kitchen_kink | Entries tagged with fighting

A college senior at UConn was sexually assaulted, fought off her attacker, then was circled and further assaulted by a pack of cheering dudes - whom she also fought her way out of.

On the one hand, her fighting back, then writing about it in the school newspaper, is awesome.

On the other hand, dude, you see a woman attacked and you laugh and attack her some more?

And then you start with your blame the victim bullshit, and confirm other girls' shame and feeling that they shouldn't come forward about their own experiences with rape and assault?

The title of this post was my favorite comment from the first linked article. If we can't change the attitudes that make these boys act they way they do, perhaps it's time to arm the female populace. Is rage all that will stop this?

I find I can't even think about this conflict between Israel and Hezbollah without wanting to cry, scream or tear my hair out. Or all of those things. Perhaps also rip W a new one. But what else is new.

The only think I've been able to focus on is the disparate panoply of pronunciations for one of the key players in this war. In fact, thinking about that keeps me just a little bit sane during the continuous barrage of news from NPR and the BBC.

So, forgive me if this seems flippant. But seriously:

[Poll #784507]

After a couple of months training in Krav Maga, I finally got in early enough yesterday to have the instructor show me how to wrap my hands. I almost always hurt my wrists in this class; punching and taking hits while holding pads jars them terribly, and they're rather delicate given the size of my hands.

I wrapped them up in red bandages, the sweet stink of use rising from them. Krav requires that you always keep your hands near your face; the smell is like nothing I can describe: rotting lettuce soaked in sweat? Rancid sweet butter? I began warmups with the group, all male today except for me. I felt the warmups, and the drills, getting easier with time and increased fitness. It's a thrill to feel my body respond.

We partnered up and practiced front kick to the groin, then a combination: front kick, straight punch, elbow, knee.

Holding the pad to my body I took the knees from a man about my size. He grabbed me by one shoulder and one trapezius muscle, yanking me down hard to knee me in the stomach. I'm a little taller than he is, and have the advantage of leverage. Bending me over that far is tricky for him, but the knees hit their target, and even with the pads, I felt it penetrate my gut.

The first night I tried this, I felt exhilarated afterwards, powerful and free, pumped with endorphins. I felt like nobody better mess with me. I felt like whatever else happened, if it came to it I could lay the smackdown.

In this class, for some reason, somewhere in the middle of drills I felt on the edge of tears. It felt as if the knees in the stomach had hit some emotional centers, opening me up in ways I didn't want to be in this circumstance. All at once I didn't want to hit as hard, didn't want to continue the drills, didn't feel the thrill that I usually get, and in fact, felt that doing so and feeling so was somehow wrong.

I kept on, resisting my impulse to step outside the class for a few minutes and either calm down or give vent to my feelings. As I continued, the feeling faded somewhat, but thoughts raced in my head until the end of class.

In this class I feel rage. I feel power. I feel power directed at me, and I take it. And over and over again, I think about what I would do if someone attacked me this way, that way, another way. How do I throw someone off-balance so that I can control their movement? How do I get out of a choke hold? What do I do if someone comes at me with a knife?

How do I stop this person as quickly as possible? How do I hurt them? How do I kill them if I have to?

I had a conversation with

pir back in December about Krav versus Aikido, which he takes. He's a big man, for those of you who don't know him: about six foot four and fairly solid muscle. I told him that I liked Krav because it made me feel that I could defend myself, that if someone attacked me I could actually hurt them and stop them. He told me that he hardly remembered a time in his life when he couldn't hurt, or even kill, someone. He takes Aikido because it teaches him how to stop somebody from hurting you while doing minimal damage to them. I take Krav because I need to learn the power in my hands first.

But I'm passing through a critical point.

This is the point at which I have learned two things, and those two things scare me and keep me on edge. One is the knowledge that I have this violence inside of me, that it is possible for me to exercise and channel my rage in order to hurt or kill someone. This is frightening, as I have pretty much always considered myself a pacifist. At the same time, it's empowering: I think of the bullies from my school days and what might have been different if I'd been able to fight them. Not that they ordinarily threatened me physically. But that power in my body might have given me just enough confidence to keep from being tortured.

