tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79460690723519045262024-03-13T20:01:02.656-07:00Hold This Posea serial novel about break-ups, celibacy, chess,epistemology, fame, fighting, Los Angeles, martial arts, minimalism, northern-central Michigan, obsessive crushes, pain, paradoxes, pseudo-Eastern philosophy, revenge, self-help, skinniness, small towns, and yoga. Please see the note for new readers.Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-37669866686366005522010-12-15T16:59:00.000-08:002010-12-16T15:58:48.798-08:00Now in paperback!<em>Hold This Pose </em>is now available as a self-published book at this link:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/hold-this-pose/14305688">http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/hold-this-pose/14305688</a><br /><br />I am hoping to publish it professionally as well, if anyone would like to offer any thoughts or advice.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.lulu.com/commerce/index.php?fBuyContent=9756637"><img src="http://static.lulu.com/images/services/buy_now_buttons/us/blue.gif?20101215113558" border="0" alt="Support independent publishing: Buy this book on Lulu." /></a><br />Thanks for all of your support!Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-61256293271312454652010-11-25T02:32:00.000-08:002010-12-05T20:41:16.703-08:0043. Getting on with Her Life“If I'm the emblem for ‘This is what it looks like to be the lonely girl getting on with her life,’ then so be it. It's fine. I can take it.” —Jennifer Aniston<br /><br />“Don’t decide now,” said Master Park. “Think about it overnight. You can tell me tomorrow.”<br /><br />“Okay, but…”<br /><br />“Tomorrow,” he interrupted. ,. “Or take a week,” he said. “It’s a very important decision. You shouldn’t rush it. Really take your time and think about it.”<br /><br />“But…”<br /><br />He held up his hand up as though to block a kick. I closed my mouth. There was no point in telling him that I wanted to make this decision soon, as soon as possible, definitely sooner than a week.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In a week</span>, I said to myself, closing the front door behind me, <span style="font-style: italic;">I’ll be gone</span>.<br /><br />I drove back to the lake house, feeling lost on the road I had traveled every single day for almost a year. I had fallen asleep last night with the lights still on, my face resting on Paula’s journal. I didn’t feel ready to make the kind of heavy, life-altering decision that Master Park had placed on my shoulders. His offer of opening a taekwondo academy together was an amazing opportunity, one that would solve all the problems of my life by bringing everything I loved into one place: Master Park, taekwondo, Los Angeles, my home, my friends.<br /><br />Still, the thought of taking my teacher from his rightful home seemed like a violation this town that I had also come to love. It didn’t matter that he was really from Los Angeles, or that he wasn’t actually Korean, or that he wasn’t even really Master Park. His school was my favorite thing about North Middleton, and it would feel unethical to take it with me when I left.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">But he wants to go back to LA</span>, I told myself. He might leave even if I didn’t accept his offer, and then nobody would have him. Maybe it was the right thing to take him at his word that he wanted to leave; that part was his decision, not mine.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Then you should do it</span>, I said to myself. <span style="font-style: italic;">You should open a school with Master Park</span>.<br /><br />It seemed so logical: I wanted to move to LA. He wanted to open a school in LA. We should open a school together. It made perfect sense.<br /><br />Except when I thought about this hypothetical school, my heart sank. The problem wasn’t the school itself; I would love a school like that. The problem was that this morning, I had woken up with Paula’s journal under my face and a song of unbounded freedom in my heart. That was the reason for my urgency in leaving, right away, within the week, before I became dragged down by complacency and expectations and routine. I needed to go, to stir, to get moving while I was still burning with excitement to start my life again, with an unmarked slate that I could fill up with absolutely anything.<br /><br />I didn’t want to move back to LA to do what Becky or Chase or Paula or Master Park wanted me to do. I wanted to do what <span style="font-style: italic;">I</span> wanted to do. Except I didn’t know yet what it was that I wanted to do; and what if I gave up this opportunity and then never figured out what I was getting in its place? What if it turned out that this <span style="font-style: italic;">was </span>the thing I wanted to do all along, open a taekwondo school, and I had missed my chance?<br /><br />Back at the lake house, my first instinct was to do what I had done so many times before when I had to make a decision: consult Thomas Fo. <span style="font-style: italic;">Zen for Times of Crisis</span> still occupied its privileged spot on the living room bookshelf, lying flat in front of the other books, placed there for easy access. But now, when I picked it up, it filled me with anger and betrayal instead of trust and calm as it used to.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">It’s still the same book</span>, I told myself. I forced myself to flip through the pages, starting at the back, visiting each of the sections that had provided guidance in the past: Embracing Your Ugliness. Healing the Divide Between Who You “Should” Be and Who You Are. Keeping the Outside Out.<br /><br />I had underlined a passage—lightly, in pencil, since the book didn’t belong to me—that had inspired me so deeply that I had written it on a piece of paper and taped it on the wall of the bedroom: “Though we may not appreciate it at the time, adversity is our ally. The times when we are defeated, beaten down, broken, these are the times when we grow, the times that hone the metal of our being into the sharpest, strongest steel.”<br /><br />These words seemed now like grocery-store wisdom, like something that, when you heard it quoted on an afternoon talk show, would cause you to think to yourself, <span style="font-style: italic;">well obviously</span>. I tried to convince myself that it was just my new knowledge of Thomas Fo’s identity that was making his writing sound like a Groundbreaker’s pamphlet. But no matter how many times I reread it, I couldn’t shake the tawdry sound of Groundbreakers off of the words.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">It shouldn’t matter that Thomas Fo doesn’t exist</span>, I told myslf. <span style="font-style: italic;">It’s still the same book</span>.<br /><br />“The problem isn’t that Thomas Fo is a fake name,” I said, speaking aloud, as I often did in the lake house to lesson the loneliness there. “The problem is that it’s a fake name for Vanto Hatch.”<br /><br />As soon as I said it, I felt better—because I had finally articulated the exact reason for my disturbance. And then I felt worse—because it was so, so disturbing. Vanto Hatch, I said. Vanto Hatch. I hit myself in the face with the open book. Vanto Hatch, I said again. I hit myself harder.<br /><br />I closed the book again and let it fall back open, knowing already what I would see. It was the page I had read the most, the story of how the author had forced himself to watch every commercial he had ever acted in, all in one afternoon. That’s right, I said to myself. An actor. Becky had mentioned it a few times; “Vanto used to do commercials, too, you know, before he founded Groundbreakers,” she would say. “He knows how hard acting is.”<br /><br />“You are still an actor,” I said aloud to the book. <span style="font-style: italic;">You were nothing but an actor all alon</span>g.<br /><br />As I placed it face-down on the shelf, my eyes fell on Nicolai Snail’s testimonial, printed on the back cover: “I have been a great fan of Fo’s work for many years.”<br /><br />They all knew, I realized. All those men playing chess at the Snail Plant, complaining about Vanto Hatch and praising Thomas Fo all in the same breath.<br /><br />The whole thing is fake, I thought in disgust. <span style="font-style: italic;">My guru</span>. I hated the sound of the word, but what else would you call him? For almost a year, I had turned to him for guidance and inspiration, following his philosophy of living, studying his chess strategies, looking to him for reassurance on cold dark nights when the isolation of the lake house felt like too much to bear.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">It’s my own fault for believing in anybody</span>, I told myself bitterly, lying down on the couch, although it was still morning, and pulling Paula’s mother’s knitted blanket over my head to shut out this ominous day when everyone I trusted had turned out to be a liar and a fake. <span style="font-style: italic;">Nobody is my guru,</span> I said to myself, as a grim, sickening sleep began to darken my senses. Not anymore. Never, never again.<br /><br />I couldn’t tell how long I slept, but when I woke up, I felt clearer, ready to work on making a real decision. I sat on the couch—Paula’s mother’s couch, not mine, I thought, feeling horribly uncouth all of a sudden for sleeping on a stranger’s couch—and my eyes fell on a small red paperback book sitting on top of the bookshelf. It was shoved so far back towards the wall that if it had been any thinner, it would have fallen behind the heavy shelf and been lost forever. I had banished it there the moment I finished reading it, disgusted with its message of selfishness, competitiveness, and arrogance.<br /><br />I’ll give it back to Master Park tomorrow, I had told myself each time my eyes fell on it. But just the sight of the book’s cover was so repugnant to me that I couldn’t bear to move it anywhere more visible. I rose to pick it up now, annoyed by the mere site of the bold, black-outlined font declaring its title.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The New Aggressive Male.</span><br /><br />Its cover was already sticky from humidity and dust, and its back cover was speckled lightly with mildew, something I had never seen on a book before I lived in Michigan, where the summer air was wet enough to dampen paper.<br /><br />I carried it to the kitchen and wiped the cover with a wet paper towel, hoping that Master Park would never find out how I had neglected it. The mildew and sticky dust lifted easily, and after a quick follow-up swipe with a dry towel, the book looked as healthy as when I had first borrowed it.<br /><br />Turning it over in my hands, I began to wonder what Fred Fawls would have to say about the question I was supposed to be trying to answer.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">You know what he would say</span>, I reminded myself. <span style="font-style: italic;">The same exact thing that Thomas Fo would say.</span> Which was the same exact thing that Vanto Hatch would say. Which, based on my morning of research, was absolutely nothing.<br /><br />I opened the book and scanned the table of contents, looking for something about decisions. The chapter titles reflected a sense of disdainful judgmentalism that seemed to be the exact opposite of Thomas Fo’s message of self-acceptance: Valuing <span style="font-style: italic;">You </span>Over <span style="font-style: italic;">Them</span>. Real Love Doesn’t Hold Us Back. How to Not Care.<br /><br />As I gave it some thought, though, I couldn’t define what the distinction between the two philosophies was. Don’t care about others; only care about yourself, both incarnations of Vanto Hatch seemed to say.<br /><br />Then I noticed a chapter at the end of the list, the epilogue, entitled, “The Choices You Will Have to Make.” Although I had forced myself to read the entire book, I didn’t remember this chapter. Perhaps I had rushed through it, so eager to be done that I was no longer actually paying attention to what I was reading, or perhaps in my haste to finish, I had decided that the epilogue didn’t count and considered myself finished after the final chapter.<br /><br />I sat down on the couch with the book in my lap, scanning the pages of the epilogue quickly, eager to find something useful, even if it was just some offensive recommendation that might help steer me in the opposite direction.<br /><br />“If you truly want to become a Fully Actualized Male, you will at times need to make decisions that will upset those you care about, that society will not approve of, that will alienate your family and friends, because when you make them, you will be prioritizing yourself over all others.<br /><br />“You might think that this sounds self-aggrandizing. Who cares about your decisions so much, anyway? It turns out that society places a host of demands on us in the form of conventions, and when we defy them, the people around us will condemn our actions, even when they have caused no harm. If you do not believe me, try returning an RSVP card saying that you will not be attending a friend’s wedding because you don’t feel like going. Refuse a holiday present from a coworker on the grounds that you don’t want to clutter up your house. Tell your wife that you need to leave the country for a few years, and that she can’t come with you.<br /><br />“At best, these actions will win you any number of unflattering labels: stubborn, uncooperative, eccentric, self-centered. At worse, they will cost you your friendships, your job, your marriage. All because you dared to be honest, to state outright what would make you happy, what would make your life easier, what would further your development as a human being.”<br /><br />“Vanto Hatch,” I cursed under my breath. “You will need to make decisions that society will not approve of.” I thought of Rob trying to work up the nerve to cheat on his girlfriend. “When we defy conventions, the people around us will condemn our actions.” I nodded in recognition. I wanted so much to hate this book, did in fact hate it, but I had to admit, I learned something profound every time I read it. Usually it was something I would rather not know, something that I had hoped was not the case. Why did Fred Fawls always have to so perfectly explain the actions of every man who had ever made me feel horrible?<br /><br />“When people tie themselves to the things they think they need—friends, lovers, jobs, families—they gain a feeling of security in exchange for their freedom. It might be surprising to realize how often people willingly surrender their freedom, that thing that we believe is the most vital condition of our humanity.”<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Stupid aggressive males</span>, I said to myself. What would they do, I wondered, if <span style="font-style: italic;">we </span>started acting that way, never thinking of anyone but ourselves, prioritizing our own wants and needs above everyone else’s...what would they do?<br /><br />Really, what would they do? It was something to think about.<br /><br />I finished reading the chapter. Then I read it once more, and once again after that, before it was time to get ready for class.<br /><br />Everything was normal at the school that night, except for me. I felt like I was being watched, like cameras were capturing each movement and facial expression as I led Olivia through her usual training routine. I held the kicking pads in fast combinations of high kicks, low kicks, high kicks. We had spent the last month preparing her for her first competition, coming up in a few weeks.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I won’t be here</span>, I realized suddenly, trying not to let the pang of disappointment distract me from the intricate pattern of kicks flying fast at my head and body, blocked only by the pads I was holding. My hands were shaky, and I felt like I might lose the rhythm at any moment. <span style="font-style: italic;">Pay attention</span>, I scolded myself.<br /><br />I watched Olivia’s back in the mirror, the snap of her hip and shoulder as she whipped the kick out from her body, the moment of perfect balance as her foot made contact. She had come a long way in such a short amount of time, only a few months.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I think I’m going to miss her</span>. The unexpected realization disrupted the precariously balanced rhythm of the pads moving through space, and her foot smacked hard into my cheekbone. She gasped loudly.<br /><br />“Sorry,” she and I both said at once. I tried to keep my face blank and reset the pads, to keep going rather than dwelling on my embarrassing mistake, but she was already making a fuss.<br /><br />“Are you alright?” she said, leaning in to examine the side of my face. “That hit you pretty hard, didn’t it?”<br /><br />“I’m fine,” I said.<br /><br />“Look, your cheek is swelling up.” I could feel the side of my face heating up, throbbing a little, but I didn’t want to disrupt her workout any further by worrying about it.<br /><br />“It’ll be all right,” I said. “I’ll put some ice on it after you’re done training.”<br /><br />“Okay, if you’re sure,” Olivia said, with a motherly tone of skeptical concern in her voice.<br /><br />“I’m sure,” I said, holding the pad in place for the first kick in the sequence she had been practicing.<br /><br />Olivia returned to her fighting stance, bending her knees and lifting her arms, then paused. “It looks like you’re going to have an awesome black eye,” she said as she snapped her foot out to meet the pad.<br /><br />“What happened to your face?” Master Park asked as I took my regular seat across from him at the chess board.<br /><br />My inclination was to say “nothing,” but I had learned that the proper response to a question from Master Park was always the truth, in its most factual and unembellished form.<br /><br />“I messed up holding the pads,” I said. I had iced my face for a few minutes before my own workout and should probably have been icing it once again now, but I didn’t want to draw my teacher’s attention to it. I looked down at the board, avoiding eye contact, waiting to see if my answer was satisfactory.<br /><br />“Your move,” he said.<br /><br />We played two games, each one lasting about an hour, our usual routine as of late. Master Park never bothered with having me choose a pawn anymore; we just took turns going first.<br /><br />He still won every game easily, but lately he had seemed more engaged, as though he had to concentrate on his moves. When we had first started playing, it hadn’t bothered me how neatly and easily he could defeat me—after all, I was a brand new player—but his air of distraction while he did it was infuriating. His eyes would never stray from the board in front of him, but the calm, mechanical rhythm of his moves always gave me the feeling that he was reserving part of his brain for some other activity: planning the exercises for tomorrow’s class, perhaps, or making a grocery list, or even playing some other, more stimulating chess game in his mind.<br /><br />Now, between moves, he stared intently at the board, furrowing his brow. I had even seen flashes of anger blaze through his eyes like quick flashes of lightning after I had made a particularly aggressive attack; that was when I knew I was about to be slaughtered.<br /><br />After I had been mated on the first game and resigned from the second one to avoid a messy endgame, Master Park reset the board, just as he did each evening after we played.<br /><br />“I’ve decided,” I said, as he dropped the last pawn into place.<br /><br />“Wait,” said Master Park, rising from the table to carry our empty tea cups over to a tray on the bookcase. <span style="font-style: italic;">He must wash them in the bathroom</span>, I thought, before remembering that he also had a little kitchen sink somewhere. “Don’t tell me anything today. Give it time.”<br /><br />“I don’t need any more time,” I said. I cringed as I heard the assertiveness in my voice, so inappropriate for addressing my teacher, but I kept speaking. “I’m ready to tell you now.”<br /><br />Master Park stopped mid-step, turned, and set the dirty cups back on the table. He sat down in his chair and looked straight at me. His stony expression was the same as ever, but it frightened me. I waited at least half a minute for him to say something before realizing that he was waiting for me to speak.<br /><br />“Your offer,” I started “It’s a great idea, and I’m really honored.”<br /><br />Master Park was still looking at me with that blank expression, that waiting expression, waiting calmly for me to throw the kick that would allow him to launch his own attack.<br /><br />“I don’t want to open a taekwondo school,” I said.<br /><br />It seemed that the slightest shadow fell across my teacher’s face, though I wouldn’t have been able to say what had moved. His mouth was calm, his eyes were still and quiet. Perhaps it was the skin over his cheeks, which seemed to hang more heavily downward off the bones.<br /><br />“I am going to try to do what it says in <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Aggressive Male</span>,” I said, hoping to persuade him through recourse to the book he had made me read. But how could I phrase my reasoning? <span style="font-style: italic;">I want unlimited possibility. I don’t want to be restrained by another person’s goals and aspirations. Opening a school with my teacher, my decisions would never truly be my own. I want to prioritize myself. </span><br /><br />“I just don’t know what I want to do yet,” I said, finally. “And I need whatever it is to be something I decide on my own.”<br /><br />I waited for Master Park to respond. He looked at me blankly. I waited. His face didn’t move.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">What did I expect</span>? Yelling? Crying? I had only rarely seen the slightest signs of emotions from him. Mild annoyance, at the Snail Plant. The quick anger when I captured one of chess pieces. Faint sorrow, as he spoke about his children. Now I looked at his features and saw nothing at all. I didn’t even see my teacher there anymore. What I saw was a mask: still, blank, unknowable, a wall.<br /><br />Then, very slowly, he rose and lifted the dirty cups from the table. This time he made it all the way to the bookcase, where he placed them carefully on their tray. Then, without turning to face me, he spoke. I could hear his voice clearly, though he spoke quietly and I could only see the back of his head.<br /><br />“I understand,” he said. His voice was calm. <span style="font-style: italic;">It’s going to be okay</span>, I told myself. Then, without looking back at me, he walked out of the room.<br /><br />I could hear him walking down the little hall, hear a key unlocking one of the mysterious doors, hear it open and then close again.<br /><br />I sat in the room for a while, waiting to see if he would come back. I listened for footsteps, but I couldn’t hear anything except the quiet ticking of the small alarm clock on the bookshelf. I looked around me, trying to be patient and wait. <span style="font-style: italic;">He’ll come back</span>, I said to myself. <span style="font-style: italic;">He just needs to think about it. </span><br /><br />The walls of the room were lined with framed documents that I had never had time to examine before. There were certificates for earning his first, second, and third-degree black belts. One of the certificates made him promise to never use his taekwondo skills “in self-defense only, to protect myself, my family, and my country.” His signature below was as neat as computer-cursive.<br /><br />There were also two awards from chess tournaments and a clipped-out newspaper article with the headline, “Snail Workers Get a Kick out of New Taekwondo Class.”<br /><br />One frame near the door was so small that I couldn’t make out the words on the paper inside of it. I stood up and walked over to it. Inside the black frame was an aging piece of white typewriter paper with the following words typed on it:<br /><br />“The times when we are defeated, beaten down, broken, these are the times when we grow, the times that hone the metal of our being into the sharpest, strongest steel.”<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> He’ll be okay</span>, I said to myself.<br /><br />I picked up my bag and walked back into the front of the school, shutting each door quietly behind me. The room was dark, and all the students had gone; Rob or one of the other students had closed up. I turned the bolt on the front door to let myself out. Normally Master Park walked me out of the school after our chess games, so that he could lock the door behind me. I hesitated as it shut behind me, not wanting to leave it unlocked.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">He’ll lock it</span>, I said, as I headed towards Paula’s mother’s car to drive to Paula’s mother’s house.<br /><br />When I woke up the next morning, my vision was fuzzy and the skin on my face felt stretched and tight. <span style="font-style: italic;">Oh, right</span>, I said, surveying my swollen, purple lower eyelid.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Maybe I shouldn’t leave until this thing is gone</span>, I said to myself. I had seen this kind of bruising on one of the guys in the class once or twice; I was pretty sure it would take over a week to fully clear up. Becky would freak out when she saw it, and it wouldn’t do much to convince Paula or Chase that I should continue with my taekwondo practice, either. And then, in Los Angeles, there were always the photographers to think about. My stomach turned, thinking of everyone fussing over my face, back in a city where a person’s face was their most valued possession.<br /><br />But knew that I needed to leave as soon as possible, before I lost my resolve and excitement to go. Besides, the thought of a lengthy goodbye to North Middleton seemed too painful to bear.<br /><br />“I am going to Los Angeles with a black eye,” I said aloud. “And Becky and Paula and Chase and everyone can just…” I paused, searching for the right expression to please my audience of one. “Suck it.”<br /><br />I bought the plane ticket myself. It was my first time calling the airline, making the reservation; Becky had always done it for me before. Listening to the dial tone on the lake house phone, I felt so nervous that I almost called Becky instead. <span style="font-style: italic;">Be brave</span>, I told myself.<br /><br />There was no need to be scared, of course. The perky-sounding lady on the phone helped me purchase a ticket for Saturday afternoon, three days away. That would give me enough time to pack and clean, and no time to sit around and think about my decision. It was a perfect plan, and I had done it all myself.<br /><br />As I cleaned the house, washing the sticky bookshelves with soap and mopping the equally sticky kitchen floor, I wondered what Master Park would say when I arrived at the school that night. I hoped he would smile, forgive me, that I would train Olivia and then take his advanced class and then play chess with him, and that everything would be all right. But my heart told me this would not happen, that all he would show me would be the blank, stony face, that there would be no forgiveness and no chess.<br /><br />I was nervous as I trained Olivia that night, waiting for Master Park to emerge from the back room, as he usually did part-way through the beginner’s class, if he wasn’t out already.<br /><br />Olivia was almost as distracted as I was, buzzing from the effects of so much exciting news at once. “Check out that black eye—I must kick really hard!” “I can’t believe you’re going to move away before my fight!” “It’s going to be so boring around here without you!” “You’ll let me come visit, won’t you?”<br /><br />I tried not to look around too much as I held the pads for her; one black eye was careless, but two would be ridiculous. But I glanced behind me halfway through Olivia’s workout, and then ten minutes before it was over, and once more when it was done. Master Park had still not appeared.<br /><br />I warmed up for the advanced class, bracing for my teacher to finally arrive, and to ignore me, which I was now quite sure is what he would do.<br /><br />But Master Park did not arrive. Instead, Rob taught the advanced class. And he taught it again the next night, and the one after that, on Friday. It was my last night at the school, and my teacher was nowhere to be found.<br /><br />I hadn’t wanted to ask anyone where he was, to make a show of my anxiety. But that evening, after the advanced class, I pulled Rob aside. I hadn’t spoken to him, beyond responding to his directions when he taught classes, since that first day when we had visited the Snail Plant together, before I had joined the taekwondo school. His expression, when I told him I needed to ask him something, wasn’t just one of surprise; it was one of unexpected pleasure, like receiving a wonderful but excessive birthday present.<br /><br />“What is it?” he said, smiling warmly at me, as he lead me to the back corner of the room, away from the bustle of the students packing up their uniforms and putting on their street shoes.<br /><br />“Do you know where Master Park is?” I asked.<br /><br />“He’s out of town,” he told me. “He said he had some kind of business.”<br /><br />“Do you know when he’s coming back?” I asked.<br /><br />“He supposed to be gone for a week,” Rob said.<br /><br />I didn’t want to cry, especially not in front of Rob. But I could feel my lower lip shaking, and I knew if I tried to speak, my voice would break.<br /><br />“What is it?” Rob asked, putting his arm gently on mine.<br /><br />“I’m moving away tomorrow,” I said, my voice quavering at an odd, high frequency. “And he’s angry at me, and now I’m not going to be able to say…”<br /><br />Rob was hugging me as I sobbed against his arm, a tight, warm hug, clinical-feeling in our crisp, white taekwondo jackets, like a child being hugged by the most kindly, comforting pediatrician. I haven’t hugged anybody since Becky left, I thought, burying my face in his shoulder and crying and crying until I couldn’t anymore.<br /><br />“Who’s driving you to the airport?” Rob asked, when I pulled myself out of his arms and wiped my face.<br /><br />“Oh,” I said. “A cab, I think.” I had meant to call and schedule a ride yesterday, but I had been too distracted worrying over Master Park, where he was, whether he was hiding in the back room until I moved away, whether I’d ever see him again.<br /><br />“Let me drive you,” Rob said.<br /><br />“No!” I said, horrified at the thought. It was a sweet offer, but it was a three-hour drive; there was no one in North Middleton that I could ask to take six hours out of their Saturday, just to drive me. Especially not Rob.<br /><br />“No, really, please let me,” Rob said. “What time do you need to leave?”<br /><br />“Around noon?” I said, hoping he would say that it was impossible, that he needed to teach class or take his kid somewhere, that he was so sorry but it wouldn’t work out.<br /><br />"I can get someone else to teach the night classes," he said. Before I could protest, he added, "Why don’t I come pick you up for breakfast at nine?”<br /><br />“Breakfast?” I asked, shocked. It was hard enough to imagine how we would fill three hours of driving time, after not speaking to each other for my entire stay in North Middleton.<br /><br />“Sure. You won’t want to have food in the house if you’re moving. You should come over to my place and meet my family.”<br /><br />After so many months of pretending Rob didn't exist, my instincts told me to refuse, to make up an excuse, to extricate myself from this plan.<br /><br />I looked at Rob, who was smiling at me, as much as he ever smiled, his mouth stretched into an expression of wary approval. He looked a little older than when we'd first met, although that was less than a year ago. Under the harsh florescent lights of the school, I could see the delicate web of wrinkles creeping out from the corners of his eyes.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span></span>I thought about <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Aggressive Male. </span>Would a Fully Actualized Man refuse a ride and a meal from someone simply because they had shared an awkward moment in the past? Would he pass up an opportunity just to avoid a few moments of discomfort?<br /><br />“Okay,” I said.<br /><br />“Great,” he said. “It’ll be fun.” He pointed at my swollen eye, which had turned a darker, more intense shade of purple. “Plus I can't wait to hear the story of how you did that to your face.”<br /><br />Saturday morning, Rob picked me up outside the lake house. He lifted my one large suitcase into the back of his small, black sedan, the same one in which we had evaded the chasing reporters by driving through the back allies behind the food co-op.<br /><br />“This is all you have?” he asked. For a cross-country move, it didn’t seem like much, I had to admit. I had given away all the clothes I had brought from California, donated them to Shane’s favorite thrift store, their tiny limbs far too small to accommodate the bulky muscles in my arms and legs. I had also donated most of the clothes I had bought in Michigan, the down jacket and bulky sweaters and thick, insulated pants that would be useless in Los Angeles. All I had were kept were some pajamas, a few pairs of jeans, some t-shirts and thin sweatshirts.<br /><br />All of that only took up about a third of the suitcase. The rest was filled with my three taekwondo uniforms and all the books I had bought: two about Zen and three about chess, all by Thomas Fo. I had considered leaving them for Paula’s mother. But looking at them on the bookshelf, I couldn’t imagine not taking them with me. <span style="font-style: italic;">I can’t stay mad at you, Thomas Fo,</span> I said, tucking them safely between my jeans and sweatshirts.<br /><br />As I climbed into Rob’s car, I handed him the last book I had removed from the lake house: <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Aggressive Male. </span><br /><br />“That book,” Rob said, crossing his arms. “That book tried to ruin my life.”<br /><br />“It’s not so bad,” I said. “Could you please give it back to Master Park for me?”<br /><br />Rob took the book and placed it in the backseat, holding it disdainfully between his thumb and index finger, like it might infect his hand with some awful disease.<br /><br />Master Park had told the truth about Rob living in Cone. His building was only two driveways down the road, a giant house that had been divided into three apartments. In the sparsely populated woods, that still put him almost two miles away from where I had been living. Still, I couldn’t help but think wistfully of how I could have had a neighbor, someone to visit on those cold winter nights when the lake house had felt as frozen and barren and isolated as the North Pole.<br /><br />The breakfast was heavier than anything I would have made for myself, but good, a hearty, family breakfast. Rob's girlfriend Diana made scrambled eggs and pancakes with fruit in them and a big pot of coffee. She ate a modest portion, instead focusing her energy on putting food onto Rob and Apollo's plates, rising every few minutes to get a serving spoon or the pepper shaker or a napkin. She floated around the small apartment with a frantic energy that reminded me of my own mother, even though her energy had been channeled into organizing erotic seances rather than cooking.<br /><br />"It's too bad you're moving," Diana said, leaning in from behind me to refill my coffee cup. I had already had two cups, the first two I'd had in several years; there was no way I was going to sleep on the plane, I thought. It was fine; to meet Rob's girlfriend, this specter I had imagined as a dark shadow floating over him, was worth a little discomfort.<br /><br />"Rob never brings any of his taekwondo friends around," she said. "If I had known you were living right down the street, I would have invited you over a long time ago."<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">She's fine,</span> I realized, watching her scoop more eggs onto her son's plate. <span style="font-style: italic;">We really could have been friends. </span><br /><br />As we ate, I told them the story of my black eye. Diana gasped as I described Olivia's foot hitting my face.<br /><br />"I've messed up the pads" Rob said. "But I've never gotten a black eye. You must have messed it up really bad." He let out a laugh that was a little bit cruel and mocking, but mostly friendly.<br /><br />While Rob and Apollo washed the dishes, Diana gave me a tour of the apartment, the two bedrooms and one tiny office that doubled as a guest room, where Master Park slept on a fold-out sofa when he stayed the night. “He's so sweet,” she said, her face melting into a sad expression. “Rob thinks he might be visiting his kids right now.”<br /><br />“Really?” I asked. I hadn’t considered this possibility. It seemed a little more hopeful than what I had been imagining, that he was hiding in the back rooms, pretending to be out of town until I was gone.<br /><br />“Well,” she said, “It’s probably just wishful thinking. But Rob said Master Park’s never gone out of town for a whole week before. It would be nice if that’s where he went.”<br /><br />Breakfast was all cleaned up by eleven, and I didn’t need to leave for the airport until noon.<br /><br />“Have you ever been out on the lake?” Rob asked me. “We have a canoe.” He saw me hesitate, not wanting to inconvenience him any further. “You can’t leave Cone without a canoe ride on your own lake,” he insisted, dragging me outside by the hand.<br /><br />It was still mid-February, and just two weeks ago it had snowed, but today was a beautiful day for a ride. The lake was crisp and sparkling and blue, matching the clear cold blue of the winter sky. In two sweatshirts and a pair of gloves borrowed from Rob’s girlfriend, I felt just the slightest bit of bracing chill in my bones. Rob didn’t seem to notice the cold at all, even though he was only wearing one sweatshirt and no gloves, as he rowed us out to the middle of the lake.<br /><br />He paused at a beautiful calm spot from which I could see the back yard of the lake house, where I used to practice my taekwondo forms on warm days.<br /><br />"I'm sorry," he said.<br /><br />"For what?" I asked. I was afraid he was about to have another breakdown, like the first day we met, that he would cry and tell me that he couldn't drive me to the airport because he felt too guilty being alone with me. <span style="font-style: italic;">I knew you shouldn't have trusted him</span>, one part of my mind gloated at the other part.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span></span></span>"For how things started out between us," he said. "<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span>I really messed that up."<br /><br />"It's okay," I said, wondering if I was just falling back into my old habit of saying whatever would get me out of an awkward conversation the most quickly. But no, I realized, I wasn't lying; of course it was okay.<br /><br />"It was a really bad time in my life," Rob said, his gaze fixed across the lake, back towards the shore where both of us had, until this morning, lived. "We had all just moved in together, because I used to live separately, and things were so stressful, and I was really, really confused.”<br /><br />“It’s better now?” I asked. I realized as I said it that I truly hoped it was better, that his life was as happy and sweet as it seemed.<br /><br />“It’s a little better,” he said, without smiling. "I've been talking to Master Park about it, and that helps."<br /><br />"What does he say?" I asked, wondering what sort of advice my teacher might give about how not to destroy one's family.<br /><br />"He told me you never really lose the feeling of being trapped," Rob said. "You just get used to it, and it becomes the normal way your life is."<br /><br />He was quiet for a while, and so was I. We sat staring back at our houses, the cold empty barren one and the one brimming with unbearable affection and connectedness.<br /><br />Before we headed back to shore, I remembered something I wanted to see. “Look,” I said to Rob, pointing towards the green house on the far side of the lake from Paula’s mother’s house. “Do you see a man sitting on the balcony?”<br /><br />Rob squinted. “Maybe,” he said.<br /><br />I squinted, too, unsure of whether he was there today, and whether I could see him from this angle. And then suddenly, he came into sharp focus: the small man, squatting on what seemed to be a stool, his arms crossed over his chest, staring straight across the lake.<br /><br />“Right there,” I said to Rob, pointing.<br /><br />“Oh, I do see him,” said Rob. “Sitting on that stool.”<br /><br />“That’s him!” I said. I lowered my voice, embarrassed to be yelling, but I was so excited to finally have someone confirm the presence of this guardian ghost who had been haunting me for months and months.<br /><br />“Let’s go check him out,” Rob said, rowing towards the green house.<br /><br />In all my puzzlement over the eerie figure, it had never occurred to me to simply get closer to him. <span style="font-style: italic;">I could have walked out on the frozen lake</span>, I thought, but I knew I would have been too scared to ever try it; I had heard enough horror stories about what could happen to foolish, naïve Californians testing out ice for the first time.<br /><br />“Hmm,” said Rob, as we grew closer. “Do you think he’s a statue or a real person?”<br /><br />I stared at the figure, who was growing into sharper and sharper focus as we approached, now only a hundred feet away from shore. His eyes were staring fixed ahead of him, frozen like stone. But his crossed arms seemed to wave and shift with gentle liveliness.<br /><br />And then we were fifty feet from shore, and as I stared at his stony eyes and swaying arms, they began to move slowly away from each other. One eye moved right, and the other eye moved left. The arms moved down, and the head moved up.<br /><br />And then the left eye became the stubby end of a tree branch, just in front of the balcony, and the right eye was the top of a shovel leaning against the balcony’s railing. And the arms and body were a bush, an evergreen in a pot, squat and healthy in its cozy spot by the back wall of the balcony.<br /><br />“He’s gone!” said Rob, his voice hushed in amazement. "Just dissolved into nothing."<br /><br />But my guardian hadn't dissolved into nothing. He had dissolved into plants and tools and the wooden rail of a balcony and the sparkle of shimmering blue water.<br /><br />"It's beautiful," I said. I wasn't lying. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The End</span></span>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-26293445975395881912010-10-16T16:06:00.000-07:002010-12-05T10:40:04.993-08:0042. Nothing to Try to Do“There is nothing to try to do but try to be purposeless and formless, like water.” —Bruce Lee<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Two years later</span><br /></div><br />The invitations lay in ten stacks on the table. They were printed in a simple gray and lavender letterpress style that had cost Jen almost as much as the gluten-free vegan cake she had ordered—three months in advance, as required—from the artisan bakery. They really do look nice, she thought, looking down grudgingly at the cards, even though she had only spent the money on them because Becky made her.<br /><br />Still, her stomach churned uncomfortably every time her eyes fell on the stacks. She had agreed to put the invitations in envelopes, along with RSVP cards, and affix the address labels that Becky had printed out. It had seemed like an easy job when she had volunteered for it, until she saw them and realized exactly what five hundred invitations looked like. It’s going to take twelve hours, she thought, just as she had for the last six days since the cards had arrived.<br /><br />She should have started days ago, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to spread out the cards and envelopes and labels and allow them to take over her desk. Becky wanted to send the invitations out before Sunday; that was only three days away now. Jen had a lot of other work she needed to do, and then there was her writing, and she didn’t want to spare a minute on something as frivolous as stuffing envelopes.<br /><br />With a loud sigh, she moved a stack of papers from the desk top to the floor to make room for her project.<br /><br />Marie looked up from her play area, where she was stacking blocks. “Wanna play?” she asked. She was having some trouble mastering the letter “l” though, so it sounded more like “pway.”<br /><br />Jen hesitated for less than three seconds. “Sure,” she said, crossing the office to the play mat.<br /><br />“Look, Mommy, it’s a castle!” Marie exclaimed when Becky arrived half an hour later. She pointed at the turreted structure they had built out of tiny red blocks that looked like bricks. “For my pwincess doll.”<br /><br />“Hmph,” said Becky, wrinkling her nose in disapproval at Jen.<br /><br />“And a stable for the ponies,” said Jen, with a sheepish smile.<br /><br />“Have you started on those invites yet?” Becky asked.<br /><br />“I’ll do it,” said Jen. “I was just about to start, and then Marie wanted to play.”<br /><br />“Start now,” said Becky. “Chase is coming to get Marie in an hour.” She knelt down to survey Jen and Marie’s miniature architecture. “Not bad,” she said, poking her finger at one of the blocks.<br /><br />While Becky and Marie staged a pony rebellion that, judging from the crashing noises, led to the destruction of both the castle and the stables, Jen split one of the stacks in half and spread the invitations out on the desk. Each one was bordered in a single lavender line, with gray words in the middle, reading:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">You are warmly invited to a party</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">celebrating the first anniversary of</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Jennifer Aniston Center for Collaborative Learning.</span><br /></div><br />Jen couldn’t help it; she sighed again. Every time she looked at the invitations, she sighed.<br /><br />“What?” said Becky, looking up at Jen. “Is something wrong?”<br /><br />“No,” Jen said, silently chastising herself. “Everything’s fine.”<br /><br />The truth was, Jen was dreading this party—the stress, all the work that would go into it, all the cheerful socializing that would have to occur during it. Jen was happy that the center had already received so much acclaim during its first ten months, but she would have chosen to celebrate its upcoming anniversary with something more casual, like a dinner party for the center’s small staff of paid employees and teachers. Or maybe even just a nice catered lunch at work. What a radical idea, Jen had thought to herself: celebrate the work we do just by doing it.<br /><br />“That all sounds nice,” Becky had said, wrinkling up her mouth in a sardonic dismissal. “But it’s wrong. You have to do something big so you can make all the important people who’ve helped us feel appreciated. And it has to get in the newspaper so the important people can see their photos in there.”<br /><br />It all sounded awfully cynical, a big fancy event just to please a bunch of people who, in Jen’s opinion, couldn’t care less about a party or having their faces in the paper. She personally knew all the big-name experts who had taught at the center, and like herself, they all seemed more interested in getting their work done than on patting themselves on the back for doing it so well, which is why they had agreed to teach at a place like the center in the first place. They’d probably love the idea of celebrating by carrying on with work like it was just another day.<br /><br />I guess that’s why Becky does the public relations and I don’t, Jen thought.<br /><br />“I’ll handle the whole thing,” Becky had said, when Jen complained about all the work that would be involved. Jen knew she could do it, too, but she felt too guilty not to help at least a little. And since she had agreed to the party, she was working as hard as she could to think about it positively, no matter how stressful she found the idea.<br /><br />Anyway, Jen told herself, as she matched up one invitation with one RSVP card and placed them in one envelope, if Becky wants a party, she should have one, because, despite its name, the school belonged half to her. Becky and Jen were co-directors. And while Jen had developed the general concept for the school, the innovative business model that had been praised in several national economics magazines and newspapers was all Becky’s.<br /><br />As she collated the large and small cards, she looked up at the newspaper clipping stuck with a thumbtack to the wall in front of the desk. She had read it so many times that she probably could have recited it with her eyes closed. Her heart still raced with a little burst of adrenaline every time she looked at it, so much that she had resolved several times to take it down to make her work area more tranquil, but had never quite been able to bring herself to do it.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">When Jennifer Aniston disappeared from the public eye three years ago, the tabloids speculated that she was having the routine mental breakdown their readers had come to expect from Hollywood actresses such as herself. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Instead, Aniston returned from a year of introspection in a small Midwestern town inspired by a new vision of what her life’s work would be. And with all the dedication that she used to apply to her acting career, Aniston brought her inspiration to fruition in a remarkably short amount of time, just one year after moving back to Los Angeles. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Blending the course offerings of a community center, the cooperative spirit of a commune, and the ambiance of a yoga studio, the Jennifer Aniston Center for Collaborative Learning provides a non-traditional venue for sharing knowledge and skills.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I thought about all the talented people I knew,” Aniston said, as she showed us around the building, formerly an unused middle-school. “I know so many talented people, and I have learned so much from them. I thought, what would be the best way for them to share their knowledge with each other, and with anyone else who wants to learn?” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Aniston’s close friend Rebecca Gold developed the center’s business model. “It functions like a cooperative,” said Gold, who teaches yoga at the center in addition to her role as co-director and business manager. “People can pay for their classes with money, or they can volunteer in the bookstore, the tea shop, or on the janitorial staff. The entire building is maintained by volunteers.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The most unusual feature of the school is that anyone can teach a class. “People can earn volunteer credit by teaching their own classes,” Gold explained. “But once the class becomes popular enough, teachers get paid in money instead of credit.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This focus on community participation allows the school to offer remarkably diverse and specialized course offerings at highly affordable prices. In its first year, the school has sponsored courses in over sixty subjects ranging from vegan baking to aerial acrobatics to figure drawing. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Even someone who is not a professional teacher has a lot of knowledge to share,” Aniston said. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The center also provides more academic offerings such as Spanish conversation and bookkeeping. The most surprising and widely-discussed of these has been the Radical Gender course taught by the local artist and activist who goes only by the name of Ex. Both course and teacher have attracted quite a bit of attention in academic circles, and professors have traveled from as far as the University of Chicago, Duke University, and even the University of Sydney in Australia to attend. </span><br /><br />“How are those invitations going?” Becky asked. Jen had put the cards and envelopes down on the desk and was staring up at the article.<br /><br />“They’re going,” she said, beginning her collating again. I need to focus, she told herself, quickening her pace, even though it meant that the RSVP cards lay crooked instead of straight in their envelopes. She wanted to make a good amount of progress so she would not feel guilty when she stopped and headed downstairs for five o’clock taekwondo class.<br /><br />The class had started four days ago, and though most students were attending once or twice a week, Jen had gone to every single class. She had hoped for a taekwondo class ever since the center had opened, but she hadn’t been able to find a teacher.<br /><br />“You should teach it,” Becky had told her every time she complained about missing taekwondo, until Jen finally learned not to bring it up anymore. It was true that Jen had taught Olivia, but she didn’t feel ready to teach an entire class of students; she still had so much she wanted to learn.<br /><br />Now, she had finally recruited a teacher, and the best part was, that teacher was Shane. Two weeks ago, Shane and Brittany had flown in from Ann Arbor, where they had both just graduated from college. Brittany had majored in business and wanted to work as an intern for Becky, and Shane would teach taekwondo. They had only committed to stay for three months, but Jen was hoping to lure them into a permanent move.<br /><br />“Your form is a mess,” Shane said, as they sat in the school’s tea shop together after the first day of class. “How much have you been training?”<br /><br />“Not very much,” Jen said, hiding her face behind her teacup. “Not at all.”<br /><br />“It shows,” said Shane, raising his eyebrows. His? Jen wasn’t sure, actually.<br /><br />It had been two and a half years since Jen had last seen her old training partner, and she had steeled herself for the new, male version of Shane. She had wondered whether he would be bigger, heavier, whether he would have a beard, what his voice would sound like, whether his Adam’s apple would protrude.<br /><br />Jen had been shocked when Shane showed up at her office before the first class looking no different than when Jen had last seen him—or her. Same spiky hair, small face, strong jaw, muscular physique under a bulky shirt that masked any telltale clues. Even after watching Shane lead an entire taekwondo class, Jen still couldn’t tell whether he, or she, had actually gone through with the gender reassignment.<br /><br />“So, the real thing I need to talk to you about,” Shane said, lowering his or her voice to an embarrassed whisper over his or her teacup, “is whether I can get into the Radical Gender class.”<br /><br />“Of course you can!” Jen said, surprised that Shane would make it sound like a special favor. “Anyone can take that class.”<br /><br />“But it started two weeks ago,” Shane said. “I’m going to feel horrible joining late. And I know it must be completely full. I wanted to come out earlier just to start the class on time, but I had to take my last set of finals, and Brittany really wanted to walk at graduation. I would wait until the next session, but I’ve been so excited for that class, I don’t think I can stand to wait. Brittany wants to take it, too, but she said she doesn’t mind waiting if I can get in. It’s actually the main reason we came out here, to take that class.”<br /><br />Shane gulped his or her tea and wiped his or her mouth with the back of his or her hand. “You know, Ex’s work was one of the main influences on my decision not to make my transition.”<br /><br />“Oh!” said Jen, relieved that she wouldn’t have to worry about what pronoun to use when the inevitable time came that she needed to refer to Shane in the third person. “Right,” she added feebly.<br /><br />“You didn’t know?” Shane asked, smiling. “Do I look like I’m taking testosterone?”<br /><br />“Well,” said Jen, not sure of the correct answer.<br /><br />Shane laughed. Her high-pitched, melodic giggle sounded as incongruously feminine as ever.<br /><br />“I guess it might be hard to tell with me,” she said, dropping from her laugh back to her lower, gruffer speaking voice. “But I was taking it for a while, and I started to look <span style="font-style: italic;">really </span>masculine.”<br /><br />“Why did you stop?” Jen asked. “You didn’t like it?”<br /><br />“I liked how I looked. It felt great to really be a guy, a real guy, not just a sort-of guy or a halfway-guy like I’ve always felt. People started calling me ‘sir’ in stores and stuff like that, and I was getting kind of a mustache. It was great. But I didn’t like how it felt to take medicine all the time, and to know I’d have to take it for the rest of my life. And then there was the taekwondo.”<br /><br />“You wouldn’t be able to compete,” Jen said. This had occurred to Jen when Shane first announced her intention to become a man. Jen had been in awe that Shane’s commitment to changing her gender would trump her commitment to her sport; she must really, really want this, Jen had thought.<br /><br />“No, I wouldn’t,” Shane said. “And at first I thought it didn’t matter. But once it was really happening, I realized how sad I was about it. And I started hanging out with all these radical queer activists from the university and the town. All of them are like obsessed with Ex’s work—Ex is like a rock star to them. And they told me how I didn’t have to change my body to change my gender. I mean, a lot of them do change their bodies, and that’s fine, but I realized there are other options. I can be a boy if I want to, and no one can tell me I have to be a girl, or a traditional type of girl, just because I have a girl’s body.”<br /><br />Oh, no, Jen thought. Now I don’t know what to call her—him. She searched her memory of the last minute to see if she had referred to Shane as a woman yet.<br /><br />I should just ask, she realized. That would be much simpler. “So do you want me to call you ‘he’?” You’d have think all my interactions with Ex would have trained me better to be direct about this kind of thing, Jen scolded herself.<br /><br />“Yeah, I guess I like ‘he.’ My genderqueer friends call me by male pronouns, usually,” Shane said. “And Brittany does. But you could call me either one. Or neither. Or you could go back and forth between he and she. I don’t care either way. I’m just going to accept that I’m somewhere between the usual kind of male and female, and everything is fine just the way it is.”<br /><br />Shane’s explanation reminded Jen of a similar transformation in thinking that she herself had once undergone, long ago, it seemed. But before Jen could mention this, Shane seemed to guess her thoughts.<br /><br />“Actually, I’ve been studying some Zen philosophy, too, and that’s helped me a lot. I’ve been looking at who I am, and really trying to see myself and learn to accept it. I’ve been reading these books by Thomas Fo. Master Park recommended them.”<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Thomas Fo</span>, Jen thought. What she knew now about Thomas Fo, and even about Master Park, flashed into her mind. She wondered if she should tell Shane, if the true identities of these men even mattered. <span style="font-style: italic;">Of course not</span>, she thought.<br /><br />“So you’ve been in touch with Master Park?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“Yeah, I started training with him again,” Shane said. “It was a long drive up from Ann Arbor, so I could only go on the weekends, but I found some people to work out with during the week, and I even did a couple of tournaments. When I told him I was coming out here for a while, he told me to send his regards,” Shane said. “I think he misses you a lot.”<br /><br />“I miss him, too,” Jen said.<br /><br />Sitting with Shane like this after a taekwondo class, she missed him all the more, more freshly and immediately. But in the rest of her life, as she ran the school and took classes and wrote and talked to the press and helped with Marie, she still often thought of her old teacher and her old school and of how happy she had been to be a student, a devoted student, with nothing more to worry about but showing up to class and doing her exercises and playing her chess games.<br /><br />You can’t have a life like that forever, she thought. Eventually, you need to become your own teacher and lead yourself.<br /><br />She had tried repeatedly to convince Master Park to come teach at the academy. Every time she wrote to invite him, he wrote back congratulating her on her success, but he would never agree to come teach. “I’m not able to at this time,” he would say. “Perhaps someday.”<br /><br />Everyone else who Jen had invited had eventually come to teach. Paula had signed on right away as the first full-time teacher, teaching yoga classes as well as anything else she wanted. Ex had also joined from the beginning, and the Radical Gender class had quickly become so popular that the center now ran ten sections of it. Jen’s mother had flown out to take Ex’s class, paying for it by teaching her own class on occult sexuality, which Ex in turn had taken.<br /><br />Nicolai Snail had flown out to teach a three day business seminar. He had wanted to teach a workshop on his new passion, crossbow hunting, and Jen had allowed him to. But she had convinced him, by mustering of every last drop of her persuasive energy, that he would appeal to a wider audience if he could give advice from his position as the founder and CEO of a major national corporation. Though he was reluctant, he seemed thrilled when his seminar was attended by a battery of business leaders, business students, and eager newspaper and magazine reporters (the center did not allow television cameras, though several students were in the process of filming a documentary about it).<br /><br />Even Vanto Hatch had agreed to come teach a class. His course on memoir writing would start in two-and-a-half months, at the beginning of the next session. Jen, who was just finishing the first draft of her own memoir and getting ready to edit it, was actually looking forward to attending.<br /><br />The only person who had turned down her invitation was the one she would most like to see, her old teacher and mentor. She had a fantasy where she could fix his life and make him happy. He could move to Los Angeles and teach at the center full-time, and go back to using his real name, whatever it was, and mend his relationship with his children and ex-wife. And it would be okay then that she had hurt him by rejecting his offer to open a school together, and it would be almost as though they had, because he would be part of this thing that she had created, this great thing that she had built up out of nothing through the strength of her own determination and focus.<br /><br />“So,” Shane had said, finishing his last sip of tea and rising from his seat. “Could you ask Ex if I can join the class late, and tell Ex that I’m really sorry I missed the first two weeks? I mean, do you talk to Ex regularly? Would it be a problem to ask?”<br /><br />“No, not at all,” said Jen, laughing at Shane’s elevation of this person who was one of Jen’s closest friends. In fact, Ex and Paula had their own office in the center, just across the hall from the office Jen shared with Becky. “I see Ex all the time. I’ll make sure Ex knows you and Brittany will be joining the class late, and I’ll send your apologies. And we should all get together for dinner or something this weekend.”<br /><br />“Dinner with Ex?” Shane repeated, almost bumping into the counter as he placed his teacup into the plastic bin that held dirty dishes.<br /><br />“Sure, with you and Brittany and Ex’s partner, Paula,” Jen said. “And maybe my friend Becky will come.”<br /><br />“Oh my god,” Shane had exclaimed, her voice rising to that of a giddy schoolgirl. She wrapped her arms around Jen, who hugged her back, pleased that it was this easy to make at least one person she cared about happy.