A Bad Idea I'm About to Do (28 page)

She paused, and took a deep breath.

“Whatever you do,” she exhaled, “
under no circumstances do I want you to turn around and look at the condition of the robe you had on during the colonic
.”

I knew there must have been diarrhea everywhere—on the robe, on the table, who knew where else? I could not have been happier to follow her suggestion, and overall I couldn't have felt more grateful or better about the whole thing.

“I
think the worst,” my father said, “was the time you shit your pants at Six Flags Great Adventure.”

“No,” I said. “That wasn't the worst. That's not even in the top five.”

My dad looked confused.

“Let me tell you what I did last month,” I said. I sat down and told my parents all about my colonic.

“Well,” my mother said when I finished speaking. “At least you apologized.”

“Yeah,” my father agreed. “At least we raised you right.”

M
y breaths were coming fast and heavy. Maybe the panic was due to the fact that I was standing barefoot in an outfit resembling pajamas in public. Maybe it was the few hundred people shouting at me.

More likely it had something to do with the large bearded man standing eight feet away whose plan was to kick the living shit out of me. I glanced at the people all around me. I definitely didn't belong here. For a moment, I couldn't remember how this came to pass.

I
n 2004, I got a call from my old boss at
Weird NJ
. It'd been two years since I quit my job at the magazine to take a job in Los Angeles, and we'd spoken intermittently since then. It was good to hear from him. I'd feared that leaving on short notice had burned this bridge.

“We were wondering if you'd like to write a book for us,” my boss said, much to my surprise. “It will be called
Weird NY
.”

I was tasked with researching, writing about, and photographing any odd, haunted, or strange thing in the entire state of New York. I spent countless hours on the road, and experienced some very ill-advised situations. I almost peed my pants from fear in a cemetery in Frewsburg. I got lost looking for albinos in the woods outside of White Plains. In other words, it was the best job ever.

When the book was published in late 2005, I felt a great sense of accomplishment. But along with publication came a huge downside as I began to feel what I can only imagine empty-nest syndrome feels like. While the days immediately after the book came out were filled with excitement, after just a few weeks I found myself becoming restless and depressed. I had become used to having a huge project occupying all my time, and now without one I was bored and lonely.

I told myself I'd take a month before finding the next project to sink my teeth into. The plan was to use that month to get inspired again. So much for plans. One month off soon turned into six months of doing nothing but sitting around before I realized I was stuck in a major rut.

Then one day, as I was walking down Thirtieth Street in Manhattan in what had become my standard funk, I passed by a gym owned by legendary mixed martial artist Renzo Gracie. I'd once watched a fight of his on a Japanese DVD in which he refused to submit even after having his arm broken at the elbow. I recognized his name on the sign immediately and something told me I had to see a business run by a guy like that. I strolled into the building's lobby, and the doorman told me to head down a dimly lit set of stairs.

As I turned the corner at the bottom of the steps, I recoiled. The place reeked of man sweat. But even more overwhelming were the hordes of tattooed muscleheads wrestling on every inch of floor space. I felt as if I'd stumbled into a secret alternate reality I had absolutely no business being in.

I signed up for a year's worth of classes on the spot.

Jiu Jitsu is a martial art that revolves around joint locks; I was born with a joint disease. Jiu Jitsu relies on agility and maneuverability; I often trip for no reason besides the fact that walking eludes me. Jiu Jitsu is for the mentally and physically tough; I have the emotional stability of a pregnant woman, and physically, it would be kind to call me laughable.

But when it came down to it I was in a bad spot and needed to shake things up for myself. In that moment of what some would call clarity and others would call extreme foolishness, it seemed as though Brazilian Jiu Jitsu might just be the answer to all of my problems.

From day one, the training was far from easy. After my first class I sat in a corner dry-heaving. As the months wore on, I routinely limped through the other parts of my life due to the constant injuries I sustained. I received black eyes, horrific bruises, a popped bursar sac, and a rib that popped loose from its socket. All for a hobby I casually and voluntarily signed up for.

But I kept coming back. I'm sure some of it was rooted in my deep-seated sense of self-loathing, that I liked being beaten up. Most days, I'd show up, fumble my way through the lesson, then get severely thrashed during the sparring. Every once in a blue moon, though, I'd pull something off that would fuel the addiction. I'd sweep a guy off of me. I'd block him from doing a move he was going for. Every few weeks I'd even manage to get a guy to tap out to me. It was completely exhilarating.

Renzo himself once dropped by the gym and yelled some pearls of wisdom from the sidelines as we sparred.

“You spend most of your lives being the nail, my friends,” he yelled one day as I was pinned underneath a very burly and very sweaty bearded guy. “But don't worry. One day, you'll be the hammer.”

The few-and-far-between moments when I got to be the hammer validated all of the time I spent being the nail.

The mental trauma was actually worse than the physical. People at the gym found me funny, and this made things harder on me. It's rare for a Jiu Jitsu gym to take on a big-headed sad sack comedian as a student. Most of the dudes who do Jiu Jitsu are well built. Many have tattoos. I have one tattoo. It's Morrissey's signature. These guys had real tattoos, like the insignia of their former Marine battalion. There are some other nerdy guys, but the large majority of them are Asian, which gives them way more credibility as martial artists than I ever got. Every now and then you'd get some other weirdo like me, but they almost never stuck around.