The second thing is that practicing this form, which focuses almost exclusively on fighting and real-life situations, keeps the knowledge of people who want to hurt me ever at the front of my mind. The world becomes a place where muggers and rapists and murderers are around every corner, and where I am slowly being prepared to face them.

I wonder about the effects, on me and on the world, of this lethality building within me, and of a worldview informed by danger. I believe that the way we approach the world shapes the world, and I enjoy approaching the world in a somewhat trusting, open fashion. I'm careful, especially at night, but I try to inhabit my world with good thoughts and goodwill - to assume the best of people rather than the worst. Now, when I walk, I often look at people in terms how how likely they are to be a threat to me; think of what I would do if someone attacked me. I go through the motions in my head of kicking, punching, kneeing. Exploding into action as soon as I'm threatened, as Krav teaches. My fondest hope is that just the fact of my fighting back would be enough to scare most attackers away.

In this inbetween space of learning, on the path of the student, I am both incredibly frightened by thinking about such things, and uncertain as to whether I am yet trained enough to survive should I meet it today. Taking self-defense makes me hyper-aware of dangers that ordinarily, I don't want to think about, because I don't know what I would do if I met them. Not taking self-defense classes, in some sense, is like not going to the doctor. Something could be wrong, but because you don't get checked out, not only aren't you aware of it, you don't ever have to think about it.

Until it comes out of nowhere and kills you.

So I continue. Because I want to know how to face it if I meet it. But right around now, I'm thinking about forms I can take that aren't quite so rage-fuelled and violent. Krav Maga is the fastest fighting form to learn and the one that most effectively uses your natural instincts and body movements. But once I gain a certain proficiency, I might switch to something that has more art to it, something with a more philosophical base.

I know that this feeling won't last forever; that I'm in a passage between an essentially defenseless self and a powerful self. That passage is painful, like any kind of growing. Thinking about those who might wish to hurt me is scary; thinking about myself emerging as a worthy opponent is perhaps scarier. But I think of Asian masters of martial arts who are calm and centered in their approach to the world, and whose philosophy demands that they never hurt another soul.

Unless they have to.

This is how it is. You get up, you go to work. You do what you have to do; if you're lucky, you do what you want to do. You eat. You exercise. You make love and do the dishes and drop the kids off at school.

You keep going.

I wake up early, but doze until nearly ten. It's the first day of February, which I conveniently forget; perhaps the knowledge would have gotten me out of bed sooner with the fond realization that January, the dread month, is finally over.

I drag myself around. I clean up a bit, fix breakfast, write a journal entry. I get ready to leave for Krav practice for the first time in a week and a half. Last week was eaten up by sickness, snowed under by a hail of Kleenex.

Finally I have the ambition to work out again, or at least I have the ambition to get into the car and go try to do so. I'm dreading the class the way I dreaded the classes I taught yesterday: the depression, then, nearly trapped me in the bed for the day.

But yesterday I managed for three hours to talk about literature to a bunch of kids who, with a few exceptions, couldn't care less and thank me with their blank stares, and today I manage to get out on route 93 and head for Roxbury. I'm even on time. At about ten minutes before noon I'm just outside the tunnel, waiting to get off at exit 18.

At 12:30, I'm still there.

It's enough that I'm infuriated by having to sit on the highway for this long. It's more than enough that I've dragged myself out of depression and sickness to go do some cardio and kick some ass, a proactive step to make myself feel better. But the worst of it is that the whole time I'm listening to NPR, and the reports are as follows:

A conservative talks about how a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage should be higher on Bush's agenda, and the reporter takes him seriously, in fact doesn't challenge him at all. Bush's approval rating is lower than any second-term president since Nixon, yet he still takes the November election as evidence that he's been given a mandate by this country to effect change. Meanwhile, as they're still counting the ballots from Iraq's election, an insurgent group has taken an American soldier hostage and says that they will behead him within 72 hours unless the U.S. releases its Iraqi prisoners. In slightly lighter news, the makers of the Oscar-nominated documentary Born into Brothels (subject matter self-evident in the title) are interviewed about their program to rescue children of prostitutes in India, themselves lined up at age 13 to continue the tradition, from their plight.

