Enter the Dojo

Creepy body painting for a show spurs me to finally start learning self-defense.

March 2005
32 years old

He’s cast me in the role of Kali, the Indian Goddess of Destruction (among other things).¹ This has been a good exploration for me, as I haven’t danced with Her in many years. Even before I was hired as the primary choreographer for this multimedia variety show, that fiercer, fanged side of me had already been stirring again, rustling in the undergrowth.

Play with me... She whispers.

It’s been too long. I haven’t picked up a weapon except my dance sword since I hung up my armor and stopped doing Medieval reenactment six years ago. Not for lack of desire. I miss training like I’d miss a limb. Something just isn’t right without it in my life.

Granted, I left that society and had been thinking about getting into karate shortly before a drunk driver rammed me into a construction median, so martial combat was far beyond my reach for quite a few years. Then, once I regained the physical capacity to seek out a new type of training, I was just a little busy re-learning how to dance. How to read. How to speak while there was any sort of ambient noise. How to play finger cymbals while dancing.

Okay, let’s face it. How to clap on the friggin’ beat, much less return to that caliber of cymbal-clanging performing-monkey multitasking.

But now that restoring dance and basic functionality doesn’t gobble up the majority of my time and energy, and now that I can stay awake for more than four hours at a time pretty consistently, I can feel that old familiar pull toward the combative arts.

When I left the SCA, part of my decision revolved around how much my dance career was taking off, so although I ache every day and especially every night for setting my body into motion to live music under the stars around a bonfire, I have no reason to miss dance. Dance is my world.

But here with Kali whispering sweet-everythings across my sword and into my limbs, into my spine, into my gaze and breath, I remember what gutted me the most about leaving the SCA.

Learning to wield weapons and prevent others from wielding theirs against me.

Setting sword to music tides me over. I love the music for the sword dance in this show. I’ve got it mostly choreographed and will soon teach it to my students, six of whom are performing with me in this multi-art, fusion extravaganza designed by a producer/director who moved here from Los Angeles.

I can’t flippin’ wait!

2005, prepping for Kali

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Two weeks later…

We’re doing a photo shoot today, so Our Producer can start working on the advertisements. He prefers the blue-skinned rendition of Kali over all others, so he’s brought in his airbrushing machine to spray my body. Since my students aren’t being spray-painted, the pair who can make the shoot have a later call-time than I do.

By the time they arrive, we’re almost done making me blue.

From the corner of my eye, I see it. When they walk in to find me standing there in nothing but a thong, they recoil in shock.

I smile, remembering my own awkwardness with nudity at their age—they’re only eighteen and nineteen.² Doing theater for so many years cured me of that, given how often cast members of any gender stripped down together backstage for quick costume changes.

In the hopes of setting my students’ minds at ease, I greet them like normal and launch into a casual conversation about the concept of the photo shoot. Their replies suggest that they’re taking it all in stride.

Groovy.

But then, when I about-face for the spraying of my left side, I can finally and fully see their expressions. Not when they look at me. They’re fine with me.

It’s when they glance at Our Producer that everything tightens. Contracts. They exchange sidelong looks with each other, flick their eyes back at him. Whenever he speaks to them, they squash their scowls into tense flickers of a smile, then go back to their pale-faced, round-eyed, teeth-clenched scrutiny.

My guts thrum in warning.

Because now I can’t un-notice it.

I also can’t un-feel it inside myself.

Their expressions scream everything that I have been stuffing down inside me for the last forty-five minutes. It’s just theater, it’s just theater, it’s just theater, I croon to my hackle-raised, alarm-clanging Inner Growler. I’ve had this on repeat to myself, over and over. It’s just art. It’s okay. It’s just art.

I am absolutely certain that Our Producer would give me the same assurances, probably in the same words, if I’d expressed any misgivings about being almost naked in front of him.

I have never been completely sold on this tall, toothy-grinned, Hollywood slickster, and now I see it in my students’ eyes. They are really not sold on him, on being here, and on watching him spray my body with blue paint.

Nudity is nothing to be ashamed of, my Inner Rebel reminds me. The prudes and priests and pinchy-faced pricks were all wrong when they bombarded you with that crap from the moment you were born. The human body is nothing to be ashamed of. My body is nothing to be ashamed of. And what if we WERE doing some sort of sexy photo shoot? Sex is not shameful. But we’re not even doing that. We just don’t want paint lines underneath my little dance top, and I can’t very well spray myself.

