Enlightening Nonsense

THE FOLLOWING POST, LIKE MANY OF MY POSTS, IS ONLY PARTIALLY TRUE. LIKEWISE, ALL REFERENCES TO ME SEXUAL HARASSING ANYONE IS ONLY PARTIALLY TRUE. I HAVE TO WRITE THIS BECAUSE SOME MORON READ THE PIECE AND TOOK IT UPON HERSELF TO TRY AND GET ME FIRED FROM IT. PERHAPS I SHOULD INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING IN EVERY PIECE:

WARNING: IF YOU ARE A MORON, DO NOT READ!

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Whether it comes in the form of a raise or a new job title, most people are pretty psyched whenever they receive a promotion. Since I am not “most people,” I tend to have a different view. Since I haven’t worked a “regular” job since I was thirteen taking shorthand for a long-order cook and thus inventing the title “short-order cook,” I have rarely been presented with any promotions and so this fact has never been so obvious to me. That was until today.

I teach a couple of kickboxing classes on Saturdays. The first class was a 101 class, which means it contains mostly women who want to punch and kick their fat asses away. I usually flirt and touch them in inappropriate ways that keep them coming back and my teacher and boss happy, that is, until the inevitable lawsuit comes to fruition. “Your honor, I will show that rubbing my groin against the students’ asses is part and parcel to a good kickboxing workout and my subsequent ejaculation is part and parcel to me needing to keep a fresh pair of underwear in my locker.” There were about forty students in this class and we all had a good time and I didn’t blow a load until I explained to Peter how to turn his hip over by adjusting it with my groin.

The second class was a 202 class and only four students stayed around for it. This is a more advanced class where there is contact between the students but it is relatively safe as I have all the men wear condoms and all the women wear dental dams.

Near the end of class, my teacher interrupted us to share with us something that he said was long overdue. I was worried that it was going to pertain to me jerking-off in the women’s lockers and quickly prepared an excuse about roach control. Instead he announced that he was promoting me and another long-term student there to the rank of black belt.

He told everyone that I was his longest-time student, starting in 1995 or ’96 (which is about 15 years to all you Math 101 readers) and that while I was a pedophile, kleptomaniac, sociopath and compulsive masturbator, spending that much time as part of his school was worth something.

I discovered his martial arts school back in ’95 or ’96 when I had been out of the martial arts game for some time, instead focusing my time on competitive crochet. I had picked up the latest copy of Black Belt Magazine, which I hadn’t read in probably two decades, and saw in the back that there was a two-day seminar that coming weekend in Lama Kung Fu,“A complete art encompassing striking, trapping, grappling and preparing omelets.” As most people were unsatisfied with my omelet preparation, I decided to sign-up.

Seafood Moss and I still joke about our first meeting. I rolled into his studio and down a small hallway on my rollerblades. I entered the doorway of his office and stood there waiting for some type of acknowledgement. He didn’t even look up at me. I was like, “Uh. Can I pay for the seminar this weekend?” He finally looked up and saw some freak on blades wearing a black and white striped Rasta hat.

“Sure,” he responded, not friendly in the least. I thought he was a bit of a douche but after fifteen years of knowing him…well, I still think he’s a douche but he does a good job of getting all the pieces of toilet paper out of your vagina.

I handed him a check and he looked at it. “Is this your address on the check?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. He looked at me quizzically as if to ask, ‘Who in their right mind hands someone a check and admits that it is not their own?’ Of course the conclusion was that I was not in my right mind. After fifteen years of knowing me…he’s now certain I’m not in my right mind.

I told him that it was my parents’ check. Him being a Jew, he took it. I took the seminar and had a really good time and signed-up and, like the workers in the movie High Fidelity, I became an annoying staple at the school, you know, one of the ones that jams up the stapler and you have to bang it and try to press another one through to push it out and finally enough of it is sticking out that you can pull it out and then you curse as it stabs your finger.

There was a sign-on the wall that read:

FIGHT TEAM TRY-OUTS NEXT WEEK. ALL WELCOME TO TRY-OUT

I asked him if I could try-out, as while I am a subset of the “ALL,” I did only join up that day. He said, “It says ‘All welcome’,” which was to say, “Are you stupid or—I can’t think of any alternative to stupid.”

No one who “tried out” was rejected from the Fight Team, which consisted of most of the school, which was about thirty kung fu students. The point of the fight competitions was for us to experience kung fu in action, as punching air is for pussies and crazy people.

