I Am So Popular: Fight Like a Girl!

In fact, I did love KFP. And I LOVE IT STILL! And I would’ve loved it even if I’d been totally sober when I watched it. The only thing the drugs did to make the experience different than it would have been otherwise? In my altered state, I allowed myself to convince myself that just as soon as I healed up fully from having my uterus ripped out, I would don a ghee (the white uniform, not the clarified butter—though there’s an idea) and burst into the dojo and take the martial arts world by a storm! Move over Bruce Lee, Sensei Spike has entered the building!

For certain, these martial arts aspirations that filled me were quite delusional. I have a surgically restructured right foot that is not up to the task of “the way of the hand and foot” (the translation for Taekwondo). I have constant shooting bursitis pain in my left shoulder. And beyond these specifics, I’m just getting… well, let’s just say I’ve put an awful lot of mileage on my engine.

But still, I wasn’t merely delusional, a know-nothing wannabe watching a black-and-white cartoon bear master martial arts and, in the process, convince me I could do the same. Because actually, no shit, I did used to practice martial arts. I earned a red belt in Taekwondo, after a couple of years of working out, practicing and testing. I quit two or three tests before black belt, switching to yoga when it occurred to me I didn’t have it in me to be a black belt, not really. But back in the day, I could kill you (if you were very weak, and would lay very still and not move at all) with my bare hands and feet.

I probably couldn’t do that anymore, but some of my best skills have stuck with me. Not so much the physical side of it, but the alertness, the respect, the philosophy of it all. These things came flashing back to me last Saturday when I went down to the Sun Dragon Martial Arts Studio near Central Market South, to watch my friend Leila test for her black belt in Seido Karate, a Japanese style incorporating mind-body-spirit training elements.

I met Leila through her dad, Bart, who has inked me quite a bit. As it happens, Leila and her whole family—her brother, Will, her mother, Doris Ann and her dad—all work out at Sun Dragon. (Heck, they’ve even been featured, as a martial arts family, in People Mag). Leila is fourteen. I was recalling last week how when I was fourteen, I was honing my binge drinking skills. I was also being told, regularly, how clumsy and non-athletic I was.

While it is entirely possible that I was not the gazelle some of my classmates were, looking back, I find it hard to believe I was as awful at sports as I thought I was. As I was told I was by siblings, peers and teachers. I think there was some self-fulfilling prophecy going on there, and it was much easier (or so it seemed) to learn how to crack jokes at my own expense, than risk trying some new physical activity out on the field. (Admittedly, when I fell down a curb and failed to put my hands out, thus skidding across gravel on my face, and winding up with a very intense ER experience, I don’t think I gave myself or my friends much confidence that deep inside I had the focus and stamina to excel on the field.)

But what if, like Leila, I’d had martial arts training, which she’s done since she was seven? Can I just tell y’all what it was like to watch a fourteen year-old girl exhibit the most intense concentration I have witnessed? I arrived around three hours into her test—her testing partner was Graham, a grown man—and she was perfectly composed. As those testing her asked her countless questions, not all of them in English, she produced the answers swiftly. But, even better than her accuracy—both in physical and verbal aspects of the test—was how she handled the occasional error. Upon being corrected, she nodded and said a word, that sounds like this: Uhhhs to make it clear she understood. She didn’t flinch, or act upset with the correction. She simply accepted the information, made necessary changes, and moved on. All with an audience intently watching her.

I love the irony of the whole thing—taking martial arts to learn defense, but then knowing when not to be defensive, as in when you are being handed important information that others might interpret as criticism. I sat watching, imagining my own response, how I might flinch if corrected, or want to offer a long explanation of why I was doing things a certain way.

Not Leila. Focus focus focus. I watched this girl, who has studied karate for half her life now. I recalled my blue belt test, my hardest, when I forgot to tuck my thumb in and it got jammed during sparring. I remember one of my very first classes where I advanced when I was supposed to retreat. The black belt who’d been coming toward me was moving too fast with her front axe kick to pull back. We all heard my nose crack and, though it didn’t break, for weeks I could “pop” it like bubble wrap.

And I remembered my favorite classmate, Henry, who was so reluctant to join me when I insisted we go to class together. We were living in Knoxville when we began, having fled Austin to escape some trauma that had incited agoraphobia in me. I was a fucking mess. Moving far away was a good first step in healing. Learning self-defense hadn’t been part of the plan, but a good friend insisted we do just that. It was the best advice I ever took, cured the agoraphobia, and gave me a calm confidence I’d lacked my whole life. As Henry and I progressed through the ranks, I made a vow that one day, when I am king, every child, woman and man will take some form of martial arts.

Joy Williamson, who runs Sun Dragon-- celebrating its 20th anniversary this year-- agrees with this idea of mine. (I mean, I’m not sure she agrees I should be king of the world but I do think she agrees that everyone ought to try martial arts.) As it happens, Sun Dragon is a non-profit. So even if these tight times are telling you you can’t afford the $25ish weekly cost (no contracts), you can always apply for a scholarship. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Which is to say, don’t give me any excuses people, it’s time to sign up. (And don't tell me you don't have time-- at least sign up for a one day self-defense class.)

I wish you all could have been there with me, watching Leila. Long ago I wrote an essay, I think it was called something like Notes to My Thirteen Year Old Self. And in it, I wished I could go back and take the young me, whom thought I was so clumsy and stupid, and just reassure myself. I wish I could’ve circumvented at least some of the crushes and found some wormhole that would’ve taken me faster to a place of a bit more knowledge, self-confidence and enlightenment.

I eventually got to a place like that, and I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that the martial arts went a very long way toward getting me there, at the ripe old age of 34, two decades past Leila’s achievement. Seeing my young friend, calm determination, self-confidence and then—at sparring time—a big smile at the chance to get in there and throw kicks and punches-- what joy this brought me. Deep bows, Leila. Nice job.

Spike Gillespie wants you to sign up for martial arts TODAY. If you don’t want to drive to South Austin, she recommends Tao of Texas Martial Arts Studio near UT. Spike blogs at www.spikeg.com and-- check it, people!-- www.knitbuzz.blogspot.com. She also is the Head Mistress for the Dick Monologues. Next show April 15th—don’t wait, email spike@spikeg.com NOW for tix.