I couldn’t stand that.
It was a dramatic moment. Everything else faded, but not entirely like usual. There was his face in my mind, staring at me, waiting for me to stand so he could finish me off, or crouch there until the time was up, and we went to sit down. I leaped to my feet, sprinting across the wide circle and bringing my foot up into an excellent front-side kick. Exceptional, not because my form was perfect (it was probably terrible by this point), but perfect because he fairly flew backwards in complete shock.
He was only down for a moment, but I had my chance to stare confidently at him. I probably didn’t use it well because I was in enough pain, and I probably looked pathetic. He sprang back up at me, and we clashed in a fury. I threw what I had against what he had, and the two of us were locked in combat, not moving. Time seemed a distant thing of the past; we could have easily been creatures of myth, forever locked in a battle that wouldn’t end. It was likely less than ten seconds. A teacher clapped his hand against the stone floor in a loud sound, but we kept at it, neither one ending. The teacher in the center of the ring ran between us, shoving us apart. We stood hands on knees, panting, staring at each other.
“Hey, hey, hey!” The teacher said quickly, turning us around to face the front. “Continue it next Thursday.”
We bowed stiffly to each other, to the teacher, and ‘the timer’ (the man who had a timer on his phone and was tracking how long the fight was supposed to go). He shook my hand, smiling in his somewhat smug way. I shook it back, laughing inwardly. When I sat down next to Caleb, he hit me on the back, grinning, saying without words, “You totally got him.”
I sat down watching the rest of the fights. It had been the hardest match I’d ever faced, and no doubt the guy was much better than I; I had a lot more to learn and practice. All that aside, at least I got one good hit in. I hadn’t given up, I’d wiped that smug expression off, even if it was briefly, and even if I didn’t drop-kick him.