<br /><br />“Brittany is going to <span style="font-style: italic;">freak out</span>,” Shane said.<br /><br />Sitting at her desk, Jen smiled in spite of the stack of invitations in front of her, which was shrinking at a much slower pace than she would like. Having Shane at the center as a teacher and student was one of her most satisfying accomplishments so far. Now she just needed to work on Master Park. She wasn’t going to give up. She would invite him to teach each time the new session started, every three months, for the rest of her life if necessary.<br /><br />After that, there was only one other thing that she hoped would happen. This was a thing so important that she couldn’t even say it out loud in her head for fear she would jinx it. One thing she wanted so badly, wishing for it hurt her stomach and made it hard to breathe.<br /><br />“It’s my girls!” said a booming voice from the doorway. Jen turned and saw Chase walking into the office, followed by his new boyfriend, Winston. Despite his rather nerdy name, Winston was a vision of masculine beauty, the tallest Chinese man Jen had ever seen, with smooth skin and biceps that could barely be contained by the sleeves of his t-shirt, a great sense of humor, and an easy, warm smile. Chase adored him; Jen adored him; Becky adored him; Marie adored him. Everyone adored him. Jen was occasionally jealous of how everyone seemed to love him instantly. That’s not my role in life, to be loved instantly by everyone, Jen would remind herself. That’s Winston’s role.<br /><br />Chase crossed the room and grabbed Marie off the play mat, hoisting her high over his head. Marie shrieked in excitement. “Hey, careful,” Becky said, rising to save her.<br /><br />Winston was carrying a stack of mail. “We ran into the mailman on the way up,” he said, handing the stack to Jen.<br /><br />Most of the mail was for Becky, bills and invoices and press correspondence. She put these into the inbox on Becky’s impossibly tidy desk. But the last piece in the stack had Jen’s name on it.<br /><br />“It’s from a publisher,” Jen said, her fingers shaking as she ripped a sloppy gash in the envelope.<br /><br />Chase and Winston were too focused on tossing Marie back and forth between them to hear her.<br /><br />“What’s that?” Becky asked, coming over to Jen. “Did you say a publisher?”<br /><br />“Look,” said Jen, waiving the envelope numbly.<br /><br />“What does it say?” Becky asked, shaking Jen’s arm impatiently.<br /><br />Jen pulled the letter out and read aloud. “We have reviewed the summary and sample chapters you sent from your book, <span style="font-style: italic;">If You Can Hold This Pose for Three Minutes, You Can Do Anything</span>. At this time, we are interested in meeting with you to discuss publication options. Please contact us at…”<br /><br />“Chase!” Becky was screaming, jumping up and down, still holding onto Jen’s arm as she jumped. “They want to publish Jen’s memoir!”<br /><br />And then, like the dramatic final shot of a made-for-TV movie, everyone was there hugging Jen. Chase and Winston and Becky and Marie, all surrounding her in a tight ecstatic huddle, jumping and screaming until Ex and Paula came running over from across the hall to see what was going on, and then they were screaming and jumping and hugging Jen, too.<br /><br />This is my party, Jen thought to herself, looking at her friends with tears running down her face and a smile so wide it hurt her cheeks. In fact, if this really happened, if this publisher really agreed to take her book, she wouldn’t mind having a real party; she would welcome it. Now, she thought, finally, I’m ready for a celebration.<br /><br />With her famous name, she had known that somebody would publish the book. But she and Becky had decided to only send proposals to literary presses, ones that wouldn’t try to edit out the book’s complexity to sell it to a larger audience. “It's a long shot,” Becky’s book-editor friend had told Jen when she asked for advice. "Publishing houses like these don't usually do celebrity stuff."<br /><br />Becky ripped the letter out of Jen’s hand to read it herself. “This sounds serious,” Becky said. “They’re talking about an advance, and working out rights. I’d better come with you to the meeting.” She handed the letter back to Jen. “Sorry,” she said. “I mean if you want me to.”<br /><br />“Of course I do,” Jen said, squeezing Becky’s hand. She had never been so happy to have a partner in everything—a partner in life.<br /><br />“Now you just need to shorten that title,” Becky said. “It’s way too long.”<br /><br />“We’ll see,” Jen said, but it was her title, her very favorite part of the book, and she knew she would never, ever change it, not even for Becky, not for anyone.<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2010/11/43-getting-on-with-her-life.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 43</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-30045256819819136442010-09-15T00:13:00.000-07:002010-10-16T16:18:29.145-07:0041. Without Makeup Or Masks"As in true theater, without makeup or masks, refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live." —Julia Kristeva<br /><br />“It’s okay, no need to explain,” said Master Park. “I knew you were going to leave. You’ve had that look lately, ever since your friend with the baby left. Maybe ever since Brittany left. Shane,” he corrected himself, before Jen had a chance to.<br /><br />Standing in front of the desk, Jen towered over her teacher, who was still sitting, shuffling some papers around. Still, she had the feeling he was staring down his nose at her.<br /><br />“What look?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“That look like you’re not really here,” he said. “You’ve looked bored, maybe, or dissatisfied. It’s all right,” he added, as she opened her mouth to contradict him. “I guess I should have known that you wouldn’t want to stay here forever. North Middleton is a pretty boring town, especially if you’re used to L.A.”<br /><br />“No, that’s not it at all,” Jen said. “I don’t even like L.A.”<br /><br />She wasn’t sure herself what had spurred her decision to return to Los Angeles. Something in Paula’s journal had steered her so firmly in that direction that it did not feel like a decision at all, but like the self-evident future had simple presented itself to her. But she felt that she owed Master Park an explanation, as much as he claimed not to require one. Or perhaps it simply frustrated her not to be able to answer such a simple question about her own life.<br /><br />As she searched her mind for the words that would match her feelings, an image appeared instead: a piece of computer paper designed to look like a blueprint, with rows of detailed instructions printed in tiny letters running accross the blue walls and support beams. It was something she had seen on Becky’s desk once, years ago.<br /><br />“Do you know what Groundbreakers is?” she asked. Immediately, she realized that of course he did; he was friends, or at least chess partners, with Vanto Hatch. He didn’t say anything, though, just nodded his head in quiet affirmation.<br /><br />“In Los Angeles, <span style="font-style: italic;">all </span>my friends were in Groundbreakers,” Jen said. “It made me feel like everyone was in a cult.”<br /><br />She took a breath, pausing until she could figure out what her point was.<br /><br />“But then I was here studying taekwondo and chess every day and doing exercises and reading all those books by Thomas Fo. It started to feel like its own cult in a way.”<br /><br />“Well, that makes sense,” said Master Park. He didn’t sound like he was offering empty agreement, but rather like he was pleased to hear her confirm what he had been thinking all along.<br /><br />“It does?” Jen asked. She felt bad for implying that his school was a cult. She hoped he would understand what she had meant, that it was a cult for her, because she was treating it like one.<br /><br />“About the Thomas Fo books,” said Master Park. “It’s not surprising that they remind you of Groundbreakers.”<br /><br />“Oh,” said Jen. “Why not?”<br /><br />“Because they were written by Vanto Hatch,” Master Park said. He looked up at her, shuffling the papers on the desk absentmindedly while he waited for her to comprehend his statement.<br /><br />“Vanto Hatch,” Jen repeated blankly.<br /><br />“Thomas Fo is a pen name,” said Master Park.<br /><br />“But why wouldn’t he just use his real name?” Jen asked. “He’d probably sell more books that way. People buy millions of those Groundbreakers books.” She thought of the parenting book that Becky had found so offensive; Becky had at least ten other books with the same cover design on her shelf, each one a national bestseller.<br /><br />“I’ve asked him the same thing,” Master Park said, with the same offended snort he had used to dismiss the excessive security at the Snail Plant. “Believe me.”<br /><br />“What’s his answer?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“He says he wants to try out these different styles without everyone thinking the books are a part of Groundbreakers. That’s what he says.”<br /><br />“You don’t believe him?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“The thing about Vanto,” said Master Park, “is that he’s obsessed with self-help.” He had collected all the papers on the desk into a stack between his hands. He whacked the long side and then the short side of the stack against the desk to neaten it.<br /><br />“He’s one of those guys, always looking for the next great path to enlightenment,” he said. “One day it’s Zen, the next day Christianity or Scientology or some Indian thing. Sometimes it’s martial arts or chess. Whatever it is, he wants to write a book about it, but it would confuse his little fan club: Vanto Hatch wants us to fight! Vanto Hatch wants us to play chess! They’d only put up with it for so long, and then he’d lose them. So he writes the books, but he makes up all these fake names: Thomas Fo, Fred Fawls.”<br /><br />“Fred Fawls?” Jen could hear the hint of hysteria in her voice. She couldn’t take this all in. The idea that a single author could have written <span style="font-style: italic;">Zen For Times of Crisis </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Aggressive Male</span> was more shocking than the fact that this author was Vanto Hatch.<br /><br />“Right,” said Master Park, smiling sardonically. “That’s his ‘fighter’ personality.” Jen thought she could hear the scare quotes in his voice.<br /><br />Thomas Fo doesn’t exist, she said to herself. There is no Thomas Fo. She had devoted herself to the words of somebody who was not even a real person, but a persona. She reminded herself that her disappointment was irrational, since a book is never more than a collection of words and ideas, and that those matter more than who wrote it. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from feeling that the purpose of the universe had collapsed in on itself.<br /><br />“It doesn’t sound like you like him very much,” she said.<br /><br />“He’s one of my closest friends,” said Master Park. “Which doesn't mean much, since I only have a few friends and they are not that close." Jen searched his face for some sign of whether this was a joke, and whether she should laugh, but his expression was neutral, neither laughing nor sad.<br /><br />"I tease him about changing his identity so often. But then, who here hasn’t benefited from a good identity change?”<br /><br />Jen looked around the empty academy to see who else was there, but she knew already; there was no one in the school but the two of them.<br /><br />“Come in back, have some tea,” said Master Park, rising and turning towards the back room. “There are a lot of things you should probably know about. Before you leave.” Jen watched his back as he walked across the padded workout floor without turning to see if she was following him.<br /><br />They walked past the screen and into the small living room. Jen remembered how fascinated she had been by the screen when she first came to the school, how mysterious it had seemed each time Master Park had emerged from it followed by Rob and Shane. Now she played chess daily in this room; it was as familiar and worn as the kicking pads she held for Olivia each night.<br /><br />Jen sat on the couch as Master Park poured two cups of tea from the electric kettle he kept on the bookshelf.<br /><br />“Are you comfortable?” Master Park asked, placing one of the steaming cups of tea on the coffee table in front of her and the other on the taller dining-room table in front of his favorite straight-backed chair.<br /><br />Jen nodded and tried to pick up her tea, but the cup was too hot to hold comfortably.<br /><br />Master Park sat up very tall in his chair, looking at Jen through the steam rising from his own cup of tea. “Have you ever done something really, really bad?” he asked.<br /><br />“Sure,” said Jen, without really thinking about it.<br /><br />Master Park scowled. “What was it?” he asked.<br /><br />Nothing came to mind immediately, but she was sure there was something. Stealing Becky’s boyfriend in middle school had been pretty bad, even though it was an accident. And sleeping with Skipper had been really <span style="font-style: italic;">stupid</span>, but she wouldn’t call it bad, exactly.<br /><br />“Nothing specific,” said Jen, not wanting to share these particular stories with her teacher. “I’ve done things that have hurt my friends’ feelings, or caused them a lot of problems.”<br /><br />“No, I mean something <span style="font-style: italic;">bad</span>,” said Master Park. “Something so bad it ruins your life, and other people’s lives, forever.”<br /><br />“I guess I haven’t,” said Jen. “You have?”<br /><br />Master Park didn’t say anything. She took a sip of her tea—ginseng, she realized, trying not to grimace as the bitter taste hit her tongue—and waited.<br /><br />Master Park took a sip of his tea as well. He was sitting very straight, his taekwondo uniform as crisp and well-laundered as ever, with both feet planted straight on the floor. He held the tea in his mouth for a minute, his eyes thoughtful, before exhaling forcefully from his nose.<br /><br />“Where do you think I’m from?” he asked finally.<br /><br />“From?” Jen asked, wondering if this were a trick. “Do you mean Korea?”<br /><br />“No,” he said. “I’m not from Korea.” Jen opened her mouth to apologize for her assumption, her face flushing with embarrassment. He held up his hand to stop her.<br /><br />“It’s a logical assumption,” he said. “It would be fair to say that I’ve been hoping people would assume that.”<br /><br />Why <span style="font-style: italic;">had </span>she assumed it? He definitely spoke with some kind of accent, though it was very faint. She searched her memory for clues to Master Park’s heritage. She remembered Rob mentioning something about Master Park’s time “back in Korea,” and anyway that was where taekwondo was from. And “Park” was a Korean name, wasn’t it? Maybe it was his parents who were from Korea, and his accent was the sort acquired by the children of immigrants, especially those who had grown up hardly ever hearing English spoken in their own neighborhoods.<br /><br />“In fact, I am from your city,” he said.<br /><br />“Cone?” Jen asked. She had long suspected that he lived there, though it was difficult to imagine an enclave of Korean immigrants living there, or even just one family of them.<br /><br />“No,” he said, drawing the word out. He looked at her suspiciously over the tops of his glasses. “I meant Los Angeles,” he said. “That’s where I was born and where I grew up.”<br /><br />“Oh,” said Jen. That made sense. A lot more sense than him growing up in Cone, anyway.<br /><br />“So your parents are from Korea,” she said.<br /><br />“No,” said Master Park. “I’m not Korean. I’m Filipino.”<br /><br />“Filipino?” Jen repeated back to him. From what she could remember, that was one of those nationalities had long, winding last names with consonants in orders that it seemed consonants should not be able to go in. Or were Filipinos the ones with the Spanish last names? Anyway, “Park” was neither long and windy nor Spanish, nor, she was fairly certain, anything else but Korean, or maybe something like Chinese.<br /><br />“This is how the story begins,” said Master Park. “I was born in Los Angeles. My parents were both born in Los Angeles, too. <span style="font-style: italic;">Their </span>parents came from the Philippines, in something like 1920.<br /><br />“I grew up down the street from a taekwondo studio. I studied taekwondo from the time I was seven.<br /><br />“I was in a lot of plays in grade school. And I studied acting in college. I wanted to be a martial-arts movie star. But it turns out they don’t really make that many martial-arts movies in Los Angeles, and when they do, the lead characters are white.<br /><br />“I played some villains in a few action movies. Then I went to Hong Kong for a few years and played villains there, usually the evil Korean guy because of my Taekwondo, but sometimes the evil Japanese guy or the evil Mongolian guy. I didn’t really need to speak much Chinese to do those roles, since they were mostly fighting. It was fun for a while, but I wouldn’t have been able to advance my career without studying Chinese pretty seriously.<br /><br />“Plus I missed Los Angeles. I had a girlfriend back there, a model. So I moved back and became a stunt man, and we got married.<br /><br />“I liked the stunt work. It was regular and paid better than the small acting roles, and my wife could stop working while we had kids.”<br /><br />“You have kids?” Jen asked. She had never imagined him having any sort of family; even thinking of his parents and grandparents had been startling.<br /><br />“Two,” said Master Park. “A daughter and a son.” His face softened for a moment, and Jen almost expected him to pronounce his undying love for them. But after a moment his features regained their usual evenness, and he continued his story.<br /><br />“I started working for this one police show long term, and there was this guy Charlie I became pretty good friends with. He did the stunts for the white cop, and I was doing them mostly for the Latino criminals.”<br /><br />He looked straight at Jen, making sure she had caught the bitterness in his voice. She nodded.<br /><br />“He was the typical L.A. bachelor. Barely spent any time in his apartment, couldn’t cook, always had some new girlfriend making food and doing his laundry. He started coming over for dinner a lot. My wife was a really good cook, and he seemed to like playing with the kids after dinner. They would get all excited when he came. They’d start yelling, ‘Uncle Charlie’s coming over!’ It used to make me mad, because I didn’t know many good ways to play with them, and they were never that excited to see me.<br /><br />“So one night, I was at home trying to play with my son, Gabriel. We were playing guns, and he kept telling me I wasn’t shooting my gun right. Which was ridiculous because I <span>knew </span>how to <span style="font-style: italic;">really </span>shoot a gun.”<br /><br />He looked up at Jen, who hadn’t said anything. “We used to play guns back then,” he said with a shrug.<br /><br />“And Gabe said, ‘Uncle Charlie taught me you need to <span style="font-style: italic;">hold </span>your breath. Like <span style="font-style: italic;">this</span>.’” Master Park took in a deep breath through his lips and puffed up his cheeks like a trumpet player.<br /><br />“I said, ‘When did Uncle Charlie tell you that?’ And Gabe said, ‘Last night, when you were at work.’<br /><br />“My wife was folding laundry with our daughter on the other side of the room, and she jumped to her feet, ran across the room, and slapped Gabe right across the face.”<br /><br />Jen gasped. “That’s terrible!” she exclaimed.<br /><br />Master Park furrowed his eyebrows at her. “Well, hitting your kids wasn’t such a big deal back then.”<br /><br />“No, I meant…” Jen sputtered, confused now about what part of the scene was most troubling.<br /><br />“Oh, right,” said Master Park, nodding. “Yes, it was terrible. Gabe was screaming and crying, and my wife locked herself in the bedroom and wouldn’t come out, and I was screaming at her through the door, and the kids hid in their rooms. I had to sleep on the couch, even though I wasn’t the one who had done anything wrong.<br /><br />“She and I didn’t talk at all for the next two days. Every day I left before she woke up, drove around until it was time for work, picked up some fast food at night, went to the bar. I’d come home after midnight and sleep for a few hours on the couch. I think I only saw her a couple of times, when she came out of the bedroom at night to get something from the kitchen. And when she saw I was on the couch, she looked at me so scared, like I was going to kill her, and she turned and ran back into the room, and I could hear her lock the door.<br /><br />“I could have gotten through that lock anyway. It was one of those little push-button locks. You can open it with a safety pin.” He pantomimed the procedure, his hands deftly turning the invisible doorknob.<br /><br />“On the third day, I had to do a scene with Charlie. And he must have known something was wrong, because he was looking at me all nervous. I didn’t know if he had talked to my wife, or just guessed what had happened. He was sweating, pouring sweat, that’s all I know.<br /><br />“I was supposed to throw a punch at him and kind of leave it out so he could grab my arm, and he was going to grab my arm and do a kind of judo throw so I’d fly through the air and land on my back. Because he was the good guy, so he always won.<br /><br />“I punched, and I saw him lunge in towards my wrist. And his hand was coming reaching down, and I turned, and I threw a side-kick as hard as I could, right at the side of his head.”<br /><br />Jen gasped. “What happened?” she asked.<br /><br />“It looked like your fight,” said Master Park. Jen cringed in embarrassment but didn’t say anything. “His eyes rolled up in his head, and he just fell sideways to the floor like chopping down a tree. But he didn’t get up. And they called an ambulance, but by the time he got to the hospital…”<br /><br />“He was dead?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“No, not dead!” said Master Park, sounding indignant at the suggestion that he might have killed somebody. “But his neck was broken. It turned funny when I kicked him and then he made it worse when he fell.”<br /><br />“Oh no,” said Jen, putting her hands over her face to shut out the image.<br /><br />“They saved his movement in his upper body, but below the waist, he was paralyzed.”<br /><br />She tried to imagine what would happen after one stunt man paralyzed another, and whether such an act was considered a crime or merely an occupational hazard. “Did you get arrested?” she asked.<br /><br />“I thought I would,” said Master Park. “I was ready to turn myself in. I wasn’t allowed to go to work while they were investigating. But when Charlie was able to talk to the police finally, he said it was an accident. He didn’t want to press charges.<br /><br />“So I was a free man. I had taken some money from our savings and rented a little apartment, but I didn’t have any income. I couldn’t work anymore in stunts.<br /><br />“I went to see my old taekwondo teacher—I hadn’t been back to the school since I started college—and I told him what happened. I asked him, ‘Could I teach here?’ I knew it wouldn’t make much money, but maybe it would cover some of my rent and give me something to do besides stare at the wall in my apartment all day.<br /><br />“‘You can’t teach here,’ he told me. ‘Not after what happened.’ And he was right, I realized. How would people feel safe with me as their teacher if they found out what I had done? And the school taught lots of little kids from the neighborhood. How could parents leave their children with me?<br /><br />“‘There is something,’ my teacher told me. ‘Master Park, the teacher at one of our sister schools, has just died. His students are a bunch of white kids, and they don’t want to run the school themselves; they asked if I know of an authentic taekwondo teacher.’<br /><br />“‘It sounds like they want a Korean,’ I said.<br /><br />“’Yes, but they did not say that,’ said my teacher. ‘But perhaps we should pretend you are Korean, just in case. I will tell them you are their old teacher’s second cousin.’<br /><br />“‘But they’ll never believe that,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to make up all these lies, and they’ll see that I look Filipino.’<br /><br />“‘You’re an actor,’ he said to me. ‘<span style="font-style: italic;">Act Korean</span>.’<br /><br />“‘I don’t know if I’m a good enough actor to do that,’ I said.<br /><br />“‘They’ll never know the difference,’ he said. ‘They live in Michigan.’<br /><br />“And then I finally realized what he was signing me up for: to move far away, to somewhere I had never been, where I didn’t know anybody for miles and miles. Where I would have a fake name, and a fake history.<br /><br />“The thought of moving so far away from my children made me so sad. I couldn’t sleep or eat for days. But finally I decided it would be better for them if I weren’t around, easier not to have to deal with a divorce, with two feuding parents and a father who had made such a horrible, horrible mistake.”<br /><br />He lifted his tea cup with both hands, and Jen thought she could see a shudder travel across his shoulders. She thought he might be crying, and she looked down at her cup so she wouldn’t see his eyes.<br /><br />“Since then, I have sent all my money to my wife, if you can call her that. She is still my wife, legally, and everything I make I send for my children. That’s why I have to live back here.”<br /><br />“Back where?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“Here,” he said, waving his right hand through the air. “In the back of the school.”<br /><br />Jen looked around the tiny room. “You live here?” she asked. She still couldn’t understand, exactly.<br /><br />“I thought you knew,” he said.<br /><br />“Where do you sleep?” she asked, frightened that it might be on the very couch where she was sitting.<br /><br />“I have a bedroom,” he said, pointing to the wall behind Jen’s head. “Next door down the hall. And there’s a bathroom, and a little area with a sink and a hot plate. It’s all made from little offices, so the rooms are very small. The rooms come with the rental for the school, so I keep my living expenses very low. And I just teach and study and play chess and live like a monk here, all in penance for destroying my family.”<br /><br />“I thought you lived in Cone,” she said.<br /><br />“Rob lives in Cone,” he said. “With his girlfriend and the kid. I go to their house for dinner a lot, and sometimes I sleep there in their fold-out couch. It’s more comfortable than my little futon here, I’m sad to say.<br /><br />“He’s a nice boy, Rob,” Master Park said, looking Jen straight in the eye as though he expected her to argue. “He’s been like my son here.”<br /><br />The admission seemed to make him uncomfortable, and Jen almost thought she could see him squirm in his seat for a moment.<br /><br />“Do you need more tea?” he asked her, rattling his empty cup around by its handle. She shook her head.<br /><br />“Okay,” said Master Park. “Here’s the reason I’m telling you this story. Two weeks ago my son turned eighteen. That means both my children are adults now.”<br /><br />“So you won’t need to send them money anymore,” said Jen.<br /><br />“I think it is time to go back,” Master Park said. “To make things right in my life.”<br /><br />“But what about your life here?” Jen asked, imagining the void that his absence would leave in the town.<br /><br />“Rob could run the school,” said Master Park. “He would love to. And he won’t have to pretend he’s Korean. He won’t have to pretend he’s anything, since he’s from here, and everyone has known him his whole life.”<br /><br />He looked at Jen. “Pretending is very, very tiring,” he said. “It is so ugly to me that sometimes I don’t want to teach, and I don’t want to run the school, and I just want to stay back here and play chess. I don’t feel like I am pretending to be anything when I play chess. All that pretending is bad for your soul, I think. Better if you can just be what you are. That’s what I want to do.<br /><br />“And you,” he asked Jen. “What do you want to do? What will you do in L.A.?”<br /><br />“Oh,” said Jen, feeling a little stunned as she searched her mind for an answer. “I’m not sure. Help Becky raise the baby. Maybe find a taekwondo school to study at.”<br /><br />“Have you ever thought of opening your own school?” said Master Park. “You’ve got money and connections. And I know a guy who’s pretty good at teaching taekwondo, for a Filipino.”<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2010/10/42-nothing-to-try-to-do.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 42</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-90648580134902337162010-08-29T20:31:00.000-07:002010-12-05T01:08:40.065-08:0040. The Big Scary Unknown“People don’t want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.” —Chuck Palahniuk<br /><br />Like an exclamation point punctuating her confusion, the letter from Paula’s mother was in the mailbox when Jen arrived home from dropping Becky and Marie at the airport. She ripped open the envelope as she walked into the house.<br /><br />“Thanks for taking such good care of the lake house,” the letter read, the scrawled handwriting filling a page of notepad paper that had the words “Deacon-Sanders Educational Publishing Company,” printed across the top. “We’ll be returning for the summer at the beginning of May.”<br /><br />May, Jen thought. That’s less than three months. It didn’t seem like enough time to make a decision. She read the letter again, silently, leaning against the inside of the front door, her purse at her feet where she had dropped it, her hands growing cold even in her winter gloves.<br /><br />How do they know I took good care of the house, anyway, she asked herself, surveying the living room in front of her, which was as messy as it had been before she cleaned up for Becky’s visit.<br /><br />She tidied up the clutter as she walked through the house, carrying a dirty coffee cup, its rim stained with Becky’s tawny lipstick, from the living room to the kitchen, making a little pile of the assorted baby items—a sticky bib, a pacifier—that hadn’t made it back into Becky’s suitcase.<br /><br />She was going to miss them horribly, she realized, as she placed Marie’s possessions into a kitchen drawer. And more, she felt guilty that she would not be around to help Becky with Olivia, after Becky had helped her with every part of her life, putting Jen’s career and finances and publicity and personal issues before her own for so many years. It was time to return the favor, Jen decided. Wherever she was going to live, it was going to be with Becky.<br /><br />Becky had sounded serious about wanting to move to Michigan. It sounded like the perfect solution, one requiring almost no decisive action on Jen’s part. But Jen didn’t know if she could stomach the responsibility of having her friend move across the country, to a place where she had no friends or family besides Jen, just to be closer to her. Sure, Becky had liked North Middleton, but she was romanticizing it as a nowhere-place, a clean slate upon which to sketch out a new life, just as Jen herself once had. Would Becky still want to live here once it was no longer a blank, when it was filled in with all the meanings and problems and annoyances of any other town? And what would they do for work— get jobs at the college, or a grocery store? Live off of Jen’s savings forever? With Becky’s cleverness at investing, it just might work, but never working again seemed too decadent for Jen to seriously consider.<br /><br />And then there was the other solution: Jen could move back to Los Angeles. In a sense, that would be even easier than having Becky move to Michigan. Jen already had a house and a bunch of friends and a career waiting for her in LA. And what did she have in North Middleton? A taekwondo school where she worked out a little, trained a woman she didn’t trust, and learned to play chess. Leaving should be easy.<br /><br />And it might be; she wasn’t sure yet. Nor was she sure if she would be able to handle the heady rush of Los Angeles after such a long spell of sobriety. She did not think the words “Bradley’s baby”—but an image flashed briefly in her head. That’s what I need to find out today, she thought, picking up her purse and heading right back out the door that she had just entered through fifteen minutes ago.<br /><br />She hadn’t been back in the drug store since that day long ago when she bought her pregnancy test and stack of celebrity magazines. Her new market had everything she needed—food, medicine, ice packs and ace bandages—plus they didn’t carry magazines at all. It was perfect, usually. But today she went to the drugstore instead, and when she saw the wall of magazines out of the corner of her eye, she headed straight towards them.<br /><br />She had envisioned herself flipping around to find what she was looking for, but there was no need; it was right there on at least half of the displayed covers. “Bradley trades parties for Pampers,” said one, below a picture of Jen’s ex-husband, a scrubby beard unevenly covering his cheeks, a cherubic blond baby in his arms, smiling up at him. Another showed Bradley looking goofy and cross-eyes, his girlfriend scowling at him as she held the baby out of his reach: “Will parenthood drive them apart?” the caption asked.<br /><br />There was even one with a tiny picture of Jen under a gigantic one of Bradley and his family: “Jen’s friends say she is crushed: ‘I wanted to have his baby!” cries reclusive star.”<br /><br />Jen was startled, not by these words but by the photograph that accompanied them. Of course she looked distressed in it, her brow rumpled into a prize-winning grimace that must have funded some photographer’s mortgage payments for a year. But it was an old photo, one from before her divorce, her hair still long and stylishly cut, her cheeks soft and rosy from well-placed makeup.<br /><br />She knew the face well, and was already quite aware that she was barely recognizable now as that same person. No one turned to stare at her on the streets of North Middleton anymore. She knew that many of the residents were simply accustomed to sharing their town with a former celebrity. But increasingly, she felt convinced that the people she passed did not recognize her at all. When she caught glimpses of reflection during the day, her puffy jacket and practical haircut made her look more like a graduate student than an actress.<br /><br />But what really surprised her about her image was how old she looked in a photograph that must have been taken at least three years ago. She carried the magazine to the little mirror by the sunglasses stand; and yes, there it was. She had gotten younger. The face of the woman in the photograph was gaunt, skeletal, the skin stretched tensely across the bones like leather tanning in the sun. In the mirror, her current face was dewy with health, her skin seeming to emit light like a maiden in a Renaissance painting. The wrinkles around her eyes had faded into smoothness and her cheeks were full and soft like a teenager’s.<br /><br />She had planned to buy a few of the magazines, but she didn’t need to. She had come here to find out if she could return to L.A., and she was still not sure, but not for the reason she had anticipated. Bradley, his girlfriend, the baby—Jen would be fine with them. But the rest of it, she was not so sure about.<br /><br />That evening, mechanically holding pads up for Olivia to kick, Jen felt like she was already gone. She watched the men in the beginner’s class throwing clumsy roundhouse kicks in the air, and realized she didn’t recognize any of them. I used to know the face of everyone at the academy, she thought. Back when Shane was still here. Now an entire generation of new students had arrived, and she hadn’t even noticed.<br /><br />“You’re doing a good job training Olivia,” said Master Park that night after their second game of chess, as she lifted her bag to go home.<br /><br />“Thanks,” said Jen, trying to accept the compliment blankly, but she couldn’t: she could feel her eyebrows rise just about a quarter of an inch in surprise. She could not remember Master Park ever having complimented her on anything before, other than her mild humiliation of Nicolai Snail. Certainly he had never said anything positive concerning taekwondo—or anything negative either, she realized. While he could talk endlessly about chess, he had probably said no more than fifty total words to her, in the entire time she had trained at his school, about the sport he purported to be teaching her.<br /><br />“She’ll be ready to start sparring soon,” said Master Park. “Once she gets a little better, she’ll be a good training partner for you.”<br /><br />“Great,” said Jen. She stood in the doorway of the back living room, her backpack slung over her shoulder, waiting in case he planned to say more. He was not speaking, but his open gaze suggested that he had left some thought unfinished.<br /><br />Just as she began to shift her weight to turn around and leave, he spoke again. “I think you’re ready to be an assistant teacher,” he said. “If you want to.”<br /><br />Jen sucked in a breath between her teeth.<br /><br />“Don’t give me an answer yet,” he said, raising a hand as though to block her words from reaching him. “I want you to think about it.”<br /><br />Think about it, Jen repeated to herself as she nodded in silence and left the room. Too many things to think about already, thoughts overflowing like a stack of books or groceries, and just one more would make her drop them all.<br /><br />The lake house seemed abandoned when Jen got home. Even with the light on, her bedroom looked dark and bleak. She had forgotten how dark it was outside the windows, how dark the entire house was, standing in the shadows of the forest, a mile from the nearest residence or street light.<br /><br />She decided to sleep in Paula’s old room instead, the one Becky and Marie had been occupying. The sheets in the bed had a lingering baby smell, and Jen imagined that Marie was snuggling next to her as she tried to fall asleep. It was less lonely in this room, but something was wrong with the bed. Jen lay on her left side, moved her arm in front of her and then in back, switched to her right side, turned onto her back. It felt like there was lump, something poking up through the mattress just under her left shoulder blade. The mattress is just uneven, she told herself, trying to ignore the hard spot.<br /><br />Once twenty minutes had passed on the digital clock, she decided to investigate. She stood up in the dark, lifted the mattress with one hand, and slid the other one over the wooden bed frame. She couldn’t feel anything except the smooth, solid wood. See, nothing there, she said to herself. But just to be sure, she knelt and reached her hand in further, all the way to her shoulder, and hit something hard and flat. When she pulled it out, she could feel the soft, worn pages of a notebook.<br /><br />She turned on the light and sat down on the bed. It was a red notebook, the kind a student would use in school. She opened it, half expecting to see math equations and English notes, but of course there would be no reason to hide something like that. Instead, she saw pages and pages of short, scribbled paragraphs, each one prefaced with the day and month when it had been written, though not the year.<br /><br />I shouldn’t read it, Jen thought, closing the notebook and lying back down on the bed which was now uniformly hard and unyielding instead of unevenly so. She held the book against her chest, the light still on, staring at the dark blankness of the window. Then she propped the bed’s two pillows against each other to raise her head up, opened the journal to a page near the beginning, and began to read.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">January 8</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I’m sick of everybody at my school. I’m sick of everybody in Toledo. Everyone is talking about college all the time. They think it’s going to be so much better at Ohio State. Maybe it will be, for them. Everything will be the same. Everything will be normal. I hate normal! I hate how they don’t know anything about art or music or culture. I hate all their normal plans, how they want to major in business or become a dentist. Please don’t let me get stuck here! </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">March 22</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I am so excited to move to California! Mom didn’t want to let me go without being enrolled in school, but the schools there are too expensive unless you have state residency, so I’m going to work for a year until I get it. By then maybe I’ll have a good job and be doing some cool stuff and I won’t have to go to college at all. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I feel like I can’t wait one more day. Everything is open and creative there, and you can do anything you want. You could be an artist, or be in a band, or be a dancer, or be in a movie. No one expects you to get a boring job or get married and have a boring family. Everyone is cool and no one cares if you’re weird. It will be the perfect place, heaven on earth. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">June 4</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Been in L.A. three days now. It’s amazing! I’m sharing this apartment in Silverlake, and everyone is so cool and creative. I got a job in a restaurant already, but I think I want to be a singer. I’m going to start going to shows and listening to music, and try to meet some people. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">August 16</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">My band played our first show last night! Well, they’ve played before a lot with their old singer, but this is their first show after she quit and I joined. I think I am falling in love with the guitar player, Tad. We’ve been talking a lot and hanging out after practice, which is really late at night, but nothing has happened between us yet. He writes all the songs and is kind of the manager of the band. He is totally devoted to living an artistic life. He doesn’t even have a day job. He just does small parts in movies and artsy films and he can pay his bills from that. He doesn’t even have to work most days, because one acting job pays enough for him to live on for almost a month. He’s going to help me get started doing that, too, because I am so tired of waitressing, especially since I’ve been working six days a week and then going to band rehearsal every night. He said I’d just need to lose some weight—like maybe fifteen pounds—and then I could totally get enough roles to live on. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">November 3</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I’m so tired. So so tired. Still waitressing in the day, now five days a week, and on the other ones I go to auditions, and band practice every night or else shows. I got one little part on a commercial where I didn’t say anything but just stood in the background looking excited about this cheese spread. But Tad was right that all the girls are skinnier than me. We’ve been sleeping together, and he’s not exactly my boyfriend, but we spend a lot of time together and he’s been giving me some good advice, like to dye my hair blonde, even though neither of us like blonde hair, but because it’s good for getting roles. I’ve already lost ten pounds, but I’m not quite thin enough. It’s a little hard to lose weight when you work in a restaurant, but what I do is eat my one free meal, which is usually something pretty heavy like pasta, and then don’t eat anything else all day. Luckily no one in the band ever seems to eat anything, so I’m not tempted during practice. Sometimes we do some coke or speed which makes me not want to eat anything even the next day, but I don’t want to get into a habit of that, plus it’s expensive. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">January 14</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I think we’re going to get signed by this big record label! Tad has been talking with the representative guy, and he came to three of our practices so far. They were talking about making videos, and Tad told the guy that I am going to lose ten more pounds, which made me kind of mad, but the record guy nodded his head like it was a good idea. By Ohio standards, I’d be pretty thin already, but here they want you to have no body fat at all because it looks better in photos or videos. I don’t agree with it and Tad says he doesn’t either, but that it’s just part of working, and the work is what is most important to us. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">May 12</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In some big hospital. I guess I took too many pills. Something happened during a show, I was on stage and my brain didn’t feel like it was working right and I couldn’t remember the words to the song and then right after the show ended I passed out. I called Tad but he won’t come and see me. He’s really mad that I ruined the show. It’s at least partly his fault because he’s the one who gave me the pills. They were working really well, as long as I kept them balanced. My appetite was really down and I had a lot of energy for work and practice, but if I took too many I would get really anxious and my heart would beat really fast and I’d think I was having a heart attack. Now my head just hurts a lot and I feel so tired, more tired than that time I did two straight weeks of waitressing with no day off and band practice every night. It feels like it takes all my energy just to move my arm. I don’t know how I would ever stand up—right now they have a thing for me to pee into on the bed. I am all along here and everything is horrible, the most horrible place I have ever been. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">May 28</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Mom came to get me and now I’m with them at the lake house in Michigan. It’s even worse than Toledo here. Worse than the hospital in Los Angeles. This is Hell, and the worst part is that it’s my own fault that I’m here, and I have nobody to blame but myself. </span><br /><br />Jen looked up. She hadn’t meant to read this much, just to glance at a few pages. The parts about Los Angeles had drawn her in, though. She remembered the feelings the journal was describing as though she had written it—the excitement of being young in L.A., the endless possibility, the fun of not knowing anybody and starting life anew, friends falling into your life effortlessly, as only happens when you’re twenty.<br /><br />She remembered these later events in the journal, too. The dieting, the auditions, the fifty girls waiting in the hall, at least fifteen who were prettier than you. The men who claimed to lament the “unrealistic beauty standard,” even as they reminded you that it was a necessary evil. The men who didn’t even bother.<br /><br />She knew she shouldn’t be reading it, but she couldn’t stop here, in this horrifying spot. She had to keep going until it got better. She hoped it would be soon, or she would have to skip ahead, because she didn’t think she could stand many more entries like the last few.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">June 10</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I hate Michigan so much. There is absolutely nothing to do here. I’ve been feeling a little better, and I want to go out, but there is no place to listen to music here except this one coffee shop where hippies sing folksongs and all the other hippies get stoned and sing along or dance around like elves. I went a couple of times anyway, but they kept making fun of my bleached hair, which I’m trying to grow out but that makes it worse because you can see the roots so it really looks fake. There are a couple little bars I can get into with my fake ID. One is all old rednecks and the other one is preppy college students. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I hate them all. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">July 11</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I am going back to LA next week. Mom thinks it’s too soon, but I can’t stand it here any longer. She’ll be going back to Toledo in September, but I don’t think I can wait that long, plus I don’t really want to be there, either. I want to be someplace where I can find out who I am supposed to be, where there are lots of options, where nobody knows me and I can discover whatever my destiny is. I’m nervous. But I don’t know what else to do. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">August 4</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">LA is not so scary as I thought. I met up with some girls from this other band we used to play with. I wanted to see if they’d let me join their band, but they said I had to learn to play an instrument first. It’s their rule: all women, and everyone has to play at least one instrument, but all of them play two or three, and they all take turns singing. They said that women are usually just the singers in a band because men want them to stand in front and look sexy but not actually write any of the music. I think I’m going to learn to play guitar, because their guitar player might be moving away to college. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">September 16</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I started doing yoga. I didn’t think I’d like it because I thought it was for hippies, but actually I like it a lot. The people in the class are normal and weird and nice, and a few of them are hippies and even they’re nice. Yoga makes me feel really good and strong after I do it, like I can take care of myself and do anything I want. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">November 21</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I started working at the yoga studio. They needed someone at the front desk, so I’m doing that. I get to go to all their classes for free, plus they pay me a little so I only have to work at the restaurant a few days a week. They have training courses to become a yoga teacher, and I totally want to do it. They said you have to have studied yoga for at least a year, but they said maybe they could make an exception and let me start after six months since I’m taking so many classes, plus I read all the yoga books at work when there’s not a lot to do. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I am still working on learning guitar, and I’m getting a lot better, but I don’t think I’ll be good enough to be in a band for a while. But I am trying to write some songs. I wrote a few I like already. I played them for the girls in the band, and they liked them a lot. They said if I write a few more and practice them really well, I could open up for them sometime, which would be so exciting. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">April 8</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Everything is going great in L.A., so much better than the first time I moved here. I feel really creative with all the songs I’m learning, and my guitar playing is getting pretty good. I love all the yoga I’m doing, and I think I have found what I want to do as my job. I don’t know why I ever thought I wanted to be an actress. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">There’s a girl I like a lot in my yoga teacher training, and she wants to be an actress. I asked her how she can stand going to auditions with all those starving, pretty girls there. She told me that she doesn’t audition for those types of roles. Which is funny, because she could—she’s skinny and naturally blond, except dark blond, and she has freckles, but you can cover those up with makeup, and it would be easy to get her hair highlighted. But she told me that she only applies for roles with descriptions like “smart girl” or “athletic girl” or “quirky girl.” That way, she doesn’t have to be any particular way, or just like everybody else. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">She told me, “The most important thing is to always be honest about who you are. Never pretend to be something you’re not. Then you never have to apologize to anyone for not really being what you were pretending to be, because they knew all along, and they had the choice to take you or leave you.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In North Middleton and Toledo, there were only a few different things you could be: a student, a redneck, a hippy, a suburban middle-American type. In Los Angeles, you can be anything you can imagine. It’s nice, but it’s dangerous, because you can get caught up in pretending to be something, and the act becomes more important than anything else. I guess the trick is to do what that girl said, and always be who you really are, no matter what. The only problem is figuring out who that is, exactly, which part is the act and which part is really you. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Still, I’d pick freedom of choice, even if some of the choices are dangerous, over safe but limited choices any day. </span><br /><br />Jen closed the journal. “See,” she said aloud to herself. “Everything turned out okay.” She hugged the book to her chest and rolled onto her side, feeling less lonely with it in the bed next to her. “Everything will turn out okay,” she said.<br /><br />When she woke up the next morning with the light still on and lines on her face from sleeping with her head on the red notebook, she did not put on her exercise close, make her toast and tea, or begin her morning exercises. Instead she drove straight to the taekwondo academy, where she knew Master Park would be finishing up the seven o’clock before-work class.<br /><br />She walked in just in time to pass the last few motivated office employees as they hustled out of the school so they could shower and dress for work.<br /><br />Master Park was sitting behind the front desk, staring down at a student waver-of-liability form.<br /><br />“Hello,” he said, not looking up at her.<br /><br />“Hi,” she said. And then, not wanting to lose her nerve, she said, “I’m moving back to Los Angeles.”<br /><br />Master Park raised his head to meet her gaze. His face was as blank and unmoved as ever, just has Jen had expected. But through his oddly stylish glasses, she could see lines near the corners of his eyes deepen just a little. She had never really thought of him as old, but at this moment, he looked as elderly as her grandfather had in the months between her grandmother’s death and his own.<br /><br />“I knew you’d say that,” he said.<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2010/09/41-without-makeup-or-masks.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 41</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-15126047240116765792010-07-22T16:14:00.000-07:002010-12-04T23:31:59.159-08:0039. Some Forgotten Corner“We live on an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” —Carl Sagan<br /><br />“Do you see somebody?”<br /><br />“Where?” Becky asked. They were standing in the backyard, shivering in their winter coats. Although the temperature had risen considerably since last week, Jen had warned Becky that it would still be too cold to stand around outside.<br /><br />“I want to see the lake,” Becky said. “I’ll feel stupid if I spend two weeks at a lake house and don’t even visit the lake once.”<br /><br />Jen pointed out that Becky had already seen the lake during the summer, and on this trip through the window, but Becky wanted to walk right up to it. They were standing at its edge now, right where the frozen ground turned sludgy with melted ice.<br /><br />“He’s way on the other side,” Jen said, pointing. “On the balcony of the green house.”<br /><br />The melting ice of the lake had cast a gray haze over everything, and Jen wasn’t sure if the distant figure was there. She thought she might be able to see his face, so stoic and unmoving, as though he were deep in meditation—or was that just a leaf? It seemed implausible that he would be outside on days as cold as this, sitting stoically on his balcony, staring out over the icy water. He might be a statue, she thought, and not a person at all. After all, though she could barely see him, he always seemed so still, his gaze so steady. But her intuition told her that this was not the case, that the figure was not only alive, but watching her specifically, not in a scary way, but with a kind of benevolent interest in her daily activities.<br /><br />“I don’t see anyone,” Becky said.<br /><br />“Look,” Jen said, tracing the figure’s outline with her finger. “See, his head is there, under that tree branch.” She could see him now, coming into focus, the straight back, the serene face staring right back at her from across the water.<br /><br />“Maybe,” said Becky. “Yeah, I think that might be somebody.”<br /><br />“Don’t lie to me,” said Jen. “It’s okay if you can’t see him.” She turned to face her friend and realized she was shivering again, her arms wrapped tightly around her body, her jaw clenched to keep her teeth from chattering.<br /><br />“Do you want to go back inside?” Jen asked. The cold wasn’t bothering her at all. I must have toughened up over the winter, she thought, remembering how the wind had felt like it was blowing straight through her skin when the temperatures had first started falling in October.<br /><br />“No, I really want to see him,” Becky said, though Jen could hear her teeth knocking together now as she spoke. “Where did you say he is?”<br /><br />“There,” said Jen, pointing again. “But maybe he’s not there today.” Suddenly, she remembered Marie, who was sleeping in her carrier just inside, in the kitchen. Becky had said it would be okay to leave her for a few minutes, but it had been at least ten by now.<br /><br />“The baby,” said Jen.<br /><br />“Oh, right,” said Becky, her tone suggesting that she knew she had forgotten something important. She stared for a moment longer before turning back towards the house. As she reached the back door, she turned to look one last time at the lake. “I really want to see him,” she said again. “The man across the lake. Is he good luck or something?”<br /><br />“I don’t know,” said Jen, pulling the door open for Becky so she would not have to unclench her arms from her waist. She tried to explain what she thought about the man, what he meant to her, but she couldn’t come up with words to describe her fascination. “I don’t know what he is,” she said.<br /><br />Inside, Jen heated up water for tea while Becky nursed Marie. It had only been two weeks, and already they had established a comfortable little routine together, like a family. On the days that Becky didn’t follow her to taekwondo, Jen loved coming home to the sounds of Becky cooking in the kitchen. “Hold Marie,” she would say, and Jen would sit on a blanket on the floor near the heating vent, Marie cuddled against her chest like a puppy, watching Becky chop vegetables and pour steaming pasta into a strainer. This house will be strange without a family, Jen thought.<br /><br />Before dawn tomorrow, Jen would drive them to the airport. By the time the sun rose in the rear view mirror of Jen’s car, Becky and Marie would be on an airplane and Jen would be returning to North Middleton alone.<br /><br />Becky hadn’t mentioned her offer to move to Michigan explicitly during the rest of her trip, but she had begun to treat Cone and North Middleton as her new home. She had been taking an ongoing verbal inventory of items Jen would need if she moved out of the lake house: “And you don’t have any blankets or sheets,” she would say, or, “You’ll need some dishes.” When they ran out to Jen’s regular small market for groceries, Jen noticed her sizing up the produce section, checking to see if the slim winter offerings, kale and hothouse tomatoes and imported cantaloupe, were organic. “Let’s look at the vitamin section,” she had said, even though she was not buying any vitamins. Yesterday had been Becky’s last day at the taekwondo school—Jen was skipping training today so they could spend the entire day together—and when she left, she had hugged both Rob and Olivia warmly: “I’ll see you soon,” she had said.<br /><br />“I don’t want to go back,” Becky said, blowing absent-mindedly on her steaming cup of tea. She was staring out the window at the lake, as though still hoping to see the figure on the other side, though Jen was pretty sure that it would be impossible from this distance.<br /><br />“You used to love LA,” Jen said. “Remember when you first moved out there? That was the happiest I had ever seen you. You’d come home every day saying, ‘Everyone here does yoga!’ or ‘Everyone here is a movie star!’”<br /><br />“Young love,” said Becky. “I’m tired of it now. I just want to be a grown-up. I want to live in a grown-up place.”<br /><br />She took a short, cautious sip of her tea, wrapping her both hands tightly around the hot surface of the cup for warmth.<br /><br />“You’ll think about it, won’t you?” she said. “That’s all you have to do right now, think about it.”<br /><br />Jen nodded. But truthfully, thinking about it was exactly what Jen didn’t want to do. She wished she could fast-forward through all the thinking and just find out what happens, like reading the last page of a novel first. Though she couldn’t imagine leaving here, she also couldn’t imagine the moment when she would make a decision to stay. The only other place she had ever decided to move to was Los Angeles, and that was to work in television and then movies, and if she wanted to keep working, she couldn't leave. But now, she could live anywhere she wanted. Anywhere. How does it happen, Jen wondered, that someone chooses a place to live, a place no different than any other place, and decides that this particular anyplace is home?<br /><br />“I’ll figure something out soon,” said Jen.<br /><br />She waited for Becky to respond, but Marie had started her hunger-dance, stretching her arms and legs as far from her body as she could, her fists clenched, toes curled into her tiny feet, and her face looking like she was crying, though she hadn’t made a noise yet.<br /><br />“Time to eat,” Becky said, picking Marie up to nurse her. Jen didn’t even notice anymore. Several times, Jen had thought that people in the store or the coffee shop had been gawking at her, before remembering that they were simply surprised to see Becky feeding her baby in public.<br /><br />“Speaking of LA,” Becky said, once Marie was comfortably situated, “I thought I should tell you. I saw Bradley.”<br /><br />“Oh,” said Jen. “Bradley. I forgot about him.” It was the truth, she realized. She didn’t watch TV, had no access to the internet, and it had been months since she had seen the cover of a tabloid. She felt reluctant to allow him back into her consciousness now, but it seemed rude not to ask about him.<br /><br />“How is he?” she asked.<br /><br />“He seems good,” said Becky. Good, thought Jen. I’m glad he seems good. She wondered if she had completed her socially-mandated duty to ask polite questions. But Becky was still looking at her expectantly, waiting for more. I could just change the subject, Jen thought. But she didn’t want to be rude or make Becky feel bad for mentioning her ex-husband. One more question, she thought, and that will be enough.<br /><br />“Where did you see him?” she asked.<br /><br />“At a yoga class for parents with babies.”<br /><br />Jen couldn’t help it; she sucked in breath through her teeth.<br /><br />“Oh,” Becky said, slapping her hand across her mouth, then dropping it to her chin. “Crap.”<br /><br />“It’s okay,” said Jen.<br /><br />“You didn’t know?” Becky asked.<br /><br />“No, but that’s all right,” Jen said. She realized that she felt worse about making Becky feel bad than about Bradley having a child with his new girlfriend.