And yet…

Why didn’t he have his assistant paint you? my Inner Growler growls back.

I glance over at the assistant. She’s over at the desk, clacking away on the keyboard.

See? Because she’s doing her job. Now calm down and do yours.

A lifetime of unpleasant interactions descends upon me in a millisecond.

Don’t be such a prude.
So immature.
So unprofessional.
So uptight.
You’re always so tense about everything!
Just relax.
Take a chill-pill.
You need a valium.
Don’t take everything so seriously!

I lift my chin and pull my hair back tighter so Our Producer can get behind my ear. My guts have been churning since about ten minutes into this paint adventure. Now that I’ve given my hackles full license to convey their unrestrained bristle, my paranoia has kicked into overdrive.

Yeah? Well, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Or in this case, perv on you.

See what I mean? Sheesh! You are such a psycho-spaz. You think everybody’s out to get you.

I can hear the classic retort now. If I voiced my concerns, I would be lambasted for being the unprofessional, immature one. Wellllll, if you think this is pervy instead of an important part of being professional, that says more about you than it does about me.

And yet, I only know what I feel in my guts.

It’s not in the way he looks at me. It’s not really even the way he speaks to me. It’s definitely not in any of the words he says. He doesn’t make any inappropriate touches with his hands or even incidental body parts brushing mine.

But it’s there.

Seedy.

Lascivious.

A subtle thread of his energy oozes around me. He doesn’t stand overly close, but the part of him that’s invisible to the naked eye does. As he takes advantage of the visual scrutiny required to cover all my skin with the paint, that part of him runs tentacled hands up my torso, around my bare breasts, across my collar bones to breathe down my neck.

That part of him has fangs, too, and he’s been glutting himself.

But what can I say about that? I can’t prove it.

And you know you. You’ve got such an overactive imagination.
So theatrical.
Hyper-sensitive.
Drama-queen.
Psycho.
Crazy.
REE! REE! REE!

And nudity IS commonplace in theater and body art. I DO legitimately need to be stripped down for this effect to look right. His assistant has been here with us the whole time. She even comes over to help whenever needed. She hasn’t batted a single eye, hesitated, or exchanged alarmed glances with me.

Nothing.

Not once.

Maybe I truly am being paranoid, given my history of abuse, molestation, and sexual assault. Maybe my imagination really is running away with me. The girls are very young. Maybe we’re all overreacting…

And yet.

My body KNOWS what’s happening to it.

Not to my skin. To all the fine little hairs dancing in my intimate energy field, and to everything deeper than my flesh. I’ve been body-painted before, by males and females, and it NEVER felt like this.

As my students go into the back room to put their costumes on, they toss matching looks back at me, as if reluctant to leave me out here with him. I answer with an easy smile.

Reassuring.

I don’t want to scare them.

But there’s a piece of me that doesn’t want them to leave either.

That piece is my own innocent nineteen-year-old, still there inside me. And yes. She is as scared for me as they are. Another piece is an even more guileless thirteen. And the four-year-old.

Those little girls inside me don’t want my students to leave.

But we’re almost done with the body painting. Just a little more of my lower left leg, and finally I can cover up my tits-n-bits with the costume.

Alas. During the photo shoot, the tentacles multiply. We’re all fully dressed now, but my students still squirm. They put on the Professional Face, just like I do, cooperating with Our Producer’s instructions. Nothing lewd or suggestive. He doesn’t ask us to pose in any way that I would be hesitant to show my parents.

Even so, when we head into the back room, all three of us are very quiet as we dress in our street clothes and leave. Out on the sidewalk under the street lights next to our cars, we arrange the schedules for our next rehearsal.

We don’t say a word about the body painting or the photo shoot.

Energetically and in our huge-eyed gazes, we are a flock of wing-flapping, feather-ruffled, squawkers: What the fuck was that! I don’t ever want to do that again! Yeah, me neither! I don’t like this anymore! Please don’t ever make me do this again! Okay, fuck this, we’re OUT!

It’s not only me and my two students who have this conversation in our looks and everything we don’t say. It’s me and them and every little girl inside us, screaming and frothing at the mouth.

I’m the one in charge here.

I’m supposed to be the responsible adult.

The teacher.

