[this is a GLOSS on Chapter 7, which has been linked here for your convenience. This chapter will also be reshared on Substack Notes.]
*
If you’ll remember from 7th Inning Stretch, I received the very great gift of my friend’s memory of this injury from that night. He was one of the most dedicated students of that time, and it was amazing to hear what he remembered, as compared to my own memory of the event, in physical distress.
I remember that night. And yeah, I started having some pretty serious doubts after that happened to you. … I remember, in particular, a level of shocked wounding that flashed across your face before anyone noticed that I’d never seen before. I gotta be honest: that’s what unnerved me the most in its implications. … Ego, I firmly believe, has no place in the dojo.
The toxic (positivity?) of resilience is a hellish poison that affects everyone in any kind of care position, including teaching at all levels. It affects women particularly strongly, but not always. It’s the concept mentioned in 12th Night, that was a terrifying ideal later in Victorian England: that of the saintly, long-suffering paragon of virtue. She suffers in silence, never complaining, taking it all on herself and carrying on. She can… I was going to say she can survive anything, but she doesn’t–she dies in sacrifice, holy in her giving up of everything, virtuous in her end, Patience on a monument. And yet. She’s not the one we worship, is she. The one that feeds the tortured artist. The one that does the brilliant and abusive writer’s laundry. And has his children. Who washes his feet with her hair. What’s her name again? Oh yeah, Lilith. Or, no. She doesn’t have a name. Not one we remember.
Of course, the only way anyone can survive in an abusive relationship is to be the kusa, to be patient and persevere (just like that ninja, two days standing deep in filth). And if you’re being cultivated to think that enduring hardship is a ninja strength, talk about a major tool in a gaslighter’s arsenal.
As much as I am not a proponent of forgiving an abuser (nor of the martyrdom of ‘oh it wasn’t that bad’), I do think that this compliment here of Ninjaboy’s talent is an important bit to include. After all, I may have been naive and even dumb in many of my choices surrounding him and our relationship, I really did have reasons why I was attracted to him in the first place. Does this admiration mean that I’m totes cool with all this stuff he did to me? Absolutely not. It may have taken me too long to shake him off, but
Whatever else you learn from me about Ninjaboy in the course of this narrative of abuse, understand that he was truly without equal in the martial arts, in my world, back then. I still haven’t witnessed a practitioner better than he was at that time. This is the main reason I married him. He was a beautiful and powerful movement artist—watching him made me feel similar to the deep attraction I had had to the alpha of the RenFaire Band. Masculine grace is a major attraction to me, and to watch Ninjaboy execute these formal, detailed, precise techniques with not only beauty, but deadly power? Please.
The dojo that Ninjaboy and I both joined after Genki Kai was dissolved was one headed by famous American ninja, Stephen K. Hayes, famous because he introduced and popularized the ninja arts in the US back in the ‘80s. All those terrible ninja themed martial arts movies in the mid-’80s to ‘90s? Yeah, that’s his fault.
Hayes wasn’t the direct sensei of the Boulder branch of that school, but was sort of the supreme cult leader of the entire sect of what he called To-Shin Do. Cult leader? Is that a bit harsh? Ehhh, a little. But only a little. He definitely conducted his ryu-ha in a decidedly cultish way. I mean, look. I said ‘ish.’ But then it can be said that all martial arts schools are cult adjacent, just in how they operate. I wouldn’t say it’s always a bad thing, either, but it wasn’t great at the Quest Center.
Ninjaboy owned all the Stephen Hayes ninja technique books, and as we attended the Quest Center in Boulder, we acquired the newer few, to complete the series. I got several of them signed. I left them all at Bookworm used book store once later after the divorce was finally finalized, because Ninjaboy had asked me to keep them safe. I had left our three cats with him and implored him to keep them safe. He gave them back to the pound. Not a no-kill shelter. So. And how did I feel, as a book lover, getting rid of that rare series?
I felt good, actually. Relieved. Like I had unloaded a burden. Which I had.
Me learning from the man himself. He’d come through for seminars every so often.
I’m not saying it was a cult but I am saying that, right after I left, the co-head of the school ended up in jail for statutory rape, having slept with a teenaged student of his. I heard from a friend that had trained there a little longer than me that there had been talk of supernaturally advanced babies and…yeah. It was ugly. I don’t know the details.
Then again, the friend is a Catholic priest, so. Grain of abuse salt? I haven't talked to him in a while, I should see what he’s up to these days.
I like this shot because you can really see what the arm bar takedowns are like in this art form. You can see I’ve got a brown belt with a black stripe, which means I’m testing for my black belt.
