Note:  A version of this was my first big ‘short story’ publication. It was in a print (remember print?!) magazine called The Awakenings. It’s creative non-fiction. This version is how it looks in the ‘literary memoir’ of Surviving Gen X

 

An orange glow bounced from the moon to the water and reflected on glass financial towers. This was not peaceful scenery. This was nuclear afterglow in the pre-dawn hours of the last millennium’s dying breath.

I had six matches that day, and all in the heavyweight division. Full contact, score a knockout and that’s one less round you have to fight. Sweat poured from my body. I had just gotten over pneumonia and my lungs burned. But this guy was a monster. An inch smaller than me.

 

Sijak!

 

He’s slightly bigger in muscularity, but somehow he hits 30 times harder. His foot comes towards my ribs, and I drop my arm to block.

The kick is bone-shattering—almost literally—but he doesn’t get a point. My eyes shift down from his chest. I see his feet switch, cross, cross back, and switch again. I need oxygen; I need air. This gear weighs a thousand pounds. How can foam weigh so much?

Lungs still on fire. Air. I don’t want to breathe. So hot. I think someone broke one of my ribs earlier today. Probably should have had it taped before this match. Fighting with pneumonia is one thing, but having a bone puncture a lung? Another level of stupidity altogether.

 

Kae Sook!

 

I met her years ago. Some shy thing that sauntered into the Taekwondo class I was in. I remember working with her and seeing such a natural grace in everything she did. We tried to make her hard, strong, cut like a knife, but privately, I’d always tell her to express her inner beauty, the grace, the control, the spirit.

 

Kae Sook!

 

We are circling each other in the ring now. I’m safe. He is too far away to hit me with anything unless he steps in first. His feet shift again. This time when they uncross, they blur at me. Christ, he is rushing. Defense? None ready. I do my best to step in and hope he overshoots my body. I get lucky. He didn’t count on me stepping into his advance and our bodies jam together. I use one arm to keep hooked under my opponent’s left armpit. His breath smells like shit.

The referee comes to break us up. I pretend to ignore his commands while trying to buy my legs time to ride through the cramps. I am clinging to my opponent as I lean my weight against him. He holds me up but wants to complain. Relief. My hamstring unfolds and my left foot touches the ground.

 

Kae Sook!

 

We are a world of exteriors. Daphne had a perfect soul. But when was that ever enough? She defined grace in physical form. Tall and lithe, a raven-haired ballet dancer bamboozled at an early age into letting her instructor crack her hips in order to always be flexible like a child. She toured with a New York City dance troupe where she picked up perfect balance, muscle control, and an eating disorder. Lions eat their young, but we send ours into impossible emotional chasms with too little rope to climb out.

At 113 lbs, she was grossly overweight for ballet; her breasts had to be taped close to the rest of her body. She had one meal a day, a Starbucks caramel Frappuccino with no whipped cream, and finished the meal with a feather and bucket. A person is only damaged when they exhibit physical scars. The hell inside is our own to deal with. Daphne was a survivor.

 

Kae Sook!

 

Tattered hair pokes over his eyes; the sleeve of his uniform is torn. My opponent paces out of range. I bounce lightly on the balls of my feet. Just have to hold on. Last match of the night. Screams from the stands. Are they cheering for him? For me? I can’t tell. My ears strain for a name, or at least a voice pattern I can recognize.

 

Kae Sook!

 

Daphne and I made the odd couple. She was pure, light, and fun—everything I wasn’t. We walked a lot of the time, just to walk, just to be together. When my knees gave out and gravity sent me to the ground, I looked up at Daphne in feigned shock and accused her, in front of everyone, of pushing me down. Daphne played her role perfectly, with a stern hand on her hip and a well-manicured finger wagging: ‘That’s what you get for not holding hands.’

 

Kae Sook!