<br /><br />“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to spring it on you,” Becky said. “I feel horrible.” Jen watched as she tried to reach out, maybe to touch Jen’s arm, but couldn’t figure out how to balance Marie with one hand while keeping her in position to nurse.<br /><br />“It’s okay,” said Jen. “I had heard a rumor.” <br /><br />“So you really didn’t know they had a baby?” Becky asked, now sounding impressed instead of guilty. “That’s incredible.”<br /><br />“It’s been everywhere?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“<span style="font-style: italic;">Everywhere</span>,” said Becky. “It’s like you can’t get away from it.”<br /><br />Jen thought back to what it was like living in Los Angeles, surrounded by tabloids and televisions and billboards and gossip. She remembered, even before her own name was well-known, how she would know everything about all the big movie stars, every relationship, every break-up, every triumphant and tragic and embarrassing event. She would call them by first name, just like the tabloids did—<span style="font-style: italic;">Jen’s</span> heartbreak, <span style="font-style: italic;">Jen</span>’<span style="font-style: italic;">s </span>new fling—as though they were her closest friends instead of people she had never met. Yes, if Bradley had a baby, everyone would know, she realized. If Bradley’s girlfriend had a baby, she corrected herself.<br /><br />“So they’re still together?” Jen asked, now asking questions out of true curiosity rather than politeness.<br /><br />“Yeah, so far,” said Becky. “At least the magazines haven’t said anything about them breaking up. We only talked for a few minutes, but he didn’t say much about her, so maybe that’s good.”<br /><br />Jen knew what Becky meant, but in fact, she didn’t agree that it was good. In fact, she realized, she didn’t care whether or not Bradley was happy. She couldn’t quite say that she wanted him to be happy, because really, she didn’t want anything for him; she had no feeling about him at all. She tried making herself be happy for him, but it was like trying to be happy for King Arthur or Napoleon. She couldn’t get any real sense of who Bradley was, or what his life was about.<br /><br />She knew that it used to be her life, too—the film sets, the photographers, the nice clothes and fancy restaurants and exclusive clubs—but looking back, it seemed to belong to some other person. She couldn’t imagine a life like that now, being followed everywhere, everyone knowing every detail of your personal life. If that can make him happy, she thought, then I’m glad. But the main happiness she felt was for herself, that she had escaped it, that she was not ever going to allow her life to become someone else’s entertainment again.<br /><br />“That reminds me,” said Jen. “I have news for you. I can’t believe I haven’t told you this already.” She had been meaning to surprise Becky with her gossip early in the trip, but each day she kept remembering only after Becky had gone to bed. I can’t believe she almost left without me telling her, Jen thought.<br /><br />“Guess who I almost saw?”<br /><br />“I don’t know,” said Becky. “What do you mean, <span style="font-style: italic;">almost saw</span>?”<br /><br />“Well, Master Park took me to the Snail Plant to play chess, and I ended up replacing another player who was supposed to be there, and it was—you are not going to believe this—Vanto Hatch.”<br /><br />“Oh,” said Becky. She looked down at Marie, determined that she had finished nursing, and straightened her shirt out, now balancing the baby more easily with one hand.<br /><br />“Isn’t that crazy?” said Jen. “He comes here about once a month to play chess. There’s a good chance I’ll play against him some day if I go back there. I wonder if he’ll remember me. Probably not—I mean, I’m just some girl he sort of dated in middle school, right? ”<br /><br />“I quit Groundbreakers,” Becky said.<br /><br />“What?” Jen asked. “Wait. Why?”<br /><br />Becky picked up her tea, now cool enough that she could take a large gulp of it while she considered how to answer. Marie was falling asleep again after her meal; Becky lifted her gently into the carrier, which sat in the middle of the kitchen table as though it were a serving platter and Marie was the main course.<br /><br />“Do you remember that book Paula gave me,<span style="font-style: italic;"> The Deliberate Family</span>?” she asked.<br /><br />“Oh yeah,” said Jen, thinking back to her trip to Los Angeles. “It was all about using chess strategy to raise your kids, right? I guess that makes a little more sense to me now—at least we know where Vanto Hatch is getting his chess strategy from.” She laughed, pleased to have made this connection.<br /><br />“That book is horrible,” Becky said.<br /><br />“I thought you liked it,” Jen said, remembering how delighted Becky had been to receive an advance copy of the Groundbreaker’s guide to parenting.<br /><br />“How could I like it?” Becky asked. “That book all about how to terrorize your children into doing what you want them to, treating them like your enemy. It calls them your ‘opponent.’”<br /><br />Becky paused and took a long breath, and then another long sip of her tea. When she spoke again, she was more composed.<br /><br />“I guess I was kind of excited about it at first,” Becky admitted. “Before Marie was born. I mean, it’s kind of an interesting idea in theory, to run your family like a war or something, but once you actually have a family…” Becky paused and looked at Marie, sleeping in her carrier.<br /><br />“It’s kind of sick,” Jen said, finishing her sentence.<br /><br />“It is,” said Becky, holding Marie’s tiny foot and using it to rock her gently in the carrier. “But you know, it wasn’t just the parenting strategies. Everything in Groundbreakers was starting to get that way.”<br /><br />“What way?” Jen asked. She had a pretty strong guess what Becky meant, but she wanted to hear how she would put it into words. It was something dark that Becky was alluding to, something that had been bothering Jen as well, and Jen was still struggling with how to understand it.<br /><br />“The idea that every part of life is a battle,” Becky said, her lack of hesitation suggesting that she was having no difficulty describing the thing Jen was thinking of. “This you-versus-the-world mentality. It just seems really egotistical and selfish.”<br /><br />Yes, that was it, Jen thought. That’s what <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Aggressive Male</span> was all about. The ideas had troubled her, and yet they had seemed so logical the way the book had presented them, so difficult to argue against.<br /><br />She thought of what Fred Fawls would say in response to Becky. “But isn’t our job as individuals to advocate for ourselves? I mean, obviously there are other people in our lives who we take care of, like our families. But aren’t there lots of people who are our adversaries?”<br /><br />“That’s one way to think about it,” said Becky, wrinkling her eyebrows at Jen like she was trying to see her better. “Did they teach you that in taekwondo or something?”<br /><br />“Sort of,” said Jen. “Maybe.”<br /><br />“It’s very male,” said Becky. “The whole having-to-be-better-than-everyone-else thing. It was starting to infuse all the parts of Groundbreakers. My coach started to talking to me about making game plans instead of blueprints, like it was football or something. He said I needed a plan for Marie to help her get ahead in life, to give her a competitive advantage. It was just making me tired.”<br /><br />Before now, Jen had never appreciated the positivity of the building metaphor; it had always annoyed her with its phony blue-collaredness. At least building was—she grimaced at the pun even though she had not said it aloud—constructive.<br /><br />“It’s good you left,” said Jen, grabbing Marie’s other foot, the one that Becky wasn’t holding. It felt warm and solid in her hand, and after a moment, she could feel the pulsing rhythm of Marie’s blood being pumped through her tiny veins. It’s traveling up her leg, and into her heart, and back down into her other foot, under Becky’s hand, Jen thought.<br /><br />“I’m never going to be in a group like that again,” Becky said. “I’m never going to let somebody tell me what to think.”<br /><br />Jen nodded. She wondered if she was herself currently in a group like that, and if so, how she had let it happen, and whether she needed to get out.<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2010/08/big-scary-unknown.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 40</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-40897475507992086882010-07-13T18:57:00.000-07:002010-12-04T23:18:10.642-08:0038. The Center of One's Own History“Exile in a real place, a place of few bodies and many stones, is just an extension (a packaging) of the other exile, the state of being separated from whatever is left of the center of one’s own history.” —Don DeLillo<br /><br />Becky called the lake house the day after the baby was born. “She’s called Marie,” Becky said, her voice tired and happy through the background buzzing of the unreliable phone line. “After Marie Curie.”<br /><br />“Marie Curie?” Jen repeated, trying to remember what she knew about this famous name. “She died a tragic death of radiation poisoning, right?”<br /><br />“She was a chemist and a physicist,” Becky said. “She won two Nobel Prizes.”<br /><br />“Oh, right,” said Jen. “And why did you name the baby after her?”<br /><br />Becky’s exasperated sigh filled Jen’s ear with a burst of crackly static.<br /><br />“I want her to be a scientist,” Becky said. “Not an actress, not a celebrity, not anything stupid. No offense,” she added. “I want her to do something important.”<br /><br />“Do you want me to fly out there?” Jen asked, jumping up from the couch to prove her willingness to leave on a moment’s notice. The truth was, she really didn’t want to. Her last trip to Los Angeles had been exhausting for her on both ends, first re-orienting herself to the frantic socialness of Hollywood, then returning to her solitary life in Michigan, far more solitary now that Shane was gone. That had been two months earlier, and Jen had just finally gotten back into a comfortable routine: training around noon, teaching Olivia in the evening, training some more, playing chess with Master Park late at night.<br /><br />She did not want to leave and disrupt everything again, but she was prepared to. Paula had reminded Jen almost every day of her last visit that she would need to come again once the baby arrived. “You’re her<span style="font-style: italic;"> best friend</span>,” Paula had said, pulling Jen aside at the baby shower, out at breakfast, making dinner in Jen’s kitchen. “It is your <span style="font-style: italic;">job </span>to be here.” Jen had nodded in resignation, trying not to think about the prospect of flying back here all over again.<br /><br />“Actually,” Becky said on the phone line, “I was hoping we could come visit you.”<br /><br />“Really?” This seemed too convenient to be true; Jen felt a pang of guilt for the pleasure that was mixed in with her surprise. “But it’s freezing here. And do you want to travel with a little baby?”<br /><br />“I really need to get out of Los Angeles,” Becky said. “The doctor told me we can fly in a few weeks.”<br /><br />As she hung up the phone, Jen surveyed the living room. The center of the room was empty, revealing a large, flattened section of carpet where the heavy coffee table had been before Jen had moved it against the wall to make room for stretching and taekwondo forms. The couch, Jen’s favorite reading spot, had a stack of books covering one of its three cushions and blankets strewn over the other two. There was a television in the corner of the room that Jen had forgotten was there, its screen attracting a thick coat of dust. Taped to the walls across from the couch were the old collages she had made using the most embarrassing passages from tabloid articles about her. She remembered how mortified she had been to read, “Jen’s lackluster performances over the last five years have caused film critics to speculate that she may be developing a serious drug habit.” Now the line had the comfortable familiarity of a worn old paperback, and she smiled happily as she read it.<br /><br />This all is going to have to go, she thought, surveying the evidence of seven months of solipsism. <span style="font-style: italic;">Someone is coming</span>. She felt a flood of excitement and relief wash over her. She began to clean the room right then, even though Becky wouldn’t be coming for three more weeks. As she folded the blankets and arranged the books on the shelf, she sang out loud, as loud as she could, songs that she remembered from when she was a teenager, songs that she and Becky used to sing along with on the radio after school. Once everything was put away, she began to focus on dirt and dust, removing the books that she had just put onto the shelves, wiping each shelf with warm water until it was smooth and clean, then drying it and replacing the books. She could not remember ever having enjoyed cleaning quite so much. When she was done, the living room still looked Spartan, with its functional furniture and drab carpet, but it was tidy.<br /><br />The drive to the Detroit airport took an extra hour in each direction along the slippery roads, still slick from the morning’s light snowfall although it was late afternoon. For once, Jen was happy to be driving Paula’s mother’s heavy four-wheel-drive vehicle, especially once she had Marie in the back, secured tightly into a baby seat that Becky had brought, along with an entire extra suitcase filled with other baby-related items. Both mother and baby were bundled in thick coats to shield them against the winter chill, which had made an aggressive return after the brief January thaw. Jen noticed Becky’s teeth chattering as they started the drive back towards North Middleton, and she turned the heat up as high as it would go.<br /><br />“I’m sorry it’s so cold,” said Jen, as she, Becky, and Marie sat bundled in blankets on the bed in the second bedroom, where Becky would sleep. Marie was asleep already, lying on Becky’s stomach, her easy tranquility reminding Jen more of Chase than of Becky. “The weather was beautiful when I first got back here after the baby shower. I could almost exercise outside.”<br /><br />“I don’t care about the cold,” said Becky defiantly, even as she pulled her blanket a little further over herself and her sleeping baby. “I am so sick of LA. I’d rather be anywhere else but there. Even Michigan.”<br /><br />Jen wasn’t sure what it meant that she wanted to jump to Michigan’s defense rather than Los Angeles’s. She had the urge to point out all the positive qualities of North Middleton—its small, quirky businesses like the food co-op, the tea house, and the juice bar, the friendly people who all seemed to know each other, the beautiful forests and lakes, including the ones visible from this very room. But she knew these features would be a hard sell in light of the bitter cold that was seeping through the poorly-insulated window, making it difficult to enjoy anything but what they were doing right now, huddling together under the blankets on the corner of the bed closest to the heater.<br /><br />“What do you want to do tomorrow?” Jen asked. “It will be too cold to walk around much, but we could go check out a yoga class at this school I’ve heard about.” In anticipation of Becky’s visit, Jen had dropped into Olivia’s yoga school and gotten the schedule of classes. “I’m sure they’d let you bring Marie into the class.”<br /><br />“You don’t have to do anything different on my account,” said Becky. “Let’s go to your taekwondo school.”<br /><br />Jen hesitated to respond. For somebody who had just given birth, Becky looked fit, but maybe not that fit, or maybe it just seemed wrong that someone would squeeze a baby out of her body and throw a roundhouse kick during the same month. “That might be too much for you,” she said, feeling bad for squashing Becky’s enthusiasm.<br /><br />“Oh, I’m not going to work out,” Becky said. Marie had just woken up and Becky was getting ready to nurse her, pulling her long tunic all the way up and steering the baby’s head towards her breast with a quick, expert gesture. “Me and Marie will just watch, if you think that will be okay.”<br /><br />“Sure, that will be great,” said Jen, trying not to sound overly pleased at the prospect of missing less training than she had anticipated. She had planned to come in at least a few times during the weeks Becky was visiting to teach Olivia, but hadn’t counted on getting to do her own workouts.<br /><br />“I go twice a day,” Jen said, wondering if she was pushing her luck.<br /><br />“Fine,” said Becky. “As long as they’re okay with us nursing in there.”<br /><br />“I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” said Jen, though truthfully she could not imagine a scenario in which Becky’s exposed breast would fail to cause a scene in a school populated almost exclusively by college-aged men. But watching Marie, who had finally succumbed entirely to sleep and was cuddled against Becky’s chest with her mouth gaping open, Jen couldn’t imagine anyone objecting to anything this tiny new person did.<br /><br />Luckily, the next day, no one seemed to notice Becky as she sat on the floor in the corner of the room and nursed Marie while Jen led Olivia through her exercises. If any of the boys were troubled, it was impossible to tell; they usually avoided the corner of the room where Jen trained, first with Shane and now with Olivia, and it was quite possible that they were as oblivious to Marie’s presence as their blank facial expressions seemed to indicate as they walked past.<br /><br />As Olivia practiced her kicks and Becky nursed little baby Marie, Jen was suddenly struck by the strong femininity pervading their section of the room, something that she had never felt in that space before. Thinking back, she could only remember a handful of times when she had trained with Shane and another woman at the same time—and of course, Shane hadn’t even thought of herself as a woman, exactly. Being surrounded by three other females was unprecedented.<br /><br />“Does your friend want to try?” Olivia asked, as Jen held the pad for her to kick.<br /><br />“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jen, looking over at Becky, who had finished nursing and was holding Marie over her shoulder. Jen hadn’t told Becky about Olivia’s past. After the Skipper incident, Jen wasn’t so sure that Becky could forgive even a reformed paparazzo. Jen herself had barely forgiven her; she gave her the best instruction she could, but nothing more, nothing like pleasant conversation or friendly camaraderie or concern about her life in general and how it was going. She often wondered whether it bothered Olivia to take instruction from someone so cold.<br /><br />“It would be fun to try, if I could do it lightly,” said Becky, sounding like she really meant it and wasn’t just being polite. “But I didn’t bring Marie’s carrier.”<br /><br />“I could hold her,” Olivia offered.<br /><br />“I’ll hold her,” Jen said, quickly, surprised by her own sudden possessiveness. She handed the kicking pad to Olivia. “Show her how to do a roundhouse kick,” she said. “It will be good for you to practice teaching it to someone.”<br /><br />Jen sat down on the floor next to Becky and took the baby from her. This was only the second time that she had held her—the other time was when Becky had introduced them at the airport—and Jen was struck by how incongruous it felt to be bracing for the startling impact of Olivia’s kicks against the pad one moment, and the next to be cuddling such a small, warm creature against her chest. She looked down at Marie, who looked like she was trying but failing to stay awake, her eyelids closing slowly then snapping open again, her bright baby-blue eyes rolling up into her head.<br /><br />Jen tried to decide if she looked more like Becky or Chase, but she didn’t look like either of them. Or perhaps she looked like both of them, so blended-up that it was impossible to separate them out again, like cream in coffee. She could imagine Marie’s straight little nose being like Becky’s nose—but then again, Chase’s nose was sort of like that, too, just bigger. And her tiny mouth was shapely like Becky’s mouth, which always looked like it had been outlined carefully with lip liner even though Becky rarely even wore makeup, but the fleshy, sensual lower lip reminded Jen of Chase.<br /><br />Jen looked up and saw Olivia explaining how Becky should kick the pad. “Make sure to pivot your foot,” she said, recreating the familiar directions that she had learned from Jen, and Jen from Shane.<br /><br />“Like this?” Becky asked, turning her left foot on the ground as she snapped her right foot lightly into the pad that Olivia was holding.<br /><br />“Yeah, that’s really good,” said Olivia, giving Becky the encouraging smile that she herself had never received from Jen. “Just pivot a tiny bit more, even.”<br /><br />Now that Jen had gotten comfortable, it felt nice to sit so still, the baby cuddled against her chest like a sleeping cat. Marie’s eyes had closed all the way and her mouth was puckering into little sucking motions. Jen touched her pinky to Marie’s lips, and was shocked by the power of the suction that pulled her finger into the baby’s mouth. Marie sucked happily on the finger for a few moments, but then, with a look of great consternation, even as her eyes were closed, she spat it out. That’s Becky’s face, Jen thought, remembering all the time she had seen that same eyebrow wrinkle when she had similarly disappointed her friend. She shifted Marie’s weight onto her body a little more and leaned back against the wall, watching Olivia do all the work of teaching Becky.<br /><br />By the end of the hour, Becky’s roundhouse kick was looking pretty decent for a beginner. “She did great, didn’t she?” Olivia said, smiling proudly, as Jen rose from the floor, a tricky maneuver that involved holding Marie with one arm, and carried her over to her mother.<br /><br />“Yeah, she did,” said Jen.<br /><br />Becky smiled broadly. “That was fun,” she said. With the arm that was not holding Marie, Becky reached out and squeezed Olivia’s shoulder. “Thanks so much for teaching me.”<br /><br />“It was my pleasure,” said Olivia, squeezing her arm back. Jen felt puzzled watching them exchange the warm look of new friends, wondering if this meant that she would have to start being nicer to Olivia.<br /><br />Usually Jen retreated into the back room as soon as Olivia’s lesson was over, but she had already told Master Park that she would not be staying for chess tonight. It turned out to be the right decision; Becky was tired, and the baby was starting to get cranky, making little crying sounds that Jen feared would lead to outright wailing.<br /><br />Jen held Marie while Becky put her shoes on, and then they switched. Olivia had followed them to the shoe cubbies and was making small talk with Becky: “How long are you here for? How are you liking North Middleton?” And Becky, though tired, seemed happy to answer: “Two weeks…yeah, I love it here…I don’t mind the cold.”<br /><br />And then, as Jen finished tying her sneakers, she looked up and saw Rob standing right next to Becky. He was leaned over the baby, covering and uncovering his face with one hand in a rudimentary game of peek-a-boo. Becky lifted Marie so he could see her better, clearly enjoying showing her off.<br /><br />“She’s brand new, isn’t she?” Rob asked, stroking Marie’s forehead softly.<br /><br />“Not quite four weeks,” said Becky.<br /><br />Jen was stunned. During the seven months that Jen had trained at Master Park’s, she had not exchanged more than a cursory word with Rob, things like “excuse me” during the multiple times they had almost crashed into each other because they were not making eye contact. But here he was, now, gushing over Becky’s baby. Olivia was standing next to him; together, they formed a little cooing huddle around Marie.<br /><br />“I’m sorry, I know you probably need to get going,” Rob said. “I just really wanted to come see her. I’m such a sucker for little babies.”<br /><br />“It’s okay,” said Becky, smiling, clearly charmed by the attention to her offspring. “Do you want to hold her?”<br /><br />“Oh, no, I don’t want to disturb her,” said Rob, his tone indicating that he hoped she would insist.<br /><br />“It’s okay,” Becky said, transferring Marie into his arms. “She just took a little nap with Jen.”<br /><br />Marie began to make the little crying noises again as Rob lifted her to his chest. “There, there,” he said, as he began to bounce up and down lightly with his knees. “It’s okay, everything’s okay.” He looks good with a baby, Jen thought reluctantly, noticing how the icy blue of his eyes seemed gentler and grayer as he smiled down at Marie, his posture softening as he curved his shoulders over her, holding her tight as he bounced.<br /><br />“My son is six,” he said to Becky, without looking up. “It’s a fun age, but I loved when he was a tiny baby like this.”<br /><br />“Maybe you should have another one,” said Becky, eyeing his bouncing technique favorably. “You seem like you know what you’re doing.”<br /><br />“I’d like to,” said Rob, his voice growing quiet as he hugged Marie closer to his chest. His tone implied that the next word should be “but,” although he didn’t say it.<br /><br />“You have to wait until it’s the right time,” Becky said quickly, squeezing his shoulder like she had just squeezed Olivia’s arm a few minutes ago.<br /><br />“I know,” he said, his voice sticking in his throat. “That’s right.”<br /><br />Jen walked over to the door and watched from a distance, wanting to get home and have Becky to herself again, but reluctant to break up this scene, Becky, Olivia and Rob connecting to each other as naturally as Becky, Paula and Chase once had back in Los Angeles. When they finally said their goodbyes, they were acting like old friends, hugging warmly and promising to see each other again during Becky’s trip.<br /><br />“So what’s the deal with that Rob guy?” Becky asked, as Jen drove down Main Street back towards Cone. She had her sun-visor pulled down even though it was dark, and she was staring into the little makeup mirror on it, watching Marie sleep in her car seat. “He’s the guy from the co-op, right?”<br /><br />“Yeah,” said Jen, surprised that Becky remembered him from one sighting, so long ago.<br /><br />“He’s cute,” said Becky. “Why can’t he have a second baby? Does that mean he’s single, or is he still with the mother of his kid?”<br /><br />Jen thought back to the night that Rob had driven her home, how he had kissed her and then confessed to being in a relationship, how he had cried and made her promise that they would still be friends.<br /><br />It was that aggressive male book that made him do it, she remembered. She had just finished reading it herself. She had found it a disturbing read, although she couldn’t find anything in it that she specifically disagreed with. Perhaps that was the problem. Everything it said seemed to describe accurately the actions of some man or another she had known: her father, Bradley, Skipper, Chase, Rob, Master Park. She wondered whether he had given it to her to help her enhance her own aggressiveness or just better understand the mental state of the men around her.<br /><br />“They’re still together,” said Jen.<br /><br />“Too bad,” said Becky. “But see, that’s so nice,” she added abruptly, as though continuing an ongoing debate that Jen had not noticed they were having. “A guy who can stay with his wife. No one stays together in LA, especially if they have kids.” She let out a self-deprecating laugh. “Sometimes they were never even together in the first place.”<br /><br />Jen didn’t bother to correct Becky, either about Rob being married to the mother of his child or about her representation of him as the ideal loyal partner.<br /><br />“It’s just so great to be out of LA,” said Becky, as Jen turned onto the bumpy road that led to the lake house. “Everyone there seems so superficial, like they’re not real people, like they’re acting all the time.”<br /><br />While last night Jen had felt like standing up for Michigan, now she wanted to come to the defense of Los Angeles. Becky had friends there, and yoga, and a community. But Jen didn’t feel ready to admit how lonely her life was here, because she was scared that Becky would tell her to move back to Los Angeles, and she wouldn’t be able to make a case for why she wasn’t ready to.<br /><br />“What about Paula and Chase?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“They’re both in these relationships, and I never get to spend any time with them alone,” said Becky. “I like Ex, but he’s so strange. Or she. And Eduardo…”<br /><br />“He really is obnoxious,” said Jen, remembering how he had acted like he owned Becky’s unborn baby just because he happened to be sleeping with the baby’s father.<br /><br />“I try so hard to like him, for Chase, but I just can’t stand him,” said Becky. “But it’s not just him; everyone is like that in LA. Everyone has all these stupid ideas, all this intrigue, all these silly, meaningless dramas. It must be so refreshing not to have to be around any of that, to be in a place where people just live their lives without projecting all this crap onto them.”<br /><br />“I guess,” said Jen. They were pulling up to the lake house now, driving up the long bumpy driveway.<br /><br />“Everyone here seems so normal and nice,” said Becky. Like Rob. Or that woman you train with, Olivia. She’s just a sweet, normal woman who does taekwondo. What does she do for a job?”<br /><br />“She works at a juice bar,” Jen said. She had stopped the car, and they were sitting in the dark driveway. Jen could see Becky’s face silhouetted in the dim light of the lamp over the garage door. She was still staring into the mirror in front of her, even though Jen doubted that she could see anything in the back seat.<br /><br />“See, that’s such a nice, normal thing to do,” said Becky. “I wish I had friends like that. It must be so peaceful living here.”<br /><br />“It is peaceful,” said Jen. “But you know, everyplace has its own problems.”<br /><br />“If you don’t move back soon, I might just have to move out here with you,” Becky said. “You’re going to have to move in the summer since Paula’s mom will want the lake house back.”<br /><br />Jen hadn’t thought of this detail, but Becky was right. She would have to make a decision about where she was going to live sometime in the next few months.<br /><br />“We could get a place together,” said Becky. “I could teach at that yoga school you mentioned, and I’m sure rent is cheap out here.”<br /><br />“I don’t know,” said Jen. “I don’t know if I want to stay here.”<br /><br />She tried to imagine living with Becky in North Middleton, in a real rented house that wasn’t just borrowed, that they would fill with their own possessions and decorate according to their own taste, where Becky would cook nutritious meals just like in Los Angeles. It would be a real home, and Jen would really be living in Michigan.<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2010/07/39-some-forgotten-corner.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 39</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-85918436866585722232010-06-23T13:13:00.000-07:002010-07-13T19:08:38.661-07:0037. What It Means to Be Civilized“Due to a misguided idea of what it means to be civilized, the modern male has convinced himself that the spectator is morally superior to the competitor.” —Fred Fawls<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Bryce is the type of high-school basketball player who is always called “a team player” and “a hard worker.” He shows up early for every practice. A senior on the varsity team, he always helps his sophomore and junior teammates with their game. He is a solid player, with a reasonably high scoring record, though not as high as some of his teammates. He holds the team record for assists, though, and is considered a “strategic player.” When two of his teammates are recruited by prestigious university teams, he feels sad but not surprised that he has been overlooked; he has never expected to be noticed for his playing. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Before he met his wife, Kevin’s passion was racing motorcycles. His wife feels the sport is too dangerous, reminding him of several local men who have been injured or killed pursuing the sport. There’s a big racing event coming up, which will covered by a cable sports station, and several of Kevin’s friends are competing. As the day of the event approaches, Kevin gets a sickly feeling in his stomach every time he thinks about his friends who are racing. He wishes that he could participate; however, he is so out of practice that he would be unable to race, even if his wife would allow him to. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Joe has worked in human resources at a large bank for seven years and has not had a promotion in five. He does everything that he is supposed to: his work is thorough, he completes his assignments in a timely fashion, he has instigated procedural changes that have maximized efficiency and saved his company thousands of dollars. Yet every time he applies for a higher position, it goes to one of his colleagues. He has become so frustrated that he has considered changing jobs, but he is very close with his immediate supervisor and does not want to abandon him. </span><br /><br />In my ten years as a life coach, I have seen countless cases such as these. All of these men are talented and capable, yet their lack of aggression prevents them from achieving the accomplishments they dream of. They don’t believe that they deserve success. They have been gambling against themselves, thinking that everyone else’s needs, goals, and desires are as important as their own.<br /><br />Maybe you agree with them; you believe that you are no more entitled to success than anyone else. Perhaps this is true. But your job is not to advocate for everyone else. Your job—your birthright as a living being—is to advocate for yourself.<br /><br />Imagine the president of a country who says, “I want to win the war, but of course, the other country also wants to win, so why should my needs come first?” Imagine the quarterback who says, “My team wants to get to the Superbowl, but the other team wants it more, so I think they should go.” Imagine the antelope who thinks, “This lion is going to eat one of us, so it might as well be me.”<br /><br />What would we say to this president, this quarterback, this antelope? We would say that they are not doing their jobs! They have neglected to advocate for themselves, and this neglect will lead to their unnecessary downfall.<br /><br />But their way of thinking is extremely common for many modern men. We are raised to be considerate, to cooperate, to think of other people’s needs as equivalent to our own. And later, we are taught that morality is relative, that good and evil do not exist, that our enemies are simply people with needs and desires, just like us, that all conflicts can be solved through diplomacy.<br /><br />That all might be true, but it’s not your problem. Your problem—your mission as a living being, your duty, your reason for existing—is to promote your own interest. Once you can agree to this truism, that your purpose for existing is to honor your own self-interest above all other interests and considerations, then I can give you strategies to help you achieve that purpose. But until you are willing to break from the pluralistic ideology of cooperation that you have been indoctrinated into since childhood, you will never be able to activate your full potential as a Fully Actualized Man.<br /><br />To become Fully Actualized, you must fulfill your role in the Evolutionary Contract. This contract mandates that, for survival of the fittest to work, we must all fight to survive. “But I’m not the fittest,” you might respond. “I am doing my species a favor by removing myself from the gene pool.” You are wrong; that’s not how evolution works. It is not for you to decide whether you are the fittest. Only time and the progression of nature can decide that. What if the first mammal with opposable thumbs had decided that he was a freak, and therefore not fit to pass on his genes? Mankind would have never come into existence, because one individual decided not to fight for his own survival. Whatever you have to offer, you must offer it with pride, unapologetically, knowing that it may be your unique traits that save our species or carry it further into greatness.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Want to Win</span><br />As the opening of this chapter suggests, the first step of becoming Fully Actualized is to activate your desire to outperform others. This sounds simple, yet the desire to win has been bred out of many modern men. Instead, we are trained to compromise, to hold back, not to draw attention to our abilities.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">When I met Bryce, he had just joined the basketball team at his local community college. He was still a solid player but was overshadowed by other players who were the stars of the team. He often made suggestions for plays they might try in upcoming games, but no one took his ideas seriously. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I asked Bryce what was the difference between himself and the star players on the team. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Are they more skillful players than you?” I asked him. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“No,” he said, with certainty. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“So why do they get all the attention?” I asked. “What are they doing that you’re not?” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">He thought about it for a moment. “They will do anything to win,” Bryce said. “They will play dirty, commit lots of fouls. They try to injure the top players on the other team. They will grab the ball from a weaker player on our own team to make sure we get the shot.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Why don’t you do those things?” I asked him. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Because they’re mean,” said Bryce. “I’m not a mean person.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“What’s the purpose of playing a game?” I asked. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“It’s for fun,” he said. “There is no purpose.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I don’t agree,” I said. “I think the purpose of playing is to win. The fun comes from the knowledge that there will be a winner and a loser, and from the desire to be the winner. Otherwise, games wouldn’t have winners and losers; but almost all of them do.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I explained to Bryce that a game is not really a game unless you are doing everything possible to try to win. Without that kind of sincere competition, you dishonor the game, your teammates, your opponents, and, most importantly, yourself. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Bryce took my advice and began to focus more persistently on winning. He noticed that this change of perspective immediately affected his level of play. Before, his attention during a game had been on team dynamics; he would always look to see who was open and in position for a shot, making sure to pass to players who hadn’t had a chance to score yet or who weren’t getting much action. He would be careful not to foul the other team’s players. Now, he put all of those concerns aside and focused on scoring points. He did whatever it took to get himself into a position where he could score, even if it meant elbowing past one of his opponents. If he was not in the position to score, he would pass to the strongest teammate who was open. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Because of his increased contribution, Bryce’s team began to win more games and move up in their conference rankings. His coaches began to take interest in him, and the local newspaper profiled him as a “local athlete to watch.” When he was ready to transfer to a four-year school, he was accepted onto a prestigious team that one of his high school teammates was already playing for. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Your game has really come up,” the classmate told him. </span><br /><br />A lot of men are like Bryce—they consider themselves to be nice people, and they believe that they are doing the world a favor by not competing at their highest level. But it is not a favor to dumb down your abilities; it is an insult. What Bryce discovered is that people respect a competitor—no one more so than those who have to compete against him.<br /><br />If you think that it is not in your nature to compete because you are a nice, cooperative person who does not want to dominate others, consider how you behave in traffic. When you are in a rush and somebody cuts in front of you, driving slowly, you do you sympathize and cooperate with his incompetence? Do you slow down as well so that the person doesn’t feel bad that they made a mistake? Do you say to yourself, “I won’t acknowledge his poor driving. He probably just isn’t a very experienced driver. I don’t want him to get discouraged and stop driving altogether!” No, you do not. You change lanes and speed past the person, possibly shooting him a dirty look as you do so. In a situation where you know you want to win—to get to your destination on time—your goal is your singular focus, and you have no tolerance for those who stand between you and your objectives.<br /><br />When the stakes matter to you, you are willing to make winning your only priority. The issue is not that you can’t want to win—it’s that you choose not to want to win. You choose to give life your best capabilities when it really matters to you. Why shouldn’t <span style="font-style: italic;">all </span>your pursuits matter that much to you, enough to make you want to work your hardest and do your best?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Stop Worrying about Others</span><br />The second step in becoming a Fully Actualized Man is to put your own needs above the needs of others. Yes, it is a nice thing to help other people, when they need our help, and when giving help does not undermine our own desires and objectives. But your own interests must always be your first priority. Otherwise you will not be fulfilling your part of the Evolutionary Contract.<br /><br />My experience working with Kevin demonstrates this principle:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I asked Kevin what was stopping him from achieving his dream of racing motorcycles again. He told me that his wife did not want him to race. I asked him why this mattered; why should he have to do what </span>she <span style="font-style: italic;">wanted? What about what </span>he <span style="font-style: italic;">wanted? He said that he didn’t want to make her upset. I asked him what would happen if she got upset. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“She would leave me,” he said. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“How do you know that?” I asked him. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“She told me. She said, ‘I’m not going to hang around waiting for you to get yourself killed on that motorcycle.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> I asked him, “Why would you stay in a relationship with someone who uses emotional blackmail to keep you from doing things that are important to you?” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Kevin thought about this question for quite a while. He did not have an answer for me that day. When I saw him again, several months had passed. Kevin told me excitedly that he had begun to train for motorcycle races. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“What did your wife say about it?” I asked him. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“She left me,” he said. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“But you were right,” he told me. “It’s much better to be single and be able to do what I want.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Kevin went on to tell me how much his life had improved since his wife had left. He was free to do whatever was necessary to pursue his passions. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I don’t need to worry about making anybody happy,” he said. “I can stay out at the track all weekend, and I don’t need to come home for meals or anything. Sometimes I sleep at my friend’s place closer to the track and don’t go to my apartment for days on end.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Kevin’s only regret was that he missed his two young children, now that they weren’t living with him. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“They’ll appreciate your decision when they’re older,” I told him. “Kids want their parents to be happy.” </span><br /><br />When you stop worrying about others, you may lose friends, or anger your family and loved ones. But if their “love” was contingent on you doing things that benefited them, was it really love at all? To become Fully Actualized, you must never lose sight of your own goals and objectives, even if they are challenging or upsetting to those around you.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Be Arrogant</span><br />You know that guy who gets under your skin every time you’re forced to interact with him? He thinks he’s better than everybody. He has many strengths, and he lords his abilities over those around him. He is unsympathetic towards other people’s individual difficulties and problems; he expects everyone else to rise to the level of his unreasonable standards.<br /><br />You need to become that guy. You need to have confidence in your own abilities and not worry about seeming conceited. Why should you minimize your own talents and achievements just to make lesser people feel better about themselves? If you are the best in a particular area, if you are an expert, you should not hesitate to let those around you know it. Opportunities to use your expertise will not come to you unless people recognize that you are an expert.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Joe came to me bitter and frustrated about the poor treatment he received at his job. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I do all the work around there,” he said. “But it’s like no one notices. I have been turned down for at least seven promotions, which went to people who were less experienced and less qualified.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Why don’t you quit?” I asked him. “You could get another job.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I know,” said Joe. In fact, Joe knew somebody at a rival company who had offered him a position. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Why don’t you take it?” I asked. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I don’t want to upset my supervisor,” Joe said. “It’s not his fault that I haven’t been promoted. Also, I think I would have the same problems at the rival company.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Do you like James Bond movies?” I asked Joe.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">He looked surprised. “Yes, I do,” he said. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Okay,” I told him. “Think about what James Bond would do in your position.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“James Bond would never work in human resources,” Joe said. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I told Joe that this was a mental exercise, an imagination game. “Imagine that James Bond feels he is not being treated well by the Secret Intelligence Service. What would he do?” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I guess he wouldn’t stand for it,” said Joe.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“So what actions would he take?” I asked. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“He would quit,” Joe said. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“Would he get a job at another intelligence service?” I asked. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“No,” said Joe. “He would work for himself, so he could never be screwed over by his bosses again.” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“I think you know what you need to do,” I told Joe. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Joe decided not to quit right away. Instead, he began doing research and making some connections. After a year, he was able to found his own transnational company which handled human resources remotely, from India. His company helped many banks save hundreds of thousands of dollars by moving their human resource departments to India. In a few years, both his old company and the rival company that had offered him a job outsourced their human resource departments to his company. Joe’s supervisor was laid off, along with the rest of Joe’s former department, but Joe was able to offer him a position at his company in India. </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Joe had all the knowledge and skills to run his own company, yet he was unwilling to capitalize on these advantages. He allowed himself to be treated as less than his true worth, all because he didn’t want to hurt his supervisor’s feelings. Once he was willing to insist on the respect he deserved, he gained the power and prestige he had dreamed of. </span><br /><br />When you meet a man who annoys you by being too self-confident, too full of himself, too obnoxiously self-promoting, ask yourself: why am I bothered by his confidence? Is it because I know that he is better than me or because I know that I am better than him? If the former is true, you have no reason to be annoyed at him; it is your own inferiority that should annoy you. And if the latter is true, it is your duty to prove your superiority so this man will better understand his place in the world.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Act the Part</span><br />Reading about these steps to becoming a Fully Actualized Man, you may feel overwhelmed. Perhaps you are thinking, “I would like to be like those men you describe—but that’s just not me.” That’s a common reaction. It is not easy to undo years of cultural conditioning. It is a grueling task to change everything about how you view the world and your place in it. But the rewards of this change are great: being truly engaged, truly alive, not a spectator but a competitor.<br /><br />Studies have shown that pretending to be happy—the mere act of smiling, even—raises people’s actual feelings of happiness. The same is true for acting confident, dominant, or arrogant. You do not need to feel aggressive to be aggressive. Think of the most aggresive person you know, and use him as a model for your behaviors. You may have noticed that I often encourage men to find role models to help them imagine how a Fully Realized Man would act. Eventually, of course, you must learn to be your own man and not follow anyone’s example too closely. But we all learn our life philosophies from those we look up to; that’s why it is crucial to choose your role models wisely. In time, with practice, you will find it easy, even natural, to assert your innate aggressive nature without the need for outside inspiration.<br /><br />In closing this chapter, I’ll tell you a secret: one of these men that I described in this chapter was me. Hell, all of these men were me, just as all of us are these men at certain points in our lives. But one of these men was <span style="font-style: italic;">really </span>me. And I talked to myself, at that time, as a coach would talk to a player, or as a ranking officer would advise a soldier, or a father would offer guidance to his son. And I told myself: <span style="font-style: italic;">you can make your dreams come true</span>.<br /><br />What I discovered, once I was able to take my own advice, was that there was nothing in the world that I could not do. I did not need to sit on the sidelines, cheering appreciatively as other people did amazing, brave, risky, rewarding things that I secretly longed to do myself. I did not need to be a spectator. I could get in there. I could be a competitor. So can you. The world is full of opportunities. You just need the conviction to take them.<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2010/07/38-center-of-ones-own-history.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 38</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-22228922062825886402010-06-13T20:47:00.000-07:002010-06-23T13:21:25.283-07:0036. The Great Myths“It was the men who got involved in spinning most of the great myths. The women were too busy; they had too damn much to do to sit around thinking about stories.” —Joseph Campbell<br /><br />“You can take that off,” said Nicolai Snail, pointing at Jen’s chest. Jen liked his accent, but it took her a second to figure out what he had said; the final word sounded like “ov.”<br /><br />“What?” Jen asked, confused.<br /><br />“The smock,” said Nicolai Snail.<br /><br />Jen looked down and saw that she was still wearing the bright yellow crossing-guard vest that marked her as a visitor to the Snail Plant. She had completely forgotten about it. She looked across the giant table at Master Park to see if he was still wearing his, but all she saw was the plain white shirt he had been wearing when they first entered the plant. She couldn’t remember when he had taken the vest off—he had definitely put it on at the entrance, but she didn’t remember seeing it after that.<br /><br />“Oh, right,” she said. She pulled the vest over her head, folded it into a neat square, and then placed it under her seat.<br /><br />“Sorry about all that,” said Nicolai Snail, waving his hand first in the direction of the vest, then at the heavily secured door. “We’ve had scares, terrorism, you know. I’m sure it all seems a bit unnecessary to you.”<br /><br />“Oh, no,” said Jen, embarrassed by Nicolai Snail’s accusing tone.<br /><br />“It <span style="font-style: italic;">is </span>unnecessary,” Master Park interrupted. “One little problem seven years ago and you make this whole place like a prison.”<br /><br />“Little problem?” said Nicolai Snail. He turned to face Jen, opening his eyes wide for emphasis. “Our rival company planted a bomb in my office.”<br /><br />“It didn’t go off,” said Master Park.<br /><br />“Do you hear this?” Nicolai Snail asked. He looked first at the back of the man he had just beaten at chess, who was still facing the window and did not turn around. Then he looked at Jen, who kept her face studiously blank, since she did not want to be seen as siding with this stranger over her teacher. “It didn’t go off? It didn’t go off because my security guards found it and diffused it. Otherwise, I would have been killed!”<br /><br />Master Park did seem affected by Nicolai Snail’s hysteria; he was calm and placid in his crisp white shirt. “You overreacted,” he said. “Remember, ‘An unnecessary display of power is an invitation to be attacked.’”<br /><br />“What’s that, a taekwondo saying?” Nicolai Snail asked.<br /><br />“No, Fred Fawls,” said Master Park. “It’s from<span style="font-style: italic;"> The New Aggressive Male</span>.”<br /><br />“Ah, yes,” said Nicolai Snail. “I should have recognized it. Well, I’m sure this Fred Fawls fellow—<span style="font-style: italic;">whoever he might be</span>—never had to diffuse a bomb in <span style="font-style: italic;">his </span>office.”<br /><br />He leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms over his head, and yawned, giving up his fight. Jen looked past him at the middle-aged man in the torn t-shirt, who was still staring obstinately out the window. For all his agitation about enemy attacks, Nicolai Snail didn’t seemed bothered by the dark brooding of the opponent who was right here in the room with him. He leaned back in his chair and tightened his ponytail, a distracted look in his eye.<br /><br />“So,” he said to Jen after a moment. “Are you playing today?”<br /><br />“She’s playing,” said Master Park, his authoritative tone suggesting that he was worried Jen would want to back out.<br /><br />“Good, then we will have our fourth after all,” said Nicolai Snail, smiling.<br /><br />“Where’s the guru?” Master Park asked. He was running his hand back and forth over the thickly polished surface of the table.<br /><br />“He couldn’t come to town at the last minute,” said Nicolai Snail. “He had something to do in Los Angeles.”<br /><br />He turned to Jen. “Vanto Hatch,” he said. “Have you heard of him? He usually visits us every other Wednesday. He is supposed to be here playing today. Quite the busy man.”<br /><br />Jen opened her eyes wide, but when she spoke, she kept her voice calm. “Yeah, I’ve heard of him,” she said, trying to sound like this new development was not completely surprising and confusing. She knew that Vanto Hatch was an old friend of Nicolai Snail’s—but he was flying into Michigan twice a month to play chess?<br /><br />“What is it this time?” Master Park asked. “Groundbreakers emergency? Someone has lost their foundation? Someone has holes in their blueprint?”<br /><br />And Master Park knows him, Jen thought? Why hadn't he ever said anything about him, or about Groundbreakers?<br /><br />“He had to accept an award,” said Nicolai Snail. “Greatest accomplishment for a self-help author or something like that.”<br /><br />In reaction to this piece of news, the brooding man finally turned from the window to face the interior of the room, crossing his arms and pressing the back of his dirty-looking t-shirt against the delicately tinted glass.<br /><br />“He’s too busy being a rock star to bother with us,” said the man, his voice sounding as cranky as his demeanor.<br /><br />“Jen,” said Nicolai Snail, “this is Oggy Osterberg. The artist.”<br /><br />Jen remembered his name. He was the sculptor whose work had been on display in front of the visitors’ center when she had gone there with Rob. Rob had told her that he was a student of Master Park’s, but she didn’t realize that he was still in town; she had never seen him at the school.<br /><br />Oggy gave her a cursory look and nod. “Yes,” he said, turning his gaze immediately away from her and towards Master Park. “I’ll take the killer. She can have the tycoon,” he said.<br /><br />Jen wasn’t sure what to make of this statement, until she saw Master Park rise from his chair and move to the one across from Oggy Osterberg. She felt a faint tremor of fear as she realized she was going to have to play chess against one of these intimidating men, and that Master Park would not be on hand to help her. She had never played against anyone but him.<br /><br />“Okay,” Nicolai Snail said to Jen, smiling warmly. “Then it’s us.” He pulled his chair to the side, so that he faced Jen, and slid the unused chess board between them.<br /><br />He held out two fists for her to choose what color she would play. She pointed towards his right fist, and he unclenched it to reveal a black pawn cupped in the palm of his large, flat hand.<br /><br />Jen gasped aloud.<br /><br />“What’s wrong?” Nicolai Snail asked.<br /><br />She didn’t want to tell him, but out of the dozens of games she had played against Master Park, she could count on one hand the times that she had chosen black. Her habit of choosing white had become so regular that, in the past few weeks, they had bypassed the choosing process altogether and simply assumed that she would play white. Since white always had the first move, Jen didn’t know any of the strategy for going second.<br /><br />“Nothing,” she said. “Black is great.”<br /><br />“How long have you been playing?” Nicolai Snail asked, as he turned the board to face the black pieces towards Jen.<br /><br />“Not very long,” she said. “A couple months.”<br /><br />“Park’s been teaching you?”<br /><br />“Yeah,” said Jen. “And I’ve been reading some books.”<br /><br />“By Thomas Fo?” Nicolai Snail asked.<br /><br />“Yes,” said Jen, her surprise evident in her voice. Of course it made sense that Master Park’s chess friends would know his favorite chess author, but she hadn’t expected it. She tended to think of Thomas Fo as her author, not Master Park’s, since she had first discovered his books about Zen on Paula’s mother’s bookshelf.<br /><br />“Thomas Fo is the best,” said Nicolai Snail, projecting his voice towards the board where Master Park and Oggy Osterberg were already deep into their own game. “We are all very fond of his work around here.”<br /><br />Jen saw Master Park’s lips curl into the slightest hint of an acknowledging smile. Oggy Osterberg’s scowl remained unaltered as he stared down at the board.<br /><br />Nicolai Snail’s opening moves were conventional, but it still unnerved Jen to be on the defensive, accustomed as she was to going first. She hated the feeling of responding to his moves, rather than being the one to set the direction of the game. Stop being so passive, she told herself, trying to break from his agenda. But each of his moves demanded its own response from her, and she could not figure out how to set up her own strategy.<br /><br />After her seventh move, Nicolai Snail looked up from the board. “I’ve been trying to get Park to bring you in here for months,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “He told me you were too busy. But I am guessing he never even invited you. So tell me, am I correct?”<br /><br />Jen froze, unsure of what to say. Her first inclination was to answer honestly, that she had indeed never been invited until now. Her second thought was to lie, to defend Master Park and prove Nicolai Snail wrong. She could tell him that she had been invited, and had indeed been too busy with her training.<br /><br />She looked across the table at Nicolai Snail. His well-kept hair and tasteful sweater spoke of confidence and power. But Jen saw something more in his eyes, something less self-assured. And then, suddenly, she could read it as clearly as if it were a sentence written across the top of his groomed eyebrows:<span style="font-style: italic;"> he wanted something from her</span>. She wasn’t sure whether it was something business related, or political, or romantic, or sexual, or something far less tangible than any of those—something as simple as her approval—but there was definitely something he was after.<br /><br />And she saw that whatever he wanted was distracting him, and he was not really thinking about the game in front of him. And she resolved, in a quick moment of decisiveness that she hoped would make Master Park proud if he could witness her thoughts, that she was going to win.<br /><br />She remembered the words from <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Aggressive Male</span>:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Don’t defer. Don’t be rude, nor polite; be unconcerned.</span><br /><br />And she decided to answer his question with another question.<br /><br />“Why did you want him to invite me?” she asked.<br /><br />He shrank a little bit, as though a bright light had flashed in his eyes, and she knew for certain that she had him. “That should be obvious,” he said, reaching down to move his knight into an attacking position.<br /><br />“No,” she said, sliding her bishop up to defend her pawn.<br /><br />He stared at the board for a moment, then advanced his own bishop.<br /><br />“Well,” he said. “This is the room where all the most important and interesting people in North Middleton come to meet.”<br /><br />Jen looked silently down at the board. She was going to let him derail his own train of thought. Don’t be rude or polite, she thought. Don’t say anything. Don’t defer.<br /><br />Nicolai Snail allowed the silence to hang between them for a moment, until it seemed he could not bear it any longer. “You don’t consider yourself to one of the most important and interesting people in North Middleton?” he said.<br /><br />“I live in Cone,” she replied.<br /><br />“You know what I mean,” he said, his agitation showing in the abrupt way he slapped his pawn down on its new space.<br /><br />She picked up her knight, which she had not yet moved at all, and placed it in front of her row of pawns.