My school sponsored the first fight competition and there were about eighteen fights scheduled, my fight being the last. I think about eight people from our team were fighting. My parents and a couple they were friends with who I’ve known for years came to the fight, as well as friends of mine and associates from work.

The style of competition was called “freestyle” and it consisted of one 5-minute round where punches and kicks anywhere on the body except the groin and throat were permitted, as well as throws and takedowns and when you were on the ground no strikes but chokes and submission holds were fair game. You wore light headgear and small, open-fingered gloves so you could use your hands to grab and choke.

The guy I was going against was a shootfighter, which meant that while he had stand-up training, he probably had more ground experience than I had. So our strategy was that I would avoid the ground game and keep it in the stand-up arena.

It is very hard to avoid going to the ground in these type of fights and so our training consisted of having me do something called “stacking the guard” which, without getting into too technical a discussion, essentially meant crushing him in a certain way where I could then get out of his grasp and get back to the stand-up game. And it worked pretty well.

The main problem was for my parents. You see, most of the fights got to the ground where basically a wrestling match ensued and it was a much more mellow experience to watch. My fight started with me charging across the ring with a massive overhand arm swing, including my opponent bloodying my nose and was a wham bam thank you ma’am affair.

When my fight was over, I was the most tired I’d ever been in my life, except for the time I was running from my naked father who was chasing me with an erection and shouting, “It’s time to take your temperature—rectally!” I was bloody and a little dazed and confused. Since I was always a little dazed and confused, that didn’t really bother me. I was also declared victorious, the only one on my fight team to win his fight.

My friends and people from work were congratulating me and all I wanted to do was to get away from them and be alone. My parents came up to me with their friends and my Mom said, “Congratulations. We’re never coming to another fight of yours.” And they didn’t.

In the locker-room I passed my opponent sitting on a bench with his coach and he looked more dazed and confused than me. In about twenty-five fights of my fight career, winning more than I lost, including a couple of national competitions, while I was decent enough, I wouldn’t say I was any Chuck Norris, based not only on skill but on my lack of long mutton chop sideburns he used to sport. But one thing most agreed upon was that I hit hard. I remember after one fight I had that I won, my opponent asked me, “How long have you been fighting?” By the third time in a minute he asked me this question, I knew he was a bit wacked.

I remember being in the shower by myself, which was very unlike the late 70s/early 80s White Shadow television shower scenes where everyone on the basketball team would scrub each other’s backs and sing songs together, and as the water came off my body, mixing with my blood to form a pink lemonade stream that washed down the drain, I thought to myself, “I didn’t really like that.” This was a challenge for me to face, being that I never really quit anything, including the faggy Madrigal singing choir I joined in high school, mistakenly thinking it would be cool harmony do-wop songs, instead of being songs like this (I shit you not!):

Now is the month of Maying

When merry lass are playing

Fa la la la la la la

Fa la la la la la

After our first concert, someone I knew said, “I just want to know how they got you to do this.” I responded, “You can’t be all that straight if you attended a friggin’ Madrigal show!” On a positive note, I got some of my best blowjobs during that Madrigal faggery, as the basses really knew had to vibrate their vocal chords in a low buzz that tickled my balls during their “hummers.”

I thought I was going to like the fight game and didn’t really. But I knew I had more to discover from the game, that there were some demons inside of me, of fear and insecurity, that had to be exorcised and I wouldn’t quit the game until they were. I conceded that the demons that told me to kill my mother were there for good and, heck, might even be right! “Fa la la la la la!”

At the next fight practice, half the team had quit, preferring to punch air than to take another beating. I stayed on and saw a lot of people over the years come and go. But never me.

Seven years later, I was the Fight Team captain, had about twenty-five fights under my belt, which was started to cramp up my 14” schlong, which included freestyle, san shou (punches, kicks, throws), san da (san shou with knees), Muay Thai (san shou without throws), one Western match (above the waist kickboxing), grappling (wrestling and submission holds) and a couple of Golden Gloves boxing matches. I had travelled to Florida, California, Ohio, Rhode Island, Long Island, Canada and many other non-exotic places to play fisticuffs. I’m not sure I got rid of all my fears but I certainly faced them.

My energy healing teacher and friend, Treya, as well as all my New Age associates who had always been asking me, “When are you going to give up the fighting?” were all happy to see me hang up my gloves. I did so with mixed emotions, as I didn’t think I achieved my highest potential nor conquered all my fears. But I had enough.