It's another day in goddamnfuckingparadise.

So I turn around, I go back home, I'm pissed off that I've wasted an hour and a half driving and that meanwhile the world, the country I thought was mine is, as usual, falling apart, and I'm thinking about where I would move and how I would work if we passed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, if we overturned Roe v. Wade, if in four years Dick fucking Cheney secured the presidency, if we go to war in Iran, Syria, Korea...

And I hear a report about an all-male ballet troupe who performs female roles on pointe and in tutus, with no attempt to conceal their maleness, and I laugh a little. I go to the gym and get on the elliptical machine and burn for 25 minutes, in high gear, my rage and helplessness. I read an amusing article about Johnny Depp in Rolling Stone (The New Yorker isn't available today and I didn't bring it from home).

And I go home, and shower, and go to the cafe and write, and I think, this is how it works. This is why it works. This is a few million people, feeling helpless, feeling rage, feeling the same way I'm feeling and knowing that the only thing to do is chop wood, carry water. Keep going.

This is how the status quo holds on, this is how the politicians get away with what they get away with, this is how a government strips its citizens of its freedoms, bit by bit, and legislates the hell out of our lives. And this isn't me telling you to get off your butts and do something, this isn't me getting up and being politically active, this isn't even me going to a demonstration or writing a letter to my congressperson. This is me seeing that it's pointless.

This is me, just trying to live my life.

The buzzer rang yesterday at around 6:30 and I was surprised: our guests weren't due until 7:30 or 8, and

imlad wasn't yet home. As I trundled downstairs to answer it (our apartment has no way of buzzing people in), I heard the neighbor's buzzer sound as well, and though I could not yet see the visitor, I had some misgivings, though I hoped it would simply be the UPS man uncertain of which doorbell was which.

Instead, I was greeted by a smooth-cheeked, toothy young lady in a red shirt, bearing the DNC logo. She was brandishing a clipboard in my general direction, and was careful to get her entire enthusiastic speech out, all the time looking directly into my eyes, before I could interrupt or say a word other than "hello."

In spite of my natural desire to dismiss her out of hand and shut the door to return to my cooking, I simply couldn't do it. Not because the cause moves me particularly or doesn't - it does, in fact; I want Kerry elected more than I've wanted anything in politics since I wanted Bush not to declare war on Iraq two years ago. It's more because I'm particularly susceptible to young kids earnestly pushing their various fundraising campaigns door-to-door.

Sure, it's hard going up to individual people's houses and bothering them around dinnertime to beg for money, and I sympathize with that. But more to the point, I empathize with that - because I did it for a summer, and man, it's the hardest frickin' job in the world.

I'm not sure how most organizations work, but I know how PIRG and Clean Water Action - two of the most successful environment and other public interest fundraising organizations - operate in terms of their lowest level employees.

Ever see those signs that say, "Work for the Environment! Make $300-$500 a week!" Yeah, I answered that ad once. And ended up working for the New Jersey Environmental Federation, an inveterate group of young wiseguys and older, earnest types who spend their time between 4 pm and 9 pm going door-to-door in various neighborhoods, spreading the word about one disaster or another (poisonous insecticides on your kids' schoolgrounds, mercury in your fish) that we're attempting to pass a resolution or law to prevent, reverse or correct. All you have to do is give us some money.