<br /><br />“I suppose you think I’m vain,” said Nicolai Snail, his voice sounding authentically sullen now. “It’s fine. You can think that.”<br /><br />Jen didn’t say anything. She looked at the board. Nicolai Snail looked down at the board, too.<br /><br />“Shit,” he said. Her knight was threatening both his knight and his bishop; he was going to have to lose one, and it was early in the game to be down a piece. She saw him bite down hard on his lip as he considered the unpalatable range of possible moves ahead of him. This is sort of fun, Jen thought.<br /><br />“Nice work,” said Master Park an hour later, as they returned down the hall towards the parking garage, holding their yellow vests under their arms.<br /><br />“You saw my game?” Jen asked. She had beat Nicolai Snail, using the same sequence Master Park had used on her at least ten times to put him in checkmate. She had only had the one game; after he lost to both Nicolai Snail and Master Park, Oggy Osterberg had pronounced himself too tired to play any further, declaring, “I’m going to take a nap for a few days,” before slamming the heavy door behind him.<br /><br />“I saw you turn Nicolai into a stammering idiot,” said Master Park. Jen didn’t respond, but inside, she felt like she had just been nominated for an Oscar.<br /><br />After they dropped their vests at the front desk—“You’re supposed to <span style="font-style: italic;">wear </span>it, Park,” the security guard had growled—and returned to the car, Master Park turned to Jen as he pulled out of the parking lot.<br /><br />“You should have been playing black more,” he said. “I’m sorry.”<br /><br />“It’s not your fault I always draw white,” Jen said.<br /><br />“Actually, it is,” said Master Park. “I’ve been fixing it so you always draw white.”<br /><br />Jen was so surprised that she couldn’t speak for a moment. She stared blankly at the looming pink walls of the Snail Plant as they passed by her window.<br /><br />“Why?” she asked, finally.<br /><br />“You need to learn to be more aggressive,” he said. “I thought it would be good for you to have the first move.”<br /><br />“How did you get me to always pick white?” she asked.<br /><br />“Sleight of hand,” he said. “I learned it from one of my students.”<br /><br />She tried to remember if she had ever seen him do anything unusual with his hand or his sleeve before he extended his fists, but nothing came to mind. “Do you do that when you play those guys?” she asked, wondering how Oggy Osterberg would respond to such subterfuge.<br /><br />“I can’t,” he said. “They know the trick. I think Nicolai used it on you. He likes to go first.”<br /><br />Figures, Jen thought, wrapping her arms across her face to block the glare of the setting sun.<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2010/06/37-what-it-means-to-be-civilized.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 37</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-88668148778302653412010-05-16T23:45:00.000-07:002010-06-13T21:11:28.672-07:0035. Politics Itself“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.” —George Orwell<br /><br />Like the gaping insides of a gigantic pink sea clam, the parking garage of the Snail Plant loomed through the windshield of Master Park’s car.<br /><br />“I’ve never seen this side,” said Jen, as they pulled into a parking space marked “compact.” It was an appropriate designation for Master Park’s aging sedan, but less so for the bloated SUV and truck in the two adjacent spaces.<br /><br />She remembered Rob telling her about the mysterious employee entrance, but she had only ever seen the front side of the plant, like a sprawling fortress dominating a good seven or eight blocks of Main Street. She remembered the little gate to the courtyard where she had first met Master Park and spied on his taekwondo class; it seemed like a whole other life. Master Park had snuck out the gate after his class; but there was a real entrance, one too fussy to be bothered with.<br /><br />Master Park seemed to recognize her meaning.<br /><br />“We’re official today,” he said, opening his door carefully to avoid hitting the vehicle next to him. Jen turned sideways to slip out of the cracked passenger-side door and through the gap between Master Park’s car and the silver truck next to it.<br /><br />They entered the building through a door that led directly from the basement of the parking lot to a large security desk. The guard seemed to know Master Park already, but he asked to see Jen’s ID.<br /><br />As she rummaged through her purse looking for her California driver’s license, men of all ages passed the desk, flashed identification cards at the guard, and hurried down the hallway and around the corner. Finally, she handed him her license. He squinted at it and then up at her face several times, and she thought she saw him raise his eyebrows a few millimeters, but he handed it back to her without further comment.<br /><br />“Here,” he said, handing Master Park two yellow bib-smocks. Master Park pulled his swiftly over his head, revealing the word “VISITOR” stenciled in square black letters across the chest. She was a little clumsier putting hers on, unable at first to sort out all the various straps and arm-holes. Once it was in place, it hung down to her knees and made her feel like an elementary school crossing guard.<br /><br />“Ridiculous,” said Master Park, as walked down the hall, his words seemingly directed more at himself than Jen. “Nicolai Snail is out of his mind.” She looked from side to side, wondering if any of the Snail employees walking alongside them had heard Master Park’s comment, but no one seemed concerned.<br /><br />As Jen, Master Park, and the Snail employees rounded the corner, everyone but Jen and Master Park veered abruptly into a large doorway on the left. Jen slowed her pace, unsure whether she was supposed to follow them.<br /><br />Master Park tapped her arm, so lightly she could barely feel it, but the motion steered her straight ahead.<br /><br />“Men’s dressing room,” said Master Park.<br /><br />Before Jen could ask why they needed a dressing room, they passed a second door, which must have been the room’s exit. Men in sunny yellow jumpsuits poured out of the door, their color matching Jen’s borrowed vest, the same yellow jumpsuits that the men had worn to do taekwondo in the courtyard, though Jen hadn’t remembered them until just now.<br /><br />“Where’s the women’s dressing room?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“Hmm,” said Mater Park, sounding puzzled by the question. “I’m not sure. I think there might be one down at the entrance by the other end of the parking garage.” But his dubious tone suggested that he could not remember seeing a female employee at the Snail Plant, much less a room for her to change in.<br /><br />They followed the horde of yellow men through a maze of passages so convoluted that after five minutes, Jen had no idea whether she was heading away from the entrance or back towards it.<br /><br />“How’s Olivia?” Master Park asked. His directness surprised her. She felt awkward about the whole thing: having her own student when she herself was little more than a novice, the fact that, until a week ago, this student had been her nemesis, their inauspicious first day of instruction. Jen had waited two days to formally accept Olivia’s request, but she had known that she would do so from the moment Olivia left the juice bar. She felt like a sucker for being charmed by Olivia’s story; still, she couldn’t help but respond to its overriding themes of discipline and renunciation that were so common to her own life.<br /><br />She had been teaching Olivia every night for the last two weeks, working it in around her own training schedule, just as Shane had once done for her. Whenever she felt strange about it, she comforted herself by thinking about a passage she had read in the <span style="font-style: italic;">New Aggressive Male</span> book that Master Park had given her to read:<br /><br />“There is no point to having enemies. When you perceive somebody to be your enemy, you give him instant power over you. He raises your blood pressure and distracts your focus. In the eyes of a smart man, there are three types of people: those he trusts, those he does not trust, and those whom he perceives wish to hurt him. The first, he keeps close; the second, he keeps at a distance; the third, he keeps closest of all.”<br /><br />Jen was unsure whether Olivia was “someone she didn’t trust” or “someone whom she perceived wished to hurt her.” At the moment, her intuition pointed more towards the former, but her actions seemed to point towards the latter; she was spending more time with Olivia than anyone else.<br /><br />It’s okay, Jen told herself. She really is someone who tried to hurt me. So it is only fair for me to keep her closest of all.<br /><br />There was another passage in the book that was helping Jen feel all right about her relationship with Olivia. It was in a chapter called,” Dominating the Conversation.” The section that stuck in Jen’s mind discussed how to deal with conversational conflict.<br /><br />“Don’t defer. Don’t be rude, nor polite; be unconcerned. Practice this with people in your everyday life who you usually avoid conflict with: your boss or an annoying coworker, your mother-in-law, even your girlfriend or wife. Rather than appeasing, arguing, or avoiding, try stating the truth calmly and factually. This will be highly disconcerting to your opponent.”<br /><br />This tactic had largely shaped Jen’s interactions with Olivia.<br /><br />“How does that look?” Olivia would ask, throwing a sidekick that was uncannily precise for someone who had only learned it a week ago.<br /><br />“It looks good,” Jen would say, unsmiling, showing no sign of approval other than the word itself. “Snap it back faster.” She focused on giving instruction without conveying pleasure or disdain for Olivia’s accomplishments and shortcomings. Hearing her own dispassionate voice, Jen thought to herself, I sound like a martial arts teacher. Perhaps that why Olivia never seemed disconcerted, as the book had predicted she would; perhaps she had expected it.<br /><br />“Here,” said Master Park, as they finally emerged from one of a series of dark hallways into a large open vestibule lined with elevators. Jen slowed her pace, but Master Park walked past them, to a plain wooden door, painted the same color as the drab walls, almost invisible except for the lighted green exit sign above it.<br /><br />He opened the door and led Jen up flight after flight of stairs. Four, five, six, she counted, as they turned the corner onto each successive, poorly-swept landing.<br /><br />At the seventh floor, she knew they would have to exit, because the stairway beyond it was blocked with a bolted screen gate; “Roof Access—Authorized Personnel Only,” it read. For a moment, she felt worried that Master Park was going to make her sneak past somehow, just as he had done with the gate to the courtyard. But he opened the door to the seventh floor and walked through without holding it for her.<br /><br />They emerged to a hallway so beautiful that Jen couldn’t help but cry out in amazement. The wall across from the stairway and the elevators was all glass, tinted a pale turquoise color that caught the sunlight and projected dancing diamonds all across the walls and floor.<br /><br />“Look!” she said, walking to the window and looking down. They were several floors up now, not six—they must have been more than one story underground when they entered the stairway—but perhaps three or four. Still, from this height, she could recognize the courtyard below, the first place that she had met Master Park and watched the yellow-suited students doing their taekwondo exercises.<br /><br />“Ah yes,” said Master Park, standing next to her to look. “I’m here too much. I forget to appreciate it sometimes.”<br /><br />Jen suddenly remembered that she had been expecting to play chess in that courtyard. “Didn’t you say we were going to play down there?” she asked.<br /><br />“Too cold,” said Master Park. “We only actually play there in summer. The rest of the time I suppose we are just overlooking the courtyard.”<br /><br />Of course, Jen thought, wondering why she hadn’t questioned his statement before. She had been envisioning a bunch of old men with funny haircuts sitting at tables in the courtyard, just as they did year-round in the park in Santa Monica. It had been getting warmer in Michigan, perhaps even warm enough for courtyard taekwondo, but certainly still far too cold for something as sedentary as courtyard chess.<br /><br />Master Park began to walk again, down the hall to the right, and Jen followed him, wondering where they would be playing. This building seemed awfully fancy for the workers to be playing games in; she didn’t get the sense that they were headed towards a break or recreation room. She remembered Rob saying that this building was the one the Snail Corporation always took guests to, because it was so fancy. Perhaps the players weren’t Snail employees, but some kind of guests? Jen hadn’t even thought to ask Master Park who the other players would be.<br /><br />They followed the hallway, circling the courtyard, without passing a single Snail employee. Finally, Master Park stopped at a large, heavy-looking door. He pressed a button at the side of the door, and a voice projected from speaker: “Who is it?”<br /><br />“Park,” he said, letting out an angry, vocal sigh.<br /><br />Something clicked electronically inside the door. Jen wondered what all this security was about; why were they playing chess in a locked room with an intercom?<br /><br />After a few more seconds, the door swung open. A tall, slender man wearing khaki slacks and an expensive-looking black sweater greeted them. His hair was tied back into a ponytail that reached close to his waist.<br /><br />“Come in, come in,” he said, hastily, ushering them into the room as the heavy door swung shut behind them with a loud clicking noise.<br /><br />They walked into a luxurious board room that was even more beautiful than the hallway. The far wall was all glass, in the same shade of turquoise as the windows in the hall. But unlike those windows, it was also adorned with delicate vines creeping downwards from the top of the window, already dotted with tiny purple flower buds.<br /><br />The inside of the room was filled with plush, velvety armchairs, positioned around a conference table that seemed to have been fashioned from the highly polished cross-section of a giant, gnarled tree.<br /><br />On the table, there were two stately-looking chess sets. One was set up for a new game; the other had its pieces distributed around the board. The only other person in the room was sitting behind this second set, a small, wiry-looking man whose face looked about sixty, though he was dressed like a teenager in a torn-up t-shirt and dirty jeans. He sat with one sneakered foot up on the seat of his fancy chair, hugging his arms around his knee and scowling down at the board.<br /><br />The tall, pony-tailed man lowered himself into the other seat nearest this chessboard without even saying hello to Jen or Master Park, although he did flash Jen a quick smile of recognition that seemed to suggest that they were old friends.<br /><br />Master Park pulled out a chair for her and then sat down himself to watch the game in progress. The chair was as comfortable as it had looked, but Jen felt distinctly ill at ease. She had expected a bunch of Snail workers, the same sort of friendly, tough-looking guys that she had seen in the taekwondo class. She had not prepared herself for this fancy board room or for such a small, intense group of players.<br /><br />Despite her annoyance, she forced herself to turn her attention to the board. Now she understood why the man in the scruffy t-shirt was so surly—judging by the captured pieces on the each side of the board, he was down by two pawns and a bishop.<br /><br />Looking at the board itself, it took her a moment to turn the pieces into something that made sense. For a moment, they were as opaque as a wall of squiggly shapes; and then, as though a light had turned on, the meaning of the positions became clear as decisively as one of those posters with the hidden images that could only be seen if you looked at them crossed-eyed.<br /><br />The bishop that he did have was stuck behind his queen-side pawns, pinned there by the pony-tailed man’s well-positioned knight. Jen watched intently, becoming increasingly stressed on behalf of the white pieces, as the black pieces moved in slowly but decisively for the kill. Jen was reminded of a spider she had seen once on a nature show; it immobilized its prey limb by limb, until it had no choice but to lie still and await its death.<br /><br />After seven moves, the man in the t-shirt lay his king on its side, rose from his chair, and walked over to the window, were he stood staring out with his arms crossed and his back to everyone in the room.<br /><br />The man in the nice clothes and the ponytail turned to Jen and Master Park, seemingly unconcerned about his brooding friend.<br /><br />“Park!” he exclaimed, greeting him as though they had not been sitting in the same room for the last half hour. He opened his arms as though he were about to lean across the giant table and embrace Master Park. Instead, he extended one long arm.<br /><br />“Nicolai,” said Master Park, leaning forward to reach the taller man’s hand across the table.<br /><br />Nicolai, Jen thought; where had she heard that name?<br /><br />As though he had heard her question, Master Park introduced him: “Jen, this is Nicolai Snail.”<br /><br />Nicolai Snail—the founder and CEO of Snail Construction and Mining Equipment.<br /><br />Nicolai Snail extended his hand with as much affection as he had shown Master Park. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said, his voice made somber with a tint of an accent that Jen remembered, from the historical plaques at the Snail visitor’s center, must be Russian. “It feels like I have had to wait forever.”<br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2010/06/36-great-myths.html"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 36</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-55919746684336967762010-04-13T22:48:00.000-07:002010-12-01T18:27:23.648-08:0034. What We Pretend to Be“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” —Kurt Vonnegut<br /><br />Master Park was there immediately, his eyes narrow and angry behind the squares of his eyeglasses. He grabbed Jen by the shoulders—the first time she could remember him touching her directly—and shook her.<br /><br />“Are you crazy?” he yelled. “What are you doing?”<br /><br />Jen didn’t know what to say. The men from the advanced class had swarmed around the reporter on the ground, offering to help her up, asking her if she was okay. Jen wanted to punch her again, to kick her in the face. It took all of her energy to restrain herself.<br /><br />“Go sit over there,” said Master Park, pointing at the chair behind the front desk. “Don’t move.”<br /><br />She sat in the swiveling office chair, feeling like a bad child forced to sit in the corner, and watched Master Park help Olivia up and lead her outside. Through the glass of the front door, she could see them talking. Her male classmates were leaving one by one, most of them avoiding eye contact as they passed her, although a few of them smiled grimly at her, their expressions conveying that they knew she must have had a good reason. One slightly-built green belt, a college student Jen had trained with a few times since he was close to her size, stopped in front of the desk. “What did she do to you?” he asked under his breath.<br /><br />Even though Master Park was facing the other direction, Jen didn’t want to risk him turning around and seeing her talking to someone. “Nothing,” she said quietly. He didn’t seem offended by her reticence. He just flashed her a sympathetic smile and left.<br /><br />That’s nice about taekwondo students, Jen thought; they don’t pry.<br /><br />Master Park and Olivia stood outside talking for almost fifteen minutes, according to the clock on the wall, which Jen couldn’t help but stare at as she sat in the empty room, waiting. Master Park stood with his weight balanced evenly, his arms crossed. Olivia was gesturing with her hands as though trying to negotiate some kind of deal.<br /><br />Finally they came back inside and walked over to the desk. Master Park had a rigid look about him that suggested some formal business. I hope they aren’t going to ask for an apology, Jen thought; she didn’t know if she would be able to offer one.<br /><br />But instead, Master Park nodded his head towards Olivia.<br /><br />“She wants you to go have a drink with her,” he said.<br /><br />Jen was surprised for a moment, but quickly regained her composure. Of course she does, Jen thought. She’s been chasing me all over North Middleton.<br /><br />“I don’t drink” said Jen.<br /><br />“It’ll be juice,” said Olivia.<br /><br />Jen looked up at Master Park. He was impassive, his arms still folded across the front of his crisp white jacket. “I don’t care,” he said. “It’s up to you.”<br /><br />“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” said Jen.<br /><br />“Give me one hour,” Olivia said. “After that, I’ll never come back here again if you don’t want me to. You’ll never have to see me again.”<br /><br />Jen looked at the clock. It was nine forty-five. “Okay,” she said. “Where are we going?”<br /><br />“The juice bar,” said Olivia. “You can follow me in your car.”<br /><br />In the parking lot a few minutes later, Olivia pulled her car up in front of Jen’s. Jen was expecting one of the large, black SUVs that had waited in ambush for her outside the co-op. Instead, Olivia was driving a squat little Volkswagen, painted a faded red color except for the driver’s side door, which was black.<br /><br />Jen drove behind her into the center of town. Just before they reached the university, Olivia flashed her right-side turn signal. It occurred to Jen that she had never turned this direction off of Main Street; the food co-op and the tea house were both on the other side.<br /><br />Jen followed Olivia down a side street whose sidewalks were flooded with students, even though it was almost ten o’clock on a Tuesday, toting heavy backpacks as they poured in and out of the bars and coffee shops. Olivia parked in front of a run-down storefront whose sign read “North Middleton Juice Collective.”<br /><br />The small space inside was crowded with young women whose style of dress reminded her of Paula’s comfortable, earth-tone wardrobe, except in place of her dreadlocks, most of these women had short, boyish haircuts that contrasted their flowing garments. They had filled up every visible seat, their backpacks occupying every chair that they were not sitting on. Several of them looked up from their work and smiled when Olivia walked in. “Hey, Olivia, want me to move this?” asked a woman in an oversized oatmeal-colored turtleneck, pointing at the stack of books, sweatshirts, jackets and scarves overflowing from the chair next to her.<br /><br />“No, that’s okay,” said Olivia. “There’s a back room,” she said to Jen, leading her into a tiny area behind a wall that housed four more tables, all of them occupied except one. Olivia threw her jacket over the top of the empty table and walked back to the front to order.<br /><br />The counter was staffed by two young, shorn-headed women who appeared indistinguishable from their clientele. Jen raised her eyes to the expansive menu posted on a chalkboard above their heads. It was printed in colored chalk, with writing that grew increasingly smaller as it approached the bottom.<br /><br />Olivia turned to Jen. “What do you want to drink?”<br /><br />Jen glanced again at the dizzying menu, squinting her eyes to sharpen the tiny letters. The words that popped out at her from the swirl of hand-printed writing normally would have appealed to her: carrot, melon, flaxseed, cucumber. But there was a heavy smell in the air, like bleach and steam and mushrooms, that killed Jen’s appetite; or perhaps it was just the effect of standing so close behind Olivia, her nemesis.<br /><br />She was tempted not to order anything, but she didn’t want to seem passive aggressive. She had promised Olivia an hour; she resolved to be pleasant until her time was up.<br /><br />“Whatever you’re having is fine,” Jen said.<br /><br />“Okay,” said Olivia, turning to the girl at the counter. “Two Greenpeaces.”<br /><br />Jen scanned the board for the translation: kale, grapefruit, celery, garlic. Not the combination she would have chosen. At least it’ll be healthy, she thought.<br /><br />She cringed at the price, six dollars for a small. Pulling her wallet from the pocket of her jacket, she asked, “Can I give you some money?”<br /><br />“Don’t worry, it’s free,” said Olivia, turning from the counter. Jen looked at the girl who took their order; she had already started helping the next customer, despite the fact that Olivia hadn’t paid for their expensive drinks. She really must be a regular here, Jen thought.<br /><br />Jen sat down while Olivia waited for their drinks to be freshly squeezed. When she finally appeared around the corner, she placed two tall glasses filled with frothy brownish-green drinks on the table and sat down across from Jen.<br /><br />Jen looked at the clock on the wall. It was five minutes past ten. “You’ve got forty minutes,” she said. She expected Olivia to protest that her hour shouldn’t include driving and ordering time, but she accepted the warning somberly.<br /><br />“Okay, then, let me just think where to start.”<br /><br />She paused, her hand wrapped around the bottom of her face. She really does look a lot better, Jen thought, remembering how the fluorescent lights of the co-op had caught in the dull ends of her bleached blonde hair and sickly, creased skin. The face of the woman sitting across from Jen now glowed with health, framed by her glossy, dark hair, looking at least ten years younger than the woman who had sat ringside, watching Jen get knocked unconscious.<br /><br />“I’m going to have to start at the beginning,” Olivia said. “Sorry, but it’s important.”<br /><br />Jen nodded and took a tentative sip of her drink. The first flavors were pleasant, celery and grapefruit. Then the bitterness of the kale struck her, and then, finally, a shocking flash of garlic. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, just bracing. She took another sip and swished it around in her mouth. At least it will keep me from getting sleepy, she thought.<br /><br />“I don’t know how I ended up writing for a crappy magazine,” said Olivia. “Or, I suppose I know, but the whole thing was a mistake. Growing up, I always planned to be a ballerina. I was really serious. My parents used to drive me an hour to Milwaukee every day after school. And I would go to study in New York every summer, and I was thinking of moving there when I was sixteen, because you could board at the ballet school there.”<br /><br />“Why did you stop?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“Oh, you know,” said Olivia, the healthy glow of her cheeks intensifying by a few shades to a burning crimson. “The same reason everybody does.”<br /><br />Jen thought of all of her friends who had given up on their dreams of becoming actors. “Because it’s impossible to make a living as a dancer?”<br /><br />“Oh, no,” said Olivia. “Because I got addicted to diet pills. So, you know, I had to go through treatment and that whole thing, which wasn’t so bad because a bunch of my dancer friends were doing it, too. But I lost half a year of study, and I never really got back to it in the same way.”<br /><br />Jen was appalled by the image of a Midwestern rehab center flooded with adolescent ballet dancers. “If you were all doing it, somebody should have told the ballet school,” Jen said.<br /><br />“Oh, they knew,” said Olivia. “They encouraged it.”<br /><br />“Really?” Jen asked, scandalized.<br /><br />“Well, they would say things like, ‘You will just need to figure out how to manage your weight in some way, whatever that might be.’ What do they expect in an art form where they want you to be really skinny and really energetic at the same time?”<br /><br />She looked up at Jen, embarrassed, and added, “Well, you know.”<br /><br />Truthfully, Jen didn’t know. Of course there was a lot of pressure to be skinny in Hollywood, but she had always dealt with it by just eating very little, as had most of the other actresses she had talked to. The truth was, it didn’t take that much energy to shoot a movie or television show. In fact, she had found it helpful to be a little lightheaded from hunger; it heightened her emotions and made her feel more creative. She tried to imagine what it would be like to eat that way while trying to maintain a rigorous athletic schedule; there was no way she could fast three times a week while training at taekwondo.<br /><br />“But you’re right,” said Olivia. “It is impossible to make a living. So instead I stayed in Wisconsin for college and got a degree in mass communications and started writing for a newspaper.”<br /><br />“I was writing for the arts section, reviewing concerts and art exhibits and even the ballet; I liked that job a lot. But the paper got bought out by a bigger company that owned newspapers all across the state. And then they got bought out by an even bigger company that owns a bunch of newspapers all over the country.<br /><br />“That company cut the arts section from my paper, so I was going to be out of a job. But they said I could do contract work for a couple of magazines they had just bought. They wanted people in the Midwest who could specialize in what they called ‘recluses,’ which basically just meant celebrities who weren’t in New York or L.A.<br /><br />“And that’s how I ended up writing for <span style="font-style: italic;">Celebrity Gape</span>. I’ve been doing it ever since, for almost ten years. It’s really depressing work, really boring, a lot of waiting around. I was so excited when I got the assignment to cover you in Michigan, because no one knew what you were doing out here. Most of the celebrities in the Midwest just wanted to get out of the spotlight and raise their families, so there’s not really much to say about them. So you just wait and keep an eye on them and hope they get a divorce or have an affair or something.”<br /><br />“That’s horrible,” said Jen.<br /><br />“It sounds bad, doesn’t it,” Olivia agreed. “But it hardly ever happens. The recluses are usually really stable. If they get divorced, it’s just like a regular divorce, after the kids are grown and it’s a mutual thing, no drama.”<br /><br />So you have to invent it, thought Jen, thinking of some of the wilder claims Olivia had made about her.<br /><br />Olivia looked up at the clock anxiously; ten minutes had already passed. She picked up her untouched drink and took a large gulp. When she spoke again, her eyes were large and earnest with excitement. “But really, the thing I want to talk to you about is your fight. Because that’s the day my whole life changed.”<br /><br />Your life changed, Jen thought, surprised. She scanned Olivia’s face, looking for some hint of ironic distance, a sign of a trap. But she looked as earnest and absorbed as she had been when Jen showed her the opening of the first taekwondo form and how to do a roundhouse kick. A woman at an adjacent table rose and gave Olivia a friendly pat on the shoulder on her way to the front room, but Olivia was too engrossed with telling Jen the story of her own fight to notice.<br /><br />“I drove down to Lansing with a photographer. The drive seemed so long, and I was so nervous for you. I kept thinking, I can’t believe Jen is really going to do this. I’d been tracking you for months and months, and I just felt so invested in your progress. When you first got to Michigan, you seemed so fragile. I couldn’t believe how far you’d come since you moved here.<br /><br />“Like when you first started sparring, I was sure you were going to get your rib broken again, or your nose or your arm. You didn’t know it, but we had a photographer in the parking lot every Sunday just waiting for you to be carried out in a stretcher.”<br /><br />Jen felt anger begin to rise in her chest; she wasn’t sure whether it angered her more that the reporters had been stalking her without her knowledge or that they had been hoping to see her get injured. But she had decided not to pass any outward judgment until Olivia’s hour was up. Jen looked at the clock. There were twenty-seven minutes left. She took another swallow of her drink and looked down into the cup. Now that it was almost gone, she decided it was actually quite tasty. She wondered how she would distract herself from making horrible grimacing faces at Olivia’s story once she had nothing left to hide her face with.<br /><br />“When we got to the gymnasium, I found a seat in the back, where no one would notice me,” said Olivia. “I sat there for the first set of fights. I was watching those two little skinny guys who went before you in on the same mats. And they were flying in the air, kicking each other. It was the most exciting thing I’d ever seen. You know how that one guy kept jumping up so high?”<br /><br />Jen nodded, though she hadn’t seen any of the three fights that had occurred simultaneously in the period before hers.<br /><br />“I thought that was so amazing,” said Olivia. She was speaking very quickly now, either from excitement about her story or nervousness about running out of time.<br /><br />“Your fight was next, and I was so excited and nervous. I’d been keeping a low profile since that day I saw you at the co-op. But I wanted to sit closer. And I decided, screw it, I’m moving to the front. I figured there was no way you were going to be looking at the crowd, much less recognize me.”<br /><br />“I saw you,” said Jen, unable to contain this small comment.<br /><br />Olivia rushed on as though Jen’s statement made her nervous. “Watching you fight up there, I thought, this is amazing. This is more impressive than anything I’ve ever done—than everything I’ve ever done, put together. Here I am, following this woman around, and she is spending her life in such a better way than I am spending mine. Why am I here, sneaking around the corners of this event, when I should be right in the middle of it? Why couldn’t I be the one doing it?”<br /><br />Jen remembered the awful, queasy sickness of waiting for the fight, waiting in the dressing room with Shane, reading the article that this woman, Lorna Olivia Lee, had written about her. And then the fight itself, the pressure, the public humiliation. It’s not as fun as it seems, she thought, taking one final, silencing sip of her drink. <br /><br />“When you got knocked out, I screamed. I don’t know if you heard me.”<br /><br />Jen didn’t bother responding, although she didn’t remember hearing a scream, didn’t remember hearing anything other than the rushing in her own head.<br /><br />“My photographer was all excited, taking all these pictures. But I was so worried. I thought, if she gets up, I’m going to change my whole life.”<br /><br />She paused and took a long, melodramatic sip of her drink, licking her lips clean of the green froth.<br /><br />“And of course you did, and that was it. I stayed and watched all the fights. I had been planning to leave right after yours, but I just sat there, close enough to touch the fighters, and watched until the very end of the tournament. The photographer was complaining that he wanted to leave, but I had the car keys and I wouldn’t move. I saw all the people from your school fight, and your friend Brittany.”<br /><br />“Shane,” said Jen.<br /><br />“And when it was over, I walked out, and I felt exhilarated, like I was high or something. I called my job and quit that afternoon. And I decided my goal was to become a fighter like you.”<br /><br />Olivia looked at her expectantly, as though wanting her to respond. But Jen didn’t want to show her surprise at this unanticipated declaration. She returned Olivia’s gaze blankly.<br /><br />“How long do I have?” Olivia asked.<br /><br />“Fourteen minutes,” said Jen.<br /><br />“Okay,” said Olivia, taking a deep breath and a large gulp of her drink. “I spent the next few days looking for a new place to live. I always stayed at this one hotel in North Middleton, but I took all my stuff out of there and moved into a big house with a bunch of college kids, and one of them got me a job at the juice collective.”<br /><br />“You work here?” Jen asked. That would explain why everyone here knew her, not to mention the free drinks.<br /><br />“Yup, since one week after your fight,” said Olivia. “It doesn’t pay much, but I have savings, plus my rent is really cheap. And I get most of my meals here for free.” As though to emphasize this point, she took another large sip of her drink.<br /><br />“The only problem was that I was in no shape to start taekwondo. I had no stamina at all. I hadn’t exercised at all for years, since I stopped dancing. So I started running every day, and I joined the yoga studio.”<br /><br />“Right,” said Jen, remembering their conversation during class. “What’s it called again?”<br /><br />“Pomegranate Yoga Studio,” said Olivia.<br /><br />“Where is it?” Jen asked.<br /><br />Olivia looked anxiously at the clock.<br /><br />“I’ll count this as a time-out,” said Jen.<br /><br />“Okay, thanks,” said Olivia, sighing in relief. She had been speaking so quickly that she seemed a little out of breath.<br /><br />More slowly, she said, “It’s just a little further down the street.” She turned to look around the cramped room at the handful of college women hunched over their textbooks, drinking juice and eating vegetable sandwiches. “A lot of the people in here go to Pomegranate. Actually almost all of them.”<br /><br />“Do you like it?” Jen asked. She couldn’t help but be curious about this potential alternate life; if she hadn’t met Rob, she realized, she likely would have been one of the women attending the yoga school and drinking juice in this collective.<br /><br />“I love it,” said Olivia, smiling. “It’s a woman-centered practice, so we do more moon salutations instead of sun salutations, and all the teachers are women.”<br /><br />Jen couldn’t help but note the contrast to the taekwondo school and its attendant tea house, both populated heavily, and at times exclusively, by men. I’ve been hanging out on the wrong side of Main Street, Jen thought.<br /><br />“So that’s why you look so different?” Jen asked, finally understanding why the woman sitting across from her seemed to have lost ten years off her age during the last three months.<br /><br />“Yeah, I suppose,” said Olivia, looking down at the table in embarrassment. “I also stopped smoking and eating fast food and bleaching my hair. And I’ve been eating a mostly raw diet, lots of vegetables and nuts and juice of course.”<br /><br />Olivia took another large swallow of her juice and looked at the clock. “I can finish my story now if you want.”<br /><br />“You have six minutes,” said Jen.<br /><br />“Okay,” said Olivia, speeding her pace again. “Now that I’ve spent a few months getting in shape, I felt like it was finally time for me to start studying taekwondo, that I was finally ready. So that brings me to why I need to talk to you now.”<br /><br />“You want to study with Master Park,” said Jen. She didn’t care anymore. “It’s fine. Go ahead.” If Olivia was really trying to change her whole life, Jen certainly wasn’t spiteful enough to try to stop her. And if this was all some kind of elaborate trap to get into Jen’s school, well, Jen had decided months ago, back at the co-op, that she wasn’t going to bother protesting whatever the reporters did. Jen could ignore Olivia like she usually ignored all the other beginning students. Hell, Rob could teach her; they would be a perfect match.<br /><br />“No,” said Olivia. “I want to study with you.”<br /><br />“With me?” said Jen, startled. “I’m not a teacher.” This evening had in fact been her first experience teaching, and clearly it had not ended up well.<br /><br />“Sure you are. You taught me all that stuff tonight. I thought you were a great teacher.”<br /><br />“I don’t think Master Park would agree to it,” said Jen, hoping this white lie would distract Olivia long enough for Jen to come up with a more credible excuse.<br /><br />“I told him tonight outside, after you hit me,” Olivia replied. “He said it’s fine, if you agree.”<br /><br />Jen couldn’t manage to be polite in her dismissals any longer.<br /><br />“You wrote those lies about me,” she said, spitefulness darkening her voice as she tried to control her temper. Jen saw several of the women in the room look up from their textbooks in alarm.<br /><br />“I never wrote any lies,” said Olivia. She did not appear insulted or ruffled by Jen’s attack. “I would never write lies. Everything I wrote was technically true.”<br /><br />“You said I was obsessed with fighting and I was sleeping with my training partner,” said Jen.<br /><br />“So you weren’t sleeping with her?” Olivia asked.<br /><br />“No!” Jen yelled. She expected the students to come to Olivia’s defense, but as soon as she had shown herself to be calm and untroubled, they had resumed their studying.<br /><br />“Oh, well, I wasn’t sure,” said Olivia. “You sure spent a lot of time at her house.”<br /><br />“That’s none of your business,” Jen said, trying to lower her volume. She could hear her voice shaking; she looked down and saw that her hands were shaking as well. “Didn’t you just say you only reported facts, not just things you made up?<br /><br />“I never said you were sleeping with her,” said Olivia, her calm voice suggesting that, unlike Jen, she was accustomed to this sort of confrontation. “I said that there were rumors you were sleeping with her.”<br /><br />“But there weren’t any rumors like that,” said Jen.<br /><br />“Sure there were. Me and the reporters had the rumors,” Olivia replied. “We had all kinds of rumors.”<br /><br />“That’s really crappy journalism,” said Jen. She was tired of yelling; her voice was worn and sullen now.<br /><br />“I know. And I shouldn’t defend it,” said Olivia, her voice softening. “I have no real way to defend myself, other than to say that I’ve stopped. I’ve stopped for good, and I’m going to do something better with my life, and I’m asking you to help me.”<br /><br />Jen sighed. She hated rejecting people, even people who had done horrible things to her in the past. And it did seem like Olivia had changed everything about her life in an effort to reject her disgusting, parasitic career. She cursed herself briefly for being so quick to forgive.<br /><br />“I’ll think about it, said Jen. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”<br /><br />“That’s great,” said Olivia, smiling broadly. She stood up and pointed at the clock. “Time’s up; you’re free,” she said, pointing at the clock. She pulled her jacket on and pushed in her chair.<br /><br />“You might think I’m a bad person,” said Olivia, “and maybe I am. But I never lie, and I always keep a promise.” And before Jen could say anything in response, Olivia had disappeared out the front door, leaving her half-finished drink on the table.<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2010/05/35-politics-itself.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 35</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-5999721997046624302010-03-05T00:25:00.000-08:002010-05-16T23:55:29.587-07:0033. Moved by Hope“As long as I fight, I am moved by hope; and if I fight with hope, then I can wait.” —Paulo Freire<br /><br />Step, punch, block, jump, <span style="font-style: italic;">kick</span>.<br /><br />Jen stopped and rubbed her hands together. They were getting numb already, and she had only been outside for ten minutes. Still too cold, she said to herself, pulling the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head.<br /><br />There had still been snow on the ground when she returned to Michigan a week ago, but the weather had been unseasonably warm for January since then, above freezing, and the melted snow had made its way down to the lake in little streams. This morning the sky was a bright, enticing blue through the kitchen window, and it had lured Jen out to practice her forms and kicks in the yard.<br /><br />She wrapped her arms around herself and stared across the lake, which was still covered with a thin layer of floating ice. The houses on the other side had been difficult to see through the thick layers of snow that covered their roofs and balconies and clung to the evergreens surrounding them. Now their full array of earth-tones was visible again: dark, muddy browns, stony tans and grays, a brick red. And there, off to the right, like moss clinging to the rocks, the old grass-green house that had comforted her back during the summer, when she first moved to Michigan and had felt so entirely alone.<br /><br />Jen was happy now to see it emerge, like the patchy grass of the lake house lawn appearing from beneath the snow. The cheerful color matched the blue sky, and Jen felt suddenly optimistic that life in North Middleton would be tolerable, even without Shane to train with. Look at this beautiful lake, this house, she told herself. And all I have to do is hang around and read and study taekwondo and learn to really play chess; this is a good life.<br /><br />She had said these words to herself each day since she returned to Michigan, but today, she actually believed them, at least for this moment.<br /><br />As she looked at the green house, she began to get the feeling that someone was looking back at her. She looked harder, and yes, there it was: at the edge of the balcony, crouched on a short chair or perhaps a stool, was the distant figure she remembered from the summer, staring at her from far across the lake.<br /><br />She continued staring for a moment, wondering if the person could see her. He moved a little, tightening his arms around his body, she thought, but his gaze did not waver. She realized how uneven their staring contest was; he was barely visible between the sweeping pine branches, while she was unobscured on a flat lawn. She wondered how long he had been watching, whether he had seen her doing such a horrible job on her forms, her feet numb and unstable on the cold earth, her hands too frozen to make proper fists. Embarrassed, she turned and walked back into the house, making a point of not looking behind her as she stepped through the door.<br /><br />But once she was inside, she still had the feeling that she was being watched. She finished her forms in the living room, imagining what Master Park would say about her cramped movements as she worked within the limitations of the enclosed space, trying not to kick the sofa or the end table. As she ate her usual lunch of toast and peanut butter, she almost went back to make a second helping, but something stopped her, and she decided that one serving was enough.<br /><br />She was antsy all afternoon, counting the hours until she could train again, even though she had been at the school only fifteen hours before. She had felt this way all week since returning to Michigan; it was like her body was trying to make up all of the exercise she had missed during her nine days in Los Angeles. She wanted to pull on her sneakers and go for a run, but she knew that was a silly idea; it would be better to save her energy for class. She forced herself to sit still and read the final chapters of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Meaningful Endgame</span>.<br /><br />When she finally arrived early for the intermediate/advanced class that night, she felt like skipping through the front door. Instead she calmly placed her bag and shoes in a cubby by the front window and made her way to the side of the room to stretch. She had half an hour until the class started, plenty of time for a nice, long warm-up.<br /><br />As she lowered herself into a forward split, she heard Master Park call her name. She looked up, and saw him standing just in front of the screen in the back. He folded his hand twice, beckoning her to follow, then disappeared behind the screen.<br /><br />“What now?” Jen whispered to herself, although no one had asked anything of her all day. She didn’t want to be interrupted from her stretching; she had just been thinking how wonderful the position felt, how eager she was to use all that range from her stretched-out hamstrings to kick high in the air. She sighed, lifted herself from the floor, and followed Master Park into the back room.<br /><br />“Hi,” she said as she walked through the door to the living room in back of the school. Master Park was sitting at the table, staring at the bookshelf.<br /><br />“I need you to do something,” he said, without looking up at her.<br /><br />“Okay,” said Jen, trying not to get frustrated by his complete lack of urgency. <span style="font-style: italic;">Time to warm up for class</span>, she thought, trying to project this idea into his mind.<br /><br />He continued to survey the bookshelf with the passive calm of somebody browsing a bookstore for a fun summer read. Finally he reached into the middle shelf. “You should read this book,” he said, handing her a small red paperback. <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Aggressive Male</span>. She remembered the title. It was the book Rob had been reading, the one that was encouraging him to want to win his fights more, but was also making him cheat on his girlfriend.<br /><br />Was this what Master Park had called her back here for? Couldn’t this have waited until their post-class chess lesson? She held the book disdainfully in two hands, between her thumbs and index fingers.<br /><br />“You think this will improve my taekwondo?” she asked.<br /><br />“Hm, I don’t know,” said Master Park, as though this thought had not occurred to him. “Maybe.”<br /><br />Jen looked at him expectantly, waiting for further explanation.<br /><br />“I think it will improve your chess,” he said.<br /><br />“Chess?” Jen repeatedly dumbly. She knew that Master Park wanted her to be more aggressive in her chess playing—but she had assumed that this was supposed to translate into her taekwondo. It hadn’t ever occurred to her that might be teaching her chess as an ends in itself.<br /><br />“I think you should start playing chess at the Snail Plant,” Master Park said. “I go Saturday afternoons, in the courtyard. But you’ll need to improve your game a little first. The guys over there are pretty competitive.”<br /><br />The courtyard, she thought, forgetting her hurry for a moment. She remembered the taekwondo class she had spied on there, how she had brought Rob to watch, how he had introduced her to Master Park. She thought about what the Snail Plant had symbolized to her then—the intrigue of a strange new town that was a cipher to her, a puzzle to solve. She hadn’t been back there since, called off the investigation as soon as she found something better to occupy her time. That place was too unreal, Jen thought, with that fortress-like exterior, those high, pink walls, the men with funny names that seemed to proliferate around it: Nicolai Snail, Ozzy Osterberg, even Vanto Hatch.<br /><br />She suddenly felt a strong wave of dread at the thought of going back there. After all, hadn’t she left Los Angeles to get away from that sort of unreality, to find something more substantial, tangible, something that meant exactly what it seemed to mean and nothing more? And hadn’t she found it?<br /><br />Calm down, she told herself; it’s just a place. A place to play chess. She shook her head and looked down at the book in her hands.<br /><br />“Okay, I’ll read it,” said Jen, turning towards the door. “I just finished the endgame book, so it’s good timing.”<br /><br />“Wait,” said Master Park, as she tried to leave. She stopped and turned around.<br /><br />“I still need you to do something,” he said.<br /><br />“Oh, right,” she said. She had assumed that reading the book and going to the Snail Plant were the somethings he had been referring to when he had called her into the back room.<br /><br />“I need you to train the new girl.”<br /><br />Jen tried not show her surprise, but she could feel her eyebrows rise. Only the top students trained the new people—usually Shane and Rob. Jen was still only a green belt. Of course, Shane was gone now, off to Ann Arbor with Brittany in time for their new semester to start at Eastern Michigan University. So maybe Master Park just needed a replacement, a new female trainer to set the female students at ease. Jen was now the most advanced woman in the school, she realized. Shane was gone—and wouldn’t be a woman for much longer at any rate. There were a handful of white and yellow-belted girls, most of whom had been there when Jen started training, but they barely ever came to class, and she had shot quickly past them.<br /><br />“Okay,” said Jen. “When, tomorrow?” She was feeling anxious to wrap up this conversation so she could get back to her warm-up. She could hear Rob leading the beginners through their final set of push-ups and sit-ups out in the training room, and the advanced class would begin in less than ten minutes.<br /><br />“No, now,” said Master Park. “She’s waiting by the front desk.”<br /><br />“But the beginner’s class is almost over,” Jen said. “Do you want me to train her for ten minutes?”<br /><br />“You can work with her during advanced class. She got confused and came at the wrong time; she got here right before you did. Just give her a first lesson, the beginning of the first form, roundhouse kick.”<br /><br />“But I’ll have to miss class,” she said. She knew she shouldn’t complain, but she couldn’t help herself.<br /><br />She knew as soon as she said it that she had made a grave mistake. Master Park looked straight at her, the edges of his mouth drooping grimly. “Some things are more important than class,” he said.<br /><br />“Yes, I know,” said Jen, believing it in principle.<br /><br />Out in the classroom, Jen scanned the room for the girl, looking for a college student. Instead she saw a woman close to her own age, perhaps in her early thirties, sitting in one of the folding chairs by the window.<br /><br />Right, we’re all girls here, Jen thought, remembering how Master Park had so often referred to her and Shane as “you girls,” how Shane had talked about “that girl who knocked you out” to Jen.<br /><br />Jen walked towards the woman, who rose to her feet. Jen sized her up quickly, comparing her to some of the other new woman she had seen at the school, most of whom had not stayed for more than a few weeks. The woman looked to be in decent if not exceptional shape, with some muscle tone visible in her arms and shoulders. She’s got to be doing some kind of exercise already, Jen said to herself. The woman’s skin shone with the healthy glow of someone well-nourished and hydrated; that was a good sign. Her hair was thick and dark, and Jen noted with approval that the woman had secured it into a plain, practical ponytail; that meant she wasn’t at the school just to meet a boyfriend, like some of the women who had come to class with their hair hanging unbound and well-combed, their faces full of makeup.<br /><br />“Hi,” said the woman, beaming a large, familiar smile at Jen as she approached. “I’m Olivia.”<br /><br />“I’m Jen.”<br /><br />“I know,” said the woman, still smiling as she placed her hand in Jen’s and shook it firmly.<br /><br />I guess she recognizes me, Jen thought, feeling startled; she hadn’t met any new people in a while, and she had gotten used to feeling anonymous in North Middleton.<br /><br />But looking into the woman’s eyes, Jen had the feeling that she also recognized the woman, that they had met somewhere, not so long ago. Perhaps she had seen her around town; maybe she worked in the supermarket where Jen had been buying her food ever since she had stopped going to the co-op. She tried to imagine the woman working behind the cashier’s counter; the image didn’t seem to fit. But that’s was the only place she ever went in North Middleton—to the store and the academy. She scanned her memory—could she know the woman from Los Angeles?<br /><br />She considered asking the woman if they had met before, but, thinking of how she had already gotten in trouble for not wanting to teach the student, she decided it was better to restrain herself from extraneous conversation that would distract from the lesson she was about to give.<br /><br />Over by the mirrors where Shane—then Brittany—had given Jen her first lessons, Jen led Olivia through the opening of the first form.<br /><br />“Good,” said Jen, meaning it, as Olivia confidently repeated her movements back to her. Watching her stomp and block and punch, Jen was impressed; there was no way Jen had looked half that good during her first lesson.<br /><br />Likewise, Olivia’s first roundhouse kick felt surprisingly powerful on the pad that Jen held for her. Her hips pivoted well and her leg snapped out with a nice whipping motion.<br /><br />“Have you done martial arts before?” Jen asked, realizing she should have asked this at the beginning of the lesson. I bet she did taekwondo as a kid, Jen told herself, or maybe kungfu or something. It was probably one of those things that never left your muscle memory, like running after a cab in high heels, which Jen had been pleased to discover she could still do during her visit to Los Angeles.<br /><br />“No, never,” said the woman.<br /><br />“You’re getting it very quickly,” said Jen. “Your form looks good and your kick is strong.”<br /><br />“Well, I used to be a dancer when I was a teenager,” the woman said, slurring her words and looking towards the ground as she said it, as though wanting to avoid talking about herself. “So I guess it’s not too hard for me to copy your movements.”<br /><br />Jen wanted to laugh from her surprise. It had never occurred to her that a dancer would have an advantage in learning to throw a roundhouse kick. The two arts seem diametrically opposed: dance was all about appearance and superficial things, whereas taekwondo was about power and fighting, and it didn’t matter how one looked.<br /><br />But in the end, I suppose it’s all just movements, Jen thought. If you can do the movements, then you can throw a good kick. She imagined an army of ballerinas throwing round after round of perfect, pirouette-like roundhouse kicks.<br /><br />“That’s amazing,” said Jen. “And you haven’t danced since you were a teenager?<br /><br />“No, not at all,” said Olivia. “I’ve been too busy with,” she paused, interrupting herself. “Well, a lot of stupid things, really.”<br /><br />“You look like you’re in good shape,” said Jen, noting again the definition of Olivia’s upper arms, more noticeable now that her muscles had been working. We should stop chatting, Jen thought, cursing herself for starting and continuing this conversation. She glanced around the room, hoping Master Park wasn’t watching them.<br /><br />“Well, I’ve been doing a lot of yoga just recently,” Olivia said. “For the last couple of months.”<br /><br />“Yoga?” Jen repeated, forgetting all about ending the conversation. “Where?”<br /><br />“Pomegranate Yoga Studio,” said Olivia. “Have you heard of it?”<br /><br />“No, I don’t know any yoga schools around here,” Jen said, a little embarrassed that she had given up her search so quickly after meeting Rob and Master Park. After that first taekwondo class, she had never bothered to even find out the names of any local schools. She marveled to think of her earlier yoga practice, how she used to go every day, even twice a day. She hadn’t done so much as a single sun salutation since she had arrived in North Middleton.<br /><br />“So, let’s see that roundhouse kick again,” said Jen.<br /><br />As the advanced students finished the isometric stretches that signaled the end of the class, Jen walked Olivia to the door. Seeing her in street clothes, a sweatshirt and puffy jacket, Jen was struck once again with how familiar she looked.<br /><br />“Do I know you from somewhere?” Jen finally asked.<br /><br />“Yeah, we’ve met a few times,” Olivia said, looking down at her feet again, as she had done when she talked about dancing.<br /><br />How could that be, Jen thought? She hadn’t met anyone in Michigan, at least not any women. The only people she had met were taekwondo students and people who worked in stores, and none of them had been named Olivia—she would remember a name like that.<br /><br />“In Los Angeles?” Jen asked. That would make sense. It seemed like she had been introduced to thousands of people there, more of them forgotten than remembered.<br /><br />“No,” said Olivia. “In Michigan.” She was still looking shyly at the floor.<br /><br />“I’m sorry,” said Jen. “I don’t remember meeting an Olivia here.”<br /><br />“Well, I don’t think we were formally introduced,” she woman said. “And Olivia is actually my middle name.”<br /><br />“But where did we meet?” Jen asked, puzzled. The more Olivia talked, the more Jen was certain that they had met before, many times, that this woman had played some significant role in her life.<br /><br />“At the food co-op,” said Olivia. “And then I saw you again at your tournament.”<br /><br />“At the food co-op,” Jen repeated, the center of her consciousness now racing to catch up to something lingering around the edges.<br /><br />A voice rang in her head, and it wasn’t Olivia’s. It was a man’s voice, a man with a funny accent, Australian, perhaps, or maybe from some very isolated part of the Bronx. And the voice was saying, “Bradley’s baby.” Yes, she could hear it clearly now: “Do you have any comment on Bradley’s baby?”<br /><br />Jen gasped.<br /><br />“Um…um…” Jen stuttered, dredging for the woman’s name. That reporter, the one who wrote that horrible tabloid article about her. What was her name?<br /><br />“Lorna O. Lee?” she finally sputtered, unable to hide the disgust in her voice.<br /><br />“Yes!” said Olivia, smiling in pleasant surprise. “I didn’t know you knew my name.”<br /><br />“Oh, yes, I do,” said Jen, confused now. Why was this woman beaming at her, this woman who had written all manner of ridiculous lies about her, who was making her own wealth by slandering Jen’s name? Here she was, allowing Jen to make a fool of herself, showing her the opening of the first form, teaching her to throw a roundhouse kick. Here was this woman pretending to be a student, accepting this precious knowledge from Jen, the most important things that Jen knew. And for what—another story? Another insider exposé of Jen’s secret life?<br /><br />The woman fell to the floor, and Jen looked down at her fist. It stung a little. She had just punched the reporter in the face.<br /><br />Never hit a reporter, Jen thought dully, watching her clutch both hands over her right eye.<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2010/04/34-what-we-pretend-to-be.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 34</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-12651450457984507132010-01-23T19:59:00.000-08:002010-05-16T23:56:51.452-07:0032. The Intent to Be Lost“The art of losing isn’t hard to master;<br />so many things seem filled with the intent<br />to be lost that their loss is no disaster.”<br /><br />—Elizabeth Bishop<br /><br />“Oh my God,” Becky exclaimed, as Paula handed her the book across the table. “I didn’t know this was out yet.”<br /><br />They were out at brunch a few days after the baby shower—Becky, Jen, Paula, and Paula’s mysterious new non-sexual romantic partner, whose name was Ex. Chase and Eduardo were supposed to be there, too, but Eduardo had caught a cold at the last minute and needed Chase to stay home and nurse him: “He hates being sick. He gets too lonely in bed all day by himself,” Chase had said to Jen on the phone as he apologized for missing brunch.<br /><br />“It’s not out,” said Paula. “Ex had some connections so we got an advanced copy.”<br /><br />“Thanks so much,” said Becky, a little more reserved as she addressed Paula’s androgynous lover. Ex nodded politely; so far, he or she didn’t seem to be much of a talker. Jen had met Ex briefly at the shower and now again today, but she still had no idea whether Ex was a man or a woman. Becky didn’t know, either: “When I asked Paula, she just said, ‘Ex doesn’t have a gender,’” Becky had said. “I tried to bug her about it, but she wouldn’t tell me anything more.”