The fact that some of the guys found my perseverance endearing was great, because they subsequently looked out for me. It was bad because the way they showed their affection was through tormenting me with no abandon.

The funniest guy at the gym was Black Rob. He was also the scariest. He's over six feet tall and around 250 pounds of pure muscle. When I met him he was a brown belt, right on the verge of getting a black belt (which, in the world of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, usually takes well over ten years). Before Jiu Jitsu became his life, he'd served in the military and later as a cop. His entire adult life was based around violence. He looked like a badass on sight, and after talking to him for five minutes, I realized he was an even bigger badass than I could possibly imagine. Despite
being incredibly intimidated by him, I'd spoken to him a few times in passing and cracked a few jokes that made him laugh. Still, I figured he had no idea who I was.

My first clue that this wasn't the case came while I was taking a class one afternoon. I was sparring another guy and we were really going at it. In our scuffle, my belt loosened and my gi jacket opened. My chest and stomach were exposed for the entire gym to see.

Black Rob had been eyeing my match from the side of the room. A lot of times the more experienced guys watched beginner classes to hand out advice to the novices. I made eye contact with Rob. He cleared his throat. I assumed he was going to drop a pearl of wisdom on me, something that would help me unlock the mysteries of Jiu Jitsu.

“What the fuck is wrong with your body?” he bellowed. “Are you a man or a boy?”

He was loud enough to make sure all of my classmates turned to see whom he was speaking about, and when they did, he cackled with glee. From that day forward, if I was training and Rob was around, I was heckled mercilessly for the amusement of others. The bright side was that other people were no longer allowed to fuck with me, but in exchange it meant that Rob could do whatever he wanted. I was, in effect, his prison bitch. Rob and I once sparred and it ended with him undoing my own belt and tying my hands together, laughing the whole time. I'd never felt more helpless in my life. And I was paying hundreds of dollars a month for this privilege.

Rob also wasn't the only person to develop a big brother/ little brother system of teaching/torture with me. As I got more experienced, a black belt named Brian took me under his wing. He was a quiet, sort of nerdy guy who, despite being skinny and unassuming, was well known as one of the fiercest dudes in the
school. If you were into mugging or murder or whatever and you passed this guy on the street, you wouldn't think twice about victimizing the shit out of him. But if you'd seen him fight even once for two minutes, you would sprint across the street in fear of his badassery.

Brian rooted for me as a fellow small guy and sparred with me to practice moves and let the rest of the gym know he was looking out for me.

Despite his mentorship, he didn't take it easy on me. One morning, he was working on judo throws and asked me to spar. I agreed. I'd sparred with him a handful of times before, and while it was tough and somewhat terrifying, I always walked away having learned something valuable.

We squared off and slapped hands as a sign of respect. I took a step forward and reached for his lapel.

Before my hand could get there, he grabbed my sleeve and twisted his body. I felt my own body leave the ground, and the next thing I knew, I was upside down and completely vertical. My head was even with Brian's head and my body extended straight out above me, my toes nearly brushing the ceiling. The sickening disorientation of this motion stopped only when I heard a loud thud. It took me a moment to realize that the thud was the sound of my own body slapping flat against the mat. I didn't reach this conclusion through analytical deduction, but instead via the feeling of sharp pain that washed over me due to the impact. I yelled. Yelling is frowned upon at the gym. It's a sign of weakness, and makes people skittish. I'd seen people dislocate their elbows and not yell. I promise you, though, this time I had no choice. I'd been thrown on many occasions before, but this happened so fast that I shouted out of instinct. It was the shout of a man who genuinely has no idea what the fuck just happened to him. The shock of hitting
the ground was immense. I was still processing the fact that I had even left my feet.

Before I could fathom what happened, Brian twisted again. I didn't realize he was still holding his grips on me until I was again in the air, only now I was completely horizontal to the floor. He adjusted his foot positioning to send me downward and I hit the mat with an even more sickening thud. This time I didn't yell, but instinctively curled up into a tight ball. Brian stepped over me and executed a fierce arm lock that made me submit instantly.

In addition to the physical pain I was terribly confused. I rolled over and shook my head, clearing the cobwebs and wondering what the hell had just gone down.

Brian grinned at me. “You wanna talk about it?” he asked. The entire gym, all of whom had been watching his demonstration of skill, burst out laughing.

My least pleasant injury came when I was about a year into my training.

There was a tradition at the gym that took place whenever a new guy came to learn. If he was cool, humble, and wanted to jump into lessons, that was fine. No problems, and no questions asked. But not surprisingly, at a gym that teaches fighting you get a lot of testosterone-fueled lunatics who want to come in and kick everyone's ass right away. Those guys are usually thrown into the fire against someone with a little bit of experience. Guys like that need to be humbled. Once they are, they either turn into normal human beings and take classes, or they remain crazy and are sent on their way. Getting beaten is a litmus test to see just how agro these weirdo meatheads are.