If it matters to you, and if such people have come to your door in the past, you should know that half of that money (with taxes taken out first, of course) goes into that little college student's pocket, which, for the hot (or cold), potentially dangerous, humiliating, demoralizing nature of the work, seems to me to be far less than their fair share. The rest of it goes to fund their lobbying groups and keep operations up. The people who run these things are nonprofit warriors to a man or woman, dedicated, honest, and working in lousy office conditions. We drove to our locations in beat-up Econolines. We practiced our "raps" to each other, the enthusiastic speech I mentioned earlier, over the bumps in the road and the loud engine. We had a whole vocabulary, a parlance of door-to-door fundraising, starting with the word "canvassing." People in houses were known as "doors," as in, "I had this one door tonight that let me in the house and invited me to dinner!" Once you had your door's attention, you made sure to keep their eyes as you delivered your rap, and to clip them - get your clipboard into their hands - as early as possible, without letting them look at it until you were done talking. That attitude of sunny rapport, and the pushiness and lack of change in expression when you tell them, again and again, that you simply can't give right now, that you gave at the office, that you can't afford the $25 "membership" level donation - that's called "assuming support." "That's okay," you probably hear those kids say over and over when you insist that you can't afford it, "folks are just giving five or ten dollars." Assume support. Go to every door imagining that this person is already on your side, already reaching for their checkbook. In our case, we had weird numbers, to be fun and also to get checks instead of cash, to get addresses: $6, $12, $25, $60. A $60 giver was called a sustainer, and boy were they ever, in making up half of your quota for the night. The desperation with which the fundraiser will finally just ask if you can pitch in a couple bucks became known, thanks to a hilarious, extremely bright surfer boy called John Hogan, as the "buckertwo." Once he steamrolled over a door's noisy objections to his very presence by insistently chanting, "Buck-or-two-buck-or-two buckertwobuckertwobuckertwo buck - er - two!" He later became so disenchanted with the job that he replaced our field manager's common exhortation "Make it happen" with "Let it happen."

I had a lot of highs, a lot of failures, and a lot of stories from that job. Someday they'll become a short story, I think. In any case, now, whenever one of those people come to the door, whatever their cause, with their little clipboards and their hopeful faces and endless positivity, I smile back. I grade them on their technique. Sometimes I even give a contribution. Because that's their job, and I know what that job is like. It sucks. And if you don't make your quota, you get fired.

But yesterday, I didn't. I went back into my comfortable house, back to my cooking, after she insisted three times and I, like Peter, three times denied her. Maybe I'm getting a bit hard in my old age.

So today started with more tiredness and heaviness, and ended with The Cranky. I was in that everything-is-annoying-me place again, and I'm not so much out of it now. Actually, the way I'd more describe the state is somewhere between nothing-excites-me and everything-annoys-me. The yummy dinner I'd planned was a nice diversion, but it didn't get me jazzed the way last night's did. My usual dropsy and heart trouble (another old family expression for constant dropping of things meant to stay in hands) annoyed me far more than usual, unhelped by a killer headache I developed sometime around 3:30 p.m.

I finally dragged my ass out to yoga, which helped some, but that particular instructor's style is what I can only describe as...male. He's good, and strong, and quite gentle and helpful, but the poses he concentrates on are mainly warrior series and lots of plank-to-downward dog-to-plank-to-low-plank-to-cobra kinda stuff. By the end, my arms are killing me and my legs are still tight. Where are my deep squats and Goddess postures?! Where my deep hamstring stretches?

Anyway. I'm still cranky. I got upset in yoga if someone was better than me, which never happens.

Sigh. It makes a person desire very little other than sleep.

Soon, precious.

Hammering away at the Diesel again.

This morning I wasn't quite so ambitious: I couldn't drag myself up until about 7:30. But I still got up, resisted the urge to flop back into bed, tempting as it was, ate some breakfast, went to the bank and the post office, and now I'm here.

The problems, as I see them, are twofold:

1. I'm not awake until at least 10 anyway, so the hours between 7 and 10 are spent getting myself awake and not getting much done. That'll change, but it'll take time.

2. Salicom is evil.

Well, let me rephrase that. They're not evil; in fact, the guy I've talked to a bunch of times to help me with it is really sweet - and it's always the same guy! Small, these Salicom people are. (Yoda I speak like.) What they are is idiots. Every morning I've had to call them and fix one thing or another before I could have the privilege of logging on to the 'net at my favorite coffeeshop. And of course, T-mobile (provider of internet access for the Starbucks across the street and my cell phone carrier) are equal idiots, and for whatever reason don't give me reception inside the Diesel - in spite of the fact that I can usually pick up T-mobile internet access from inside the Diesel! Not sure if they're connected at all, but if they are, that shit just pisses me off.