<br /><br />Becky held the book up for Jen to see. Jen read the title as it floated between Becky’s bulging stomach and her beaming face.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Deliberate Family. </span><br /><br />“What is it?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“It’s the new Groundbreakers book on parenting,” Becky said, with an enthusiasm that she hadn’t shown for any of the organic cotton blankets, designer baby clothes and fancy diapering gadgets she had received at the shower. “It’s supposed to be all about making conscious choices about your interaction with your child, instead of just doing whatever comes into your head.”<br /><br />“So they think you should avoid being relaxed and acting naturally?” Jen asked. Becky scrunched her face up in rejection of this critique, then put the book down on the table so she could focus her attention back on the enormous plate of scrambled eggs in front of her.<br /><br />“You might actually like this one,” Paula said to Jen. “It uses a lot of chess metaphors.”<br /><br />“Chess?” Jen asked. “I thought Groundbreakers was all about construction and mining.”<br /><br />“They’ve been switching up a lot lately,” Becky said. “They’ve been emphasizing competition as a theme.”<br /><br />“Yeah, actually I had trouble understanding all the chess stuff,” Paula said, picking up the book and handing it to Jen. “I mean, I only skimmed through it; it probably explains more if you read the whole thing.”<br /><br />Jen let the book fall open to a page in the middle. Her eyes landed on a familiar word, and she read aloud: “Zwischenzug.”<br /><br />“What?” said Becky.<br /><br />“It’s a chess strategy,” said Jen, trying to remember when she had seen it used. “I can’t exactly remember what the strategy is, though.”<br /><br />“Does the book explain it?” Paula asked.<br /><br />Jen scanned the page until she found a definition. She read the passage aloud. “In a zwischenzug, a player is in the position to capture a piece, but he delays capturing it. Instead, he makes other moves that strengthen his position and require his opponent’s immediate attention. He then goes on to capture the piece.”<br /><br />Jen stopped, puzzled. She had seen that kind of strategy a number of times, but she couldn’t remember Master Park using that word; he never taught her technical chess terms. “When did I hear that?” she asked herself aloud. She remembered somebody inflecting it with the nasal diphthongs of the Midwest.<br /><br />“I do something like that in tic-tac-toe,” Becky said. “No, I really do,” she added, when everyone ignored her comment except Paula, who laughed dismissively.<br /><br />Jen shook her head, looked down at the page, and continued reading. “Psychologically, this maneuver is a show of force meant to frustrate and intimidate one’s opponent. It is like punching a man in the face, and then, as he lifts his arms to defend against further punches, kneeing him in the stomach. Then, as he doubles over, you punch him in the face once more.”<br /><br />Jen looked up from the book again. “I’m curious how this will relate to parenting,” she said skeptically.<br /><br />“Me too,” said Becky, her eyes widening with excitement. “This is great.”<br /><br />“Experiment with this strategy in your own household,” Jen read. “When your child has violated your rules, do not punish him right away. Use the leverage of the situation to get him to do things that you want him to do.<br /><br />“For example, imagine your child breaks something in the house—perhaps a lamp. You find the broken pieces that he has hidden in his room. Don’t play your move right away; hold on to the evidence for later. Now, you can begin to make suggestions: Why don’t you clean the bathroom? How about you take your little sister to the park? I think if we sold your video game consul, you could get a lot more homework done, don’t you?”<br /><br />“Wow,” said Becky, clearly impressed. She had put down her fork so she could give her full attention to the passage Jen was reading.<br /><br />“You can deploy these intermediate moves for several days, potentially up to a week,” Jen read. “When you sense that your child’s feelings of guilt and fear are beginning to subside, that is the moment to produce your evidence: show him the broken lamp, tell him that he will need to do chores to earn the money to buy a new lamp, along with extra chores as an interest payment for all the days that he did not tell you about his crime.”<br /><br />“Brilliant,” said Becky.<br /><br />“It’s good stuff, isn’t it?” Paula asked, pleased that her present was being received so well. Even Ex was smiling in peaceful approval as he or she nibbled his or her toast.<br /><br />“I’ve been doing these Groundbreakers parenting meetings,” said Becky to Jen. “They’ve been talking about this kind of stuff, but no one can get the book yet.”<br /><br />Jen closed the book and put it down on the table. Something had been bothering her about the analogy of chess to parenting. It had taken her a moment to figure out what it was; suddenly, it came to her. “Isn’t it kind of weird to think of your child as an opponent?” she asked.<br /><br />“No, it’s not,” said Becky, her tone conveying that she had anticipated this counterargument, or, more probably, that her Groundbreakers advisors had. “But that’s what we’re taught to think as mothers, that it’s weird. That our child’s interests are identical to our own. It’s not true. Groundbreakers has been teaching me to recognize that I will have needs and desires that run counter to those of my child, and that our interaction will always be a negotiation of needs, goals, and interests.”<br /><br />Jen had already tuned Becky out, as she always had whenever the Groundbreakers rhetoric got too heavy. She tried again to remember where she had heard the term “zwischenzug.”<br /><br />“Oh, I remember who taught me that word,” said Jen. “It was Brittany.” She remembered the first time she had met Shane’s girlfriend, how she had seen the intermediate move that Jen had missed, the move that, it turned out, would force Master Park to move his pawn, creating an opening to set up a game-ending attack. Master Park had explained it to her later, and they had reviewed the strategy a number of times, though never again using that funny name.<br /><br />“That’s the woman who was teaching you taekwondo, right?” asked Becky. “She plays chess, too?”<br /><br />“No,” said Jen. “Actually it was her girlfriend.”<br /><br />“They’re <span style="font-style: italic;">both </span>named Brittany?” Becky asked. “Brittany and Brittany?”<br /><br />“Well, they would have been,” Jen said, wondering how much to explain. “The first Brittany changed her name to Shane. I mean, his name.” The moment she corrected herself, she had the urge to cover her mouth with her hand, but it was too late; it was out. Jen had been working on referring to Shane by masculine pronouns during the last few weeks since she—he—had told Jen of his plan to change his gender. But she wished she had restrained her self-editing right now, so she wouldn’t have to explain.<br /><br />“<span style="font-style: italic;">His </span>name?” Becky asked, raising her eyebrows.<br /><br />“Yeah, she’s going to become a guy,” Jen said, trying to sound nonchalant about it. She had remembered, mid-sentence, that she still had no idea of Ex’s gender status.<br /><br />“Seriously?” asked Becky, her unconcealed surprise making Jen cringe as she thought of what Ex’s reaction might be. “She’s switching from a woman to a man? Why would you ever want to do that? I’ve never met anyone who went that direction before.”<br /><br />“You’ve met people who went the other direction?” Jen asked. Until recently, she had been pretty familiar with all of Becky’s friends and acquaintances, at least by description. She hadn’t heard anything about a transgendered woman; it was the sort of thing she thought Becky would have mentioned.<br /><br />“No,” Becky said. “I guess I haven’t.”<br /><br />Jen tried to find Ex in her peripheral vision, hoping to gage his or her reaction to this line of conversation. As far as Jen could tell from this sidelong glance, Ex’s face appeared as calm and removed as ever, without any sign of tension in the pointed chin, large dark eyes, or prominent cheekbones.<br /><br />“At least I’d heard of men becoming women, though,” Becky continued, apparently oblivious or unconcerned about Ex’s presence. “You always hear about men who used to be women; they’re all over the talk shows. I haven’t heard too much about the other way around. Well, unless,” she said, turning to look at Ex.<br /><br />Oh, don’t ask him, or her, Jen commanded silently. Just let it go.<br /><br />“Did you used to be…” Becky continued, waiting for Ex to finish the question for her.<br /><br />Ex just looked at her expectantly, a small, polite smile on his or her face.<br /><br />“I mean, are you…”<br /><br />“Are you asking about Ex’s gender?” Paula asked, grabbing her lover’s arm protectively. “Ex doesn’t have a gender.”<br /><br />“I have been both genders,” Ex said, in a voice that was both melodious and gruff. Jen could imagine it belonging to a surprisingly sensitive truck driver, or the singer in an all-female punk band, or a teenaged boy trying to sound older than he was. “I spent many years projected into the world through the prisms of both ‘male’ and ‘female.’”<br /><br />Now Paula was surprised. “Really?” she asked. That’s love, Jen thought. Up until now, Jen had found it a bit annoying that Paula refused to explain Ex’s gender. But suddenly it seemed charming that Paula had taken Ex’s explanation at face value. Paula really <span style="font-style: italic;">believed </span>that Ex was neither male nor female, without any further questioning of this impossible proposition, Jen realized.<br /><br />“Of course,” said Ex. “I wasn’t always this neutral figure you see before you. In fact, if you had met me then, back in the days when I was a man or when I was a woman, you never would have recognized me as the person you see today.”<br /><br />Looking at Ex, Jen believed this; she could not quite imagine the face as belonging to either a woman or a man. It blended both elements so perfectly that when Jen tried to imagine it as one gender, contradictory features popped up that made it appear more strongly the other. But if she imagined it as the other gender, then suddenly it reverted to the first one. It was like one of those drawings in which it is impossible to tell if a box is facing up or down, projecting out at the viewer or retreating backwards into the world of the drawing.<br /><br />“I was very, very good at each gender,” said Ex. “Too good. People expected things of me, certain behaviors, attitudes. I felt that I was not fully myself; yet people were completely fooled. They used to fall in love with me, throw themselves at me, take off their clothes. People like when you are the paragon of what they expect you to be; it attracts them.”<br /><br />Jen looked across the table to see how Becky was reacting to this arrogance; she appeared to be completely engrossed in Ex’s narrative and not at all resistant or skeptical. Remembering Becky’s friendly façade around Eduardo, Jen wondered if Becky liked Ex or simply tolerated him or her because of Paula.<br /><br />“When I was a man, I was a brick wall,” Ex said. “People expected me to be rigid, unbending. Men puffed themselves up for battle when I stated a simple viewpoint or observation; women deferred to me, deftly reorganizing their opinions to mirror mine. It was disgusting to me, this unearned power. It made me nauseated.”<br /><br />As Ex spoke about being a man, he seemed to grow into one before Jen’s eyes. The jaw solidified into squareness, the voice hit deep notes that were definitely more tenor than alto.<br /><br />“The worst part of it was my job,” Ex said. “I worked in commodities trading.”<br /><br />Paula looked over at him in surprise. “You never told me you knew about finance,” she said.<br /><br />“I didn’t,” Ex said. “I still don’t, really.”<br /><br />“But don’t you need to go to school for that kind of thing?” Becky asked. She herself had gotten a business degree in hopes, at the time, of getting a fancy financial job, though things hadn’t worked out that way.<br /><br />“You would think so,” said Ex. “But no, I didn’t need to. I was living in Chicago, and I got a job filing papers in an office. All the traders liked me, thought I was ‘one of the guys.’ They were always inviting me out to drinks, complaining about their jobs, and I would chime in with my thoughts and ideas. And when one of them had a nervous breakdown and quit—they were always having nervous breakdowns at that office—they offered me his job.”<br /><br />“That’s horrible!” Becky exclaimed. She had worked as an administrative assistant for several years after she completed her business degree, hoping to move up in the company, and though they interviewed her for several openings, she always lost out to someone with more experience, or a more advanced degree—and always a man.<br /><br />“No offense,” she added. “I’m glad it worked out for you.”<br /><br />“No, you’re right. It was horrible,” Ex said. “And yet, part of me liked it, craved the approval, puffing itself up to become all that people saw me as. My body was rigid, and my shoulders stiff in their broadness. I grew strong as an oak and stiff as one. I grew to see why the men at the office were so psychologically fragile. I felt that if I were pushed too hard, I would crack through my very core.”<br /><br />A look of suffering crossed Ex’s face, as though something was piercing his stomach. He frowned for a moment, pushed his shaggy hair back from his forehead, his mouth conveying strength and anger and pain all at once.<br /><br />If Jen had doubted Ex’s claim about attracting people, taken it as boastful pride, she believed it now. Even as Ex spoke about his discomfort with his masculinity, Jen felt the overwhelming desire to embrace him, to throw herself against his chest and be wrapped in his arms, to offer herself as a comfort in the face of the pain he described. She had to remind herself that this was Paula’s lover, and a person that Jen barely knew, to restrain herself from leaning in to kiss his unhappy mouth.<br /><br />Then his face softened, so abruptly that Jen couldn’t place when it changed, though it had changed radically. She looked at Ex’s eyes; they appeared now to be clearly women’s eyes, Jen thought, shy and dark and secretive. Ex’s brow was too delicate, her eyelashes too graceful to belong to a man, it seemed now. So odd, Jen thought, when a moment ago she was a man, and I was so attracted to him.<br /><br />“When I was a woman, I was soft like butter,” Ex said. “I was tasteful. I was polite. Nothing made me so uncomfortable as someone else’s discomfort, so I did all I could to comfort and appease those around me. I felt that I was melting, changing my shape all the time, molding myself to the expectations of other people.”<br /><br />Ex cleared her throat and looked around the table, checking to see that everyone was still paying attention. Becky nodded encouragingly at her. “Go on,” she said.<br /><br />“Men were always asking me on dates,” she said. “And I wasn’t interested in them, but I would go, because I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. I sat through endless insufferable dinners, picking at my food because I didn’t like for the men to see me eating. I stopped answering my phone so that I wouldn’t have to refuse a second date.”<br /><br />“What was your job when you were a woman?” Paula asked.<br /><br />“Oh, nothing too notable,” said Ex. “I worked at a day care for a bit, and at an after-school program. Those jobs were only part-time; I did a little modeling, too, when I could get work. I lived in L.A. then. I never had any money. I bought everything with coupons, like an old lady, and I sometimes let men buy me clothes, but I hated doing that.”<br /><br />Ex seemed to fold into herself as she recalled these difficult times; she pulled her knees up to her chest and shivered, despite the warm temperature in the restaurant. Her long bangs fell over her forehead, shading one eye, which only enhanced the brilliant green of the other eye, which Jen could swear was bordered in dark eyeliner.<br /><br />Again, Jen felt the powerful desire to embrace Ex—to pull her close, to touch her hair, her face, to rip open the buttons of her shirt so she could touch the soft skin below them. A confusing set of conflicting emotions tore at her chest; she wanted to protect this fragile woman—but also to devour her.<br /><br />What is wrong with me? Jen asked herself, rubbing her eyes to try to straighten out her vision. <span style="font-style: italic;">Paula’s lover</span>, Jen said to herself, several times over, as a mantra, her eyes closed against the apparition.<br /><br />“Did that explain everything?” Ex asked. Jen opened her eyes, and Ex had returned to his or her previous state of optical illusion; the man and the woman were both gone.<br /><br />“I have a question!” exclaimed Jen, with the poor manners of one who has just awakened from a trance. Then, realizing that the question she wanted to ask might very likely be perceived as rude, she added, “I mean, if you don’t mind.”<br /><br />A look of fatigue, or annoyance even, passed over Ex’s eyes, and he sounded irritated when he spoke. “No, go ahead,” he said.<br /><br />Oh no, Jen thought, horrified that she might have broken the fragile spell, that Ex would be angry with her. “Oh,” said Jen, feeling her face grow warm with embarrassment, “it was nothing.”<br /><br />Ex’s face softened, and her voice grew softer, more patient. “No, it’s okay,” she said. “Really, that’s why I asked.”<br /><br />“Oh, well,” said Jen, stumbling over her words in embarrassment. “Were you…I mean, which were you first, a man or a woman? I mean, a boy or a girl? Which one were you born as?”<br /><br />She heard Paula breathe in sharply. Jen knew it was rude to ask, but she felt that she needed to know, that it would help her understand who this mysterious person sitting in front of her was.<br /><br />“That is an interesting question,” Ex said.<br /><br />“Really?” Jen asked, surprised. “I would think people asked you that all the time.”<br /><br />“They do,” said Ex. “That’s what is interesting about it. I suppose people think that it means something.”<br /><br />Now Jen really wished she hadn’t asked the question. But since she had, she decided to commit to it; after all, there was nothing wrong with being curious. Ex had told her a story, and she wanted more information about it.<br /><br />“Well, doesn’t it mean something?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“What do you think it means?” Ex replied.<br /><br />Jen wanted to say,<span style="font-style: italic;"> It means who you really are.</span> But she knew that was the wrong answer. Growing up, her next-door-neighbors had been Mormons. The children, who were born into Mormonism, weren’t any more Mormon than their parents, who had converted. In fact, some might say that the parents were all the more Mormon because they had made a conscious choice to be so.<br /><br />“Maybe you’re right,” said Jen. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”<br /><br />“I didn’t say that,” said Ex. “I just asked a question.” It was true, Jen thought; she had just assumed, for some reason.<br /><br />“Which do you think I was born as?” Ex asked Jen.<br /><br />Jen studied the lines of Ex’s face, the sharpness of the chin and soft curve of the cheekbones, the glowing brown skin showing no sign of an evening shadow.<br /><br />“I have no idea,” Jen said.<br /><br />“I sometimes forget, myself,” said Ex. “A girly boy, a boyish girl. Years pass, and it all begins to run together.”<br /><br />“It doesn’t matter,” said Paula, grabbing Ex’s arm and twining her own around it. “I bet you were adorable, either way.”<br /><br />“I have a question,” said Becky. “Which way is sex better? As a man or a woman?”<br /><br />“Becky!” said Paula sharply. Jen looked over at Becky, who, unlike herself, did not seem the least bit self-conscious about asking personal questions. It wasn’t in Becky’s nature to be shy, Jen thought, but this was pushing the boundaries of politeness even for her. It’s the pregnant-lady prerogative, Jen thought—they are allowed to be brutally honest, what with their own private business so publically on display for all to see.<br /><br />Still, Jen thought, it seemed a particularly inappropriate question to ask an avowed celibate.<br /><br />Ex didn’t seem annoyed at the question. “I didn’t like it either way,” Ex said. “It never made any sense to me.”<br /><br />“You didn’t like sex?” Becky asked, incredulous. “I didn’t know that was possible.”<br /><br />“Of course I didn’t like it,” Ex replied. “Why do you think I gave it up?”<br /><br />“I thought it was some kind of spiritual thing,” said Becky.<br /><br />“It is,” said Ex. “You know, perhaps I enjoyed sex at the time. All I remember now is that it made me crazy. It made me have connections to other people that were…” Ex paused to choose a word: “unhealthy.”<br /><br />Becky nodded. “That makes sense,” she said. Jen noticed her absently rubbing her hand across her belly as she spoke.<br /><br />“When I was unhappy with my gender, I thought another gender would make me happier, would be truer to myself,” Ex continued. “I was wrong.”<br /><br />Ex turned and looked straight at Jen across the table.<br /><br />“Remember that,” said Ex. “Tell your friend: if you don’t like your car, you could get a different one, but someday you will not like that one either. It is an endless cycle of neediness. I think you are better off to get rid of your car and just walk on your own plain feet.”<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2010/03/33-moved-by-hope.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 33</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-67145267599562187242009-12-31T08:34:00.000-08:002010-11-30T22:26:11.944-08:0031. The Agent of Defeat“It is important to understand that only rarely does the volume of stress defeat us; far more often the agent of defeat is insufficient capacity for recovery after the stress. Great stress simply requires great recovery.” —James E. Loehr<br /><br />It was snowing in Michigan. Through the window of the airplane, Jen could see the white specks cutting a diagonal path across the dark pre-dawn sky as she arranged her books and carry-on bag for easy accessibility during the flight. The woman sitting in the window seat had boarded the plane already dressed for Los Angeles in a short skirt, her bare legs tightly crossed to protect her modesty. The cabin was chilly, and the woman hugged herself, rubbing her upper arms through her thin sweater.<br /><br />Jen, who was always cold on airplanes, looked down at her own outfit: thick sweatpants that would serve as her pajamas in California, an old t-shirt, a giant, hooded sweatshirt. Even at the height of her fashion-consciousness, she had never dressed sexy when she traveled. She liked her airplane clothes to double as a blanket; once she got settled in, she would pull her hood up over her head, pull her arms inside the body of the sweatshirt, and try to sleep. Still, in years past, the sweatshirt would have been something more stylish: the top half of a matching designer terrycloth track suit, or perhaps a fashionably large cowl-necked sweater that she could sink her head down into while she slept and ignored the other passengers.<br /><br />Usually flight attendants showered her with special attention, knowing that a complaint from her could get them fired. It had been years since she had flown without multiple inquiries as to her comfort: was she too warm, too cold, would she like more blankets, was she hungry, thirsty, did she need pills to sleep?<br /><br />The male attendant on this flight seemed more interested in Jen’s short-skirted neighbor. “We have warm cookies,” he said to her, winking, looking right past Jen even as he handed her the warm face cloth that always marked the beginning of a flight in business class. “Let me know if you get hungry.”<br /><br />Jen studied herself in the bathroom mirror as soon as she was allowed to rise from her seat. The flight attendant had looked right past her as though she were any one of the hundred anonymous passengers on the plane. Was she really so changed as to be unrecognizable? The dim, yellow light showed an athletic young woman whose muscular shoulders were apparent even under the bulk of sweatshirt. Her hair was still short; she had taken to cutting it herself, which she turned out to be reasonably skilled at. But this morning she hadn’t brushed it, so it clung to the side of her had in some places and stuck out at startling angles in others. She hadn’t bothered with dying it black after the first time. Without any coloring or highlights, it was the indistinctive color of dead leaves, a few shades darker than her face, which was still tawny from all the time she had spent practicing her forms outdoors before the weather had gotten too cold. Her jaw looked broad and strong, her eyes bright and focused below her messy hair.<br /><br />She tried to remember what she had looked like before. It wasn’t so long ago—six months, she thought in awe, although it seemed like years—but she couldn’t get a clear image of herself with her long hair, her blonde highlights, her skinny limbs. All that came to mind were photographs from magazines, stylized images of exaggerated emotion: Jen looking sweet, looking angry, looking perturbed. Jen at her wedding, looking glamorous and happy. Jen after the divorce, tears streaming down her face, juxtaposed against a photo of Bradley rolling his eyes in exasperation.<br /><br />No wonder the flight attendant didn’t recognize me, she thought, remembering the soft, sheltered look of her cheeks and neck in those photos, the frail femininity of her face. That sweet princess look was all gone now. It had been beaten out of her by six months of grueling workouts, of repeated blows to her face and body. And perhaps even more, by six months of life in a place where people didn’t care how she looked, where she hadn’t heard one comment, positive or negative, about her appearance, after so many years of constant scrutiny, cattiness, unsolicited opinions.<br /><br />I look tough, she decided, pulling her sweatshirt hood up over her head and practicing mean fighter faces in the mirror until she remembered that there was a line of people waiting to use the restroom. It had been a relief not to always care about being pretty, about looking hot at this premier or that party, to know that her body was okay not because of how it appeared, but because of how hard and fast it could fly in and throw a kick at her opponent.<br /><br />Back in her seat, though, doubt began to creep over her. She imagined how she would appear to her friends in Los Angeles, with her newly boyish physique, unkempt hair, and new secondhand wardrobe that had replaced her original clothing, which was not warm enough for winter and was all too small now at any rate. Her old shirts strained over her shoulders and biceps; her short skirts had gone from flirty to scandalous now that they barely covered her newly muscular behind.<br /><br />Shane had taken her to the giant secondhand store where the college students shopped. There Jen had found plenty of cute and practical things to fit her new climate, physique, and lifestyle: multiple pairs of running pants with stripes down their legs, thick long-sleeve t-shirts that could be worn on sunny autumn days, warm hooded sweatshirts, a puffy vest that she loved because it fit so neatly over a sweatshirt for extra warmth. And just as it had gotten too cold for the vest, and she had begun to pile two and even three sweatshirts under it along with a scarf and hat and gloves, she had found a perfect winter coat, long, puffy, filled with down, and in a style that seemed to be fashionable amongst the college-student crowd; “Score!” Shane’s girlfriend Brittany had cooed after Jen found it hanging alongside rows of pilled pea coats and boldly-colored ski jackets.<br /><br />They are going to laugh at me in Los Angeles, she realized, imagining her appearance from Becky, Paula, and Chase’s perspective. Was she going to attend Becky’s shower in secondhand sweatpants? Even her “nice” outfit, which she had remembered to stuff into her suitcase the moment before she left the lake house, the stretchy black pants and tailored tank top with a pretty Asian design on it, would appear to her friends as hardly more than a glorified sweat suit. Yet in Michigan, this was as fancy as anyone she knew ever dressed. Of course, she still had several closets full of her old clothes at the house, she reminded herself, although they would be too small. Worse, she realized, they were over six months old, which meant that they would be laughably out of style.<br /><br />Don’t think about it, she told herself, pulling her newest chess book from the seat-back pocket in front of her. It was the last in a series of three by Thomas Fo; <span style="font-style: italic;">The Meaningful Endgame</span>, it was called.<br /><br />By the time the flight arrived in Los Angeles, Jen was dreading the reaction she would receive from her friends when she met them in the airport. She could just imagine Chase eyeing her hair skeptically, telling her not to worry, that something could be done to salvage it.<br /><br />But as she passed the security gate, only Becky was waiting for her. Jen could see her from a distance, staring into the crowd of arriving passengers. She looked remarkably unchanged for a woman who was eight months pregnant. Her trim figure was barely altered, except for the large, round belly filling out her stretchy tunic. As Jen walked up to her, she saw that her face still bore the same combination of girlishness and shrewdness that it always had, except with a bit of added rosiness in the cheeks, and tired-looking crinkles around the eyes that Jen did not remember having seen before.<br /><br />Becky looked at her blankly for a moment before her face lit up with recognition. “Oh, hi!” she said, reaching out to enclose Jen in a warm, tight hug. Jen hugged her back, marveling that this pregnant lady who she could barely fit her arms around was her best friend of so many years.<br /><br />“I can’t believe you’re pregnant,” Jen said. “You look just the same.” She realized too late that her statement invited commentary about her own changed appearance.<br /><br />“So do you,” said Becky, automatically, before determining that her statement was too obviously false to stand unedited. “I mean, you look different, actually.”<br /><br />“I’ve been working out a lot,” said Jen, trying to smooth over the awkwardness she had caused by bringing up this topic.<br /><br />“Yeah, I can tell,” Becky said. “You look…” She paused to find a word. “Strong,” she decided.<br /><br />Jen wasn’t sure if this was a compliment, directed at a woman in Los Angeles, but she decided to take it as one. “Thanks,” she said.<br /><br />“So it’s just you?” Jen asked, as they walked towards the luggage claim.<br /><br />“What do you mean?” said Becky.<br /><br />“I thought Paula and Chase would be with you,” Jen said.<br /><br />“We’re going to meet Chase for dinner,” Becky said. “Paula won’t be back for a few days, though. She’s on a retreat.”<br /><br />“What kind of retreat?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“I don’t know, some kind of sex cult,” Becky said.<br /><br />“I thought she was celibate.”<br /><br />“Oh, she’s celibate,” said Becky, her tone indicating that this had been a frequent topic of conversation. “But she’s into this tantric thing now. She’s got this new partner and I guess they’re into this tantric non-penetrative intercourse thing.”<br /><br />“Partner?” Jen asked. “Is it a guy or a girl?”<br /><br />“Well,” said Becky, “That’s kind of complicated.”<br /><br />Normally, Jen would have found this response mysterious, but now that she had been hearing all about Shane’s intended transition from female to male, she understood the general idea without further questioning. She could find out the specifics from Paula when she returned.<br /><br />Back at the house, Becky helped Jen find a suitable outfit for dinner. “I think this shirt will fit,” she said, pulling a sheer striped blouse from the closet. “It was a little big on you before.”<br /><br />Jen tried it on and shrugged; “It’s fine,” she said, but Becky wrinkled her nose and began fussing with the sleeves, which were bunching awkwardly over her upper arms.<br /><br />It was nice to spend time with Becky in the house like this, Jen thought. Despite her initial hesitance to break from her training schedule, once the trip was arranged, she had actually been looking forward to it. Shane had stopped training altogether while she got ready for her move to Ann Arbor, and the school was lonely without her. Jen realized that what had felt like a rich social life in North Middleton actually mainly consisted of her training sessions, plus an occasional evening at Shane’s apartment with her friends. Without Shane, Jen was only training with Master Park, either alone or in the advanced class, which consisted solely of college-aged men and Rob. Now, it was the thought of returning to Michigan, rather than the thought of leaving it, that was filling her with anxiety.<br /><br />Once Jen had tried on half a dozen outfits and Becky had finally deemed one of them acceptable, Becky drove them to meet Chase for dinner. The restaurant used to be one of Jen’s favorites. It had everything she used to enjoy: tiny portions, fussy ingredients, minimalist-chic décor. It’s pretty, Jen thought, eyeing the concrete tables and pale blue glass lamps as she and Becky waited to be seated. But all the careful thought that had gone into the decorations seemed to her now like a waste of effort and resources. Why spend so much energy on all of these hand-made tables and bars and lamps? She knew this was a silly train of thought, that decorating was not a waste of energy any more than taekwondo or yoga or brushing one’s teeth. But she couldn’t stop thinking of all the more valuable things that could be accomplished rather than getting these decorations just right; that kind of attention to detail could lead someone to throw a perfect roundhouse kick, she thought, or open a homeless shelter, or find a cure for a horrible disease. Even the people in the restaurant seemed excessively thought-out in their casual-but-stylish clothing that clung to their bodies just so, as though they had all come directly from a photo shoot for a yoga supply catalogue.<br /><br />“For four,” said Becky to the hostess, who took them to a concrete table in the corner, lit by a steel lamp hanging overhead like some kind of Spartan boom mike.<br /><br />“Who’s the fourth?” Jen asked, as she sat down across from Becky.<br /><br />“Chase’s boyfriend,” Becky said. “Eduardo.”<br /><br />“Oh,” said Jen, surprised. She hadn’t heard anything about Chase having a boyfriend. She wondered how this detail would affect her vision of Becky and Chase’s perfect co-parenting situation.<br /><br />“What’s he like?” Jen asked. She had no idea what sort of men Chase was attracted to. She envisioned him towering over a petite, feminine hairdresser, then dwarfed by a strapping leather daddy.<br /><br />Before Becky could respond, Chase was walking towards the table, followed by a tall, broad-shouldered man in a stylish olive suit. The man had the self-important air of an investment banking executive or advertising mogul. As they navigated between the tables she saw the man discreetly place his hand on Chase’s hip; if not for this small gesture, Jen would have assumed that this was not the boyfriend but some stranger on his way to the bathroom, the sort of stranger who had a trophy wife at home and a couple of buxom administrative assistant mistresses at work.<br /><br />Becky and Jen stood to great them as they reached the table. Chase leaned in to give Jen a hug. He looked the same as ever, beaming handsomely in his casual-but-expensive designer sweater.<br /><br />“Jen, this is Eduardo,” said Chase as he released her, smiling proudly as he looked his boyfriend up and down. The guy was pretty good-looking, Jen thought, in a kind of overly-put-together way that matched her feelings about the restaurant.<br /><br />Eduardo leaned in and kissed her on one cheek and then the other before sitting on the seat next to her. “So nice to finally meet you,” he said. “I’ve heard so much.”<br /><br />“Likewise,” said Jen, hoping her expression wouldn’t belie the fact that she hadn’t known of his existence until two minutes ago.<br /><br />Eduardo reached across the table to Becky and laid his hand over her round stomach. “How’s our little mama?” he asked, giving her belly a rub.<br /><br />Jen winced, expecting Becky to shake his hand off and offer some withering comment in reply, but she just smiled politely. “Pretty good,” she said. “Ready for baby to make her grand debut.”<br /><br />“It’s a girl?” Jen asked. She hadn’t even thought to ask about the baby’s gender. That shows how disconnected I’ve been, she chastised herself.<br /><br />“Oh yeah, I didn’t tell you?” Becky said. “I guess we really haven’t talked much.”<br /><br />Jen wanted to ask more—what names was Becky thinking of? Had she been hoping for a girl or a boy? Was she going to dress the baby in pink or in more unconventional, unisex clothes? But Eduardo spoke first.<br /><br />“Chase and I are so excited about the baby,” Eduardo said, as he pulled out the chair next to Jen, waited for Chase to sit, and then seated himself next to Becky. “I keep telling him how lucky we are that Becky is having a daughter for us. So many men have to adopt or get a woman to have a baby for them, and here we just stumbled into it. It’s a perfect way to get a baby, without any of the work.”<br /><br />“I did some of the work,” Chase said.<br /><br />“Oh, I forgot,” said Eduardo, patting Chase’s hand over the cold concrete table. “You are very manly.”<br /><br />Jen looked over at Becky to see if she was troubled by this line of conversation, but Becky’s face was impassive as she studied the menu.<br /><br />“Champagne!” said Eduardo, as the waitress appeared to take their drink order. “Something mid-priced, not too dry. We need to celebrate.”<br /><br />“Should I bring four glasses?” the waitress asked.<br /><br />“Three please,” said Eduardo. “None for mommy.”<br /><br />“I’ll have a glass,” Becky interrupted. “One drink is okay.”<br /><br />“And I don’t need one,” Jen added. “I haven’t been drinking.”<br /><br />“Oh, champagne doesn’t count,” said Eduardo. “We’ll take three glasses.”<br /><br />“I guess it counts for me,” Becky said in a quiet voice that it seemed only Jen, sitting directly across the table from her, could hear.<br /><br />“You can have mine,” Jen mouthed to Becky as the waitress left.<br /><br />His order completed, Eduardo turned sideways to face Jen. “So great to see you in person,” Eduardo said. “Chase and I just watched <span style="font-style: italic;">Love at Dawn</span>.”<br /><br />“Oh?” said Jen, not really wanting to talk about it. It was a big-budget tearjerker drama and it hadn’t received great reviews. She had played the lead’s troubled-but-insightful best friend. She had only done it for the money; it was right before the divorce, and she had felt worried about her finances.<br /><br />“Not great casting,” he said. “I liked you better in <span style="font-style: italic;">Meeting Elizabeth</span>. You’re not really cut out for dramatic roles.”<br /><br />Jen wasn’t sure how to respond. Everyone agreed she was best suited for romantic comedies, from her old acting coaches to her former agent to Becky—but they didn’t usually tell her so bluntly, especially when she had just met them.<br /><br />“Eduardo is a casting director,” said Chase. “He’s a total rock star, very in-demand. I need to book weeks in advance to get a date with him.”<br /><br />“Don’t listen to him,” said Eduardo, waving his hands to erase Chase’s words, as though they were floating in the middle of the table.<br /><br />“Didn’t I schedule this dinner with your secretary?” Chase asked.<br /><br />“Stop it,” said Eduardo, giving Chase’s hand a little slap.<br /><br />“I want to hear about Jen’s fight,” Becky said. She turned to Eduardo and said, “Jen’s been in Michigan studying taekwondo.”<br /><br />“That’s right, you told me that,” said Eduardo to Chase.<br /><br />“She’s really good,” said Becky, despite the fact that she had never seen Jen fight or even train. “She practices every single day.”<br /><br />“That’s fascinating,” said Eduardo. “So that was to study for a role?”<br /><br />“No,” said Jen, annoyed to be returning to the subject of her movie career after Becky had so skillfully steered them away from it. “I’m taking a break right now.”<br /><br />“The new look is interesting,” Eduardo continued, without seeming to have heard her response. “Different, but I’m into it. Kind of butch. I could see you playing something like a gym teacher. Or something military, like a chick in the army or something.”<br /><br />“Oh, that would be so bad-ass,” said Chase. “Could you get her something like that?”<br /><br />“Thanks, but I’m actually not looking for work,” Jen said.<br /><br />“You know I can’t just ‘get’ people roles,” Eduardo said to Chase. “I mean, I could keep an eye out in case anything comes up.”<br /><br />“That won’t be necessary,” said Jen.<br /><br />“Don’t mention it,” said Eduardo, giving her a little squeeze around her shoulders.<br /><br />As they ate their healthy meals of sashimi and kale and frisée, Jen asked Chase and Eduardo where they had met.<br /><br />“I had heard of Chase, of course, but we had never met in person. I called him in for the lead in this movie called <span style="font-style: italic;">For Better or For Hearse</span>, and the first thing I thought when I saw him was that he was perfect.”<br /><br />“So you’re doing a film?” Jen asked Chase. She knew he had been struggling for roles and hadn’t had work in a year or so. She was excited for him, though it seemed odd that Becky wouldn’t have mentioned it.<br /><br />“No,” said Chase, shaking his head.<br /><br />“Well, ultimately the director and I decided he wasn’t perfect for the <span style="font-style: italic;">role</span>,” said Eduardo.<br /><br />“Too old,” Chase said.<br /><br />Jen expected Eduardo to contradict him, but instead he said, “Well, we did go with somebody a little younger and fresher.”<br /><br />Jen turned to see Becky’s reaction, but Becky was still smiling pleasantly.<br /><br />“But,” said Eduardo, “I mean I thought he was perfect in general. Perfect for me.”<br /><br />“What did you like about him?” Jen asked, hoping to elicit some compliments to counteract Eduardo’s harsh words about Chase’s lack of youth and “freshness.”<br /><br />“He’s so masculine, you know. So discreet. Just very typically male. I hadn’t met any guys in Hollywood like that.”<br /><br />Jen was incredulous. Was he saying that the main thing he liked about Chase was that he didn’t seem gay? Jen turned to Becky, waiting for her to come to Chase’s defense, but she was smiling politely as she chewed her frisée. She looked at Chase; he was looking down at his sashimi as though it wasn’t him who was being talked about.<br /><br />“And he has such a nice, dominant energy about him,” Eduardo continued. “The broad shoulders, the deep voice, the messy hair.” Eduardo reached across the table and cupped Chase’s chin in his hand. “That strong jaw.”<br /><br />“You’re embarrassing me,” said Chase, blushing.<br /><br />“It’s all true,” said Eduardo.<br /><br />“So, Becky,” said Jen, unable to take any more of this. “Have you thought about names for the baby?”<br /><br />“I like Tamlyn,” said Eduardo. “Very hip.”<br /><br />For the rest of the meal, they discussed baby business: the shower, the ultrasounds, the due-date, Becky’s heartburn and sciatica. Eduardo offered his viewpoints liberally, while Chase quietly munched his dinner. Jen thought Eduardo’s involvement in the baby planning seemed awfully presumptuous, given that he couldn’t have been dating Chase for more than six months. But Becky seemed untroubled by his invasiveness, smiling at his suggestions, pleasantly answering his bold questions. As they parted ways in the parking lot, Becky gave Eduardo a hug goodbye before he climbed into the driver’s seat of Chase’s S.U.V. and drove them away. If Becky likes him, Jen thought, that’s what matters. Oh, and also if Chase likes him, she reminded herself.<br /><br />When Jen lay down in her room that night, her bed felt like every bit of the several thousand dollars she had spent on it. She lay on top of the covers with the lights on, still in her dinner outfit, staring up at the tastefully painted ceiling. But as her back sank into the thick mattress, every inch cushioned yet supported, she found herself missing the ascetic plainness of the rickety single bed that she had been occupying for the last seven months. This feels like a hotel, she thought, stretching her arms above her head and wondering if she should read a bit more of her chess book or just get undressed and go to bed.<br /><br />She heard footsteps in the hall, a knock at her door. “Hey, Jen,” Becky said, opening the door before Jen could respond.<br /><br />“Come in,” said Jen, sitting up, but Becky had already entered the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. In her oversized pajamas, she looked more like a little girl than a grown, pregnant woman. She stared past Jen at the wall, chewing anxiously on her lip. She looks sad, Jen thought. She wondered if she was jealous of Chase’s relationship.<br /><br />“You know what I was thinking of on the flight over here?” said Jen, hoping she could cheer Becky up. “That time we got caught shoplifting. Do you remember? We had to wait in that security office, and we were banned from the mall for life.”<br /><br />Becky was still looking at the wall, unsmiling. Then she looked straight at Jen. “You need to move back,” she said.<br /><br />“What?” Jen asked, startled.<br /><br />“It’s time for you to move back,” Becky said. “You’ve been in Michigan for more than twice as long as you were supposed to. You were only supposed to go for the summer.”<br /><br />“I know,” said Jen. She had hoped that no one had noticed her extended absence; she had been choosing to imagine that life in Los Angeles had been progressing smoothly without her. The revelation of Becky’s pregnancy had only confirmed her belief that Becky and Chase were getting along just fine without her, setting up an idyllic little life in which Jen would be nothing but a disruption.<br /><br />“I’ll come back soon,” she said, and then, feeling bad about lying, added, “eventually.”<br /><br />“It’s so lonely by myself here in the house,” Becky said. “This house is really huge for one person.”<br /><br />“What about Chase?” Jen asked. “Doesn’t he keep you company?”<br /><br />“Chase,” Becky repeated, spitting his name scornfully through her teeth. “I don’t get any time with Chase. He’s always with Eduardo.”<br /><br />“You don’t hang out with both of them together?” Jen asked. “Eduardo made it sound like you were all one big happy family.”<br /><br />“We are <span style="font-style: italic;">not </span>one big happy family,” said Becky. “I can’t stand that guy.”<br /><br />“Really?” Jen asked. “Why were you so nice to him at the restaurant?”<br /><br />“I have to be nice to him,” Becky said, her voice pained. “Otherwise I’d never see Chase again.”<br /><br />“Oh,” said Jen, relieved. “I am so glad you don’t like him! The way he was rubbing your stomach, it was just…” She paused to find the right words.<br /><br />“Completely inappropriate,” Becky said.<br /><br />Now Jen felt free to air all of the complaints she had suppressed during dinner. She shifted up on to her knees and began to laugh at the absurdity of their dinner conversation.<br /><br />“I can’t believe he was trying to pick your baby’s name,” Jen said, laying her hand on Becky’s knee. It was hard to speak through her flood of relieved laughter. “Like it’s his baby. How long has he been dating Chase, a few months?”<br /><br />“Five,” said Becky.<br /><br />“And that thing with the champagne,” Jen said, catching her breath. “He acted like he was your doctor or something.”<br /><br />“You need to move back,” Becky said, her solemn tone interrupting Jen’s waning hilarity. “You can do taekwondo here. There are schools in Los Angeles. I looked them up. There are at least thirty of them.”<br /><br />Thinking of how her life in North Middleton was about to change, how lonely the academy would be without Shane, seeing how lonely and sad Becky was, Jen felt a strong wave of desire to say yes, to make Becky happy, to help raise the baby, to be with her friends. Moving back would fix everybody’s troubles all at once.<br /><br />But she also knew that moving back would leave too much business unfinished. She hadn’t mastered anything she was working on: winning a fight, learning chess, even living in the Midwest.<br /><br />Becky must have sensed her moment of weakness. “You’ll think about it?” she asked.<br /><br />“I’ll think about it,” Jen said, and she wasn’t lying. She would think about it. She was pretty sure she would think about it all week, all through Becky’s baby shower, through evenings with Chase and Eduardo and Paula, and even as she packed her things again, drove to the airport, and got on the plane back to Michigan to resume what was now her life.<br /><br /><em><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2010/01/32-intent-to-be-lost.html">Chapter 32</a></em>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-3721046948459683472009-11-15T23:17:00.000-08:002009-11-15T23:19:44.323-08:00Please Note...I normally post chapters every two or three weeks, with my longest interval being a month. I have had a lot going on this past month, and have needed a break. I will be back soon with the next chapter, sometime in the next two weeks.Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-54023115473752865152009-10-13T23:50:00.000-07:002009-12-31T09:32:39.768-08:0030. Feelings of Insecurity“We were taught to channel anger, rage, feelings of insecurity—to channel what would be negative energy <span style="font-style: italic;">masochistically</span>. We were taught not to do it <span style="font-style: italic;">directly</span>—not to go out and hit someone, for example—but to do it so we’d hurt <span style="font-style: italic;">ourselves</span>.” —Kathy Acker<br /><br />The summer after sophomore year, Becky and Jenny spent almost every Saturday at the mall.<br /><br />When they got off the bus, they would start at the store that sold lotions and strong-smelling candles. Then they would shop for clothes, first at the store with the cool clothes, then at the store with the ugly but cheap clothes where you could sometimes find a good deal.<br /><br />After lunch—croissants and coffee at the bakery—they would go to the discount store that had cheap makeup.<br /><br />The hulking, cranky security guard would eye them suspiciously as they entered the store, and Jenny could imagine how they looked to him: two teenagers, one with crazy purple hair and petticoats, the other seeming by contrast a typical Westchester County girl, tame and appropriate, a follower. Becky never seemed to notice, but Jenny always felt horrible under his disdainful gaze.<br /><br />Jenny had wanted a new lipstick all summer, and one Saturday she found the right one on a display that had samples of lipstick and eye shadow in sparkly, pastel tones. The display’s cardboard backing was decorated with a photograph of a bride, her luminous skin painted in the subtlest imaginable shades of peach and baby blue under her graceful veil.<br /><br />“Why are you looking at bride makeup?” Becky asked.<br /><br />“I’m just looking for light colors,” said Jenny.<br /><br />“I hate light colors,” said Becky. “They’re so non-committal.” She was holding a bright magenta lipstick up to her cheek, the color glowing assertively even through the layers of plastic packaging. “What do you think of this one?”<br /><br />“It’s cool,” said Jenny, and she wasn’t lying, even though she would never wear such a startling color. It would look probably good on Becky; Becky could pull off crazy stuff like that.<br /><br />Jenny rubbed her finger along her favorite lipstick in the bride display. It was lavender, with a metallic, iridescent sheen. She lifted her finger to smear the pigment across her lips.<br /><br />“Do you want to get married?” Becky asked her.<br /><br />Jenny rubbed her lips against each other to distribute the color. “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you?”<br /><br />Becky blew out air from between her teeth to indicate that this was a stupid idea.<br /><br />“Hey, that’s kinda pretty,” said Becky, pointing at Jenny’s face.<br /><br />“You think so?” asked Jenny. Becky almost never approved of her relatively pedestrian choices in cosmetics or clothes.<br /><br />Becky nodded, but her attention had already shifted to a bottle of acid green nail polish, which she held up, raising her eyebrows to show her pleasure at this unusual find.<br /><br />“Well,” Becky said, “Maybe I would get married just to have the wedding.”<br /><br />Jenny was surprised. “You want a wedding?” The thought of Becky in a white dress, her face painted in these gentle peachy colors that she so despised, made Jenny laugh out loud.<br /><br />“Yeah, totally,” said Becky. “Not with my <span style="font-style: italic;">parents </span>or anything,” she added, scoffing. “Just my friends.”<br /><br />“What about the guy’s friends?” Jenny asked.<br /><br />“What guy?” Becky asked. “Oh, right, you mean my <span style="font-style: italic;">fiancé</span>? Sure, he can bring his friends, too, I guess.”<br /><br />Jenny studied the lavender lipstick in the thin strip of mirror at the side of the display, pursing her lips and moving her head around to see her face from different angles.<br /><br />“I’m going to decorate everything in black and purple,” Becky said. “At the wedding. The tables will be covered in black lace. And there will be giant purple candles everywhere.”<br /><br />“Wow,” said Jenny, as she traced her finger over the rows of lipsticks under the display, like looking up a book in a card catalogue, until she found the lavender one.<br /><br />“Wouldn’t that be pretty?” Becky asked.<br /><br />“Sure,” said Jenny, pulling the lipstick out of its little cubby.<br /><br />“You don’t sound like you really think so,” said Becky.<br /><br />“No, it sounds pretty,” said Jenny, making an effort to sound interested and sincere. She felt guilty that she had only been half-listening to Becky, even though Becky did the same thing to her all the time. “It's just, maybe you won’t be into purple and black lace when you’re, you know, grown up,” said Jenny.<br /><br />“I’ll be like twenty-two,” Becky retorted, quickly. “That’s only seven years from now. Anyway I’m always going to be into purple and black. Are you going to change when you get old?"<br /><br />“I don’t know,” Jenny said. “Maybe.”<br /><br />“I hate that,” said Becky. “I’m not going to get all normal and respectable just because I’m old. I’m going to stay just like I am forever.”<br /><br />Jenny nodded. “I think I’m going to buy it,” she said, holding up the tube of lipstick. “It’s pretty, right?” She smiled and turned her head to show off the dazzle of her iridescent lips.<br /><br />Becky grabbed it from her hand and scrutinized the packaging. “It’s twelve dollars,” she said. “That’s way too much.”<br /><br />“It’s okay, I have it,” said Jenny, grabbing it back. Her mother had given her a hundred dollars to spend this weekend. Becky’s parents didn’t have that kind of money, so Becky had only come with twenty dollars for the day.<br /><br />“Yeah, but it’s the principle,” Becky said. “That stuff probably costs like twenty cents to make. I can’t believe they’re charging twelve dollars.”<br /><br />“Isn’t twenty-two kind of young to get married?” Jenny asked.<br /><br />“I’m not going to <span style="font-style: italic;">stay </span>married,” Becky said. “It’s cooler to do it young, before everybody starts doing it. I want to be the first one.”<br /><br />“So will you just get a divorce right after the wedding?” Jenny asked.<br /><br />Becky thought about it for a moment.<br /><br />“We’ll stay married for a little while so I can get to say ‘my husband.’ But then we’ll get divorced. I could never be satisfied with just one man.”<br /><br />“How long will you stay married?” Jenny was still looking at the lipstick, turning it over, trying to decide whether the metallic sheen was pretty or cheesy.<br /><br />“I don't know, a while,” Becky said. “Three months? I’ve never dated anybody longer than three months.”<br /><br />She leaned over, pulled the lipstick out of Jenny’s hand, and dropped it into Jenny’s open purse.<br /><br />“Hey!” said Jenny.<br /><br />“Chill out,” said Becky, through her teeth, without moving her lips. She turned her back and started walking towards the cassette tapes. Jenny followed her, rummaging in her purse to find the lipstick amongst her tangle of other makeup and assorted junk.<br /><br />Someone bumped against her, and she looked up to see one of the store employees, wearing a red vest and holding a clipboard. Jenny’s heart raced. <span style="font-style: italic;">It was her!</span> she wanted to yell, pointing at Becky. <span style="font-style: italic;">I was trying to take it back out! </span><br /><br />But she wouldn’t do that, and anyway, there was no need.<br /><br />“Sorry,” mumbled the employee, hurrying past Jenny and looking down at his clipboard.<br /><br />Jenny met Becky over at the tapes, still feeling shaken about the lipstick. I guess they don’t know about it, she told herself, deciding not to look for it in her bag anymore.<br /><br />Becky was rifling through a bin of cassette tapes encased in large plastic security devices.<br /><br />“You’re totally going to get married,” Becky said, nonchalantly continuing their earlier conversation. “Like in the normal way. You’re kind of normal.”<br /><br />“No, I’m not!” Jenny said. But yes, she thought to herself. She did want to get married, and maybe even have a real wedding. Not a huge one or anything, but with a white dress and a cake and flowers. Maybe everything would be all light blue and gray and lavender; that would be so pretty.<br /><br />She began to thumb through the cassettes, looking for something to buy so she wouldn’t feel so guilty. She found one she wanted, by a band whose lead singer she found extremely attractive, although his heavy use of makeup and falsetto made her pretty sure he was gay.<br /><br />And she wanted to have a husband, she thought. And live with him in a nice house, and have children and a backyard and a dog. And it didn’t matter if that made her normal, because it would be sweet and cute and make her happy.<br /><br />But she wasn’t going to tell Becky that.<br /><br />“Get these, too,” Becky said, handing her a stack of blank cassette tapes. “I’ll copy some stuff for you.”<br /><br />“Cool,” said Jenny.<br /><br />The cashier, when they went to check out, was a middle-aged lady with helmet hair who beamed at Jenny and Becky as though they were her favorite nieces.<br /><br />“Did you girls find everything okay?” she asked, smiling.<br /><br />“Oh, yeah,” said Becky, as Jenny nodded.<br /><br />The woman took Jenny’s cassette tapes, the album and the blank ones, ran them across the scanner, and dropped them into a plastic bag. “Are you having fun at the mall?” she asked.<br /><br />“Lots of fun,” said Becky, cheerfully.<br /><br />“That will be fourteen dollars,” said the cashier. Jenny reached into her purse and saw the lipstick, in its plastic wrapping, poking out of the top of her jumbled clutter. She gasped and placed her hand on top of it, blocking the view as she rummaged around until she pulled her wallet from the bottom.<br /><br />“I used to love going shopping with my friends,” the cashier said. “You don’t get to do that as much when you get old like me.”<br /><br />“You’re not so old,” said Jenny, embarrassed to be telling such an unconvincing lie. She handed the woman a twenty dollar bill.<br /><br />She wanted to rush out of the store as soon as she got her change, but she forced herself to wait calmly for Becky to buy her green nail polish.<br /><br />“I’ve never seen a color like that,” said the cashier, holding it up to the light. “It would be fun on Halloween.” She brought it down to the counter and held it against her own hand. “Think I could pull it off?” she asked.<br /><br />“She was so nice,” said Jenny, when it was finally time to walk towards the exit. She looked at Becky, who grimaced a little, as though acknowledging the thing Jenny was thinking.<br /><br />“I know,” Becky said.<br /><br />Just then, Jenny felt a hand on her shoulder and heard the voice from above her head.<br /><br />“Miss,” it said.<br /><br />She turned to face the security guard, who was towering over her, his hand extended as though he was expecting to have to grab her by the collar as she ran.<br /><br />“Yes?” she asked, her voice shaking despite all her efforts to steady it.<br /><br />“You put something in your bag,” he said, pointing at her purse.<br /><br />She looked over at Becky, unsure of how to respond. Becky shook her head.<br /><br />“No I didn’t,” said Jenny. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”<br /><br />“Someone saw it on the camera,” said the man, impatiently, as though he was expecting her to deny it. “You put a lipstick into your bag.” He grabbed Jenny’s arm and started to pull her towards the doorway.<br /><br />Jenny began to get that spinning feeling that meant she was panicking. Where was he taking her? Was he going to arrest her? Call her parents?<br /><br />He’d better call my mom, she thought, trying to strategize quickly. She probably won’t care. Jenny could never be sure about her mother’s reactions; she would be nonchalant about something scandalous like finding a little bag of Becky’s cocaine hidden in Jenny’s room. But then the most seemingly insignificant thing would send her into a fury, like when Jenny’s English teacher wanted her to stay after class to write poetry and her mother was sure he was hitting on her, which, even if he was, didn’t seem like the sort of thing that would upset her.<br /><br />Maybe she thinks shoplifting is cool, Jenny thought hopefully. Maybe it’s like sticking it to the man.<br /><br />“I’m taking you to mall security,” he said. “That’s where we handle shoplifters.”<br /><br />“Wait,” said Becky. “Wait, I put it in her bag. You need to arrest me!”<br /><br />Jenny felt the wave of relief—she would not have to go to security alone. She hadn’t expected Becky to speak up, and wouldn’t have been angry at her for staying silent. Unlike Jenny's own mother, Becky’s parents were predictable. They would scream at her for a week and ground her for a month; there was no doubt about it.<br /><br />The guard turned to look at Becky as though he hadn’t noticed her until just then. Without saying anything, he surveyed her, his eyes lingering on her purple hair and painted combat boots.<br /><br />“Yeah, you better come, too,” he said finally.<br /><br />At the security office, an actual police officer searched Jenny’s purse, found the lipstick, and then asked for phone numbers to call the girls’ parents. He lectured them about how they could have gone to jail for their offense. They were banned from the mall, and if he ever saw them here again, he would arrest them for real.<br /><br />He went into an adjacent office, separated by a large window, to call their parents. Jenny could see him cringe as though someone was shouting at him on the phone; that must be Becky’s father, she thought.<br /><br />Neither of their parents arrived for half an hour. Jenny and Becky sat silently on stiff chairs as they waited, Jenny’s sweaty hand folded tightly in Becky’s.