I vary the combo this time and follow the left hook up with a right hook. The bag is swinging about on the chain wildly.
I saw you in the city centre last week. It was the first time I’d seen you in your normal clothes, not your boxing gear, and it shook me. Not that you looked like a regular person. More that you being a regular person made it harder for me to visualise your face on this bag. You wore a white shirt. Polyester. I could see through to the outline of a vest. You wore grey trousers, and worn black shoes. You had one hand in your pocket, and the other held your phone to your ear. You were listening intently and looking up at the sky as you paced. You didn’t see me. I stopped and waited for you to notice me. But you didn’t. When I saw you had breezed on past me, I turned and followed you. I wanted to see where you went when you weren’t at the gym. Who you were in your real life. I got twenty steps before I realised I was exhibiting problematic behaviour. And I only realised I was exhibiting problematic behaviour because I walked into the path of a bike as I crossed the road behind you. The cyclist swore at me – unnecessarily probably – but it was enough to shake me.
What did I observe in those twenty steps?
That you walked with confidence.
That you had to look upwards in order to concentrate.
That your entire body seemed relaxed. You looked like you belonged in that body, you owned that skin, no one had ever given you a reason to doubt yourself.
It made me angry. That you were seemingly at one with yourself.
I told the cyclist to go fuck himself, and turned around, returning to my office, to my desk. I stared at a half-drunk mug of coffee and picked it up. The cold of the handle against my fingertips as I gripped it tightly was a comfort. My colleague Chloe passed my desk and looked at me quizzically. I put the mug down and smiled at her, banging at the space bar on my laptop to wake it up.
‘You OK?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I replied, quietly, and with enough finality to show her that she was not to enquire any further.
The second time I was punched, I was on a train coming home from London. It was late and I was drunk. I played a film on my laptop and pointed myself at it while I ate chicken strips, dipping each one deep into a small carton of barbecue sauce. I was too drunk to concentrate on the film, but it was action-packed enough to catch my attention occasionally. When I finished my McDonalds, I shoved all the detritus into the paper bag and shoved it under my seat in an effort to pretend the entire shameful transaction never happened.
The barbecue sauce must have slipped out of the bag because I felt a shuffle in the seat behind me turn into a shouting man.
‘There’s shit on my shoe,’ he bellowed to the empty carriage.
I looked up at him. He was greying, wearing a blue raincoat of the kind that only businessmen with no imagination seem to purchase, and clutching a can of Fosters.
I looked down at his shoe. He wore black dress shoes. I could see a speck of burgundy on the right one. Presumably some of my barbecue sauce.
‘Sorry boss,’ I muttered and offered him a napkin.
He launched himself at me with his fists. He punched me twice in the face before I could react. In launching himself at me, he lost his balance and fell on me. I was so shocked. I sat there flinching and cowering, waiting till he regained his balance and stood up.
I cried.
I could feel his knuckles embedded in my cheek. I could feel the slime of his neck sweat by my mouth. I turned back to the laptop and carried on watching my film. As if nothing had happened. He straightened himself up and apologised, before picking up his bag and disappearing down the train.
I sat there, rooted to the spot till my station arrived. I ran off the train, down the steps, and up the other side to the exit. I ran out of the barriers and I ran to the taxi rank. I jumped into a car. As the car pulled away from the station, I saw him emerge, eating a chocolate bar and staring at his phone as if he had not a care in the world.
I didn’t tell my wife I’d been assaulted. I don’t bruise, and so apart from my cheek being tender to touch, there was no sign of the impact of his fists on me. I got off the train in fear. I hurried to the ticket barriers. I prayed for a short queue for taxis. I couldn’t rationalise the casualness of the assault. I couldn’t bring myself to comprehend the escalation from a dab of barbecue sauce to a full-blown attack. All I knew was that I was attacked, and ultimately that it was my fault for being careless with my rubbish and for not reporting the unnecessary reaction sooner.
The day I signed up to the boxing gym, my wife asked me what had brought on the sudden interest in the sport.
‘I just want to protect myself,’ I said.
‘Then take up self-defence,’ she replied. ‘I’d love to do that too.’
I couldn’t explain to her that boxing would help me take up room. Boxing would give me space to occupy unapologetically, and no one would think twice about hitting me. I would have the confidence to dodge, to take a punch, and if required, hit back.
My first class, a technique one, was when it started.
I felt out of place the entire time. People had brought their own equipment. I was lost. I couldn’t skip. I took some gloves from a bin next to the toilets. The communal gloves stank of the sweat of many people. I was dripping with sweat myself, from ten minutes of skipping uselessly and shadow-boxing self-consciously. I put the gloves on without wraps and flexed my fingers. It stank.
You were my partner. The first thing you told me was that you’re a Southpaw. I didn’t know what that meant until I was unexpectedly hit repeatedly. You leaned in, and, due to your height and reach, you were able to deliver shots I couldn’t block with my elbows. Also, you were happy to use force. We’d been instructed only to tap each other while we were learning the techniques. That didn’t deter you from hitting, hard. And asking me to hit you back hard.
‘It’s OK, harder,’ you kept telling me.
The sensation of being hit when it’s part of the game, the sport, it was confusing. It hurt. It also niggled at something else in me. Why was I not learning self-defence? Maybe my wife was right. Instead, I’m learning to hit but also be hit.
I observed you everywhere around the gym. You took up space. From the way you left your wraps in a heap on the floor after a session, through to hogging the middle of the gym when you skipped, through to the way you winked at everyone.
And after a while I wanted to take that space away from you.
The moment came at the end of our second technique class. I’d tried to avoid partnering up with you, but you sought me out.
‘I like to train with the new guys,’ you told me between rounds. ‘See whether you’re tough enough to stay or you’ll just stop coming cos you like box-fit but not boxing. Which are you?’
Why does it matter so much? I said, in my head. ‘Dunno,’ I mumbled aloud.
The instructor shouted out another combination before I could muster up the courage to say it out loud.
Before I could drop my chin and put my fists up, you jabbed twice, pushing me back, and gave me a left hook that caught me on the ear.
It caught me by such surprise that I dropped to the floor.
The instructor rushed over.
‘You OK?’ he asked. He looked up at the room. ‘You better defend those shots or you’ll be dropping as well,’ he bellowed to the rest of the class.
You took your glove off and gripped me under my arm, pulling me up.
‘Hit me,’ you said. ‘Hit me.’
So I hit you. As hard as I could. You were that space on the heavy bag we aimed for, pretending it was a nose. You were ready, and used your left