Regardless. Enough bitching. Mostly I'm doing okay. It's good to get up early. I wonder if the regular use of the drops is helping with the allergy issue, and my grogginess and zombieness will pass by the end of the month...? It would be rather amazing.

This week has been a whirlwind thus far. Monday night, went out for drinks though

imlad had taken a day to work at home, since he was feeling sick. Working at home drives him nuts, so we needed to get out of the house. The next day, he stayed home sick for real, and again, by the end of the night he was feeling mostly better, and we stepped out to check the action at the Diesel (none, by 9pm) and then to get desserts at Gargoyle's. Last night we saw the director's cut of Donnie Darko, and I have to tell you - if you've seen this movie, loved it, but still have questions, see the director's cut. If you haven't seen the movie, see the director's cut. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see the fragging director's cut. It's beautiful, and it explains so much.

Off to find out if The Philosophy of Time Travel is a real book.

This morning in the elevator I saw someone with with a secret smile I recognized: that smile of someone who's just left the bed of someone he's mad for, or who has a date later with a massive crush. It was a smile I missed having, and I almost asked him about it, but felt it was obvious. He carried it all the way to the 15th floor.

I was in bad shape last night, and when I awoke--filled with that vague, crippling sadness--but I slowly worked myself out of it, until, upon arrival at work, I felt better. I have to be careful not to let it creep back in on me tonight.

This morning, I was sitting at the front desk with no computer--I couldn't log in because the person with the password was out. I wanted to see how I would do without its glare, its draw, its addictive properties. I was twitchy for a while, missing email and LJ, and the collective weight of everyone else's sadness.

And I wondered if that was in fact the problem: am I being dragged into the mire by being online so much?

Much like the endless viewing of CNN can solidify, and make impossible to shake, the horror of an event like 9/11; or like multiplication tables and religious dogma are force-fed to us and thus branded into the flesh of our minds forever, indulgence in daily weeping and praying and ranting and exposure to immense screaming bandwidths of information--pro-war, anti-war, every possible perspective, every conceivable possibility, every reality and paranoia and utopic vision--it weighs me down. It fills me with imparseable facts, a complete spectrum of opinion from which it is impossible to glean any truth, and a full gamut of painful emotions. Add to this that most of the people I read on a daily basis are friends of mine, whose opinions and feelings I care deeply about, all of whom are hurting in one way or another--inconsolably depressed, impotently angry, soul sick, numbed into quiescent indifference--of course it's going to affect me.

I'm upset about the war. Of course I'm upset about it. It's a cycle of upset: I'm crushed that we're over there, unjustly, bombing a decimated country; I'm frustrated that I can't feel more for people I am so far away from, and that my pity and horror means nothing coming from my place of privilege. I feel guilty for that same place of privilege and feel I have no right to any opinion about Iraqi or any other suffering. And then I feel so angry at my government, for only allowing their voices of greed and hatred and superiority to reach overseas, for making their voices of pomp and condescension, their ridiculous ideas of themselves as Saviors of the World, represent me, while my small voice of dissent and outrage and pity and sadness is crushed into a poor caricature of America to the rest of the world.

But that's not what's making me this depressed. I've shut off the wail of the world before; I can do it again.

It's my friends' voices.

From the most ardent peace activists to my least political and ambivalent friends, everyone is feeling this, everyone is frustrated or feel helpless to do anything, everyone's dreams are being haunted, everyone is overwhelmed and depressed and angry, and most of all, everyone just wants it to stop.

And I believe that this energy is not just cumulative but exponential, that all of this surfing and reading and very collective grieving is creating a cloud of fear and doubt and hatred and suffering, that we need to reach out to each other and spread some kind of positivity, that, whether I believe in it or not, we have to work some kind of magic, if not to stop this war, then at least to stop us all becoming casualties of it.

We are a community here, there's no doubt about that. Singly, we're all carrying our own wounds. Collectively, we're bleeding to death.

Is it time, perhaps, for us to fight our own war, against this darkness that's swallowing us all, day by day?