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 31:<br /></span><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/12/31-agent-of-defeat.html"><span>http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/12/31-agent-of-defeat.html</span></a><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-70188256812939792792009-09-20T14:01:00.000-07:002010-06-27T21:42:01.977-07:0029. A Mean Story“Beauty is a hard thing. Beauty is a mean story. Beauty is slender girls who die young, fine-featured delicate creatures about whom men write poems.” —Dorothy Allison<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The student of chess will benefit in all areas of life, for chess represents the quintessence of competition. The pieces take on both offensive and defensive roles, yet these two roles merge into one another. The strongest offensive pieces are also the ones that must act most defensively, because their power makes them vulnerable. The queen is so powerful that novice players are frightened to use her, and the king is so powerful that he is prohibited from being put into danger, as though he requires a curfew for his protection. The pawn is less powerful offensively, yet his expendable nature makes him at times the most dangerous piece on the board, like a man who is not afraid to die. </span><br /><br />“What did you learn?” Master Park asked her, slamming the door. Jen looked up from the book. Her teacher’s abrupt entrances no longer startled Jen; he always entered the back living room this way.<br /><br />“The strongest pieces are also the most vulnerable,” Jen recited.<br /><br />“Right,” said Master Park, looking pleased. “That’s an excellent point.” He paused and smiled to himself. “A very good point,” he said. “See, I told you that’s a great book.”<br /><br />He sat down across from her, as he did three nights a week at nine o’clock, after the intermediate-advanced class ended, and held out two pieces hidden in his hands. She wasn’t allowed to attend class on these nights; instead, she sat in the back, studying Thomas Fo’s book about chess. Then, after class, she and Master Park would play. Never just one game; always at least two. Jen usually stumbled home around midnight, more tired than if she had spent those three hours training at taekwondo.<br /><br />She pointed at Master Park’s left fist. He opened it, revealing a white pawn. It seemed that she drew white more than probability would predict; at least three out of four times, she estimated.<br /><br />“Start,” he said, nodding at the board.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Chess is an ancient art developed over thousands of years. It cannot be mastered through cramming or quick study, just as a rich broth cannot be developed by through fast, furious boiling. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">There is no point chastising yourself if you are not succeeding at the level you desire. You need to practice more. When you have played a thousand games, then you have played one.</span><br /><br />Two nights a week, Jen kept her old training schedule with Shane. She had finally gotten used to her partner’s new name, which helped distinguish her from her girlfriend, Brittany.<br /><br />“I can see that kick coming,” Shane said, frowning at Jen from across the kicking pad. “Disguise it more.”<br /><br />Jen took a deep breath and tried to relax her entire body. Then she jerked, in what she hoped was one sudden, unexpected movement, and snapped her leg up at the pad.<br /><br />“Nope,” Shane was saying before Jen’s foot could reach its target. “I can still see it.”<br /><br />“I don’t know what else to do,” said Jen. She spoke in a quiet, subdued voice that she hoped would disguise her frustration.<br /><br />“Don’t get frustrated,” said Shane, demonstrating that Jen couldn’t even disguise her emotions, much less her front kick. “You just need to practice it more.”<br /><br />“I practice it all the time,” said Jen. “I practiced this kick for three hours in my back yard, every day this week. And then I practiced it here in the mirror. I don’t think it’s possible to practice it any more.”<br /><br />Shane raised her hand to her face and stroked her chin, as though scratching an absent beard. Jen thought the gesture looked somehow artificial, as though Shane had been practicing it in front of a mirror. It looked odd and unfamiliar. But perhaps Shane had always done that, and Jen was only just noticing it now that she did not see her every day.<br /><br />“You know, it’s cool how much you train,” said Shane.<br /><br />“But?” said Jen, prompted by Shane’s tone of voice.<br /><br />“You learned this all too quickly,” said Shane. “It’s not exactly the right way to learn it. Most people train a few hours a week and it takes them a few years until they compete. You’ve been training five hours a day on average, I’d say. Thirty-five hours per week—that’s ten times as much as most people. So since you’ve been training for four months, that’s like forty months.” She paused, and Jen could read on her lips that she was doing long division in her head, a skill that Jen found as maddening as her spinning side kick. “That’s over three years of work in four months,” she concluded.<br /><br />“But why should that matter?” Jen asked. “I mean, hours are hours, right?”<br /><br />“In some ways,” said Shane. “But there are things that can only be learned over time. That’s why masters are masters, because they’ve studied for so long that they have all this nuance to their movement and strategy.”<br /><br />“Wow,” said Jen, impressed with her partner’s sustained progression of philosophical thought. Shane was smart, but she usually only used her intelligence in brief, explosive bursts that mirrored her kicks.<br /><br />Shane looked like she about to say something else, something important. She scrunched up her forehead, then opened her mouth and released not a profound insight, but a loud burp. She wiped her mouth crudely with the back of her hand, dragging her jacket cuffs across her face with studied crudeness. Another weird gesture, Jen noted to herself.<br /><br />“Isn’t acting like that?” Shane asked. “Aren’t there people who are so good at acting that you feel like you could never get to their level? And it’s because they have been doing it for so long that they understand it in a way that you can’t comprehend?”<br /><br />“I guess,” said Jen. She vaguely remembered having had that feeling once or twice, maybe, of being awed by the skills of an older actor, but she couldn’t remember any details. She wondered whether it was just too long ago, or whether it had never really happened, just one of the many things she had pretended to do in a movie but had never done in real life.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The novice in chess thinks only of not having pieces captured, and moves in reaction to his opponent’s moves. The sign of proficiency in chess is thinking at least ten moves ahead. Great masters have plans that span to the end of the game; if the game does not follow their plan, they readjust and shift to a new plan. </span><br /><br />One Sunday, as Jen sat at the side of the mats, watching two yellow-belts spar, Master Park appeared in the chair next to her.<br /><br />“You’re going in next round,” he said. “You’re going to spar Rob.”<br /><br />“What?” said Jen, unable to keep the indignance out of her voice. In all her months at the academy, Jen hadn’t sparred him yet. Lately he had only been training with purple-belts and above. She knew he was going easy on them, but it never looked like it. He sparred Shane almost every Sunday, sending her flying backwards across the mats no less than twice each round, and that was when Shane was sparring at her best. Jen had seen him render three different male students fully unconscious with spinning kicks to the head.<br /><br />“I can’t,” she said, helplessly, beginning to panic. He wasn’t really going to make her, was he? Because if he did, she knew exactly what would happen. She was going to get knocked out, just like her fight, knocked out cold on the floor in front of everybody. She couldn’t imagine any way that this was not going to happen.<br /><br />“Calm down,” said Master Park. “Here’s what I want you to do. What’s his scariest move?”<br /><br />“Spinning wheel kick,” said Jen, without needing to think about it.<br /><br />“What’s the counter to that move?”<br /><br />Jen knew it, had practiced it over and over. “Low sweep,” she said, impatiently. “But it’s not going to work. I’m not fast enough.” The thought that she could see one of those furious whirling kicks coming, see it soon enough, remain poised enough to drop to the ground and sweep out his standing leg—it was laughable.<br /><br />“Shh,” said Master Park. She realized her voice had become loud and hysterical. One of the male blue-belts was staring at her.<br /><br />“You need to bait him to throw the kick,” he continued. “It’s one of his favorite techniques. If you throw one, he will throw one back at you.”<br /><br />“I don’t want him to throw it back at me,” she said, annoyed that he was missing the entire point of what she was saying.<br /><br />“If you know when it’s coming, you should be able to counter it with the sweep,” said Master Park. “Now stop complaining,” he added.<br /><br />A few minutes later, there she was, staring at Rob as he towered over her. Wheel kick, Jen said to herself. It was a difficult, risky kick and she did not usually use it in sparring, especially not against an opponent with six inches of reach and twenty years of experience on her. She moved in to throw it, nerved herself up—wheel kick, wheel kick—and then saw her leg extend out into a roundhouse kick instead, impervious to her brain’s commands.<br /><br />As though he could read her thoughts and was trying to annoy her on purpose, Rob responded to her roundhouse with a wheel kick. She ducked just in time to feel the edge of his heel graze the top of her head.<br /><br />She stood up, relieved that she had successfully avoided danger, and as she regained her fighting stance, he threw the wheel kick again, this time hitting her squarely in the temple.<br /><br />It wasn’t hard enough to knock her down, but it did send a brief wave of nausea down to her stomach.<br /><br />She looked into his eyes, which were shadowed and impassive under his head gear. Wheel kick, she said to herself, more forcefully now. Three other kicks to distract him, then wheel kick.<br /><br />This time, her body followed her plan to the letter. Kick, kick, kick, spin. He backed up, but the kick flew past his face, missing him by inches. She thought she saw the slightest flash of annoyance, or even anger, rush across his eyes.<br /><br />Now sweep, she told herself, waiting for him to kick. She dropped, but not fast enough; on her way down, her chin ran into the side of his foot on its way up to where her head had just been. The blow knocked her onto her back. Then the timer rang, and the round was over. At least I didn’t get knocked out, she told herself with a sigh, rubbing her bruised chin.<br /><br />Master Park was still sitting in the same chair, watching Shane, who was the next to spar Rob. It annoyed Jen to see Shane doing better, being braver, recovering faster than Jen could against him. Master Park nodded his head as Shane’s side kick connected with Rob’s muscular stomach, even though it sent Shane flying backwards instead of Rob.<br /><br />Jen sat down next to Master Park, fuming silently, wanting to say, See, I told you it wouldn’t work.<br /><br />“Next time,” he said, without turning his head to look at her.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Don’t get fixated on what you think is happening. The novice player becomes so rigid in his expectations that he cannot see the board ahead of him. Make sure to see what is really there. </span><br /><br />On Shane’s twenty-first birthday, she appeared in the door of the back living room, interrupting Jen’s chess game with Master Park.<br /><br />“Ah, the chess,” she said. They only played on Shane’s nights off, but Jen had been telling her all about it, how ruthless their teacher was, how he would let her pieces advance just long enough to give her a bit of experience, then mercilessly kill them off one by one, like a child smashing a row of ants.<br /><br />“White is the aggressor!” he would yell, as she began to pull her pieces back in response to his attack. “You are one move ahead of me. Stop acting defensively.”<br /><br />So she would attempt bolder, more fearless moves, only to send her bishop or knight right into one of the five or six traps Master Park had laid out for them.<br /><br />Just like taekwondo, she thought; you have to get hurt to get better. But at least in chess, the pain wasn’t real.<br /><br />Shane was dressed in her cutest outfit for a night of celebration, which meant pinstriped pants, a white wife-beater tank top and a thick hooded sweatshirt. It was a chilly November night, but Shane had tied the sweatshirt around her waist, perhaps for the purpose of displaying her impressive upper-arm muscles.<br /><br />One of those arms was wrapped around the waist of a girl who was filling up the other half of the doorway, a girl who Jen recognized as Brittany, even though they had never met. She looked just like she had in Jen’s imagination: tall and curvy with long, stylishly-messy hair, lots of makeup, tight jeans and an even tighter blouse.<br /><br />“Sorry to interrupt. We just came by to say hi on the way out for my birthday,” Shane said.<br /><br />“It’s okay. We can use a little break,” said Master Park. He means that I can use one, Jen thought, bitterly. She was, as usual, in a horrible position. Master Park had just captured her knight. She could now recapture his bishop; she worried that this was a trap, however. She could see three other places where the black pieces were poised and ready, waiting to capture their white opponents if she happened to place them on the wrong square. She needed to figure out how to avoid those traps without seeming defensive, lest she get yelled at, which was worse than losing pieces.<br /><br />“Master Park, this is my girlfriend,” said Shane, as the two women came over to stand over the table, giving Jen a perfect eye-level view of Brittany’s bosom as it tried to escape from her shirt. “Brittany,” she added.<br /><br />“Very nice to meet you,” he said, rising to shake her hand. Jen wasn’t sure whether she should stand as well; she opted to stay seated.<br /><br />“And this is Jen,” said Shane.<br /><br />“Oh, I’ve heard so much about you,” Brittany exclaimed, smiling warmly and leaning down to hug her. Jen hugged her back awkwardly, this woman she had never met before and who was towering above her as she sat on the chair. She did smell excellent, Jen noted.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Power is divided between the masculine and feminine aspects. The king is the seat of power, but, accordingly, the queen bears more practical, useable power, because she can move longer distances but also because she can be placed into danger. </span><br /><br />Brittany looked down at the chess board, wrinkling her painted nose.<br /><br />“Do you play?” asked Master Park.<br /><br />“A little,” said Brittany.<br /><br />“Oh no,” said Shane, dropping down onto the couch. “I knew we couldn’t get out of here quickly.”<br /><br />“Where should she move?” Master Park asked Brittany. Jen felt indignant; why was he asking this party girl to weigh in on her game? Anyway, this was the easy move. She needed to capture the bishop; pawn to E4. What would happen after that was the confusing part.<br /><br />“Queen to H4,” said Brittany, quickly. Jen was surprised to hear her using the algebraic notation to describe the moves; she had expected her to point and say, Move your pawn there. She would have scoffed at the move Brittany suggested—presumably she didn’t see that Jen could capture the bishop. But Brittany’s confident tone made Jen wonder whether Brittany could actually see something that Jen herself was missing.<br /><br />“Interesting,” said Master Park. “Why?”<br /><br />“It’s a zwischenzug,” said Brittany. “Now you’ll have to weaken your pawn structure. She can take the bishop later.”<br /><br />“See that?” Master Park said, turning to Jen. “That’s what I mean by being aggressive. She’s not just thinking, ‘take his piece,’ ‘save my piece.’ She’s trying to mess me up down the road.”<br /><br />“Wow, where’d you learn all that?” Shane asked, sitting up high on the couch now so she could see the board.<br /><br />“We play at the sorority,” Brittany said. “We’re the best house. We totally kicked ass on Alpha Phi last weekend—they’re like our nemesis.”<br /><br />While Brittany and Master Park discussed a few chess problems on a second board, Jen and Shane walked down to the bathroom at the far end of the strip mall.<br /><br />“I guess she’s pretty smart,” said Jen, patting her friend on the arm. “Nice work.”<br /><br />“Yeah, I guess so,” said Shane, shrugging. “I mean, it’s not like that’s why I like her. I’ve never talked to her about chess or anything.”<br /><br />Jen laughed. “Sorry, I wouldn’t want to suggest that you valued her for anything but her looks,” she said. She reached out and put her arm on Shane’s shoulder. “Happy birthday,” she said.<br /><br />Shane stopped walking, and since Jen was still touching her shoulder, she stopped, too.<br /><br />“You know, there’s something I’ve got to tell you,” said Shane, her face losing all trace of the smirk that she usually wore in conversation. Jen was startled. She never saw Shane looking serious like that, except when she was sparring.<br /><br />“What is it?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“I’m thinking about becoming a guy,” Shane said.<br /><br />Jen was silent for a moment as she tried to understand what Shane had meant.<br /><br />“Do you mean, like, surgically?” she asked, finally.<br /><br />“Yeah, and with hormones,” said Shane.<br /><br />Jen had known a few women who used to be men, but she realized she had never met anyone who had changed their gender in the other direction.<br /><br />“They can do that?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“Oh yeah,” said Shane. “Well, they don’t really do a great job with—you know—the bottom half.” Shane dipped her chin to indicate the direction she was talking about. “Most people just do the top part. That’s what I would do. They do a great job with that part.”<br /><br />“Wow,” said Jen, dumbstruck. It seemed like it should be a small alteration—Shane was so much like a boy, anyway—but Jen knew it would change things. For one, Shane was her only real friend in Michigan. Jen couldn’t imagine being close friends with a twenty-one year old boy. She could barely tolerate them back when she herself was that age. But would Shane still be the same person, herself, or an adolescent boy?<br /><br />And if Shane were a boy, would they still be training partners? Jen gasped as she realized that Shane would need to take time off training, perhaps a lot of time, to undergo this process, or procedure, or whatever it was.<br /><br />“I just think it would be easier,” Shane said. “I mean, everyone already thinks I’m a guy.”<br /><br />“But you’re not,” said Jen, thinking that this wasn’t a very good reason for undergoing a surgical procedure. “You don’t need to change yourself because of what other people think.”<br /><br />“No, I know,” said Shane. “I mean, I think it would be easier for me. To understand who I am.”<br /><br />Now Jen felt horrible. How could Shane not understand who she was? Jen understood perfectly who Shane was: a tough woman, strong, brave, her role model. She wanted to tell Shane those things, tell her that she needed to stay just as she was. But she couldn’t think of a way to say that without it sounding selfish, like she needed Shane to stay a woman for her own reasons, to keep her as a teammate, a sister. Maybe it is selfish, Jen thought; it was too complicated to figure out so quickly.<br /><br />“There’s a really good clinic down in Ann Arbor,” Shane said. “I might need to move down there for a while. I could transfer to Eastern Michigan University for a semester. Brittany said she’d come with me.”<br /><br />Jen’s stomach sunk.<br /><br />You can’t go, she wanted to shout, to beg. You’re my only friend. You’re the only person here that matters to me.<br /><br />But she knew she would not say that. “Of course I’ll support you in any way I can,” Jen said. “Just let me know what I can do.”<br /><br />Shane reached in and gave Jen a long, hard hug, pressing her wet cheek into Jen’s neck. “That means so much to me,” said Shane, quietly, near Jen’s ear.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The blending of attacking and defending suggests the idea of balance. You must balance your aggressive energy with your sense of caution and introspection. You must never become so focused on your goal that you lose awareness of what is going on in the periphery of your vision. Becoming overly fixated on one aspect of life will cause other areas of your life to atrophy like withered limbs. </span><br /><br />“Jen? Is that you?”<br /><br />Jen recognized the voice on the other end of the lake house phone. She had been nervous to answer the phone; it almost never rang, and Jen only used it to make her weekly calls to Becky. If Jen answered and the phone call wasn’t for her, she needed to explain that Paula’s mother and her husband were in Toledo (they had returned in September from their summer vacation) and take a message, a complicated process since she then needed to call Paula’s mother, who she had never met, and relay the message.<br /><br />It was easier just to let the phone ring. But this was Tuesday morning, which was one of the times that she and Becky often talked, though usually Jen called Becky and then Becky called her back to avoid running up a bill on Paula’s mother’s phone.<br /><br />This person wasn’t Becky, though. Who else would be calling here for me, Jen wondered?<br /><br />“I was meaning to call sooner,” the voice continued, “I mean, I had the phone number and everything.”<br /><br />“Paula,” said Jen, relieved to have identified the caller without having to ask. She hadn’t spoken to Paula since she and Becky had left Jen in Michigan five months ago.<br /><br />“How is everything?” Paula said. “I mean, Becky’s been keeping me posted on the basic news, and I read that horrible article about how you’re on steroids and a lesbian.”<br /><br />“Yeah,” said Jen.<br /><br />“I mean, you’re not, right?” said Paula, her tone conveying a slight hope that the article might have been correct.<br /><br />“Right. Sorry,” said Jen.<br /><br />They talked for a bit, catching up on Jen’s news—yes, she really had done a fight, yes, she had really gotten knocked out—and Paula’s news—“Same old stuff, yoga, celibacy, hanging around with Becky and Chase.”<br /><br />Then Paula got to the reason for her call. “We’re having a shower for Becky. It’s at your house, not this Sunday but the next one. Sorry, I know it’s last minute; we just decided to do it.”<br /><br />That was soon, Jen thought, less than two weeks. Too soon. Her taekwondo schedule felt like a speeding train that needed a great distance to stop. She was planning to do two upcoming competitions, one in December. There was no way she could take a break right now, even for a few days.<br /><br />“You’re going to come, right?” said Paula, who apparently had been waiting for Jen’s response.<br /><br />“Well,” said Jen, trying to figure out how to explain her hesitation. “It’s short notice, and I have this fight coming up.”<br /><br />“Jen!” Paula yelled sharply, like a nursery-school teacher scolding a toddler who was just about to bite his playmate. “You haven’t been out to visit the entire time Becky’s been pregnant. She won’t tell you, but she misses you.” Paula cleared her throat. “You have to come when the baby is born next month, and you have to come to the shower.”<br /><br />Now Jen felt horrible. Paula was right; how could she even consider missing her best friend’s baby shower just because it would throw off her training schedule? As though a few days of taekwondo and chess were more important than the friend who had supported her since they were twelve years old. Something must be going really wrong with my values, she told herself.<br /><br />“Of course I’ll come,” said Jen, as though this had been her intention all along. “I was just saying it will be hard. I wouldn’t miss it.”<br /><br />“Great,” said Paula. “I’ll buy your plane ticket; I know you don’t have internet access out there.”<br /><br />“Thanks,” said Jen.<br /><br />Before they got off the phone, Paula remembered one other detail she had forgotten to tell Jen.<br /><br />“Oh, and it’s a co-ed shower,” she said. “You can bring a guy, if you want. Or a woman, of course,” she added, in a tone of magnanimous non-judgment.<br /><br />“No, it’ll just be me,” said Jen. “I’m not seeing anybody.”<br /><br />“That a girl,” Paula said, before hanging up the phone.<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/10/30-feelings-of-insecurity.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 30</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-63585945956685551392009-08-27T00:33:00.000-07:002010-11-28T00:08:34.123-08:0028. Forced Moves“If we must live on a desert island, make it fertile and rich with opportunity, not so barren and unyielding that all of our moves would be like forced moves in chess.” —Daniel Dennett<br /><br />For two days after her fight, Jen didn’t leave the house. The first day, her head felt foggy and her muscles ached. She lay in bed reading the magazine that Britt-Shane had shown her in the locker room, which she had given to Jen on the drive home.<br /><br />“While most reporters have been discouraged by the actress’s elusive ways, we have followed Jen’s descent into obscurity, her small-town life, and the new passion that now consumes her every waking moment.”<br /><br />Was this <span style="font-style: italic;">the </span>reporter, Jen wondered? Someone who had been following her around North Middleton, unnoticed, as she “descended into obscurity.” Was Lorna O. Lee the woman who had surprised her at the side of the mat and caused her to lose her fight?<br /><br />Amid the confusion and disappointment following her knockout, Jen tried had tried to piece together how it had happened. At first all she could remember was the face of the reporter, floating disembodied like a ghost above the mat, dissolving into a flash of white as Jen fell. As she rode home silently in the passenger’s seat of Britt-Shane’s car, the rest of the fight had slowly begun to materialize: the girl’s first hard kick, Jen’s strong counterattack. She had begun to feel confident that she would win, had felt her dominance against the girl. Then the reporter had appeared and ruined it all.<br /><br />Jen looked down at the magazine and snorted in annoyance. The sound hurt her head, and she thought for a moment that she might throw up. Drank too much, she said instinctively to herself, and then remembered that she hadn’t had a drink in over five months.<br /><br />She stayed in bed the rest of the morning, watching the small travel alarm clock she had bought at the drug store as it approached eleven forty-five, the time she usually left home for Sunday sparring class. As it crept towards noon, when the class began, she told herself, I could still go. I could be late, she said to herself at eleven fifty-seven. If I left right now, I’d get there fifteen minutes past the starting time.<br /><br />As though to test this theory, she raised one arm up off the bed and held it in the air. Then she dropped it back down to the bed, exhausted from the effort. No, there was no way she could spar today; there was no decision to be made. Don’t even look at the clock, she told herself, forcing her eyes shut.<br /><br />Then the clock’s hands both pointed to twelve. Class would be starting right now. Jen wondered whether Britt-Shane was there. She had won her fight yesterday and gone home in a great mood, with a celebratory date already arranged with her new love interest, Brittany. Maybe she’s too hung over for class, Jen thought, feeling a little hopeful. But she knew it was likely to be a false hope. Britt-Shane was no doubt arriving at class right now, receiving a hero’s welcome, congratulations all around. Too bad about Jen’s fight, they were probably saying to her, and maybe she replied, Yeah, Jen really screwed up.<br /><br />Jen wished she were there to silence their whispers and show how tough she was, how indifferent to her loss. It’s not too late, she thought. I don’t need to be on time the day after the fight. Then she rolled over, closed her eyes, and slept for the rest of the day, dreaming of sparring class and the derision of her classmates.<br /><br />The next day, she moved from the bed to the couch downstairs, bringing <span style="font-style: italic;">Zen for the Troubled Mind</span> by Thomas Fo with her. It was one of the books that she had special-ordered, and she had only read it once so far. She didn’t feel like starting it from the beginning, so she let it fall open to a page in the middle.<br /><br />“One of the greatest obstacles to our spiritual progress is excessive focus on our own mistakes. We judge our own mistakes with a harsh condemnation that we would never apply to others. When our friends make mistakes, we tell them to forgive themselves, move on, that no one is perfect. But we obsess over our own mistakes with a kind of reverent fascination. Even when we know objectively that the mistake is forgivable, even when we are forgiven by those we have wronged, we cannot help but be transfixed by our own past mistakes, nurturing them with a fascination that speaks more of love than disgust or self-censure.”<br /><br />Jen put the book down next and on her stomach and stared at the ceiling, marveling at how Thomas Fo always seemed to know precisely what was going on in her life. But when she picked the book back up and resumed where she had left off, she was even more startled.<br /><br />“Imagine a boxer who regrets dropping his guard and getting punched. He stops what he is doing, scowls, berates himself for his carelessness. Of course, while he is dwelling on these thoughts, he loses focus on the present moment and gets punched again.<br /><br />“Any boxing teacher will tell you that one of the most important lessons for a beginning boxing student is not to react to getting hit. The new student will stop the drill each time he makes the wrong move, because he feels that he must spend time recognizing his mistake. ‘Damn,’ he will say, or ‘Sorry,’ or ‘Why do I keep screwing that up?’ That is what our culture, with its focus on self-assessment, tells us we must do—acknowledge the mistake and criticize ourselves preemptively, before others have a chance to do it for us.<br /><br />“Any moderately experienced student of boxing knows to forget the error and stay in the moment. A fighter must take advantage of each fresh, new moment and the opportunities for success it affords, rather than reflecting on past failures, whether those failures occurred six months ago or six seconds ago.<br /><br />“We would be wise to emulate the boxer and not allow ourselves to be distracted and weakened by self-criticism. Of course it is important to reflect on our mistakes and learn from them, but only during appropriate times. A fighter reviews his fight once it has ended, noting the strengths and weaknesses of his performance. If he is wise, he critiques himself dispassionately, indulging in neither self-congratulation for his strengths nor self-flagellation for his weaknesses. And no matter what, he must not let the mistakes of the past impair his ability to move positively into the future.”<br /><br />All right, Thomas Fo, Jen said to herself, putting the book down. I’ll go back to class. Tonight. Then she fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until midnight.<br /><br />She returned to the academy the next evening. When she arrived for the seven-thirty intermediate-advanced class, Britt-Shane was not waiting at their regular spot in the back by the mirror. Maybe she’s in the bathroom, Jen thought, peering at the door behind her as she stretched, hoping to see Britt-Shane appear.<br /><br />Once Jen had stretched for five minutes, with no sign of Britt-Shane, she had to accept that her training partner might not be coming to class. Perhaps she hadn’t yet recovered from her victory celebrations, Jen speculated. But explanation didn’t seem too convincing, given that Britt-Shane had been in class every day since Jen had started training, even on a few mornings when her skin had been noticeably greenish and her breath had still stunk like cheap vodka.<br /><br />As she stood scanning the gym one last time, hoping that Britt-Shane would appear from behind the desk or the mysterious bamboo screen, Master Park came over to her. She wondered what he wanted to say. Her experience had taught her that he conserved his words, at least the ones directed at her, but there was certainly plenty to discuss today, three days after her humiliating loss of her first fight.<br /><br />He didn’t say anything at first. Instead he just stood and looked at her for a moment, as though waiting for her to speak. Jen thought of saying something about the fight, some acknowledgment or apology for her poor performance. But she remembered Thomas Fo’s words: forget the error and stay in the moment. She resolved not to say anything about her fight unless Master Park mentioned it himself. She would focus on her training right now, today, and moving into the future.<br /><br />In that case, the first question was who would be teaching her today.<br /><br />“Where’s…” said Jen, but stopped because she didn’t know what to call her training partner.<br /><br />“I told her not to come,” said Master Park, interrupting her.<br /><br />“Oh,” said Jen. “Why?”<br /><br />Master Park folded his hands across the chest of his white uniform. “She needs to focus on her school. She dropped her statistics class. Did you know that?”<br /><br />“No,” said Jen, feeling guilty. She had often suspected that Britt-Shane couldn’t be putting much work into her classes if she was at the academy training Jen every night and all weekend.<br /><br />“I told her take a week off,” said Master Park. “Then she can come back, but only four days a week, like she used to.” He narrowed his eyes accusingly at Jen. She felt the urge to defend herself: It wasn’t my fault, she thought. I never told her to come in every night. It was all her idea.<br /><br />Instead, she stared silently at Master Park, keeping her expression carefully blank, as she had learned to do back in her days as a yoga student.<br /><br />She wondered what she would do on the nights that Britt-Shane wasn’t there to train with her. Rob was already leading the rest of the class in some kicking drills. Jen sighed inwardly, resigning herself to a moment she had long anticipated, when she would lose her special status as a private student and move into the regular class. It wasn’t that she minded being part of the group; it was just that Rob always taught those classes. In fact, she had been bracing for the awkward moment that she would have to take instruction from Rob ever since she came to the academy the day after he had kissed her and then confessed that he was in a committed relationship. But the moment had never come; each day, Britt-Shane had arrived and saved her from the unpleasantness.<br /><br />Jen had avoided being instructed by Rob for so long that she was almost eager for it to happen, just to get it over with already. Besides, she didn’t have any hurt feelings about him anymore, just a vague sense of wariness and distrust.<br /><br />Realizing that Master Park still hadn’t spoken, Jen said, “Should I go join the class then?”<br /><br />Master Park shook his head. “No. I’m going to train you,” he said.<br /><br />“Oh,” said Jen, trying not to let her surprise show on her face. “Okay.” She wondered if she were in trouble for losing her fight. Maybe she had gotten Britt-Shane in trouble, too, for not training her properly. That could be the real reason she wasn’t in class tonight. Queasiness rose up in Jen’s stomach and she wished for a moment that she had not come back to the school, that she had stayed at the lake house for a few more days or weeks or forever.<br /><br />“Let’s go in the back,” Master Park said.<br /><br />“In back?” Jen repeated. Now she was really shocked. In her four months at the academy, she had still not learned what lay behind the mysterious bamboo screen. She had asked Britt-Shane several times and only received vague replies: “It’s just a back room,” she would say, as though this weren’t self-evidently the case.<br /><br />And in fact, when Britt-Shane put it that way, Jen wondered why the space behind the screen fascinated her so deeply. Storefronts had back rooms, and schools had offices; nothing so odd about that. Yet when Master Park emerged from the back, he didn’t look like he was coming from an office. It made Jen think of an exercise they had done in her drama class: emerge from a door as though you had just come from a business meeting, a party, cooking dinner in the kitchen, making love in a bedroom. He seemed to be acting the wrong role every time he came through the door.<br /><br />I’m probably just imagining it, she thought, as he led her past the screen and through the door that Jen knew lay behind it from her surreptitious observations. Too many acting classes make your mind crazy.<br /><br />They emerged into a cramped hallway that seemed normal for the space behind a storefront. There were several closed doors along its walls; Master Park opened the one closest to them and led Jen into a small room that she expected to be an office.<br /><br />Instead, she found herself in a tiny makeshift living room. The linoleum floor, the same adobe color as the floor of the academy, was covered by a dark Oriental carpet. There was a small dining table with three chairs around it; the fourth chair had been pulled out to face the short sofa that sat against one wall. Between the chair and the sofa was a coffee table topped with a neat stack of magazines and a wooden chess set. A small bookcase in the corner held far more books than it was designed for, so many that they had been stacked in vertical piles reaching from the bottom to the top of each of the three shelves.<br /><br />I suppose this is why he doesn’t look like he’s coming from an office, she thought, although this lounge still seemed a bit incongruous with what she had expected, although she didn’t know quite what that was.<br /><br />“Have a seat,” said Master Park, pointing at the table.<br /><br />Jen walked obediently to the table and seated herself in a chair that faced out into the room. Master Park remained standing. So, Jen thought, now I’m going to get a lecture.<br /><br />“You lost focus,” said Master Park.<br /><br />“I know,” said Jen. She wanted to add that it wasn’t her fault, that someone distracted her, that reporter, that woman who was stalking her, but she stopped herself. She knew better than to make excuses.<br /><br />Master Park continued to look at her, and Jen felt that she should say something else. She thought of apologizing for her mistake, promising that it would not happen again. But then she thought of Thomas Fo and remembered that there was no reason to spend unnecessary energy acknowledging her errors. She could not guarantee that it would not happen again, and the way to prevent it was through her future actions, not her words.<br /><br />If anyone was going to chastise her, she resolved, it was Master Park. She would agree with his assessment, if it was correct, but she would not waste her energy criticizing herself. She returned his gaze silently.<br /><br />“Do you know how to play chess?” he asked.<br /><br />She nodded, waiting for whatever analogy he was about to draw. A chess player must not get so focused on his…pawn…that he allows the opponent to capture his…queen? She wasn’t sure about the exact names of the pieces, but she could imagine where this was going.<br /><br />“Really?” he asked, looking surprised and pleased. “Do you play often?”<br /><br />Jen was confused. She hadn’t taken his question literally, and now she was afraid that she had inadvertently lied to her teacher for the sake of expediting the conversation. But thinking about it for a moment, she remembered that she had played chess as a child against her grandfather, although that had been almost twenty years ago.<br /><br />“No,” she said, embarrassed. “Never.”<br /><br />“Oh, that’s too bad,” said Master Park, his smile fading. “That’s okay. You’re going to start.”<br /><br />He walked to the bookcase, knelt, and began to shift the books around on one of the shelves.<br /><br />“Here it is,” he said, pulling out a thin, worn paperback and holding it in the air. He stood and handed the book to Jen.<br /><br />“<span style="font-style: italic;">Fundamental Strategy for Chess</span>,” Jen read aloud. Then she stopped, incredulous. She looked up at Master Park.<br /><br />“It’s by Thomas Fo?” she asked.<br /><br />The smile returned to Master Park’s face. “You know him?” he asked.<br /><br />“I’ve read all his books,” said Jen. Except she had never heard of this one; she had no idea he wrote about subjects other than Zen philosophy. “Well, I thought I had. I didn’t know he wrote about chess.”<br /><br />“He has written about many subjects,” said Master Park. “He is a favorite author of mine, and a very dear friend. Someone I know very well.”<br /><br />“You know him?” Jen exclaimed, her excited voice bouncing off the walls of the small room. She was about to apologize, but Master Park smiled, evidently appreciating her enthusiasm.<br /><br />“As well as I know anyone,” said Master Park.<br /><br />Jen opened the book to its title page and stared at the title and author, still incredulous that Master Park was assigning her books by her favorite author. A dear friend. Maybe he would introduce her some day.<br /><br />“You read this during the regular class,” said Master Park, walking to the door. “After class, we will play.”<br /><br />Uh oh, thought Jen—she would need to at least remind herself what all the pieces did before then. She turned to the back of the book to see if it had an index.<br /><br />Master Park walked out the door, then turned back to look at her.<br /><br />“Do you know why I want you to play chess?” he asked.<br /><br />Jen closed the book and looked up. “Because chess is like taekwondo?” Jen guessed.<br /><br />Master Park looked at her skeptically. “How is chess like taekwondo?” he asked.<br /><br />Damn. She had fallen for it again. Her teacher had tricked her into saying the wrong thing and now he was going to yell at her. “It’s not,” said Jen, quickly. “I was wrong.”<br /><br />“Of course it is,” said Master Park. “You read and think about how. You’ll tell me when I come back.”<br /><br />He left, and she opened the book again, now frantic to get started with her ambitious task. In the next hour, she would need to figure out how chess was played, and then how it was like taekwondo.<br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/09/29-mean-story.html"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 29</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-34100946262086071302009-08-07T01:36:00.000-07:002009-08-27T00:38:48.311-07:0027. A Misty Consciousness"Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me." --Hellen Keller<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ever since Jen disappeared into small-town Michigan four months ago, many of our readers have been wondering—where is Jen, exactly? What has she been doing? Why has she disappeared from the public eye? Is her new reclusive lifestyle really what she wants, or is it a sign that something is deeply wrong? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In an exclusive story you’ll find only in </span>Celebrity Gape Magazine<span style="font-style: italic;">, we follow Jen where the other news sources have not dared to go. While most reporters have been discouraged by the actress’s elusive ways, we have followed Jen’s descent into obscurity, her small-town life, and the new passion that now consumes her every waking moment. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This new obsession will be surprising to fans who fell in love with Jen in romantic comedies such as </span>Love Sick<span style="font-style: italic;"> and </span>Meeting Elizabeth<span style="font-style: italic;"> or the workplace farce </span>Free to Chat.<span style="font-style: italic;"> While the Jen we know and love is a shy but flirty ingénue who has charmed us playing quirky, off-beat love interests, the new Jen has decided to take her life in a completely different direction: into the world of full-contact fighting. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Yes, you read that correctly—fighting. Jen now spends every waking moment eating, sleeping, and breathing this new obsession. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">She has taken up a radical new lifestyle filled with grueling exercise and strict self-discipline. She attends regular classes at a regional taekwondo school, an intensive training program that many have described as a cult for good reason. Jen’s routine includes four hours per day of training at the school, along with lengthy runs and intensive stretching. She follows a strict, high-protein diet to encourage lean muscle development. For at least three hours a week, she “spars” with other students, mostly men, arduous battles that often lead to gruesome, bloody injuries. Jen herself has suffered no fewer than six bloody noses as a result of her training, and subtle changes in her facial appearance have led to speculation that she may have broken her nose or jaw. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Jen’s lifestyle is not the only thing about her that has changed. Her appearance is also radically altered. Jen’s fans would hardly recognize the once slender and feminine actress. She appears to have gained at least fifteen pounds of pure muscle, leading to suspicions that she may be resorting to steroid use. Her trademark long, chestnut hair is now short and black, and she has stopped wearing makeup. She has shed her glamorous designer outfits for sweats and running shorts, and often appears grungy and disheveled. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Sources close to Jen reveal a potential motivation for her newfound passion for fighting. While Jen’s taekwondo school is run by a Korean master, Jen’s main trainer is an aggressive, masculine woman named Shane. Rumors of a torrid lesbian affair between Jen and this statewide taekwondo champion—who, at the age of twenty, is more than ten years younger than Jen—have caused a stir in their sleepy town, where local residents are calling Jen a poor role model for young women. In a time when, more than ever, young people look to celebrities as role models, it is a shame that yet another of Hollywood’s finest has succumbed to temptation and let her fans down. </span><br /><br />In the passenger seat on her way to East Lansing, Jen thought about all the monumental occasions for nervousness that she had experienced in her lifetime. She had been through events that would make a normal person sick with fear—movie openings, awards shows, interviews with late-night talk show hosts who nurtured their own fame by making those more famous than themselves look like idiots.<br /><br />She had seen people who weren’t real celebrities waiting in the green room to be interviewed about their remarkable acts of personal bravery or winning cookie recipes; they would be sickly blue with fright, sweating and shivering at the same time. Yeah, wait until your job depends on this performance, Jen would think to herself, biting hard on her pinky finger to stop herself from chewing up her manicure. She had been through it all, over and over again.<br /><br />She had never—never, never—been as gut-twistingly nervous as she was at this moment, in this car, on her way to her first tournament.<br /><br />She supposed it made sense. After all, as obnoxious as those red-carpet interviewers and catty talk-show hosts were, there was about zero chance of her getting kicked in the face by them.<br /><br />“Hey Brittany, how much farther is it?” Jen asked.<br /><br />The young woman driving the car stared fixedly at the road and made no acknowledgment of Jen’s question.<br /><br />“Shane,” said Jen.<br /><br />“About an hour,” said the boyish young woman who had been training Jen every day for the last four months.<br /><br />Jen understood why she had changed her name; Brittany was a horrible name for a fighter, and it didn’t raise her credibility with the bouncy sorority girls that Brittany was always chasing after, either.<br /><br />Still, of all the names, why Shane?<br /><br />“I love that name,” Brittany had said, when she had first informed Jen of her decision. “It’s so androgynous.”<br /><br />I suppose, Jen had thought, although neither the males nor the females that the name conjured in her mind were the least bit appealing. In either case, they were blond with fake tans and always wore white tennis outfits.<br /><br />The renaming had happened almost two months ago, and although that was half of the time that Jen had known Brittany-slash-Shane, she still couldn’t get used to the change. When speaking, Jen tried to use the new name out of respect for the wishes of her friend and trainer. In her mind, however, she had taken to using an amalgam of the two names, “Britt-Shane,” which she had generously chosen over several other alternatives including “Shitney.”<br /><br />There was nothing in the landscape to distract Jen from her nervousness. The view from the passenger’s seat was as flat and uniform as her original drive to North Middleton had been.<br /><br />“Stop sighing,” said Britt-Shane, still staring stonily ahead. Based on her friend’s curt responses and heavy jaw grinding, Jen was fairly certain that Britt-Shane was almost as nervous as she herself was. Britt-Shane’s fight would be against another brown-belt, a tough Detroit girl who was known for her intimidating whooping war-cries as she threw roundhouse kicks.<br /><br />“I didn’t know I was,” said Jen. She took a deep breath in through her nose and tried to let it out silently back through her nose.<br /><br />“You’re doing it again,” said Brittany.<br /><br />“I’m nervous,” said Jen, hoping to elicit a similar confession from either Britt-Shane or the male blue-belt who was pretending to be asleep in the back seat. Master Park and two other male brown-belts were traveling down in Rob’s car; the blue-belt boy had been forced into the girls’ car due to his lower rank.<br /><br />“There’s nothing to be scared of,” said Brittany. The boy remained silent; perhaps he really was asleep, Jen thought. “People hardly ever get injured. This is totally safe.”<br /><br />Safe? Jen had simply been nervous about forgetting everything she knew and looking like a complete idiot. This would be her first competition, and even though she would only be fighting another green-belt, she was convinced that her opponent would have all the skills of the brown-belts that Jen sparred regularly at the academy. In her anxiety about her performance, she had forgotten to even consider the possible physical danger involved. <span style="font-style: italic;">Thanks, Shitney</span>, she thought.<br /><br />By the time they reached the university parking lot, Britt-Shane wasn’t speaking, Jen was lightheaded from trying not to exhale too loudly, and the blue-belt was snoring audibly.<br /><br />They lugged their gym bags through the basketball court where they would be fighting in a few hours. Jen looked across the gym at two women in warm-up pants, one holding a kicking shield while the other threw double jumping kicks at it, and wondered if the kicker might be her opponent. Right next to them was a bored-looking man in a jumpsuit leaning against the wall, and next to him, a raised table that Jen recognized but couldn’t quite place, until she noticed the two oxygen tanks next to it, at which point she realized with a queasy feeling in her stomach that it was a stretcher, and the man next to it, a paramedic.<br /><br />She was about to point this out to Britt-Shane, who was staring fixedly straight ahead as she crossed the gym, but then she decided it wasn’t really important.<br /><br />They walked past the entrance to the dressing rooms and into a small studio in the back of the gym where the fighters were warming up. Master Park and Rob were already there training the two brown-belts.<br /><br />“Go get dressed,” said Master Park without looking up at them, his expression as impassive as ever as a high kick landed on the pad right next to his face. “Then start warming up.”<br /><br />Once they were changed into workout clothes, Britt-Shane led the two of them through stretches, leg swings, and jumping drills, while the blue-belt boy joined the brown belts. Then, when all the boys had finished training, Master Park came over to the two women.<br /><br />“Brittany,” he said. “Go train with Rob.” Jen wondered if she would remind him of her new name, but she followed Rob across the room without saying anything.<br /><br />Then he turned towards Jen. “I’ll train you,” he said.<br /><br />Jen was startled. During her four months at his school, Master Park had remained as mysterious as when she had first met him. With Britt-Shane instructing her on the side of the room, she had bypassed the normal class sequence, preparing for two belt tests and now for this competition without Master Park’s interference or assistance.<br /><br />She had assumed Britt-Shane would be the one getting her ready for her fight. But of course, Britt-Shane had her own fight to prepare for, and Master Park and Rob were both there only as coaches.<br /><br />“Okay, so we’re going to work combinations of kicks,” said Master Park. “That’s what I want you to throw out there. No single kicks.”<br /><br />Master Park led her through the combinations, first three consecutive kicks, then four, then five, then five faster, then five as fast as she could possibly move.<br /><br />“Move your hands. Feint,” he said. She attempted to thrust her hand out deceptively between kicks two and three.<br /><br />Master Park wrinkled his brow in a faint but noticeable signal of confusion and disgust. “Not like that,” he said.<br /><br />When he had decided that the workout was over, Master Park slapped her lightly on the back.<br /><br />“Good,” he said. “You’re ready.”<br /><br />Jen wasn’t sure what to say. Should she thank him? Did she have any questions she needed to ask him?<br /><br />Master Park interrupted her thoughts before she could speak. “Meet back here at one,” he said. “Try to relax.”<br /><br />Britt-Shane had already finished her warm-up. “So what do we do now?” Jen asked, as they walked back down the hall towards the locker room.<br /><br />“Wait,” said Britt-Shane.<br /><br />“How long do you think we have?” Jen asked, realizing that she had absolutely no idea what time it was.<br /><br />Britt-Shane heaved her gym bag forward on her shoulder and pulled her cell-phone from an outside pocket. “Well, it’s eleven-thirty now,” said Britt-Shane, squinting at the phone. “So I guess we’ve got a while.”<br /><br />Jen began to ask where they should wait, but she her friend’s ear.<br /><br />“That girl from the bar last week called,” Britt-Shane said, in a quick, distracted voice that indicated that she was still listening to the message.<br /><br />Jen tried to remember which girl this was. Britt-Shane was always carrying on about some girl or another—girls in her classes, girls in coffee shops, girls working at the bookstore. Always bubbly, vapid girls in skimpy outfits. It was hard to keep track.<br /><br />Then Jen remembered a conversation from last Sunday. Britt-Shane had gone to a friend’s birthday party but limited herself to one beer because she was preparing for the tournament. Jen was always a little shocked by how much time Britt-Shane’s friends spent in bars, considering they weren’t old enough to drink, legally speaking.<br /><br />“I spent all night talking to the hottest girl,” Britt-Shane had told her as they warmed up for sparring.<br /><br />“What was she like?” Jen had asked, although she was pretty sure of the answer already.<br /><br />“Stacked,” Britt-Shane had said, her enthusiasm lighting up her face.<br /><br />Jen had snorted. “You’re a pig,” she said. When they trained or discussed taekwondo, Britt-Shane was her advisor, her guide, wise beyond her years. But when their conversations strayed to any other topic, Britt-Shane’s youthful perspective became painfully apparent.<br /><br />Still, Jen was impressed by how many of the objects of Britt-Shane’s desire—paragons of conventional femininity that they were—ended up going home with her boyish but definitely female training partner.<br /><br />“Haven’t you ever heard of LUG—‘lesbian until graduation’?” Britt-Shane had asked her.<br /><br />Jen shook her head. “I don’t think they had those back when I was in college,” she said, meaning it as a joke, although Britt-Shane didn’t laugh.<br /><br />“Besides, why wouldn’t they be into me?” Britt-Shane asked, running her hand through her hair in a gesture that drew attention oh-so-offhandedly to the definition of her deltoid and biceps. “I’m hot. And none of their boyfriends know how to give them an orgasm.”<br /><br />Britt-Shane hadn’t taken this new girl home yet; she was waiting until after the tournament to see her again.<br /><br />“What was her name?” Jen asked, as they reached the women’s locker room and Britt-Shane removed the phone from her ear.<br /><br />“It’s Brittany,” said Britt-Shane.<br /><br />Jen was confused for a moment, thinking she had called her partner by the wrong name again, before she realized that this was in fact the name of the “stacked” girl.<br /><br />“That’s funny,” said Jen. “Did you tell her?”<br /><br />Britt-Shane shrugged. “Tell her what?” she asked. She looked up confrontationally, as though daring Jen to make reference to her given name.<br /><br />“Never mind,” said Jen. She had enough fights to deal with for today.<br /><br />They sat down on a bench in the locker room, their gym bags resting at their feet, and watched the other women getting ready. It wasn’t too crowded yet. Fighters who lived close by wouldn’t be arriving so early, while those who lived much farther than North Middleton had come down the night before and were staying in local hotels. It was only those like Britt-Shane and Jen who lived a few hours away who had needed to work a large cushion of time into their travel plans. A few women walked in and out of the locker room, some giggling and gossiping in little packs, others looking tense and irritable. None of them gave Jen a second look as they passed her, and she didn’t expect them to; no one seemed to recognize her lately.<br /><br />“So,” said Jen, “What are we supposed to do for the next hour?”<br /><br />“I don’t know what you’re going to do,” said Britt-Shane, reaching into her gym bag. “I brought something to read.” She pulled out a rolled-up magazine, unfurling it with a flourish.<br /><br />Jen groaned and pretended to be exasperated. Britt-Shane seemed to take great pleasure in embarrassing her by bringing old articles about her to their training sessions. “Look at that long hair,” she would coo. “It’s so shiny!”<br /><br />Truthfully, the magazines didn’t really bother her anymore. Her self-awareness collage had served its purpose of inuring her to the stories about her. It was like getting kicked in the head, not so bad once you stopped being afraid of it. She didn’t want to disappoint Britt-Shane, though, so she fulfilled her part of the performance dutifully.<br /><br />“Have you seen this one yet?” Britt-Shane said, waving it around. “It’s new.”<br /><br />“Wow,” said Jen. She hadn’t been in the tabloids for at least the last few months, as far as she could tell; it seemed that the reporters had gotten bored of following her around North Middleton and taken off to some more fertile ground.<br /><br />“It’s a really good one,” said Britt-Shane. “And I’m in it.”<br /><br />“Oh no,” said Jen. “What does it say about you?”<br /><br />“About us,” said Britt-Shane.<br /><br />“Oh no,” Jen repeated, dropping her head into her hands.<br /><br />“It says we’re lov-ahs,” said Britt-Shane, rolling the last word off of her tongue with relish.<br /><br />“Well, they’re obviously full of crap,” said Jen. “You are so not my type.”<br /><br />Britt-Shane stuck out her tongue. “That’s not what it says here,” she said. “Look, there’s a picture of us walking.” Britt-Shane held the magazine out towards Jen, but Jen didn’t look at it. “The caption says, ‘Cradle-Robber Jen with her Lezz-bian Girlfriend.” She elongated the second-to-last word as long as she could, so that “girlfriend” came out mostly as a gasp.<br /><br />“Isn’t that kind of redundant?” Jen asked. “I mean, you wouldn’t be my heterosexual girlfriend, would you?”<br /><br />“This reporter says she’s been following you around,” said Britt-Shane. “Lorna O. Lee. Have you seen her?”<br /><br />Jen shook her head. She hadn’t seen anyone following her around; in fact, she had been feeling blessedly, blissfully unfollowed. The thought that someone had been documenting her time in Michigan without her noticing—taking pictures, even—made her feel as violated as she had ever felt back in Los Angeles. Suddenly she wanted Britt-Shane to stop waving the magazine in her face.<br /><br />Perhaps it wasn’t really the collage that had ended her fear of magazines, she thought. Maybe it was just the comfort of knowing that she wouldn’t be appearing in them any more. Now as she went through her days buying groceries and drinking tea in town or training at the school, she would always be scanning her surroundings for the reporter.<br /><br />At least it gives me something to think about beside the fight, Jen told herself.<br /><br />Once the competition had started, Jen and Britt-Shane sat in the warm-up room rather than watching the fights. Jen could hear the yelling of the crowd, and she wondered how many people were watching. She wanted to go out and look, but Britt-Shane advised against it.<br /><br />“It will just make you nervous to see the fights and the crowd,” she said. “And you’ll be the first one fighting for our school, so there’s no one before you that you need to see. You can watch my fight and the guys.”<br /><br />Before Jen could ask, Britt-Shane added, “And we’ll all come out to watch your fight.”<br /><br />It seemed like only minutes later that Master Park appeared in the room and tapped her on the shoulder. “You’re up next,” he said, speaking close to her ear. Jen and Britt-Shane followed him out to the gym. Jen scanned the room: the bleachers were about half-full, and the folding chairs down near the fighting area were all occupied. Britt-Shane spotted the brown-belts and their blue-belt passenger, who were already in the bleachers, and climbed up to sit with them.<br /><br />Master Park walked her towards the fighting area, stopping at the edge of the mat just in front of the folding chairs. She watched two young men trading kicks, back and forth, snappy kicks that made a loud noise but didn’t seem too painful.<br /><br />“Stay light on your feet, bouncy,” Master Park was telling her. “Throw combinations, not just one kick. Back her up.”<br /><br />Jen nodded.<br /><br />“The most important thing is to stay aggressive,” Master Park said. “Don’t let her intimidate you.”<br /><br />Then Jen saw the men leaving the fighting area and heard the announcer call her name: “From Master Park’s Taekwondo Academy in North Middleton, Jen Fo.”<br /><br />That was the name Jen had decided to fight under, in honor of Thomas Fo, whose books on Zen had become Jen’s scripture. She had read the three books from Paula’s mother’s bookshelf several times each, as well as two others that she had had to special-order from the bookstore.<br /><br />“Let’s go,” said Master Park, patting her on the back as she stepped onto the mat.<br /><br />As the referee recited the rules of the fight, Jen tried to size up her opponent. It was difficult to make out much of her face through her headgear or her body under the chest protector. What Jen could see were shrewd eyes looking back at her through forcibly relaxed eyelids, long, scrawny arms, a mouth smiling a broad, confrontational grin, made all the more sinister by the black plastic mouthpiece that filled the space where her teeth should be.