What these New Age pussies didn’t realize that if the game of consciousness is about becoming more aware of one’s Self, then it didn’t matter how you got there. The fight game taught me so much about my fears, Who I Am and how to punch someone in the fuckin’ head. The New Age pussies were the same as all advocates of any particular religion; they thought that the only way to “God” was through chanting ridiculous mantras like, “We are all One” and singing Kumbaya. My Kumbaya days died with the end of the Madrigal group and my foolish mantra days died in first grade when my teacher said, “Repeat after me: I pledge allegiance to the flag,” and I said, “Fuck you and your pledge!”

Back in the early days of the school, we trained in a traditional style of kung fu, which included forms and weapons and funny uniforms with a ton of loops and knots on the front of our uniforms that you somehow strung together and always sat back and felt like you just broke some secret 2000-year old code that the CIA code breakers were still struggling with.

I was training three classes a week and then the 2-hour fight team practice on Saturdays. We would have belt tests every couple of months, where you would have to demonstrate specific skills and memorized forms, which were movements where you punched and kicked air and acted like you were a lean, mean fighting machine. Since I was always around, I was almost always ready by testing day and progressed fairly rapidly through the ranks. As my few training brothers and I reached the higher belts, there was more to learn and the time between tests was a little longer.

In kung fu the belts are called “sashes” and tend to be a little wider and softer than traditional karate belts, kind of like the difference between an ascot and a tie. I reached the level of red sash, which was a fairly extensive test. It was the sash right before black.

Soon after the focus of the school became more on training for kickboxing fights then progressing through the ranks of the traditional kung fu system and we never tested again. Our system was supposedly “top heavy,” meaning that there was more “stuff” after black belt than before it but learning more techniques was less important to me than that childhood fantasy of achieving the covetous black belt. And while I fought black belts and instructors from all over the country in competition and beat many of them, I would have traded it all in for one more blowjob from Butch the bass from the madrigals.

While some of my motivation might have been ego driven, as it was getting annoying having “lay” people ask me if I was a black belt and having to essentially say, “No,” there is something about setting out to accomplish something—even if it is somewhat of a fictional landing point—and through blood, sweat and tears achieving that landing. More likely then not, you will be no different than you were before the achievement but, like the difference between your birthday and the day before your birthday, something will seem slightly different and no one is serving cake on the day before your birthday, unless that happens to fall on a Sunday and it is really inconvenient for them to order a friggin’ mud pie from Baskin-Robbins because they have tickets to some fruity Madrigal show on your birthday.

So when Seafood Moss made the announcement and told everyone that I was now a “black belt,” while a part of me liked the idea of finally being able to tell people who ask me if I’m a black belt, “You bet your ass, punk!” it seemed like a bit of a fiction to me. I didn’t take any test—and they do have a new testing system for the kickboxing program. I didn’t go through any ceremony. He gave his speech and me and then we took a picture with the other newly appointed black belt in front of the altar that contained a few sticks of incense and a picture of his teacher incense.

I was unshaven and wearing a tank-top and a pair of shorts, albeit of the “kickboxing” variety, but as much as I seem to be anti-tradition, something paled to this presentation than one where I would be wearing the kung fu outfit with all the loops and knots and bowing and perhaps even a bit exhausted from a long, hard test performed with skill. It’s like when I was younger and my Dad made me earn half the money for the $181 12-speed bike I wanted. While a part of me wouldn’t give a shit if he just bought it outright for me, there was a sense of accomplishment from earning half that money as the worst paperboy Scarsdale has ever seen.

I think some of my lack of elation has to do with the fact that the black belt has come at a time when I have metamorphed into a yoga pussy and look at any titles and labels and accomplishments as having little to do with Who I Am and thereby being almost as silly as all the colorful ribbons that murderers, known in our country as “Generals,” wear on their lapels and thereby think they deserve honor. I am not my body. I am not my job. I am not my actions. I am not my thoughts. I am not my feelings. I most certainly am not the color of the belt that keeps my pants up.

I know my supporters will say, “You put in the time, you earned it,” and I honestly don’t totally disagree. I trained extremely hard at that school for about seven years where I was the captain of the Fight Team, fought in about twenty-five fights, won national titles and local fights, have been affiliated for fifteen, am perhaps the best instructor they have there. I do fuckin’ deserve it!

But still, there’s something different about being handed a black belt with a pleasant smile on your face and taking one with a sardonic smirk on your face and a ferocious fire in your eyes.