 

He stops his pacing. Switch—a hard switch. His body weight falls forward; shoulders come at me; chest moves. We seem to have landed within three feet of each other. This is far within striking distance. A feint. A really good feint. Switch. Another change of stance. He spins in the air. I have seen him knock out people in previous fights with this. Jump spin back kick followed by a 360-degree jump spin roundhouse. He always lands one of them. They cut down bigger bodies than mine. I step in. My mind knows it is the right thing to do. Part of me thinks I am insane for moving my body into the line of fire. Some old part used mostly for self-preservation. Thankfully, I don’t listen to that part.

The back kick glances off the side of my body. No point. His 360 lands but not hard enough to score. We’re locked up and I shift my feet, trying to get a body shot off. His fist finds the rib that I can now confirm as broken. I forget about my footwork and cover my ribs with my arms.

I lock us up. Face to face. Each of us tries to get our feet free to strike the other with. His left foot escapes my trap of hooking my ankle around his shin. Crescent kick, up close. Then his right foot strikes the other side of my head. We are standing face to face, and he still has the power to knock my head hard enough to the other side, and then repeat the action with his other foot.

Kae Sook!

 

I had plans to go with my girlfriend to a wedding reception. My girlfriend had plans to break up with me. Daphne was there to pick up the pieces, to glue what she saw of my life back together, even if all the pieces didn’t match—a jagged puzzle whose jigsaw borders never quite lined up—and she was there with me at the reception, sitting next to me, while my ex-girlfriend stared daggers.

 

Kae Sook!

 

My vision shifted. My feet floated to the walls. My opponent followed me to the walls. The ref, also walking on the wall, broke us. He looked into my eye and asked me if I was alright, if I was okay, if I could continue. I think I told him to screw himself. At least that is what I wanted to say. I am sure it came out as ‘Yes, Sir,’ or something disciplined like that. I tried to make my way back to my corner while talking to the ref. Sometimes I could catch a breather by pretending to adjust my shin guards, but with the world spinning as it were, I thought looking down might be a bad idea.

‘Kae Sook!’ The match was restarted.

To win. To lose. I didn’t care anymore. I wanted to lie down. I wanted to close my eyes. To sleep. Darkness strangled my eyes, but I stayed on my feet. My field of vision shifted, and the floor became vertical in my vision. I stayed on my feet. How we never fell from the walls was beyond comprehension. How I stayed on my feet was another impossible question. With the last two hits to my skull, my opponent pulled ahead. I could see the ring next to us more clearly than I could see our own square circle. I could see my opponent circling a few feet away from me. He was trying to run the clock out. I threw a kick that landed nowhere near my opponent. My next kick came closer to the referee than to the guy trying to knock my head in. A blur came at me, and I locked into it—held on for everything I could.

 

Kae Sook!

 

It’s the shy moments that I find reflect a person’s true soul. The small moments of life when all guards are down and you think only a select few are watching. The quiver of her lip, a scar from old eating habits, when she was tired. The way she pointed me out to her parents before we started dating. As I walked down the hall at school, she lipped, ‘He’s the one’ behind my back, and the look on her face, a moment frozen, etched in the marble of time, when she realized I could see her mouth move in the window’s reflection.

 

Kae Sook!

 

The timekeeper threw a belt in the ring, signifying the end of the match. I went back to my corner. My coach’s words sounded like buzzing in my ears. I nodded my head a few times until he stopped talking. The referee called my opponent and me back to the center of the ring. His hand went over my wrist from behind. My arm swung when his swung. Back and forth. It was a game some referees played. It always made you wonder, ‘Did I win? Did I really pull it out in time?’

‘Chung Sung!’ The weight from my hand dropped, and the ref pushed me into my opponent in a hug.

Chung. Red? No. Blue! Blue Won? What color was I? I went over to shake hands with my opponent’s coach. One of us had won. I knew that much. I knew it was Blue. But my ability to determine which color was blue and which was red had temporarily left me.

I asked my coach if I had won.