<br /><br />Be aggressive, Jen thought, as the referee started the fight. She bounced on her toes, the girl bouncing across from her, each one waiting for the right moment for the bounce to launch her into a series of kicks.<br /><br />Jen started to throw her first kick, saw the girl preparing her counter, and stopped herself mid-bounce.<br /><br />A few more bounces, and the girl flew in at her. Jen let herself get chased backwards for a moment, then jumped and threw a spinning kick back at the girl, hitting her squarely in the center of her chest protector.<br /><br />This isn’t so bad, she thought. Those kicks she just threw weren’t even hard.<br /><br />She bounced a little, getting ready to make her move. Be aggressive, she told herself. Throw combinations of kicks.<br /><br />Jen began to lift her leg, but the girl was already flying in at her, slamming her legs against one side of her body and then the other. Jen moved forward just in time to feel the girl’s heel strike the edge of her jaw.<br /><br />She stumbled backwards, shocked. That kick was hard—that was all she could think. Hard. I’ve never felt anything that hard.<br /><br />She looked back at the girl, who had retreated for a moment, still bouncing, her skinny arms raised in front of her. She looked a little blurry around her edges.<br /><br />I’m going to kill you, Jen thought.<br /><br />She moved in, and felt the confidence of her training come back to her. Combinations of kicks, hard as you can throw them, she told herself, hitting the girl in the stomach, the head, the rib.<br /><br />The girl winced visibly, and Jen felt triumphant. She didn’t need anything more from this fight; that look was enough.<br /><br />No, she thought. Move in while she’s off-balance. Like she should have done to me. That, thought Jen, was her mistake.<br /><br />She followed the girl in, her leg loaded up in a fake, which the girl was prepared to act upon. Jen’s other leg was already shooting out to beat her kick. There was no way the girl was getting out of this one.<br /><br />Right at that moment, in her peripheral vision, Jen saw a familiar face, a woman, sitting in one of the folding chairs at the side of the mat. Mousy, tired-looking, deep wrinkles around the eyes. Where had she seen that face before?<br /><br />It was that reporter, she realized, even as her kick was connecting the girl’s body. The image still hung in her head, even though Jen had turned and couldn’t see the woman anymore. That reporter from the co-op all those months ago. Jen’s second and third kicks were hitting the girl’s body again, as the girl backed up to try to avoid them. What was that reporter doing here?<br /><br />And then the girl’s foot hit Jen on the side of her temple, and all that Jen felt was vibration. She couldn’t see the girl anymore, just the referee standing over her, and then Master Park. I’m okay, she said, I’m fine. I can keep fighting. They didn’t seem to hear her, and actually, she couldn’t hear herself, either. She tried to raise her hand to show that she was all right, but her muscles wouldn’t move yet.<br /><br />“Shhh,” said Master Park, as the referee waved his arms to call the fight.<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/08/28-forced-moves.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 28</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-80700252264593877742009-07-17T17:38:00.000-07:002009-08-07T01:40:24.701-07:0026. Only Half Real"The absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant." —Milan Kundera<br /><br />During Jen’s first week on her own in Michigan, Becky left six messages on Jen’s cell phone. Since she didn’t get reception at the lake house, Jen checked the messages every evening as she drove to taekwondo class. She always swore to call Becky back on the drive home, but the class left her too tired for conversation.<br /><br />Finally, on a Tuesday morning, Jen called Becky from the phone in the lake house, feeling guilty for running up Paula’s mother’s phone bill. She had some things on her mind, and while she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear Becky’s opinion about them, she felt that just talking to a friend might help her clear her head and think more rationally.<a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/08/27-misty-consciousness.html"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></a><br /><br />“So,” said Becky. “What have you been doing with yourself out there? Did you find a yoga class yet?”<br /><br />“No,” said Jen.<br /><br />“That’s too bad,” Becky said. “You will, though,” she added. “There’s got to be something.”<br /><br />Becky’s chipper tone waned at the end of her sentence as doubt crept into her voice. “Well, if not in that town, <em>somewhere</em> in Michigan.”<br /><br />“I’ve been going to this taekwondo class,” Jen said. “For about a week now.”<br /><br />“Taekwondo?” Becky said, laughing. “Really?”<br /><br />“Yeah,” said Jen, a little annoyed that Becky sounded so surprised.<br /><br />“How did you get involved with that?” Becky asked.<br /><br />Jen wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t want to tell Becky the story of Rob, at least not yet; the disappointment and embarrassment were still too fresh. She couldn’t think of a reasonable lie that would be simple enough to make sense, though.<br /><br />“The cashier in the grocery store recommended it,” she said.<br /><br />“Oh, that guy at the co-op?” Becky asked. “He was cute.”<br /><br />“Yeah, I guess,” said Jen.<br /><br />To distract Becky from that line of conversation, Jen described the classes she had been attending religiously, every weeknight at six-thirty plus Saturday morning, for the last week.<br /><br />Although the first day’s workout had made Jen so sore that she had been tiptoeing down the stairs from her bedroom like an old lady ever since, she not only continued to go to class each evening, but practiced her lessons every morning in the back yard. It was really quite lovely to get out of bed, make a cup of tea, and then do yoga and taekwondo outside by the lake. On the warmest day of the week, she had even gone for a swim afterwards. Then she would stay in the house reading (she had finished <em>Zen for Times of Crisis</em> and started on <em>Zen for Everyday Living</em>) or take a walk in the woods around the house.<br /><br />She had avoided going into town for fear of running into the paparazzi again, instead living off the dry and canned goods that Becky had bought. There was plenty to eat, but the lack of fresh produce was becoming intolerable. The only place Jen knew to shop was the food co-op, though, and she didn’t want to see Rob any more than she had to. She kept intending to look for another store, but it always seemed easier to just stay at home and eat canned corn or beans.<br /><br />By the time it reached six o’clock each evening, time to leave for class, she was restless and itching for human interaction. It was perfect timing; she didn’t mind the solitude during the day, almost enjoyed it, but the prospect of staying home in the dark forest alone as the sun went down seemed hopelessly depressing. She happily climbed into the S.U.V. and drove out to the strip mall at the edge of town.<br /><br />Brittany had greeted her at the door each day. “Go warm up,” she would say, “and then we’ll work on your forms.” Jen had learned all of the first form, more stomping and blocking and punching, and was supposed to start on the second one this week. She had continued to work on her roundhouse kick, and had learned to throw a front kick as well. Brittany hovered around her like a personal trainer, giving Jen detailed corrections about the angle of her leg, the snap of her foot, ignoring all the other students, who took their instructions from Rob or Master Park.<br /><br />Jen wondered how Brittany had time to teach class every single night. It seemed a weighty time commitment for someone so young, who presumably either attended college or had a day job.<br />And when did she do her own training, Jen wondered?<br /><br />Even Rob took nights off. He had missed two evenings so far. Jen didn’t want to notice, but she couldn’t help it. Their contact had been minimal at the school. He said hello if they happened to cross paths, and she usually nodded in response, but otherwise they did not speak to each other.<br /><br />With all the personalized attention from Brittany, Jen was advancing quickly. When she watched her own roundhouse kick in the mirror, it wasn’t half bad. Her foot even pivoted now, she had noted with pride and some awe just the other night. She looked over at the students in the general class, training with Master Park in the center of the room. None of their roundhouse kicks looked as good as hers, despite the fact that she was still segregated from the rest of the class as a “new student.” That boy Brittany had pointed out still couldn’t pivot his foot. Jen wondered when she would start training with the regular class; any day now, she imagined, she would be promoted.<br /><br />The weekend was the only thing that had broken her routine; on Saturday, the beginners’ class was held at ten in the morning, and on Sunday there was no beginners’ class at all. Jen had gone to watch the sparring class instead.<br /><br />It was the first time she had seen Brittany in action. She was one of only two women there; the other was small and skinny and wore a yellow belt. Jen watched in admiration as Brittany patiently but firmly overwhelmed the girl, throwing three kicks for every one that the girl threw, several times sending her flying across the floor with what looked like a donkey kick to her stomach.<br /><br />Brittany went on to spar each of the men who had shown up to the class. Only one of them seemed to be better than her; it was Rob. Several times he landed what looked like hard kicks to Brittany’s face and stomach. Brittany appeared unflappable, bouncing right back up each time she was knocked over, but once Jen thought she saw her lower lip trembling just a little.<br /><br />As Jen watched Rob spar the yellow-belted girl, Master Park seated himself on the folding chair next to Jen’s.<br /><br />“What do you think?” he asked her.<br /><br />It was the first time all week that he had seemed to notice or acknowledge her presence in the class. She wasn’t sure how to respond; she knew from the discussion about “health” that he was fussy about wording, and she didn’t want to say the wrong thing.<br /><br />“Scary?” he suggested.<br /><br />Despite her fear that this was a trap, she decided to agree.<br /><br />“A little,” she said.<br /><br />He leaned in a little closer towards her ear. “You’ll be doing this in three months,” he said to her.<br /><br />That had been the first alarm. And then, just last night, something else had happened, something that showed Jen that she needed to make a decision, now, immediately, as to how involved she wanted to get with this whole taekwondo thing.<br /><br />Brittany had finally mentioned something about her everyday life, that she was taking an economics class. As Jen had suspected, Brittany was a student at MNCMU.<br /><br />“It’s amazing that you can do your homework when you’re over here so much,” Jen said. “Don’t you ever get a night off?”<br /><br />“Sure,” said Brittany. “I usually only teach three nights a week."<br /><br />Brittany was giving Jen that look again, that steady stare, like she wanted to tell Jen something important. Jen had seen it a few times since that first night of class. A nervous, sinking feeling was growing in her stomach.<br /><br />“I’ve been coming in extra to train you,” Brittany said.<br /><br />“I don’t date women,” Jen blurted out. Then, not wanting to sound bigoted, she added, “I mean, I don’t know if I date women. I’m just trying to be on my own right now.”<br /><br />Brittany began to giggle. Her laugh was surprisingly high and bubbly for someone so boyish.<br /><br />“Don’t worry,” said Brittany, slapping Jen cordially on the shoulder. “I don’t want you to be my girlfriend. I want you to be my training partner.”<br /><br />“What?” asked Jen. That didn’t make any sense. “I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’ll never catch up to you.”<br /><br />“You will if I teach you,” said Brittany. “I’m a really good teacher.”<br /><br />These two brief conversations, the one with Master Park and the other with Brittany, had been troubling Jen all morning. She didn’t mention either of them to Becky as she described the taekwondo class. She tried to minimize the impact the class was having on her life, not wanting Becky to know how solitary Jen had been otherwise, how confused she was about this new activity that was trying to suck her in like a cult.<br /><br />“Sounds fun,” Becky said, after Jen told her about the forms and kicking practice.<br /><br />“Yeah, pretty fun,” Jen replied nonchalantly.<br /><br />“So, aside from hearing how you’re doing, there are a couple of other reasons I needed to talk to you,” Becky said. Her voice sounded strained and apprehensive, and Jen had the feeling that bad news was coming. She braced herself to find out what Becky’s mysterious illness was.<br /><br />“Yeah?” Jen asked in a casual, lighthearted tone that sounded entirely forced. “Like what?”<br /><br />“Well,” Becky said, “you might not like this first one. It’s about Groundbreakers. They want me to do this survey, and I’m supposed to get people who know me really well to answer a few questions. I didn’t want to ask you because I know you hate Groundbreakers…”<br /><br />“I don’t hate Groundbreakers,” Jen said, relieved but defensive, although she realized as she denied it that it was in fact pretty close to true.<br /><br />“You know what I mean,” Becky said. “Anyway, I couldn’t think of anyone who knew me nearly as well as you do, so I hope you don’t mind.”<br /><br />“Of course I don’t,” said Jen, feeling bad that Becky had hesitated to ask her. Didn’t Becky know that Jen would be happy to endure a little discomfort to help Becky out? “As long as I don’t have to go to any of those stupid seminars,” Jen said.<br /><br />“Great,” said Becky. “Okay, here’s the first one.” She enunciated more clearly to indicate that she was reading from a paper: “What are my greatest strengths? Please be specific.”<br /><br />Several mean jokes popped into Jen’s head as responses, but she opted for a flattering one instead: “Oh, well, how long do we have?” she asked.<br /><br />Becky laughed uncomfortably. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m sorry you have to do this; it’s pretty embarrassing.”<br /><br />“No, no,” said Jen, “This one is easy.” And she meant it. Despite the recent tension between them, Jen really could list Becky’s positive attributes all day long. “Let’s see. You’re supportive, caring, non-judgmental…”<br /><br />“Hmph,” said Becky, seemingly disagreeing with this last one.<br /><br />“Well, you’re a little judgmental,” Jen conceded. She remembered how she had slept with Skipper just to get into the tabloids and make Bradley jealous, how her plan had backfired and caused so much trouble for Becky. “But not without a good reason.”<br /><br />“Okay,” said Becky, sounding as though she had just finished writing this down.<br /><br />“Wait, there’s more,” said Jen. She thought of the quality she most admired about Becky, the one that she had so often wished she possessed herself. “If you want something to happen, you make it happen. You never sit around waiting or wishing for things to happen. You take action, and it always works out.”<br /><br />There was one notable exception to this characterization of Becky, Jen thought, but she didn’t say it aloud. <em>Becky’s weakness</em>. But this was about Becky’s strengths, and there was no reason to ruin the good mood.<br /><br />“Thanks,” said Becky. “That’s a very sweet thing to say.” Becky’s voice warmed for a moment with a flush of sentimentality that Jen had seldom heard from her.<br /><br />Then she regained her business-like persona. “So the next question is: What aspect of my personality or behavior do you think could use improvement? Please explain how so.”<br /><br />Jen hesitated for a moment, and Becky added, “You can be honest.”<br /><br />Again, <em>Becky’s weakness</em> popped into Jen’s head. But it was something that would hurt Becky’s feelings. Really there was just no reason to bring it up. She had learned years ago that there was no point telling people about problems they couldn’t fix. She searched her mind for something that wouldn’t make Becky upset.<br /><br />“You’re kind of bossy sometimes,” Jen said.<br /><br />“I knew you would say that,” Becky responded before Jen had even finished her statement.<br /><br />“Well, just sometimes,” Jen added.<br /><br />“No, you’re right. I’m bossy,” Becky said. “You of all people know that about me.”<br /><br />Jen was relieved that so far she had managed not to upset Becky. This is going pretty well, she thought.<br /><br />“Okay, last one,” Becky said. “What would you tell me if you knew I couldn’t get upset about it? I’m not allowed to get angry or even ever refer to it again.”<br /><br /><em>Becky’s weakness.</em> I’m not going to say it, Jen resolved. “Hmm, that’s tricky,” she said, stalling for time.<br /><br />“It could be anything,” said Becky. “Anything you’d normally be scared to tell me.”<br /><br />“What is the purpose of this again?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“It’s to help me learn more about myself,” Becky said. “To help me face realities I might not notice or want to see.”<br /><br />Jen’s resolve wavered. Sure, she hadn’t wanted to tell Becky about weaknesses she couldn’t fix, but that was when she thought Becky was looking for ways to improve her life. If she just wanted self knowledge, if that was what she really wanted…<br /><br />“Okay,” said Jen. “You’re never going to be an actress.”<br /><br />Jen could hear the sound of Becky sucking in her breath; then silence.<br /><br />Jen felt the impulse to say something else, to qualify her statement in a way that would make Becky feel better. But instead she just let the silence stretch on, interrupted. She asked, Jen told herself, so she wanted to know.<br /><br />Okay,” said Becky. Her voice sounded shaky, like she might cry.<br /><br />Becky didn’t say anything else for a minute more. Jen waited.<br /><br />Finally, Becky spoke again. “Why not?” she asked, her voice perky with forced interest, but Jen could hear that she was still upset.<br /><br />Jen was silent for a moment more as she considered the question. She had always known: Becky wasn’t an actress. Becky was a yoga teacher. Becky was an accountant. Becky was a personal assistant. Becky was a public relations whiz. Becky made a killer lasagna; even the simple salads she prepared for Jen tasted so much better than the ones Jen made herself. There seemed no reason for someone like that to be running around to auditions, Jen reasoned, doing stupid commercials, when she actually had real skills to offer to the world.<br /><br />It wasn’t an insult, Jen realized. It was a compliment. Being an actress was the insult, the lowly thing, the last resort. Becky had so much more to offer the world.<br /><br />“You’re good at too many things,” Jen said. “You’re not desperate enough.”<br /><br />“You’re just saying that,” Becky retorted. “To make me feel better.”<br /><br />“No, I’m really not,” said Jen. “It’s the truth.”<br /><br />“But you’re good at things,” Becky said. “And you were an actress.”<br /><br />Becky’s use of the past tense stung a little, and Jen wondered if she had phrased it that way on purpose, to spite her. She decided to ignore it, though, since she had just hurt Becky’s feelings, and anyway this was supposed to be an honest conversation with no retaliation. Jen wondered if Becky was supposed to be arguing with her like this; it seemed to qualify as “getting upset.”<br /><br />“I’m good at things like what?” Jen asked, wondering if Becky would come up with anything.<br /><br />“You’re good at yoga,” Becky said.<br /><br />“Not very good,” Jen said. “Not like you.”<br /><br />“And you used to be good at some of your classes at school,” said Becky. She’s really in over her head here, Jen thought, almost feeling sorry for her. “You were good at English, weren’t you?”<br /><br />“I was okay at it,” Jen said. “See, you’re just proving my point if you have to ask.”<br /><br />A strange anxiety began to creep over Jen that she couldn’t quite identify, like she had just momentarily forgotten about some tragic news but would remember again in a moment. She searched her mind for a moment for the source of the feeling before deciding it was best to try to forget about it.<br /><br />“Anyway,” Jen said, “This interview is about you. I’ve seen you at auditions, and you seem…”<br />Jen had to stop and think. She knew something seemed off about Becky’s performance, but it was difficult to put into words.<br /><br />"Seem like what?" asked Becky.<br /><br />Jen remembered her own early auditions. It wasn’t that she had been such a good actress; even in her own memory, she could remember forced lines, wooden delivery, exaggerated emotion. But she also remembered the desperation at those auditions, how she had absolutely nothing else to live for. Every last ounce of her will had been poured into her dialogue, her life preserver, saving her from having to figure out what she wanted to do with her life, what she wanted to be.<br /><br />Jen returned to her earlier assessment: Becky wasn’t desperate, and that lack of desperation really showed.<br /><br />“You look distracted,” said Jen. “You don’t seem like you’ve been awake for nights on end obsessing over the audition. You seem like you’ve just come from doing something else that was more important.”<br /><br />“So what are you trying to say?” Becky asked, still in her hurt-but-brave voice. “Are you telling me I should give up? Stop going to auditions?”<br /><br />“No,” said Jen in a patronizing voice, a voice meant to imply, “That’s not what I meant at all,” even though it was what she meant, truthfully. Now that the idea had been set free from its secret hiding place in her brain, Jen realized that she thought Becky’s acting career was a giant waste of her energy and talent.<br /><br />“Well, I <em>am</em> going to stop,” Becky said.<br /><br />“Becky,” said Jen.<br /><br />“At least for a while. Not because of what you said,” she added. “Because of the other thing I need to tell you.”<br /><br />This was it. Jen took a deep breath and waited for Becky’s news. Then she couldn’t wait any more; she blurted it out herself.<br /><br />“You’re sick,” Jen said.<br /><br />“I’m pregnant,” Becky said.<br /><br />“Oh!” Jen exclaimed, her surprise pouring raw and uncensored into her voice. “That’s funny.” Jen slapped her hand across her own mouth before she could say any more; she had been about to note the odd coincidence that she had just found out she <em>wasn’t</em> pregnant.<br /><br />Becky sounded as though she found this response suspicious. “Why’s it funny?” she asked.<br /><br />“Oh, it’s not,” said Jen. “I meant surprising.”<br /><br />Now that Jen had a moment to think about it, it really was surprising. Becky hadn’t been dating anybody, as far as Jen knew. Granted, they hadn’t been communicating well lately, but a boyfriend seemed like the sort of thing Jen would have heard about.<br /><br />“With <em>who</em>?” she asked, realizing as soon as she said it that her incredulous tone was horribly offensive.<br /><br />Trying to mitigate her rudeness, she added, “I mean, who have you been…You haven’t…” Damn, Jen thought. She was getting this conversation all wrong. There must be a correct way to construct this sentence, but she couldn’t figure out what it was.<br /><br />“Chase,” said Becky.<br /><br />“<em>Chase</em>?” Jen repeated, no longer making any effort to hide her astonishment. “Isn’t he gay?”<br /><br />“Yeah, so?” Becky said. “Gay men have sperm just like straight men.”<br /><br />“But did you guys have sex?” Jen asked. The clinical nature of Becky’s statement had her wondering if perhaps they had made some sort of alternate arrangement.<br /><br />“A few times,” Becky said. “Right when we started hanging out together. We were drinking a lot,” she added, by way of explanation.<br /><br />“I was so worried about you,” Jen said. “You looked so sick when you were here. I thought you were dying or something.”<br /><br />“I’m sorry to scare you,” Becky said. “I wanted to tell you earlier, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep it.”<br /><br />“So you’re keeping it?” Jen said. Damn, more rude questions, she chastised herself. It was so difficult to talk about pregnancy; there were more impolite things to say than acceptable ones.<br /><br />“Yeah,” said Becky, evidently not offended; she sounded as though she herself found it a bit surprising. “I talked to Chase about it, and he’s ready. He actually seems pretty excited to be a dad.”<br /><br />Jen tried to envision Chase cradling an infant in his oversized arms, but the image that came to mind was him accidentally crushing it—she thought it might be a scene from a book but couldn’t remember which one. “I squished the little baby,” Chase-in-her-mind said sadly, waving it around by its foot.<br /><br />“Us raising a kid together, it’s the ideal set-up, if you think about it,” Becky was saying. “I mean, I’m not sleeping with him.”<br /><br />“Anymore,” Jen said.<br /><br />“Right,” Becky said. “But we spend all our time together. He’s my best friend. I mean, beside you,” she added quickly.<br /><br />“Right,” Jen said.<br /><br />“I mean, kids ruin marriages,” Becky said. “But we won’t be married, or living together, or even a couple. So we can really focus on the kid without worrying so much about our relationship.”<br /><br />“It does sound nice,” said Jen, in part to appease Becky, although in reality Jen could see the value in her reasoning.<br /><br />The more Jen thought about it, once they had said their goodbyes and promised to talk again soon, the more she really did see what a good arrangement Becky had stumbled into. A gay best friend father wouldn’t leave you for another woman, couldn’t cheat on you and destroy your family. When Jen used to envision herself having children with Bradley someday, she had always worried how a child would affect their marriage. She had seen so many women’s husbands become frustrated with the hectic home life, the mother’s focus on the children instead of the him, the lack of sex—and there was the nanny, so young and cute and available. A gay father, Jen thought, was probably the best way to ensure that he would always be in the baby’s life, as well as the mother’s. What a happy life it would be for Becky, what good news.<br /><br />Jen realized with surprise that she was jealous. Up until this moment, she hadn’t been sure how she felt about her own potential pregnancy; now she was starting to feel pretty sure that she was a little bit devastated to have lost the baby she hadn’t quite admitted to herself that she was expecting.<br /><br />And something else about that conversation was bothering her, she thought, staring pensively at the living room wall as she paced the floor. In a tribute to Thomas Fo, she had begun to cut out the most embarrassing passages from the magazines and tabloids she had purchased last week and tape them to the wall across from the sofa. She was fashioning a collage of shame to remind herself of her old life, just like Fo’s stack of video cassettes.<br /><br />Her eye fell on a shiny clipping: “Jen’s lackluster performances over the last five years have caused film critics to speculate that she may be developing a serious drug habit.”<br /><br />Though she had read this sentence at least ten times already, Jen still winced. The fact that she had quite decidedly not been on drugs made the criticism all the more cutting, especially since the other part of it was the truth: Jen’s recent performances, while not flops, had all been categorized by the press squarely as disappointments.<br /><br />Suddenly she remembered what was making her uneasy. It was all that talk about her not being good at anything. What had always been an abstract source of self-criticism was about to become a concrete obstacle in her life: if she wasn’t going to act, what would she do? She wanted to work at something, to become really good at something, to dedicate herself with the level of attention that she so admired in Becky.<br /><br />It’s taekwondo, she said to herself. I’m really going to do it.<br /><br />She headed to the back yard to practice her forms and kicks. All of her earlier doubt and anxiety about the class became irrelevant in an instant; she had decided.<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/08/27-misty-consciousness.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 27</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-6265421606944344172009-06-29T01:01:00.000-07:002010-11-26T23:43:13.446-08:0025. As Much as a Man“I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman?” —Sojourner Truth<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Master Park’s Academy of Taekwondo. </span>If she hadn’t seen the sign, she wouldn’t have believed she was in the right place.<br /><br />It was exactly six fifteen when Jen pulled into the parking lot of a forgotten-looking strip mall. She double-checked the address she had found in the phone book, hoping she hadn’t messed up reading the map that she found in the car.<br /><br />She drove the length of the mall, reading the names on the signs above each storefront—Davidson’s Vacuum Repair, Sew Mart, North Middleton Medical Supply and Wheelchair Outlet, none of which seemed to be open for business—before finding her destination at the far end of the parking lot: a retail space marked only with a small sign in the window. Behind the sign, the bottoms of the windows were blocked with bamboo and paper screens, obscuring the view. Still, she could see the vague silhouettes of bodies moving inside.<br /><br />“So this is really it,” she said to herself, taking her choice of spaces in the vast, vacant expanse of the parking lot.<br /><br />As she walked up to the storefront, she felt her stomach turn over. The thought popped into her head, unbidden: there’s still time to leave. “Don’t be silly,” she said aloud, looking behind her as soon as the words had left her mouth to make sure no one was there to witness her talking to herself.<br /><br />She opened the door and was engulfed by the steamy smell of sweat and bleach. She walked into a single, long room, the length of a regular store. One side of the room was a solid wall of mirrors; other mirrors were placed around the room at sporadic intervals.<br /><br />There was a small reception desk right next to the front door, but no one was sitting at it. Jen scanned the room but saw no sign of Master Park. She looked around for a door that might lead to a back room, but could only see a bamboo screen in the back of the room, similar to those that blocked the windows in the front. There was a set of cubbies by the desk, with shoes in them. Jen balanced on one foot and then the other to remove her own sandals.<br /><br />Along the edges of the room near the mirrored walls, a handful of students in white taekwondo uniforms were doing stretches on the scuffed linoleum floor. One girl’s eyes widened as she stared longways at Jen from her side-stretch; she appeared to be about fifteen years old. Another girl sat up from her forward bend to look. One young man, perhaps in his early twenties, glanced at Jen quickly before returning his focus to an obviously painful attempt at the splits. The few other students, also male, continued stretching without seeming to notice her. Their exaggerated seriousness reminded her of her yoga classes, except with a reversed ratio of male to female students.<br /><br />Jen was about to sit down on one of the folding chairs by the front desk when Master Park appeared, wearing his taekwondo uniform, from behind the screen in the back of the room, followed by two students. The first student appeared for a moment to be a prepubescent boy, yet he was almost as tall as Master Park. Jen squinted her eyes—her distance vision was not strong as it used to be, she noted—and realized that the student was actually a young woman with broad shoulders and very short, stylishly mussed brown hair.<br /><br />The second student who emerged, although it took Jen a moment to recognize him in the white uniform rather than his usual dark t-shirt, was Rob. She had hoped not to see him here, in the beginners’ class; she realized with dismay that he might be teaching. As he crossed the floor towards the group of stretching students, he caught Jen’s eye, looked startled, and then gave her a kind of cursory smile that looked more like a grimace before turning to walk towards a group of male students.<br /><br />Master Park approached the front of the room with an air of professional formality. Jen started to say hello to him, but he turned and walked behind the desk, only beginning to speak to her once he had seated himself.<br /><br />“So, your first class,” said Master Park, in a friendly but detached tone, as thought he might or might not remember that he spend two hours with her just yesterday.<br /><br />He handed her a clipboard and a pen. “Please fill out this student information sheet.”<br /><br />She sat down on a folding chair and began filling in blanks. Most of the questions were fairly standard--her name, her age, her method of payment. Two questions at the bottom, however, could not be answered so straightforwardly.<br /><br />“Have you studied martial arts in the past?” the first question read.<br /><br />She paused to consider whether yoga counted. Then she decided to err on the side of greater simplicity and less disclosure.<br /><br />“No,” she wrote.<br /><br />The second question asked, “Do you have any medical conditions, such as epilepsy, heart condition, broken bones, or pregnancy, that would affect your ability to undertake a rigorous course of exercise?”<br /><br />Although she knew immediately what her answer would be, she felt bad writing it down, in one case because she was lying and in the other case because she was not.<br /><br />“No,” she wrote again.<br /><br />Just as Jen was putting the clipboard down on the desk, Master Park began to address the class in a voice that seemed both commanding and surprisingly quiet at the same time.<br /><br />“If it’s your first week, please come to the front,” Master Park announced. Two of the boys stood up from their stretches and came to join Jen by the desk. Though Master Park hadn’t said anything to them, Rob and the boyish girl came over as well. Rob stood slightly behind the girl, so that Jen could not see his eyes. She looked at the girl instead; up close, Jen could see a patch of tattooed skin peeking out from under the girl’s collar. Jen looked down at their uniforms and noticed Rob had a black belt, while the girl’s belt was brown. She knew black was above brown, but didn’t know by how much. She hoped that it wasn’t very far above; hoped, in fact, that this girl could secretly kick Rob’s ass if she wanted to. She looked pretty strong and not so much smaller than him.<br /><br />“This is Jennifer’s first day,” Master Park said to Rob and the girl, nodding his head towards her. Jen groaned inwardly at this confirmation that Rob was a teacher for the new students.<br /><br />“I’ll work with her,” the girl said quickly. Jen let out an involuntary sigh of relief, which she tried to disguise by clearing her throat loudly.<br /><br />“Great,” said Master Park. He turned towards Jen. “Brittany is a senior student here. She will be leading you through your first lesson.”<br /><br />“You two can work with Rob,” he said to the boys. Rob turned and shrugged at Jen in a way that was almost apologetic before whisking the boys off to a far corner of the room.<br /><br />Brittany led Jen into the workout area. “After class we’ll get you a gi,” Brittany said. She had a rough, gravely voice that made her sound older than her creaseless face would suggest. The voice projected confidence and something like wisdom that made Jen feel eager to impress her, even though they had only just met. Unfortunately, Jen couldn’t understand the meaning of the girl’s sentence.<br /><br />“Um, what?” Jen asked, feeling like an awkward teenager in the sight of this girl who very likely <span style="font-style: italic;">was </span>a teenager.<br /><br />“A <span style="font-style: italic;">gi</span>,” Brittany repeated a bit more loudly.<br /><br />“I don’t know what that is,” Jen said.<br /><br />“Oh, wow,” said Brittany. “Right. That’s the thing I’m wearing.” She crossed her arms, grabbed her own sleeves, and shook the fabric a bit. The uniform flapped stiffly over her muscular shoulders. “We might have one your size in the back.” She looked Jen up and down, skeptically. “Or maybe not. You’re pretty skinny.”<br /><br />Jen looked down at her thin arms and ankles sticking out from her t-shirt and yoga pants, and felt, for the first time that she could remember, that she was in fact too skinny, despite the fact that she had gained back most of the weight she had lost during her fast.<br /><br />“Don’t worry, you won’t need it for a while,” Brittany said, reassuringly. “Go warm up with the rest of the class, and then you’ll work with me when they split up.”<br /><br />Jen walked to the middle of the room where more students had now accumulated; even more were streaming in through the door. The clock on the wall read six twenty-nine. Jen wondered if the warm-up Brittany had mentioned was just individual stretching, or if someone would lead the class in a formal warm-up. Just in case, she decided to follow the lead of the other students and do some stretching on her own. She did a quick forward bend to loosen up, then lowered herself into a deep forward split. Her hamstrings felt a bit tighter than they had when she was practicing yoga every day, but she could still get pretty low to the floor.<br /><br />“Nice,” said the boy standing above her, the same boy who she had just seen struggling to get into the same position, in an approving voice.<br /><br />“Thanks,” she said, surprised to be complimented on her stretching ability. In all her years of yoga classes, barely anyone had ever spoken to her, and certainly not to remark on her skill at yoga. Yoga was a non-judgmental practice, after all, so the assessing of others was something that had to be done covertly and in silence.<br /><br />Suddenly Master Park appeared in front of one of the mirrored walls. All the students turned to face him. Jen pulled herself to her feet.<br /><br />“Push-ups,” he said.<br /><br />Immediately, the students around Jen lowered themselves back to the floor and into position. Jen quickly joined them. As Master Park began to count, Jen turned her head to the side and was relieved to see that at least one other woman was doing the push-ups from her knees rather than her feet.<br /><br />After two sets each of twenty pushups and twenty sit-ups, Master Park said, “Line up for forms practice.” Jen stood up and stumbled back a bit, feeling tired already just from the warm-up.<br /><br />She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Brittany standing just behind her. “Let’s go over there,” she said, jerking her thumb towards some open space in the far corner of the room, near the screen from behind which she, Rob, and Master Park had just emerged.<br /><br />“So, the first thing you’ll learn is the beginning of the first form,” Brittany said. Jen remembered Rob using that term to describe part of the class they had watched at the Snail Plant, but couldn’t remember what it meant. Brittany showed her a few movements: a stomp, a block, a step, and a punch. It seemed pretty simple. “Practice that,” Brittany said, as she walked towards the bamboo screen and disappeared behind it.<br /><br />Jen craned her neck and tried to see what was behind the screen. If she walked over to it, she could look behind it, but she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. Still, she was getting curious. I’ll look later, she told herself, drawing her focus back as best as she could to the four moves she was supposed to be practicing. Stomp, block, step, punch. Stomp, block, step, punch. It was boring, but her yoga classes had taught her to look especially engaged when doing the most menial task. That would show the teacher you were serious.<br /><br />I saw <span style="font-style: italic;">Karate Kid</span>, Jen said to herself. I know a test when I see one.<br /><br />Stomp, block, step, punch. It’s probably just the bathroom, she thought, looking over at the screen again. She didn’t see one anywhere else in the room. Except why would Master Park, Rob, and Brittany all have walked out of the bathroom together at the beginning of class? Maybe it was a hallway with offices <span style="font-style: italic;">and </span>a bathroom.<br /><br />As she stood staring at the screen, Brittany suddenly appeared from behind it. Jen quickly returned to her four moves, although it was obvious she had been busted not practicing.<br /><br />Jen was relieved when Brittany graciously overlooked her transgression. “Okay, champ, let’s see it,” Brittany said, walking over to her.<br /><br />Jen dutifully performed her moves, while Brittany watched, stony-faced, then said, “Good,” and gave Jen a few small corrections: bend your knees more, twist your body on the block, throw the punch straight out from your side.<br /><br />“Okay, that’s enough forms for today,” Brittany said, finally. “I’ll show you more next time. Now we’re going to work on your stance, and I’ll show you one kick.”<br /><br />Jen wondered if a “stance” was what it sounded like: a way of standing. It hadn’t occurred to Jen that such a thing would need to be taught.<br /><br />“So, the taekwondo stance is like this.” Brittany stood in front of Jen with her feet wide apart, knees bent and bouncy, her hips thrust forward, and her hands up in front of her face. Jen’s mind immediately traveled back to the boys fighting in the school yard; they had stood in just the same way before they began kicking each other. Really, just the same, Jen marveled; it was uncanny that such different-looking people could look so similar.<br /><br />“Like this?” Jen asked, trying to mirror her body. Her legs felt awkward in the bent position.<br /><br />“Don’t stick your butt out,” Brittany said. Embarrassed, Jen pulled her buttocks as far forward as she could.<br /><br />Brittany shot her an assessing scowl. “Now you’re curling your hips up weird. Just try to stand straight.”<br /><br />Jen shifted her body around, trying to figure out how to stand straight while keeping her knees bent.<br /><br />“You should feel like you can keep your balance really well in this position,” Brittany said, coming over to Jen and shaking her around by her shoulders. Jen was startled by the power in this small gesture; Brittany was hardly moving, but Jen felt like she was about to fall over.<br /><br />“See, you’re not balanced. You should feel really comfortable, really balanced.” Brittany repositioned Jen’s body, pushing her hips in a bit, pressing on her shoulders to make her bend her knees more. Still, it seemed the more times Brittany said the word “balance,” the more Jen felt like her legs were about to collapse out from under her.<br /><br />“There, that’s not too bad,” Brittany said finally, surveying Jen’s rigid, awkward posture with the approving eye of a sculptor. She pressed her palms to the front of Jen’s shoulders and pushed. Again, Jen felt like she was about to fall.<br /><br />“Feel balanced?” Brittany asked. “Comfortable?”<br /><br />“Yes,” Jen lied, feeling fairly certain that she would never feel comfortable or balanced in any position with her knees bent and her arms up in the air. If that’s what Brittany was waiting for, this would be a long lesson.<br /><br />“Okay, good,” said Brittany. “The first kick we’ll do is a roundhouse kick.”<br /><br />Jen watched Brittany’s powerful physique as she kicked the air, her leg lifting up and then snapping around in a perfect pirouette. It was incredibly beautiful, Jen thought, so graceful, more like a ballet dancer than a fighter, despite Brittany’s rugged physique.<br /><br />I will never be able to do that, she thought to herself.<br /><br />“Okay, you try,” Brittany said.<br /><br />Brittany coached Jen through a few feeble attempts at the kick before leaving her to practice it on her own. Jen moved over a few paces so that she could watch herself in the mirror. She saw her reflection step out tentatively with one foot and then awkwardly lift the other leg into the air, where it snapped out in a crooked line and then fell straight down to the floor.<br /><br />That looks horrible, Jen thought, shuddering. She considered moving back to her original spot away from the mirror, but then realized that it might be worse not to know how ridiculous she appeared. Instead, she forced herself to watch the offending kick over and over. I’m sure this builds character or something, she told herself, trying to assume an air of detached amusement at her own incompetence.<br /><br />By the time Brittany returned a few minutes later, Jen’s leg was exhausted and her side was cramping up. She hoped Brittany would tell her that this part of the lesson was over, but instead she offered more corrections.<br /><br />“Try to pivot on the ball of your foot,” Brittany said.<br /><br />Jen stepped and kicked with her right leg, but her left foot stayed planted firmly on the floor.<br /><br />“You didn’t pivot,” Brittany said. “Try it again.”<br /><br />Jen threw the kick again, this time willing her foot to move. <span style="font-style: italic;">Pivot</span>, she said forcefully to her foot as her opposite leg swung around. Still, nothing happened.<br /><br />“Sorry,” Jen said, feeling worried that Brittany would think she was willfully disregarding her instructions.<br /><br />“Don’t say ‘sorry,’” Brittany told her in a rote tone of voice that suggested she had said these same words many, many times. “Just do it right.”<br /><br />Jen tried again, three more times, but her foot still didn’t move.<br /><br />“I’m terrible at this,” she said.<br /><br />“Don’t complain,” Brittany shot back, before the words were fully out of Jen’s mouth. “No one gets everything right on the first day. It’s stuck up to think you’ll get everything perfect right away.”<br /><br />Brittany pointed at one of the students who were taking instruction from Master Park in the middle of the room, concealing her gesture behind her other hand. “Look at that guy. He’s been here three months, and his feet aren’t pivoting either.”<br /><br />Jen felt comforted as she watched the boy throw a series of awkward kicks (though not as awkward as hers, she knew) at a target that looked like a ping-pong paddle, which a fellow student was holding up for him. Looking at his foot, she saw that Brittany was correct; it did not move a centimeter as he kicked.<br /><br />“So everybody is this bad at first?” Jen asked.<br /><br />Brittany appeared to consider the question seriously for a moment. “No, you’re worse than average,” she decided.<br /><br />“But don’t worry,” she added encouragingly. “You’ll get it. It just takes time.”<br /><br />Jen practiced her roundhouse kick until the end of class, when Master Park reconvened the students for one more set of push-ups and sit-ups, followed by a few stretches. Jen sank gratefully into a forward bend, happy to finally be doing something that didn’t make her muscles exhausted.<br /><br />“So, what did you think?” Brittany asked Jen, meeting her as she walked to the cubby to put on her shoes.<br /><br />“Fun,” Jen said, feeling too tired to elaborate.<br /><br />“Do you think you’ll be back next time?” Brittany asked.<br /><br />“Sure,” Jen said, realizing that she had no idea when next time would be. “Is there a…” She paused to search her exhausted brain for the applicable word: “…schedule?”<br /><br />“Oh, sorry,” Brittany said, picking up a folded pamphlet from the desk and opening it to show a small calendar to Jen. It was marked with colored squares indicating the classes offered at different times. Brittany ran her finger along a stripe of blue boxes. “Beginner’s class is every weekday at six thirty and Saturdays at ten.”<br /><br />She pointed at the last day of the week, which was marked with one tall, red box, indicating a single, long class. “Sunday is all sparring,” she said. “You won’t start doing it yet, but it might be good to come and watch.” She handed Jen the pamphlet.<br /><br />“Okay,” said. Jen. “I’ll be there. I’ll come every day.” After all, I have nothing else to do, she added to herself.<br /><br />She thought this ambitious plan might surprise Brittany, but she didn’t have any noticeable reaction. “Good,” she said, quickly. “Oh, and I checked, and we don’t have any small gis in the back, but I’ll order you one. It should take about a week. Any other questions?”<br /><br />Yes, thought Jen. What’s behind that bamboo screen? She didn’t know what was making her so curious, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it.<br /><br />“Is there a bathroom?” she asked, hoping to be directed toward a door behind the screen.<br /><br />Instead, Brittany pointed at a large hook on the wall behind the front desk. It had a key hanging off of it, attached to one of the kicking paddles that was acting as a keychain.<br /><br />“It’s out the front door, turn right, past the sewing store,” Brittany said.<br /><br />This was disappointing information for a number of reasons: first, because she would not get to check out what was behind the screen, second, because now she would have to walk halfway across the strip mall every time she wanted to use the bathroom, and third, because she didn’t actually have to use the bathroom now, but she would need to walk down there anyway or risk seeming like she had lied.<br /><br />As she walked, she thought about the class, marveling that, aside from a few double-takes early on, no one seemed to make any fuss about her presence there. It was nice to feel like just any other student, Jen realized. That was one thing she had always loved about yoga, that once class began, she could lose herself in being not a celebrity, but just a person doing yoga. She hadn’t even really noticed Rob that much, she realized. She had been so busy trying to do that roundhouse kick that she had forgotten all about him.<br /><br />By the time she returned from her excursion to the bathroom, which unfortunately didn’t exceed her expectations for cleanliness or pleasant smells, the other students had all left and the room appeared abandoned. Jen ducked in, hoping to drop the key off and sneak out again, unnoticed, but once she was inside, she realized that Brittany was sitting on the chair behind the desk. Jen stepped behind her and hung the key back on its oversized hook.<br /><br />“Bye,” she said to Brittany.<br /><br />“You know, it’s funny,” said Brittany.<br /><br />“What?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“I knew you’d come in here,” Brittany said. “I just knew it.”<br /><br />“Huh,” said Jen, not sure how to respond to this. She and Brittany stood looking at each other for a moment. Jen was struck again by how boyish Brittany looked—like a very athletic, pretty boy, with muscular shoulders and cute hair, the kind of boy that made fourteen year old girls swoon with desire. Brittany didn’t say anything further, just sat, steadily returning Jen’s gaze, until Jen could feel her own face turn red.<br /><br />“Okay, goodnight,” Jen finally said. She turned abruptly and stumbled over her own shoes on the way out the door.<br /><br /><em><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/07/during-jens-first-week-on-her-own-in.html">Chapter 26</a></em>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-81625022707455744992009-06-17T00:46:00.001-07:002009-06-29T01:06:10.991-07:0024. Arrows, Rifles, Spears and Swords“Every day when one’s mind and body are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one’s master.” —Yamamoto Tsunetomo<br /><br />Jen sat in bed for a long time after finishing the first chapter of <span style="font-style: italic;">Zen for Times of Crisis</span>. She didn’t feel like reading any further just yet. Thomas Fo’s story of abandoning his acting career read like an episode from her own life. It motivated her to focus on her task here, despite her discouraging encounter with Rob last night.<br /><br />She had gone to bed feeling like she had failed at her new life before it had even begun. After reading Fo’s chapter, she reminded herself of everything that she was supposed to be doing in Michigan, none of which included finding a boyfriend. Quite the contrary. She had come to focus on herself, to shed her old life, to find some space and some peace so she could focus and think.<br /><br />And for one other reason, she thought, with a grimace, wrapping her arms around her stomach. She hadn’t wanted to think about it. With Becky and Paula to distract her, she had almost succeeded in forgetting all about it.<br /><br />She remembered Fo’s words. “Even as I write, the tapes stand facing me…a reminder of the life I once lived, and of why I must never return to it.”<br /><br />Today is the day, she resolved. Today I will think about all the things I haven’t wanted to think about. There was one thought in particular that she had been evading for weeks and weeks; now was the time to confront it.<br /><br />“I think I’m pregnant,” she said aloud. She started a bit, surprised at hearing the words that she hadn’t even shaped in her head until now. She had been nauseous every day for weeks, and her period still had not returned. And here she was in Michigan, thousands of miles from home, in a place where a baby could grow inside of her without, she had hoped, any attention or notice; that was truly why she was here, she told herself, relieved to finally admit the truth. But admitting it didn’t make her future any more known. She decided that this uncertainty would not haunt her any longer; today she would discover her future.<br /><br />With new drive, she rose from the bed, quickly dressed herself in sweatpants and a t-shirt, and found the keys to Paula’s mother’s SUV. It was her first time driving in Michigan; Paula and Becky had done all the driving until they left, and yesterday Jen had walked into town and gotten a ride home from Rob. Maneuvering such a large vehicle felt strange to her at first, but soon she got used to it and was able to appreciate how it smoothed out the bumps of the uneven road into town.<br /><br />She parked in front of the drug store, scanning the sidewalk for paparazzi, but she didn’t see any; apparently the food co-op was their main point of attack.<br /><br />Safely inside, she walked straight to the back of the store, to the aisle marked “contraceptives,” which, she remembered from her earlier visit to this store, seemed to be shorthand for any paraphernalia necessary for dealing with sex or its consequences. Alongside the condoms and spermicides, there were plastic bottles of neon-colored lubricant, a few containers of flavored “body paint,” ointments for reducing the discomfort of genital herpes, and, next to those, the pregnancy tests.<br /><br />Jen spotted the box labeled “Know For Sure,” her favorite name of all the brands, and grabbed it quickly from the shelf.<br /><br />Carrying it low in her hand with the label facing in towards her thigh, she began to search the store for the other embarrassing item she needed: magazines. She remembered seeing them in passing as Paula whisked her around the store, but couldn’t recall where exactly.<br /><br />She passed through the long row of greeting cards, and then, next to those, found the rack of magazines. She was pleased to see that they had a decent selection covering topics from music to golf to knitting. Right in the center of the top shelf she found the section she was looking for, a large spread of celebrity magazines with more titles than she had known existed. Only one of them mentioned her on its cover. She perused the tables of contents in the other magazines—rolling her eyes at how inevitably difficult it was to find the contents page amongst the pages and pages of advertisements—and discovered three other magazines containing short articles about her.<br /><br />The real tabloids, the ones with the pixilated photographs on cheap newsprint, were on a shelf at the bottom, near Jen’s feet. She knelt down to sort through them and found two that featured her on the cover, though neither as the main story. Flipping through the other tabloids, she found three more stories about herself.<br /><br />She walked to the counter, where a single cashier, a blond, pimply-faced boy who was most likely a MNCMU student, awaited her. Blushing, she placed her assortment of purchases on the counter: a neat pile of four celebrity magazines, five trashy tabloids, and topping the stack like a cherry on a sundae, the pregnancy test. She had thought about adding some other purchases to dilute these embarrassing items, but she could not imagine how many bottles of shampoo and multivitamins it would take to distract the cashier from such a preponderance of humiliation.<br /><br />Jen’s inclination was to bow her head as the cashier scanned the magazines and placed them into a plastic bag, but instead, she attempted to make eye contact with him. After all, he was only a kid, and he probably wouldn’t even notice what she was buying. But his shy smile and refusal to return her gaze convinced her that he did indeed notice, and that he couldn’t wait to report this exciting news to his friends.<br /><br />It doesn’t matter, she told herself, as she walked out the door with her shameful bag wrapped around her wrist. The whole point is to confront the things that embarrass me. But she could feel her face glowing hot and red and she returned to the SUV, and she was certain that everyone on the sidewalk was staring at her.<br /><br />Back at the lake house, she placed the magazines and the pregnancy test on the coffee table. Then she made some tea, taking a long time tidying up the kitchen and washing a few dishes that were in the sink. Finally, when she could find no further diversions, she carried her cup of tea into the living room and sat down cross-legged on the floor next to the coffee table. She would start with the magazines, she decided, and then the tabloids. Then, when she could stand no more of her public persona—the thing she had been trying to avoid for years, that she had moved to Michigan to escape—she would move on to the pregnancy test, and then finish the rest of the magazines, after which her project of self-knowledge would be complete for the day.<br /><br />The top magazine on the pile had a two-page spread near the middle devoted to Jen’s yoga injury. There was a large photograph of her being rushed out of the health club lobby, clutching an ice pack to her side. “Addicted to Asanas,” the headline read, and below that, “The ‘health’ routine that’s tearing Jen’s body apart.” A smaller inset picture on the opposite page showed a picture of Jen with her long hair, taken at the height of her fast she was fairly certain, looking emaciated and haggard as she wrapped her arms around herself on a Los Angeles sidewalk.<br /><br />Jen winced in embarrassment as her hand reached down reflexively to slap the magazine closed. But she pulled it back to her tea cup, took in a long, calming breath through her nose, and vowed to fulfill her plan of reading the article, and all the articles about her, all the way through.<br /><br />“On the big screen, Jen appears to be the model of physical fitness, with that lean physique that many women try to emulate through their own diet and exercise regimens. However, as so often happens in Hollywood, Jen’s slender figure comes at a price—and now those close to Jen worry that her extreme lifestyle might be destroying her health.<br /><br />“Hollywood insiders have noted that Jen’s appearance has gone from skinny to scary as her weight has plummeted in recent months.<br /><br />“Physician Camilla Jones confirmed that Jen broke her rib after fainting during a yoga class. ‘The fracture was a direct result of Jennifer being dangerously underweight,’ said Jones, who treated Jen at the scene of the accident.<br /><br />“Students in the yoga class found themselves unwitting witnesses to the shocking mishap. ‘She just turned white and fell over,’ said a woman who was doing yoga next to Jen at the time of the injury. ‘It was really freaky.’ The woman described Jen’s disheveled appearance during the class, noting that her hair and clothing were messy and that her face looked tired.<br /><br />“The yoga teacher supervising the class, who is also a personal friend of Jen’s, cited concerns about Jen’s health, agreeing that ‘Jen has been engaging in some rather extreme dietary restrictions.' A dietitian who has not worked with Jen personally speculated that she may have been practicing one of several ‘cleanses’ that have become popular with celebrities eager to lose weight.<br /><br />“One well-known actor who is a frequent visitor to Jen’s house discussed possible reasons behind Jen’s weight loss. ‘She’s been having a rough time,’ said the actor, who did not want to be named. ‘There has been some tension between Jen and her best friend, and it’s causing her a lot of stress.’<br /><br />“Other friends speculate that Jen may be distraught over the ending of her brief relationship with Skipper Engels, the San Francisco based pornographer who has been rumored to have involved Jen in an illicit party scene of drugs and prostitution, although those close to Jen claim that these rumors have been exaggerated. ‘Jen’s not into that kind of thing,’ said a friend who has known Jen since childhood.<br /><br />“Whatever the reason, one thing is clear: Jen’s weight is dangerously low, setting a bad example for girls and young women who idolize her. ‘Jen’s unfortunate experience breaking her rib should send a message to her fans, and all women who seek to maintain an unreasonably low weight,’ said the dietitian we consulted. ‘We all want to be thin, but when we go to extremes to get there, we are hurting our bodies more than helping them.’"<br /><br />Jen had been eager to get to the end of the article so she could close the magazine, but now that it was over she just sat and stared at the words on the page. She felt angry and embarrassed that this was how she would appear to the public, as a neurotic anorexic who was a bad role model for women.<br /><br />That’s not fair, she said to herself, grasping for the explanation of why not, exactly. I wasn’t on a <span style="font-style: italic;">diet</span>, she said to herself; it was a <span style="font-style: italic;">fast</span>.<br /><br />Still, she had to concede that to most of the public, this distinction would be meaningless. In fact, nothing in the article was untrue; the information was simply presented through a filter. Still, it was a filter that Jen highly disliked.<br /><br />How could that doctor say those things to the press, she asked herself? Jen remembered the imposing woman at the health club, lecturing her about her bone density as she sat clutching ice to her broken rib. Despite the doctor’s rather cold, clinical manner, Jen had trusted her, felt instinctively that this outsider, the only African American and the only woman over forty in the class full of gym princesses, had her best interests in mind.<br /><br />And Paula, who was supposed to be her friend, and Chase—and even Becky seemed to have given a statement. Jen fumed for a moment, vowing to confront her friends as soon as she got a chance to call them up in LA.<br /><br />But truthfully, she knew how the reporters had gotten their quotes, through bombarding their so-called informants and startling them into speech. She thought of the reporter at the co-op: “What do you think about Bradley’s baby?” If Rob hadn’t intervened, who knows what she would have said. She could just imagine one of them barging into Paula’s yoga class, asking “Don’t you think Jen has been engaging in extreme dietary restrictions?” with Paula’s affirmative nod interpreted as “agreement.”