I Got My Ass Kicked Way Harder
Than You Did Last Year
from the January 2005 INsite Magazine
One of my coworkers, Paul, is a black belt in Jiu Jitsu and for a while I kept asking him which particular style he practiced. Tiger style? Dragon style? Scorpion style? Frog style? Paul is a very patient man. One day I asked him if he would punch me in the stomach and he asked me if I wanted to puke on my shoes. I didn’t.
Eventually, Paul decided that the best way for me to learn about his style of Jiu Jitsu would be to actually learn it, so he set me up with a private lesson with him and his sensei, Nick Theodorou, at the Theodorou Academy of Jiu Jitsu in Watertown. Of my ensuing lesson, Paul informed me that “at the very least, you’ll leave knowing how to throw a punch and knowing how to choke somebody.” It sounded like a pretty good offer. So I went.
Prior to my visit to the Jiu Jitsu studio, my experience with the martial arts hadn’t been all that extensive. I had a command of the entire catalogue of Wu-Tang albums and I’d watched Five Deadly Venoms (“Toad style is immensely strong, and immune to nearly any weapon …”). I also took a beating from some teriyaki stir-fry this one time.
It was terrible. I got caught chasing a piece of rice into the corner of my mouth and wound up biting halfway through my tongue. Then my tongue got infected. I couldn’t talk right or chew for 10 days. Then Comcast figured out they had been giving me Comedy Central free for six months and took it away. That was the worst stir-fry I ever had.
But now it was time to get right with the martial arts and win my next fight. I walked in to the Theorodou Academy for my Jiu Jitsu lesson and was greeted by two-dozen 8-year-olds wearing tutus and leotards. This was going to be a cakewalk.
No such luck. Apparently the Theodorou Academy shares a space with the Tumble Kids Gymnastics Facility and soon enough the ballerinas were replaced by a quiet group of adults wearing belts and robes. There were no tigers or scorpions. It was mostly punching, gouging, kicking and actually throwing a rulebook at somebody. It’s a very utilitarian art, Jiu Jitsu. We warmed up and then Sensei Paul taught me how to block his punch, palm-smash his face, punch his solar plexus, connect my knee to his forehead or nose, and then drop the elbow of victory on his spinal cord.
I’ve done some dangerous things for this column in the past. Last year I thought I was going to die writing that trapeze school column. Before that I was even more afraid when I went to Fenway dressed as a Yankees fan. That was a terrible idea. But when it comes to ranking my anxiety I’d have to say that throwing a second-degree black belt to the floor with the understanding that he wouldn’t spring back up and remove my spine has to be at the top of the list.
The strange thing was that I wasn’t quite as afraid as maybe I should have been when it was my turn as punching bag. When Sensei Nick was teaching me how to choke somebody by choking me, I actually felt kind of safe. Sensei Nick knows what he’s doing. But when it was my turn to throw Sensei Nick to the ground using a potentially wrist-breaking hold I started to sweat. That wrist throw is dangerous and, having no experience at not breaking someone’s wrist when performing a maneuver invented to break a wrist, I was scared, hamster style.
It was only two hours, but I really learned a lot. Here are a few excerpts from the notes my cameraman was taking during my lesson:
Sensei Nick is giving Nate a brief overview of what they’re going to do today. Now Sensei Nick is giving Nate some insurance papers to fill out, “just in case [Nate] dies.” … The rest of the class shuffles in wearing totally sweet, white ninja jumpsuits. … There is a 12-year-old kid with braces. “I can totally kick that kid’s ass,” Nate says. … Sensei Nick places Nate in the center of the studio and tells everyone Nate is new, as if the dork in the homemade Wu-Tang t-shirt and tear-away pants wasn’t enough of a dead giveaway. … The rest of the class splits into small groups to work on various ninja moves, such as: flipping people, gouging people, choking people, flip-gouging people and I’m not kidding, stabbing someone in the neck with a knife. … Sensei Nick is teaching Nate how to throw a punch (while screaming), how to elbow a dude in the ribs and then do some totally sweet leg whip thing. Behind Nate the 12-year-old kid is choking out a different 12-year-old kid who is trying to stab him with a knife.
The notes go on like that for quite a while. They end with, “I am now completely terrified to go near Nate or his apartment.”
Well, mission accomplished, I guess.