I just taught my students, all right. I taught them to suck it up. I taught them that the Show Must Go On, no matter what. I taught them how to spackle on the smiley, placid-sacrificial-cow-face for the sake of “professionalism.” You wanna talk about cows?

WHAT A REEKING PILE
OF COW PATTIES!

After returning home, I hunch in the dark on my couch with a couple candles lit, fuming. Shaking. Queasy. This is how I always get when I think about fighting back. Standing up and saying something I know is doing to piss people off.

Don’t rock the boat.
Don’t borrow trouble.
Don’t kick the hornets’ nest.
Don’t make waves.
If I don’t move, they won’t see me.

Blowing out the candles, I slink to bed and pull the covers over my head.

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The next morning, the rage is still there. Actually, it’s amplified. Silly him, he shouldn’t have cast me as Kali. She has been working on me all night. Her sword is meant to destroy that which no longer serves.

• Being a doormat.

• Being a Nice Girl.

• Being everybody’s punching bag.

• Being a blowup doll that guys feel entitled to grope.

• Even if it it’s only with their eyes and their energy.

• Staying silent when I should speak up.

• Letting untrustworthy people get close enough to harm me.

• Letting untrustworthy people anywhere near my students.

• Letting bosses and other larger or older or stronger people encroach, nudge up, touch, drape arms, give the eyes, run the leers up and down, make the innuendos, and generally tentacle me because they can get away with it.

BECAUSE I LET THEM
GET AWAY WITH IT.

I always have.

Can’t prove the Curious Case of Tentacles in a court of law beyond a shadow of a doubt? Better keep your mouth shut. Can’t prove what I sense? Shhhh. Can’t prove what my guts are screaming? Zip it.

And yet.

Something has shifted inside me. Today, I no longer give two reeking piles.

These things no longer serve. Their heads require lopping. It was bad enough when I let him do to me.

BUT THESE
ARE
MY GIRLS!!!!

My beautiful, innocent, precious little sisters—my dance-daughters—and I will NEVER again let anybody make them squirm like that and get away with it. I will never model this shrinking, fawning, placating, Nice Girl bullshit ever again. I will never take that crap without standing up, placing one hand on my scabbard as I wrap the other around the hilt of my sword, and growl with unyielding clarity, “NO, YOU WILL NOT.”

Not on my fucking watch.

All the little girls inside me beg to be included in that vow, so I drape my big ole claw-armed paws around their shoulders and I take them with me. We march into the kitchen. I pull out the hefty phonebook. I thump it down on the desk and flip through pages until I come to the category of Martial Arts. Raising my chin, I close my eyes and I ask.

Show me.

Guide me.

Where?

My pointer-finger lands on the phonebook. I open my eyes.

Huh.

Apparently I’m going to learn something called Kempo.³

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Two days later

I stand before the mirror in the changing stall of a martial arts training facility—a dojo—with my eyes on the floor. I’ve put on the loose white pants and matching white top. I’ve knotted the little ties that keep the crossed lapel in place. Finally, I draw in a deep breath and dare to look at my reflection.

All my hair stands up on the back of my neck. My eyes go huge. I don’t know where to file this in my mind. This uniform is the iconic image of all-too-familiar figures I grew up with.

• Bruce Lee

• Chuck Norris

• Daniel LaRusso

But I am no Karate Kid. I am 32 years old.

I may as well be twelve. Fourteen. Seven. Nineteen.

My heart races, four parts terror and six parts exhilaration. I’m wearing a karate uniform. ME!

In college I was engaged to a brilliant young man who was a Shotokan black belt, a state champion and a sensei, so it’s not like I don’t know what a gi is. But I never dreamed I would be dressed in one.

Okay, fine. I’ve dreamed about it since I was a kid, but it’s taken half a dozen friends more than a decade to convince me to put one on.

Before my thrill-to-terror ratio can think about flip-flopping, I turn my back on the mirror, and I enter the dojo.

UP NEXT: KARATE KIDS - I and all my inner little girls put on a white belt for the first time. This will alter the trajectory of my whole life. It also changes my history.

© 2020 Hartebeast

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RELATED POSTS:

1. Some ruminations on Kali and Her misunderstood nature.

2. My 19-year-old self first encountered the theater world’s comfort with nudity as I first encountered belly dance.

3. “So, Bella, what kind of martial arts have you trained in?”