<br /><br />Tired of looking at the skinny picture of herself, Jen finally closed the magazine and pulled one of the tabloids over. This one had a headline that promised to be more lighthearted: “Jen to Her Pimp Boyfriend—It’s over!” There was a photograph of Skipper at a party, wearing the same yellow cowboy shirt he had worn at the bar with her. She was startled to see his face, and realized that she had forgotten what he looked like, aside from a vague caricature of a scrawny rag doll in flamingo shorts. The article also featured several unflattering pictures of Jen appearing to be screaming or crying, although she was pretty sure the photographers had just caught her in a yawn or a sneeze.<br /><br />“After discovering Skipper in the arms of yet another woman, Jen finally decided enough was enough and told the infamous pimp to leave her Los Angeles mansion, where he had been living for the past month during their brief, tumultuous affair.<br /><br />“‘Things were pretty crazy over there,’ said a neighbor, describing the scandalous orgies that Skipper held at Jen’s house several times a week. ‘Limousines would be pulling up at all hours of the night. There was always loud music and all these naked girls running around outside everywhere.’<br /><br />‘It’s no wonder Jen would get sick of that,’ the neighbor added.<br /><br />“Other neighbors said that Jen had been seen fighting with Skipper outside the house, and that she had frequently stormed away in tears. ‘It was pretty obvious it wouldn’t last,’ said Jen’s housekeeper.”<br /><br />Jen was almost done with her second article. This isn’t so bad, thought Jen, although her hands were shaking and the room seemed to be spinning slightly. In fact, reading such flagrant lies helped her gain perspective on the previous, more accurate article. Both articles are interpretations, she thought, and neither one is the truth. Heartened, she read the final lines in the tabloid.<br /><br />“Although the two have split, Jen’s troubles may not be over yet. Jen’s friends fear that she is carrying Skipper’s baby. ‘That would be a true nightmare,’ said a mutual friend of the actress and the pimp. ‘Neither one of them is fit to be a parent.’”<br /><br />Jen sucked in a sharp breath and looked up at the box lying on the coffee table. “Know early, and Know For Sure,” it said. Yes, she thought. It was time to know. She took the box into the bathroom, feeling every bit as humiliated as the only other time she had used one of these tests, when she was nineteen years old and terrified of having to have an abortion, though now she was a grown woman who had every intention of keeping the baby. Really, there’s no reason to be mortified by this process, she thought angrily; you’d have to find out somehow or other.<br /><br />While she waited for her little plus or minus sign to appear, Jen passed the time by reading another tabloid article: “Jen Hires Assassin to Take out Bradley.” The photograph illustrating this story—one of Bradley looking nervously over his shoulder, the other of her whispering into the ear of an ominous man in a dark suit who happened to have been a lawyer from the divorce, though the article didn’t identify him—made Jen think of Bradley again and wonder if his girlfriend was really pregnant.<br /><br />It would be so odd, she thought, if we had babies at the same time. She wondered whether the babies could be friends, once they were a little older, and whether she and Bradley could also become friends when they were both parents. She had heard that the birth of a child could negate all kinds of longstanding hostilities, could unite estranged families and heal wounded friendships. Maybe the adorable innocence of a tiny baby would purify the foul murk hanging between her and her ex-husband.<br /><br />She still had three minutes left, according to the clock on the living room wall. She looked back down at the article. “Furious at rumors that he has impregnated his girlfriend, Jen vowed to take revenge on her movie-star ex, but friends never suspected that she would go to these extreme lengths. We spoke with a hit man who says that Jen paid him fifty-thousand dollars in cash to ‘do what you have to do,’ as she put it.”<br /><br />When she went to the bathroom and picked up the little white stick, the mark was as clear and dark as fresh ink: minus. That meant no baby. “No baby,” she said aloud. She wondered whether she should make an appointment with a doctor to get a second opinion; but she also knew that two months into a hypothetical pregnancy, the results were pretty reliable.<br /><br />She walked back into the living room and stood by the coffee table. She stared at the stack of magazines and tabloids, her project for the rest of the day. She looked down at the article still open on the table. “Jen would do anything—and I mean <span style="font-style: italic;">anything</span>—to keep Bradley from having that baby,” it said. She bit her lip and sat down on the couch.<br /><br />Well, she told herself, with a sigh, now I really have no excuse to skip taekwondo tonight.<br /><br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/06/25-as-much-as-man.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 25</span></a>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-62019430265825633842009-05-11T02:01:00.000-07:002010-11-26T23:30:36.942-08:0023. Wearing its UglinessUgly, some will say.<br />The toad wears its ugliness<br />Like a holy robe.<br /><br /> —Thomas Fo<br /><br /><br />We live in a culture that encourages us to identify with those aspects of ourselves which are the most superficial, fleeting, rooted in artifice.<br /><br />We have all been taught to recognize certain facets of this ugly truth. We know that “the media” influences us, sending us so-called “hidden” messages, although truthfully they are quite flagrant, telling us that to be attractive, desirable, worthwhile, we must follow certain standards and norms that are largely determined by the media and the advertisers who finance their productions. We are warned of this deception on a daily basis, more often than not by the very media that propagates it. We know that that these standards are senseless illusions, and yet we cannot stop ourselves from heeding them. We purchase new, fashionable clothing, and throw out our out-of-date clothing while it is still perfectly serviceable. We wear makeup and bathe ourselves in cancer-causing sunlight to tan our bodies. We monitor our food intake, purchasing specially-prepared “low calorie” meals that are engineered to taste like they are full of fat and sugar. We identify ourselves with our possessions—our clothing, cars, computers, cellular phones—worried that a vehicle that is supposed to take us where we need to go is “not stylish enough,” “lacks character,” “doesn’t stand out.” We know, on some level, that this way of thinking is self-involved, shallow, false, and yet we feel it is a guilty pleasure. We enjoy the vanity of our self-deception, comforted by our ostensible recognition of our own hypocrisy.<br /><br />But these daily acts of self-deception represent just one tiny fragment of the grand artifice that is our culture. Just as our government exposes its small injustices so that the public will not delve into the unfathomable depths of true injustice, just so, we recognize our small acts of shallowness but not the more profound void of self-knowledge that they represent. Noticing the pleasure I take in my expensive new cell phone, I can chastise myself for my own superficiality, without ever noticing that my deeper thoughts and beliefs are just as cheaply bought as a gadget in a store.<br /><br />Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? Our society gives me answers to these questions. I am a man, a young man, a hip man, a man with a good job, a man with credibility. My purpose is to work, to do my job well, to be productive, to contribute to my company, to impress my friends and coworkers with my wit and competence, to find a wife, to raise a family who will carry on my name once I am gone. And my goal is to stay alive, to live as long as I can, and to die old, and rich, and respected.<br /><br />There was a time in my life when these answers were sufficient for me. These are the years I think of as “the trance,” when I was involved with the mesmerizing narrative that my culture fed to me. These were the days when, in more ways than one, I was an actor.<br /><br />I became an actor at the age of fifteen. My family moved to a new town, and I didn’t have any friends at my new high school. Every day at school, I fantasized about leaving, dropping out, escaping back to my old neighborhood. But there was one shining beacon that kept me coming back to school each day: Joanna. She was in not one but two of my classes, English and art, so I got to see her more than once each day. She was beautiful, with huge eyes and long legs, but that’s not why I liked her. I liked her because she was weird and artsy, always dressed in funny, mismatched outfits that looked incredible on her. In class, I pretended not to notice her, but in reality I was a detective, scrutinizing every scrap of her conversations that I could manage to scavenge, trying to deduce how to win her heart.<br /><br />One day she turned to her girlfriend sitting behind her and asked, “Are you trying out for the play?”<br /><br />Thus began my acting career. I showed up at the tryouts, trying my hardest to look nonchalant, like I had no particular motive other than wanting to be in a play. I got cast in a small role. I was sure Joanna would be the star, but she got a comic role as an old lady, her beauty smothered in layers of heavy bustles and age makeup.<br /><br />Alas, love was not to be between us. But from my role as “king’s steward number two,” I learned a valuable lesson: acting is not just an activity but an identity. When I saw how the drama students stuck together, how they created their own little hierarchies, how I could ascend those hierarchies merely by observing and mastering whatever behaviors and affectations were “cool” to them, I felt I had uncovered the great secret of life. Here was a discrete social ladder that I could quantify, whose perimeters I could see clearly, and all I needed to do was read the signs and move ahead. What adolescent doesn’t long to discover the path to popularity, to finally gain some feeling of agency and control over the social order that oppresses us all? Unfortunately, in most social groups, these systems are obscure, tricky, the path riddled with boulders and rickety bridges and false starts leading nowhere, all in order to prevent those at the bottom from ever reaching the heights of power held by those at the top.<br /><br />But the world of acting was different. Reality for the “drama nerds” was heightened, exaggerated, a heady, enhanced, performative existence. Every gesture, every mannerism was premeditated, carefully crafted for the greatest effect. Where normal life seems often seems murky and unsystematic, the life of an actor is art, and art can be understood and mastered if only the student is attentive enough.<br /><br />I pursued the study of my new identity with heroic diligence and patience of the sort most teachers can only fantasize about from their students. I learned the gestures, the facial expressions, the vocal flourishes that made me irresistible to directors and actresses, and anathema to my male rivals, who all wanted to befriend me nonetheless, in the tradition of “keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.” The calculated lifting of one sardonic eyebrow drew swoons from girls in black slippers and berets. I won the lead role in every play, or better yet, for reasons of female attention, the villain. I was the king of my small world, the biggest fish in my pond. And it was all automatic, as though I were following a script—play the part, say the right lines, and everyone will cheer and applaud.<br /><br />Before I continue, lest you think I have some particular grudge against actors, it is crucial to note: acting is no more false than any of the other activities and subcultures through which we develop and define ourselves. But it happens to be a perfect microcosm of real life, since it is life aestheticized, and so it is for me both the representation and the object of representation, my view of life and my particular life circumstance.<br /><br />Once I had built my identity as a thespian, there was no escape from the track I had set myself upon. I enrolled in a special university program for “dramatic studies,” and everyone told me that acting was my calling, my <span style="font-style: italic;">passion</span>. I always felt strange when people said this to me, because frankly, I wasn’t exactly sure what passion <span style="font-style: italic;">was</span>. I had become pretty adept at feigning passion—both onstage and off—and I had some guesses about how it might feel. It should make a person feel alive, I thought, and completely present. And that’s not how I felt at all, ever. I felt that I was always following a script, playing a role, doing what was expected, what was fitting, so much so that I had no idea of what I actually wanted, what I was meant to be doing, who I truly was.<br /><br />After college, I began to get “work,” as they call it, mostly parts in commercials. I hated selling things. I had always hated sales, hated the idea of convincing people to buy things they didn’t need. I fancied myself a minimalist at the time, a posture that fit in neatly with both my poverty and my artsy persona. And yet I performed dutifully, immaculately, because that was my job. I acted my heart out in service of blue jeans, facial tissue, dishwashing detergent, fast food. Each day, I hoped against hope, brought me closer to that sitcom job that would elevate me beyond the drudgery of thirty-second spots and inane catch phrases, to the status of a respectable actor. This misery was only temporary dues-paying, I told myself; and so I paid my dues with gusto, proving my dedication by treating the absurd dialogue with dead serious professionalism.<br /><br />And yet, I could not bear to watch these commercials that I poured all of my expensive dramatic training into. I was given recordings of each one to use in my portfolio. The cassette tapes lay in neat piles at the back of my closet, where I could forget their incriminating existence.<br /><br />Once at a bar, I told an attractive woman that I was an actor, but when she asked me what I’d been in, my tongue stuck like glue in my mouth; I could not bring myself to tell her that my most recognizable work had been a lucky series of advertisements for “The Diamond Discount Specialists.”<br /><br />When I finally realized, one fateful night at a sad, lonely party, that my entire life was an act, that I was always performing, that I couldn’t turn it off, that there was no “me” beyond that script whose lines I dutifully parroted with all the empty bravado that I used for my acting roles, I decided it was time to discover who I truly was. The first step, I knew, was to confront that most hated side of myself, the commercial actor. And the very next morning, I pulled every one of the cassette tapes from my closet, blowing off the dust that had accumulated from months and years of neglect. I placed them in a single, precarious stack on the floor of my small studio apartment. They reached from the ground to well over the top of the television set.<br /><br />I sat on the floor for a long time, staring in horrified apprehension at the evidence of my shame. Would I be able to stomach this physical manifestation of the misery that comprised the last five years of my life?<br /><br />My hands shook as I took the first tape off of the stack and placed it into the VCR. As it played on the television, I watched myself drinking beer with “the guys,” sitting on couches in a sitcom-style living room, the setting itself mocking my dreams of an actual weekly television show.<br /><br />When it ended, I ejected the tape and inserted another. And then another. Images of my face flashed across the screen, me laughing, frowning, working hard, holding hands with my “girlfriend” (although I had not maintained anything close to a committed relationship since high school), playing tennis. Married with a small child. Comforting an elderly relative. Enjoying a delicious hamburger dripping with orange-colored sauce.<br /><br />They were every bit as horrible as I had imagined. In fact, they were worse. Watching these familiar, trite little scenes, I was able for the first time in years, or possibly ever, to regard myself honestly, to see myself as others would see me. What I saw on the screen was not a great actor. Instead, this man in the commercials was...normal. A normal part of everyday society. A mascot celebrating convention, complacency, and good old-fashioned American consumerism.<br /><br />If I were to die tomorrow, I told myself, this would be the sum of my achievements. This is what I would leave to posterity. My life would be judged by this. I felt sick to my stomach.<br /><br />I watched one hundred and thirty-eight commercials that day. It took four hours to get through them all, switching the tapes after every thirty or sixty seconds.<br /><br />When I had removed the very last tape from the VCR, I felt weak and drained. I carried all the tapes to my closet and stacked them in the back again, eager to hide them away. An hour later, I put all of the tapes into garbage bags and placed them in the apartment dumpster downstairs. Then, in the middle of the fretful, sleepless night that followed, I rose from my bed and went back downstairs in my pajamas to rescue the tapes from the dumpster. Rather than putting them back into the closet, I stacked them in a tall pile against the wall of my living area, where I could never, never forget their existence. Even as I write, the tapes stand facing me, now in my study, a reminder of the life I once lived, and of why I must never return to it.<br /><br />I will never act again, I said to myself, as I stacked each ugly black tape against my blank white wall. And I was, at last, free.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 24:<br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/06/24.html">http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/06/24.html</a><br /></span>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-91527098127374109142009-04-15T00:43:00.000-07:002009-05-11T02:06:37.439-07:0022. Without My Permission“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.” –Mahatma Gandhi<br /><br />Jen felt queasy as they dropped Master Park off at his car. She had eaten a large plate of noodles and dumplings, a full portion of beef and pork, ostensibly to gain Master Park’s approval. But as she used her fork to lift the last few noodles that she couldn’t quite get with her chopsticks, she felt that she could have eaten a whole second plate of food, as Rob and Master Park had already proceeded to do.<br /><br />Rob drove Master Park all the way back to the Snail Plant to pick up his car, which was not parked in the large, remote garage, but along the side of the road, a block down from the visitors’ center. Jen recognized the run-down sedan that had passed her this morning as she walked down the dark, forested road that led into Cone.<br /><br />“We’ll see you tomorrow,” Master Park said to her as she took his place in the passenger’s seat.<br /><br />Rob waited politely for Master Park to unlock his car before turning his own car around to head back into town. “Are you sure you want to drive me home?” asked Jen, feeling guilty for making him shuttle her around all day like a taxi. “I live all the way in Cone.”<br /><br />“I know,” said Rob, confirming Jen’s suspicions. “And you were going to walk home? Are you crazy?”<br /><br />Noticing Jen’s accusing glance, he explained, “I talked to Master Park in the morning. He told me he passed you on the road. I couldn’t believe you were going to walk to the Snail Plant.”<br /><br />“It’s not so far,” Jen protested.<br /><br />“Of course it is,” said Rob. “You wouldn’t have gotten home until midnight.”<br /><br />Jen herself had anticipated this possibility when she had planned the trip this morning; she hadn’t been sure how long the walk would take, but she figured time was a plentiful commodity here in her new life with no schedule or responsibilities.<br /><br />“That would be okay,” Jen said.<br /><br />“Look,” said Rob authoritatively. “I know this isn’t Los Angeles, but we do have crime here. People get attacked. You can’t just go walking down dark roads by yourself.”<br /><br />Jen didn’t answer. This was the first time he had acknowledged any awareness of her past life. She didn’t like men being protective of her, but she had to admit that he had a point. It was twilight now, and it would soon be night. The air outside the car was growing chilly, and she was grateful to be safely inside of his car rather than trudging along the side of the road.<br /><br />When they reached the far end of Main Street, Rob turned onto the road into Cone. The twilight faded to darkness on the forest road, the trees casting flickering shadows across the windshield as they drove.<br /><br />“So, you’re going to come to class?” Rob asked.<br /><br />“Yeah,” said Jen, a bit too brightly, not wanting to reveal her nervousness. “I think it will be good for me.” Her voice trailed off at the end of her statement, as she realized that it might be understood to refer to her health, which was, according to her soon-to-be teacher, a horrible reason to study taekwondo.<br /><br />Rob evidently recognized the source of her hesitation. “Don’t listen to Master Park,” he said apologetically. “It’s not that dangerous. He’s had way more injuries than average. He used to do some kind of really dangerous fighting in Korea.”<br /><br />“What made it so dangerous?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“He hasn’t really explained it to me,” said Rob. “And I haven’t wanted to ask him too much about it. I think he had some traumatic experiences back there.”<br /><br />Rob paused for a moment, giving it some thought. “He might have been in the army,” he added in a speculative tone.<br /><br />Jen nodded. “So, you haven’t gotten injured?” she asked.<br /><br />“From fighting, but not from taekwondo,” he replied. “Most of my serious injuries have been from boxing and wrestling.”<br /><br />“You do all that?” Jen asked, impressed.<br /><br />“A little,” said Rob. “I train with the MNCMU teams. I broke my nose boxing, twice, and I messed up my jaw. And I tore tendons in my back and my ankle pretty bad when I was wrestling, and I broke my wrist once.”<br /><br />He stopped for a moment, as if trying to remember why he had embarked upon this conversational direction. “So anyway, taekwondo is a lot safer than that,” he concluded. “I mean, it’s mostly just bruising, and the occasional broken ribs, but they’re not too big a deal.”<br /><br />At the mention of broken ribs, Jen winced, sucking air loudly through her teeth.<br /><br />“What’s wrong?” Rob asked.<br /><br />“Nothing,” she said, not wanting him to know about her own broken rib. If Rob told Master Park about her injury, she might not be allowed to participate in the class until it healed fully. Becky had said that bones always took at least six weeks, so she still had two more to go. She held her hand protectively over her own rib but didn’t say anything further.<br /><br />Jen felt a little nervous as she directed Rob down the dark road to the lake house. She was pretty sure now that he wasn’t a kidnapper. But she had the looming feeling that when he dropped her off, he would try to kiss her. It’s silly, she thought. I just met him. But she could feel that strange, familiar energy filling the car, the communication between two bodies speaking to each other in their preverbal language that superseded all the wordy logic of the conscious mind.<br /><br />Kissing him was probably a bad idea, she reasoned. This was only her first day on her own in Michigan. She was supposed to be sorting things out, and she needed to be alone. That was why she had come here in the first place, to be by herself. But she knew without a doubt that if he kissed her, she would kiss him back. There was no use denying things your unconscious mind wanted, she thought; it was like trying to reason with a grizzly bear. Your arguments might be flawlessly crafted, but the bear would always win.<br /><br />Anyway, she told herself, there was no need to be so pessimistic all the time. Here she was with this man whose company she enjoyed. There was no reason to expect that he wanted anything more than to help out a new friend, just as he had already helped her repeatedly throughout this day. And if he did try to kiss her, would that really be so bad?<br /><br />No, she thought; actually, it would be nice.<br /><br />When Rob pulled into the driveway of the house, just behind the SUV that Jen was so reluctant to drive into town, he stopped the car’s engine. As soon as the headlights were turned off, Rob’s face disappeared into the enveloping darkness of the forest. He reached up quickly and switched on the small interior light, which gave him the appearance of a grainy black-and-white photograph.<br /><br />“It was really great to spend this time with you,” he said. “I needed something good to happen.”<br /><br />He sounded as though he were alluding to some specific reason why he needed it. Jen waited to see if he would elaborate. When she realized that he wasn’t planning to say more, she asked, “Why?”<br /><br />“It’s been a frustrating week,” he said.<br /><br />“What happened?” she asked him.<br /><br />He put one hand to his forehead, so that his face was blocked from her view by the sleeve of the sweatshirt he had pulled on after they left the tea house. “This is going to sound really stupid,” he said.<br /><br />“No,” said Jen. She found herself touching his arm. She was a little startled by her own forwardness, although his sleeve saved her from the embarrassing intimacy of contact with his skin. “It’s not stupid,” she said, hoping that whatever he was about to say wouldn’t contradict her statement.<br /><br />“I’ve been trying to get in a fight,” he said.<br /><br />She pulled her arm back. “What?” she asked incredulously, wondering if he were joking. She wanted to laugh, but she was afraid it would make him upset.<br /><br />“For the last three weeks,” he continued. “And I can’t get anyone to fight me. Everyone in North Middleton knows me. Nobody wants to fight me, even people I can’t stand. There are a few guys I’ve trained with who I’m sure hate my guts. I always figured they’d love to fight me. But I try to get them to attack me, and they just back down.”<br /><br />He sighed heavily and ran his hand through his hair. Then he sat up straight and looked at Jen.<br /><br />“Ever since those reporters showed up, I was just waiting for them to come in the store so I could get one of them to throw a punch. They don’t know me. I figured if I looked like I was about to get violent with them, they’d start something. But no, they just backed away, just like everyone else.”<br /><br />“Why didn’t you just punch that one reporter first?” asked Jen. “He was standing close enough to you.” She still didn’t understand his motivation, and she certainly didn’t think it was a good idea to assault the paparazzi, but if he was trying to get into a fight, that certainly would have been an ideal opportunity.<br /><br />“Yeah, but that’s not what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to use your aggression to goad them into making the first move, so you’re justified in defending yourself.”<br /><br />“What do you mean, ‘supposed to’?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“According to this book I’ve been reading,” he said. “It’s called <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Aggressive Male</span>.”<br /><br />“What’s new about him?” asked Jen. She wondered if the quality of aggressiveness could change over the years; it seemed pretty timeless to her. She would expect that the new male would want to be less aggressive.<br /><br />“It’s an updated version,” he replied. “Because of terrorism.”<br /><br />Jen snorted disdainfully. She hadn’t meant to; she just forgot herself for a moment. Rob turned to look at her, and she erased all signs of derision from her face, hoping that he would think she was just sniffing. After all, she had no right to mock his choice of reading; at this very moment, <span style="font-style: italic;">Zen for Times of Crisis</span> lay in the backpack at her knees.<br /><br />“Anyway, that’s not the part I’m reading,” he said, evidently recognizing her derision.<br /><br />“What part are you reading?” she asked.<br /><br />“Just the more general stuff,” he said. “About how to stand up for yourself and get what you want. And about fighting; there’s a lot about fighting in there. I really should have read it years ago. Master Park says my greatest shortcoming is that I’m not aggressive enough. He’s right, I’m not.”<br /><br />“How do you mean?” asked Jen. He seemed pretty aggressive to her, what with his looking for fights and trying to punch out reporters. How much more aggressive did he need to be, she wondered?<br /><br />“Oh, in a bunch of ways,” he said, his voice heavy with self-contempt. “It’s my main problem with fighting. Since everyone I train with is less experienced than me, I have to hold back constantly. When I need to really hurt somebody, I can’t do it.”<br /><br />“When do you need to hurt somebody?” Jen asked, confused.<br /><br />“I lost my last two fights,” he said. “Not in taekwondo; in boxing.”<br /><br />“You do boxing fights?” she asked, surprised. He had just told her he did “a little” boxing. She wondered how much would count as “a lot.”<br /><br />He nodded. “Anyway, I could have beat both those guys. With the last guy, I had so many openings, but I didn’t go for the knock-out. I knew I needed to, but…” He trailed off.<br /><br />“But what?” asked Jen. “Did you feel bad for him?”<br /><br />“No,” he said. “I felt bad for his mother.”<br /><br />“Aw,” said Jen, sentimentally.<br /><br />“It’s not a good thing,” he cut her off. “I heard his family was in the crowd. I thought of his mother seeing her son get hit in the eye, watching all that blood run down her son’s face.” He paused and interrupted his own story: “Foreheads bleed a lot,” he explained. “And I just didn’t want to hit him at all.”<br /><br />Jen winced; the way Rob described it, even she felt bad for the guy’s mother, even though she had no idea who this anonymous boxer was.<br /><br />Rob continued. “And worse than that, I thought, ‘Why am I punching this guy? He never did anything to me.’ I thought it was an absurd, disgusting spectacle, like dogs fighting in a pit.”<br /><br />“Well,” said Jen, trying to understand his perspective, “It is kind of like that, isn’t it? I mean, it would be a little crazy not to feel like that sometimes. You’re human.”<br /><br />“No,” said Rob insistently, the urgency in his voice communicating that Jen couldn’t comprehend the logic of his world any more than he could understand why one should never pick fights with the magazine reporters. “You can never, <span style="font-style: italic;">never </span>feel like that. If you feel like that, you’ll lose.”<br /><br />“It’s okay to lose sometimes,” said Jen. She had often told herself this when she didn’t get a part she wanted in a movie, or when she had gotten the part and the movie had been a flop. Nobody can win all the time. Everybody loses. She knew it wasn’t a particularly convincing or comforting sentiment.<br /><br />He sighed again, sadly. “No,” he said, “It’s not okay. But you’re very sweet to think that.”<br /><br />He reached his hand out and placed it on her knee. With a thrill of nervous excitement, she realized that the moment had arrived. And there it was: he leaned in to kiss her. She still couldn’t see him very well under the weak car lamp, but she could smell the freshly-laundered scent of his shirt. She felt his mouth on hers, and the rough scratchiness of his beard against her cheek.<br /><br />Her mind began to race. What did this mean? Was she going to be dating him now? She had just moved here; she wasn’t sure if she wanted to be dating somebody right away. She needed Rob to be her friend, not her boyfriend, she thought, desperately. She had just decided on a new pastime, and here she was messing it up. She didn’t want to start at the taekwondo school this way, as some girl who was dating the top student; how horrible! She began to panic, unsure if she were about to ruin all of her lofty plans for her new life in Michigan.<br /><br />Relax, she told herself, remembering her yoga training, although she hadn’t been to a formal class since the day she broke her rib. She was letting her mind race much too far into the future, rather than enjoying the present moment. With Rob’s hand on her thigh, his arm pressing against hers, his tongue tracing the inside of her lips, there was a lot to enjoy. Stay in the moment, she told herself, and found with pleasurable surprise that she could do it, that she could immerse herself in her senses and forget all about her plans and what this new development might mean.<br /><br />Suddenly, just as Jen was beginning to feel a little excited and happy, Rob pulled his head back. She opened her eyes and saw the silhouette of his face starting straight forward towards the windshield.<br /><br />“What’s wrong?” she asked.<br /><br />“I’ve got a kid,” he said.<br /><br />“What?” she asked him, unsure if she had heard him correctly. He had told her quite a bit about his life over the last few hours they had spent together; none of it had implied that he was a parent. It seemed like an awfully unromantic thing to bring up just now.<br /><br />“I have a son,” he repeated.<br /><br />“That’s okay,” she said, quickly. “I don’t mind.” Maybe, she reasoned, he was worried about getting involved with somebody. It must be stressful seeing somebody new, knowing your child would detest anyone you brought home. She had certainly hated everyone her parents had dated when she was little, she remembered. He must have some rule that he wouldn’t kiss people until he told them about his son.<br /><br />“I mean,” he stuttered. “I’m still with his mother.”<br /><br />“Oh,” said Jen, leaning back into her seat and pulling her hand instinctively to her injured rib.<br /><br />“We don’t get along at all. It’s a horrible relationship. We’re only together for Apollo’s sake.”<br /><br />“<span style="font-style: italic;">Apollo</span>?” Jen asked, incredulously. “That’s your son’s name?”<br /><br />“His mother picked it,” said Rob quickly. “It’s an old family name.”<br /><br />Jen’s head spun as she tried to sort out what this all meant. She wondered how much more there was to the story, what else he wasn’t telling her. “Are you married?” she asked.<br /><br />“No, nothing like that,” he said. “We live together. Her parents own the apartment.”<br /><br />Before Jen could think of how to respond to this startling new information, Rob let out a muffled, anguished noise that sounded like a sob and lowered his head to his hands. He sat that way, holding his head between his hands, for a long while. His back shook a little, and Jen wondered if he were crying. Normally the appropriate thing to do would be to put her hand on his back, to comfort him. But given the circumstances, she did not want to touch him. Instead she sat mutely, watching him as though from a great distance, like he was a character on a movie screen rather than a living person sitting inches away from her.<br /><br />Staring at his trembling back, she felt increasingly bitter and queasy. In fact, she felt far worse than earlier today, when she had learned that Bradley’s girlfriend might be pregnant. At least she had preemptively distanced herself from that situation, placing thousands of miles of physical and emotional space between herself and her ex-husband. And after all that well-reasoned strategizing, she had stumbled unknowingly from the frying pan to the fire, into the lair of another predator of her emotions and energy.<br /><br />I’m done, she thought. This is the last time. Celibacy, she thought, grimly—Paula was right about it. She stopped looking at Rob and stared at the windshield instead. She could barely make out the dim outline of the SUV parked just in front of them, her own reflection hovering over it like a ghost.<br /><br />“I’m so sorry,” Rob said finally, without lifting his head, in a voice that let Jen know that he was indeed crying, or at least doing that not-quite-crying thing that men often did when they didn’t want to bawl outright. “I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in this.”<br /><br />“That’s okay,” Jen found herself saying, to her own dismay. Why was she excusing him, she wondered? He was the one who had kissed her; now she had to comfort him because he was cheating on his girlfriend? The world is a horrible, backward place, she thought miserably.<br /><br />“It’s that book,” he said, lifting his face to look at her. “It says to follow my instincts, to go after things that I want…” His voice trailed off, and Jen wondered if he were embarrassed to have referred to her as a “thing.” Even in the dim car light, she could see that his eyes were puffy and bloodshot. “I’m really not like this. I’m usually a really nice person.”<br /><br />“I believe you,” Jen said, now just trying to appease him. The weight of the day was pressing down upon her now, and she was suddenly exhausted. She just wanted to get out of this car and into the relative comfort of her rickety new bed. She would say anything, whatever it took to extricate herself from this conversation, to get out of this car and into the house. It would be cold and dark now, but at least she would be alone.<br /><br />“I don’t want you to hate me,” Rob said. He sniffed loudly. He’s really crying, Jen thought, with a disinterested kind of disdain. “I mean, I like you a lot. I felt this kind of connection with you ever since I first saw you at the co-op.” He sniffled again and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “It’s really important to me that we can be friends.”<br /><br />“Sure,” said Jen, in a deadpan tone that reflected her insincerity. “We’ll be friends.”<br /><br />Rob smiled wanly and put his hand on her knee. She recoiled inwardly, but she did not brush his hand away. “You promise?” he asked.<br /><br />“I promise,” said Jen.<br /><br />Half an hour later, she lay between the chilly bed sheets in the same dirty clothes she had worn into town. Images swirled and blended together in her head—Rob, Bradley, Bradley’s baby, Rob’s son—until they became just a blur of disturbing images and she could not tell one from the other. She didn’t cry. The dark stillness of the house seemed to erase every last emotion from her body until she had no feelings left at all.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 23: <a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/05/23-like-holy-robe.html"><br />http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/05/23-like-holy-robe.html</a><br /></span>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7946069072351904526.post-18847001545678462342009-03-27T16:48:00.000-07:002009-04-15T00:49:23.050-07:0021. Fall the Sword“In the application of your principles you must be like the pancratiast, <a name="94"></a>not like the gladiator; for the gladiator lets fall the sword which he <a name="95"></a>uses and is killed; but the other always has his hand, and needs to do <a name="96"></a>nothing else than use it.” —Marcus Aurelius<br /><br />The white uniform, the crisp, starchy jacket, the floppy pants, the black belt—it reminded Jen of a karate movie. But she supposed that when Rob’s teacher was wearing it, it was a taekwondo uniform.<br /><br />Even in this new set of clothes, Jen recognized the man easily enough, first because of his distinctive eyeglasses, and second because he was the only Asian person she had seen during the entire week she had spent in North Middleton, aside from a few students on the campus.<br /><br />“Master Park,” said Rob. “This is Jen.”<br /><br />“Nice to meet you formally,” said Master Park, extending his hand between the bars of the gate to shake hers.<br /><br />“Do you mind if we watch the class?” Rob asked. “We’ll stay back here, so we don’t distract anybody.”<br /><br />Jen wondered why the men would be distracted by Rob, but then remembered that it was she who would be the distraction. Despite her recent run-in with the paparazzi, she had felt invisible all day, her first day alone in a town where she didn’t know anybody at all. Even if people recognized her, none of them would notice if she had a heart attack in the house or drowned in the lake; no one would come looking for her. Not knowing anybody is like not existing, she thought.<br /><br />“Anyone can watch through the gate,” said Master Park, turning his back. “No permission required.”<br /><br />“Thanks,” Rob called after his teacher, who was already walking towards a group of students who Jen could hear conversing inside the courtyard, although they weren’t visible to her.<br /><br />It was a decidedly poor vantage point. They could only see a few of the students at a time, easy to spot in their bright yellow jumpsuits, through the small break in the branches. Jen wished that she could have come inside the courtyard, where she could see the entire class at once. She was curious about how many people were in the class, and their ages, which she couldn’t discern at this distance, and most importantly, whether they were all, as it appeared from the small but ever-changing sample in her range of vision, men.<br /><br />Rob narrated the class as they watched, their heads bowed close together, peering through the bars of the fence.<br /><br />“First they stretch,” he said, and sure enough, the men were bending over one leg, the other leg, the center. In their sunny yellow outfits, the flexible men looked like graceful flowers, folding into themselves as though closing their petals for the night. Jen could see a couple of other men struggling to bend forward, looking more like rusty door hinges that didn’t want to bend.<br /><br />“Do you wear that yellow thing?” asked Jen, wondering if it were some kind of taekwondo uniform. The bright color wouldn’t do much for his olive complexion, Jen thought disapprovingly.<br /><br />“I used to,” he said.<br /><br />“Oh,” said Jen, confused. She mustered up all of her limited martial arts knowledge. “Is it like a belt? Did you move up to a different color?” It made sense to force the beginning students to wear that horrible yellow, she thought; it would be a good incentive to improve. She wondered what color outfit he wore. Black, she supposed, since he had been doing it so long. That would look nice on him. Or maybe white, like the pants and jacket Master Park was wearing.<br /><br />“What?” he asked, sounding startled. Then he laughed. “Oh, no, it’s not for taekwondo. Those are the Snail coveralls. Everyone in the plant wears them.”<br /><br />“I didn’t see anyone else wearing them,” said Jen, feeling stupid now for her mistake.<br /><br />“Anyone else where?” he asked. “Have you seen any other people around here?”<br /><br />Come to think of it, she hadn’t. Both times she walked the grounds of the Snail Plant, it had been a barren ghost town. Within this courtyard, hidden behind rows of shrubs and tree branches and iron bars, was the only sign of human life she had encountered within miles of the plant, apart from the people she came here with. That’s what so creepy about this place, she realized, wondering why she hadn’t noticed it before—no one on the streets or sidewalks.<br /><br />“No,” she said.<br /><br />The men had finished stretching. Now they were doing what seemed to be an endless series of jumping jacks. Jen felt out of breath just watching them.<br /><br />“There are tunnels between all the buildings, underground,” he said. “It keeps people from having to walk outside in the winter.”<br /><br />“But it’s not…” said Jen. Rob interrupted her before she could point out the obvious: that it was a beautiful spring day, the kind of day that would motivate someone to take an extra-long walk outside for no good reason at all.<br /><br />“You’re not allowed to wear the coveralls outside the plant,” he said. “So no one walks outside. Everybody enters at the employee parking garage, which is probably a mile from here, and then they get on moving walkways underground.”<br /><br />“Why can’t they wear them outside?” Jen asked.<br /><br />Rob didn’t answer her question; instead, he pointed his finger through the bars. The men were doing what looked like a violent little dance, stepping rhythmically and kicking in the air.<br /><br />“Look,” he said. “Hyeong.”<br /><br />“Huh?” she asked. The men were lined up and moving in formation now, like fighter jets. They walked to one side, punched, kicked, moved to the other side, punched and kicked again.<br /><br />“Those are forms,” he said.<br /><br />“Oh,” said Jen, who had no idea what he was talking about. It looked like some kind of practice fighting, like that stuff men did all alone in a field at sunrise in kung fu movies. Spartan, lean men with plain, functional clothing and ponytails; Jen could envision the scene exactly, although she couldn’t remember having actually watched a movie like that.<br /><br />“Do any women do this?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“Of course,” said Rob, his indignant tone suggesting that this was a ridiculous question. Then he suddenly seemed to recognize the motivation for her inquiry. As the students moved first left, then forward, then right, the leafy window revealed a few of the yellow jumpsuits at a time, and then a few more, and then a few more—all inhabited by men.<br /><br />“Oh,” he said, as though conceding a point. “Well, mostly the young women do. There aren’t too many older women who keep up with it.”<br /><br />Jen wrinkled her nose and let out a resentful harrumph, presuming that by “older,” he meant something around her own age, the age of adults who would work in a factory.<br /><br />“You know what I mean,” he said. “They get married and have kids, and usually if anyone keeps training after that, it’s the husbands.”<br /><br />Jen expressed her dissatisfaction with this attempted defense by remaining silent. The space between the trees was empty now, but Jen could still hear the men talking quietly. She wondered if class was over.<br /><br />“It’s not just the women; a lot of the men quit, too. Anyway, not a lot of women work for Snail. The testosterone runs pretty high in there.”<br /><br />As if to illustrate this point, two of the men came flying out into the clearing, one’s foot arching through the air, the other backing up so that the foot missed his nose by a few inches.<br /><br />“Oh my god,” Jen gasped, startled.<br /><br />“That’s not as bad as it looks,” said Rob quickly. “It’s just point sparring. They don’t kick very hard. The ground is concrete so you don’t want to fall on it.”<br /><br />“No, I guess not,” said Jen, as the first two men moved out of her range of vision and two other men appeared, engaged in almost the same motions as the first two, the retreating man leaning back to avoid the advancing man’s foot.<br /><br />“Do they just kick each other in the head?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“No, in the stomach and legs,” said Rob matter-of-factly.<br /><br />“Isn’t that dangerous?” Jen asked.<br /><br />“No,” said Rob. “Worst case, you break your nose or your rib.”<br /><br />Jen lowered a hand defensively to her own right rib, which was still tender if she poked at it. She remembered how easily it had snapped, without her even realizing what had happened. She wondered if the men’s ribs were much stronger than hers, or if they just didn’t actually get kicked very often. After all, of the two kicks she had seen so far in this class, neither one had reached its target.<br /><br />Jen and Rob watched the men kicking each other in the head, and, as promised, in the stomach and legs as well for another fifteen minutes or so. She saw a few of the kicks actually connect with the men’s heads or stomachs, but, once they landed, Jen understood Rob’s point; the kicks that looked so aggressive flying through the air seemed to lose their power just at the moment of impact, bouncing cheerily off their targets like friendly slaps on the back. Maybe this wasn’t so scary, Jen thought, although she still wouldn’t want one of those kicks to hit her healing rib.<br /><br />Finally Jen heard men’s voices joking and laughing all at once, and it appeared that the class was over. “Let’s wait for Master Park,” said Rob. The teacher appeared at the gate a moment later, now in jeans and a t-shirt, carrying a stuffed messenger bag strapped across his chest. He unlatched something that Jen couldn’t see inside of the gate and swung it open.<br /><br />Rob let out a gasp. “You’re leaving by the <em>gate</em>?” he asked with exaggerated incredulity.<br /><br />“Don’t tell,” Master Park replied, closing it quickly behind him. He turned to Jen, and said, “I can’t stand those stupid tunnels.” He turned back to look at Rob. “Tea?” he asked.<br /><br />“I need to take Jen home,” said Rob, turning towards her. “Unless you want to come have some tea. Are you done here? I’m sorry, you didn’t get to see much at all.”<br /><br />I saw exactly what I came to see, Jen thought, but she couldn’t say it aloud. “I’ll come back again,” she said. “I’ve got lots of time.”<br /><br />Rob drove the three of them back into town, Jen sitting quietly in the back while the two men talked about classes and belts and fighting in the front seats. She had almost fallen asleep when they reached their destination, an ornate building near the university. It had the deep red walls and squat, bento-box shape that Jen associated with suburban Chinese restaurants.<br /><br />“This is the only decent place to get tea in North Middleton,” said Rob, as he held open the tall, enameled door.<br /><br />“Owned by my student,” said Master Park, walking into the dark, windowless room heavy with decorative linens and tapestries on the walls.<br /><br />A cheerful-looking teenager was waiting to great them, but he was interrupted by a long-haired man with a blond beard and a Chinese-style suit who rushed from the back of the tea house to greet them with a small bow. “Master Park,” he said. “You want your regular table?”<br /><br />“Thank you, Ken,” said Master Park, following the blond man towards the back of the restaurant, with Rob and Jen walking behind them.<br /><br />Even though it was mid-afternoon, the restaurant was packed with students, identifiable not only by their youth but by the open textbooks and notepads that they had scattered across their tables. It seemed odd to Jen that they would come to a restaurant to study; then again, as she walked between the tables, she noticed that most of them held no food but only large pots of tea. A few of the students had snacks on their tables, small plates of dumplings or little Chinese tea cakes. Some were not studying but catching up with friends over their tea and food, speaking in rapid, over-caffeinated streams of words, as though they had far too much to cover during such a short event as a lunch date.<br /><br />As Master Park walked by, all of the students looked up from their homework to greet him cheerfully. Choruses of “Hi Master Park” awaited him at each table from athletic-looking young adults. Master Park smiled and waved silently at each table, beaming down proudly at the students.<br /><br />“All my students,” he said, as they arrived at a table at the very back of the restaurant, and Ken handed them each a menu. “So good, they study all the time.”<br /><br />Jen wasn’t sure whether she should open the menu in her hand. She was starving after her long walk and minimal lunch; still, she didn’t want to be the one who suggested getting some food with their tea. She always felt nervous eating around men, especially ones she didn’t know very well. She looked hopefully at Rob and Master Park. If they ordered Chinese food, it would be served family style, and she could eat some without having to choose anything for herself. But if they put the menus down and just ordered tea, she would just have to eat later on; there was no way she was going to request food if they didn’t want any.<br /><br />She was relieved to see both of the men open their menus. She opened her own menu and began to glance distractedly over the pages. She was too tired to focus well, and she wasn’t intending to order anything, but still, some vegetables would be nice.<br /><br />She flipped through the pages, remembering that Chinese menus normally relegated the vegetarian dishes to the back. Something seemed strange about the menu; she didn’t recognize anything on it. She saw a page that seemed to be all Chinese words, written out in English letters: tie guan yin, shui xian, dahongpao.<br /><br />She looked at the top of the page, which said “China.” What kind of menu is this, she wondered. She flipped to the front page of the menu, where the name of the restaurant read “Camellia Teahouse.”<br /><br />So this wasn’t a restaurant at all, Jen thought, a little amused at her own disappointment; normally, when she wasn’t quite so famished, she liked tea places much more than restaurants, with their heavy, unhealthy food and everyone judging her order and appetite.<br /><br />She wondered why she had thought it was a restaurant. It’s the building, she decided. A tea place in Los Angeles would never look like this. For starters, it would be called a tea <em>bar</em>, to show that it was a fun and hip place to be. Also, everything in the tea bar would be light-colored and translucent, lots of glass bricks and wide windows, the exact opposite of the dark wood and windowless walls surrounding her. A tea bar, she realized, catered to people just like her, people who wanted their food and drink to be light, airy, disembodied. That would make a pretty small customer base in the Midwest, Jen thought. Instead, this tea house seemed to cater to—she looked around at the patrons again—college-aged martial arts students.<br /><br />This is a strange place, thought Jen. She had a lot to learn.<br /><br />A young waiter, who looked like he had probably been culled from the regular clientele, appeared at the side of the table. “Hi Master Park!” he said, enthusiastically.<br /><br />“Hi Chad,” said Master Park. Then he turned to look at Jen across the round table. “You like green tea?” he asked her.<br /><br />“Sure,” said Jen. Actually she hadn’t drunk green tea in years. She remembered it tasting bitter, like raw leaves. She wasn’t about to argue, though. She had just been about to accept whatever food they ordered, so she could certainly accept their choice of tea. Still, she had been hoping for a nice, bracing cup of black tea; that would be perfect right now.<br /><br />Master Park grabbed Rob’s menu from the table and lifted Jen’s from her hands. “Sencha,” he said to the waiter.<br /><br />“Yes, Master Park” said the waiter. “Anything else?”<br /><br />Jen waited, hoping he would order one of the snacks that she had seen on the other customers’ tables. She wondered where they were in the menu. She hadn’t seen anything listed that sounded like food.<br /><br />”Not right now, thanks,” he replied, handing the menus to the waiter, who bowed and retreated back to the kitchen as Jen sat watching, helpless to stop this refusal of sustenance.<br /><br />“So,” said Master Park, crossing his hands on the table in front of him. “How did you two meet?”<br /><br />Relieved at the distraction from her hunger, Jen recounted the story of her afternoon. She felt shy, but she was happy to have something concrete to talk about. She described the reporters and photographers factually, without making any mention of why they were following her.<br /><br />While she talked, the waiter returned with two teapots and three small cups. He placed a transparent glass pot on the table, then filled it with steaming water from a stainless steel one. Through the glass, Jen could see the water turning a pale celery color as it softened the tea leaves.<br /><br />The most exuberant part of her narrative was Rob’s heroic deflection of the reporter in the produce section. “He just started walking towards the guy,” said Jen. “And the reporter just backed out of the store, like someone was pushing him.”<br /><br />Master Park lifted the tea pot and poured tea into the three little cups. He passed one to Rob and another to Jen. He pulled his own cup close in front of him and wrapped both hands around it, as though warming them on a cold night.<br /><br />“Robert is my top student,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. Jen looked over at Rob, and thought that his face appeared a bit flushed, although it might have just been from the hot tea or the dim lighting.<br /><br />“Everyone in this town is scared of him,” Master Park said. "People who don’t know him are scared of him, just from looking at him. They can feel his energy and they know not to mess with him.”<br /><br />“Master Park,” said Rob, now clearly embarrassed and trying to interrupt him.<br /><br />“Shush, shush,” said Master Park, waving his hand dismissively at Rob. “Your modesty is not necessary.”<br /><br />Rob didn’t say anything, but Jen could hear him exhale loudly through his nose, like a secret sigh with no accompanying facial expression.<br /><br />Then, perhaps to spare Rob any further embarrassment, Master Park changed the subject. “Are the yellow belts ready for Saturday?” he asked Rob.<br /><br />“They seem pretty strong,” said Rob. He turned to Jen, and, by way of explanation, said, “Belt test.”<br /><br />Jen tried to listen as they talked, quietly sipping her green tea. It actually tasted pretty good, she thought. Still like leaves, but in a clean, astringent way that reminded her of lemon even without lemon in it. It was hard to pay attention, with so many words she did not understand—in Korean, she guessed—and other words that were in English but meant nothing to her, words that seemed to describe kicks and punches.<br /><br />She watched Rob make a punching gesture with his hand to demonstrate some move he was concerned about. What if he had turned out to be a kidnapper, she thought? He could have killed her with his bare hands without breaking a sweat. The most dangerous man in North Middleton, and she just hops in the car with him, no questions asked. She never would have taken a ride from a stranger in Los Angeles. Stupid, she chastised herself. Alone in this new town, with no one looking out for her, safety was more important than ever.<br /><br />Master Park turned towards her suddenly. “You’re very quiet,” he said. “What are you thinking about?”<br /><br />“I’d like to come to your school,” said Jen. Once again, she did not recognize her own intentions until she heard herself say them aloud. It was becoming a daily occurrence, and she wondered briefly what it meant, and why she was so lacking in self-knowledge.<br /><br />Master Park took a small sip of his tea and held it in his mouth for a long moment before swallowing it. “Why?” he asked, bluntly, his question sounding more rhetorical than inquisitive.<br /><br />Jen hesitated. So I can fight off kidnappers, she thought, but she didn’t want to say it that way in front of Rob, who she feared might take it personally.<br /><br />“For your health?” asked Master Park, taking another sip of his tea.<br /><br />Rather than try to explain her thoughts, Jen opted for the expected answer, her old habit for avoiding confrontation. She nodded passively in agreement.<br /><br />“Humph,” growled the teacher, dismissively, slamming his empty cup decisively on the table. “That’s a bad reason. Taekwondo is terrible for your health.”<br /><br />“Really?” Jen blurted out incredulously, surprised to be hearing this from the teacher. She looked over at Rob, who was rolling his eyes ever so subtly upward, as though he had heard some version of this conversation many times before.<br /><br />“Of course,” said the teacher with a cynical, joyless chuckle. “You know people will be kicking you in the face, right?” He laughed again. “Look—broken nose. Broken wrist. Broken rib.” He pointed at the injured parts of his body as he named them. “Torn ACL. Two knee surgeries.” He tapped his head with one finger. “<em>Four</em> concussions.”<br /><br />“Oh,” said Jen, unsure whether she was supposed to express some kind of sympathy or act impressed. “Well, I don’t know if I want to be fighting.” She had watched the men in the courtyard; most of what they were doing didn’t seem like it would cause her to break anything. She wasn’t sure what the next step up in intensity and danger would be after that, but she figured she’d stop before she reached it.<br /><br />“Everybody fights,” said the teacher. “You’re not going to study and not fight.” Before Jen had a chance to respond, he said, “Now you know, you won’t do taekwondo for your health, okay?”<br /><br />“Okay,” said Jen.<br /><br />“So,” said the teacher, scanning his eyes over Jen’s body. “What <em>are</em> you doing for your health? You look very unhealthy.”<br /><br />She wasn’t sure how to answer. She had actually felt exceptionally healthy during the last month since she had broken her rib. She had been eating more, putting on a little weight, getting lots of sunshine and fresh air. She knew she must look bedraggled at the moment, and perhaps a little sunburned, she thought, lifting her hand to the back of her neck, which was warm.<br /><br />“You’re too skinny and pale. Somebody kicks you, you’re going to break in half.” He thought for a moment, putting his hand over his mouth and narrowing his eyes. “Hmm…You eat meat?” he asked.<br /><br />Again, she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t prefer to eat meat, although she wasn’t technically a vegetarian. She avoided red meat in particular, which always made her feel like she had overeaten, even if she ate just a little bit of it. But she had been expecting Rob and Master Park to order Chinese food with meat, since that’s what men usually did, and she would have gladly eaten some, if only a very tiny portion.<br /><br />“If you come to my class, you have to eat meat,” said Master Park. “No vegetarians allowed.”<br /><br />He paused and squinted at something on the wall above Jen’s head. She turned and saw that the food specials for the day were posted on an erasable whiteboard above her head.<br /><br />“I’m going to order food,” he said.<br /><br />“Good, I’m starving,” said Rob. “Get noodles.”<br /><br />Master Park called the waiter over and placed an order: noodles with spicy beef, pork dumplings, and crispy green onion pancakes. Jen saw steamed broccoli on the menu, her favorite, but she didn’t dare ask Master Park to order it.<br /><br />”You’ll come to class tomorrow night,” he said to Jen, when the waiter had left. “Six thirty, beginner’s class.”<br /><br />Tomorrow seemed awfully soon; she felt that she wouldn’t be ready yet, although she had no idea what she would need to be ready for exactly. Still, Master Park’s pronouncement sounded confrontational, like a challenge. It’s a dare, she thought, to see if I’m serious. He doesn’t think I’m actually going to show up.<br /><br />She remembered her last month in Los Angeles, when she had gone to yoga classes twice each day, building the strength and flexibility to do all kinds of poses she never would have thought possible, despite the fact that she was barely eating anything at the time. I’m serious, she thought angrily. This guy has no idea how serious I am.<br /><br />“Okay, sounds good,” she answered nonchalantly, but she stared confrontationally into Master Park’s eyes as she said it.<br /><br />Her throat felt a little scratchy as she spoke, and she noticed that she was a little lightheaded. I’d better not get sick, she thought, because I’m going anyway. Even if she had pneumonia, there was no way she was going to miss that class.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Chapter 22:<br /><a href="http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/04/22-without-my-permission.html">http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/04/22-without-my-permission.html</a><br /></span>Karin Spirnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02431240000259421369noreply@blogger.com6