The front door of the United Studios of Self Defense was decorated with a cardboard cutout of Uncle Sam in a white uniform, performing a karate kick. Inside, I inhaled the smell of dried sweat and dust. A handwritten sign said, “A Black Belt is a White Belt that NEVER Quit.”
Never? I thought, a wave of nausea rising in my throat.
We were greeted by Brad, the owner and “sensei,” a friend of one of Dad’s racquetball partners and Vietnam vet who’d opened the studio a few years ago in hopes of capitalizing on the success of The Karate Kid. So far, not much luck.
As a Bruce Springsteen song played in the background, Brad scratched his spiky grey mustache and inspected my delicate frame. I folded my arms over my chest so he couldn’t get a good look, then scanned the walls of his office: framed martial arts prizes, a free calendar from a tire company dangling at a crooked angle beside a print of a fire-breathing dragon, and a photo of a younger, blonder, handsome Brad in full karate regalia.
“Ari or airy?” he said, trying to pronounce my name in a flat Downriver twang.
“Ari,” I said, wishing my name weren’t so foreign, so Jewish. In my fantasies, I was called James or Sebastian, and I’d been born in a castle.
“Airy,” he said. “You like sports?”
“I like to draw,” I said in a small voice.
“Your dad told me you wanted to learn to defend yourself.”
He had? My cheeks flushed as I imagined the conversation:
Can you teach my son to fight off bullies?
Oh, yes, we have a bullying special. Even a wimp like your son can learn to take on the biggest brute on the block or your money back. Satisfaction guaranteed.
But Brad didn’t guarantee anything.
“Listen,” said Dad, “they’re playing the Boss.”
“‘Born in the U.S.A.,’” said Brad. Thankfully, he did not attempt to sing it.
Dad asked me, “Isn’t that who your friends listen to?” Before I could say yes, no, or that I could no longer afford the risk of friends, my father bought us two white uniforms wrapped in plastic and two yearlong memberships. It all happened so fast, I wanted to scream, but I knew even if I opened my mouth that no words would come out.
“Hey, Doc Silverman,” said Brad, “you know the six scariest words in the English language? ‘The dentist will see you now.’”
“Good one,” said Dad, though he hated dentist jokes.
What the hell was happening? I could barely catch a softball. Now they expected me to learn to chop a wooden board in half with my bare hands or kick some musclebound jerk into a pit of quicksand?
“We’ve got a class starting in T-minus five minutes,” said Brad, taking a swig of peppery Vernors ginger ale, which I hated, but which most people I knew drank proudly because it was made in Michigan. I preferred the chocolate sodas my Mom brought back from her “mental sanity” vacations in New York.
“Remember,” Brad called after us, as we headed to the locker room to change into our new uniforms, “the aim of karate is not victory or defeat, but perfection of character.”
“Sounds like a Jewish proverb,” my father whispered.
I wrinkled my nose. To hell with Jews and their useless proverbs.
The locker room also functioned as a storage space for brooms, mops, and boxes of paper. As I fumbled with my stiff white jacket and pants, I kept an eye on the other boys, who looked at least five years younger than I, flinging their karate belts at each other like whips, calling each other pussy, lady-boy, faggot, just for fun. It felt strange being in their company after staying out of school for months. My parents had worked out a plan with my principal for me to finish my freshman year of high school by working independently at home, as if I’d contracted a contagious illness.
I folded and re-folded my navy blue Michigan sweatshirt, which my older brother David bought for me when we visited his dorm last fall. If my body wasn’t the puniest in the room, it was still shameful. My arms were pale and thin, my shoulders soft and rounded. Anyone who wanted to could have snapped me in half like a twig—and someone wanted to. That’s why Dad had dragged me here.
I gave up waiting and retreated into the bathroom stall to finish the job. Maybe I could just stay here, I thought, fingers trembling as I jumped into my starchy white karate pants. Maybe I could lock myself in this stall and wait out the whole lesson.
But finally, I took several deep, hot breaths and forced myself out into the studio.
Brad had us stand in a single line on the mat, or the “dojo,” which reeked of Windex. The other boys kept breaking their ready stance to cheerfully punch each other in the ribs. Dad loomed over them. His white uniform, just a bit too tight, kept opening across his chest, showing off the hair that he kept threatening would one day sprout on my own chest. I slouched at the end of the line, my bare feet gripping the cool, waxy mat, my sweaty fingers clutching my jacket lapels closed. I felt naked.
People said I resembled my father, but I didn’t see it. Dad’s pink cheeks were dusted generously with freckles, and his hair was a tight wreath of red curls, now fading to auburn. Meanwhile, my complexion was pale, my hair brown, straight, and boring.
As MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” squealed in the background, Brad taught us to bow, and then step forward while simultaneously punching out our fists. “A punch should stay like a treasure in the sleeve,” he said. “We do not attack or defend. We reflect our enemy’s negative energy back at his unworthy face.”
Dad and the boys learned quickly Brad’s moves. I planted my feet, thrust out my fists. Step, punch. Step, and then punch. I believed that I too was getting the hang of it, that eventually I might learn how to really hurt someone. But then Brad came over to show me what I was doing wrong. He rolled back my shoulders, raised my chin, pushed on my spine. “You’re real jumpy,” he said. “Stand up tall, Ari. Like a man.”
Dad offered to help, but Brad had me practice alone for the remainder of the hour, insisting, “He’s got to figure this out for himself.” So I struggled to make my arms and legs shoot forward in stiff energetic bursts while on the stereo, “U Can’t Touch This” changed to “Blaze of Glory,” “Cradle of Love,” “Ice, Ice, Baby,” and other manly anthems, perhaps meant to inspire fighting. Usually, when it came to learning, I did well without trying. But here, the harder I worked, the less I learned.
“No, no,” Brad said, twisting my arms around. His fingers tickled like twitchy spiders. “Buddy, don’t you want to be able to take care of yourself?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” I said, feeling lightheaded from all these questions.
Now watch me. I’ll do it for you in slo-mo, so you can get it.”
He planted his feet, balled up his fists, and punched. Right, left, then right again.
“Oh, now I see,” I lied. “Thanks. That was helpful.”
Brad gave me a sorrowful look, then patted my shoulder and left me alone.
Before we left, Brad confessed to my father that he hadn’t been to the dentist in a while. “Makes me uncomfortable, sitting all helpless in that chair,” Brad said. Then he asked, “It’s not true, is it, that you can get AIDS from your dentist?”
“We wear gloves now,” said Dad, though I knew he didn’t always. He hated the slippery latex, said he couldn’t get a firm grip on his scaler, which ironically made him more likely, not less, to draw blood, and wasn’t that what they were trying to avoid?