After the Fall

By A.J. Daulerio

In the first few months of my sobriety, I wanted to join a tennis league, play golf once a week, run a 5K, 10k, and box in a gym regularly. I also wanted to bench press 225 pounds more than eight times and finally practice martial arts. All my goals were reasonable and attainable, but they required discipline and humility that I did not yet possess. Still, I went for it.

I started taking tennis lessons and got decent enough, and I began to use a boxing trainer. I was working out in a crappy gym several times per week and slowly adding more and more plates to my bench press. I was steadily on my way back and beyond. But there was still one more thing on my list–karate. I thought it was the perfect activity to help me reach both spiritual and physical perfection.

I got the opportunity when an AA friend suggested I check out the martial arts studio he belonged to, which offered many beginner's classes. Yes! I said.

I showed up early on a Saturday morning for my first class–it was some discipline of kung-fu that I don't remember. Since I was a new student, Sifu Paula had me join the five-year-olds. I did this willingly–clearly, they knew more than I did–so I had no problem learning proper punches and stances from many kids who came up to my waist.

Sifu Paula was impressed–she said many men aren't willing to take instructions from children. I was different. Special, even. She didn't say that, obviously, but I thought that.

Her subtle vote of confidence was enough for me to try a weekday class, but she warned me that these were more challenging and had many advanced students. Sifu Roger, who owned the studio, taught most of those classes, but I was eager to advance to the next level. For a brief moment, I thought I had found my purpose.

I went to a Wednesday morning class, and it was clear I was out of my depth right away. It was all men, mostly bigger, more athletic men than me, who were casually doing splits and kicking heavy bags with intimidating thuds. They were all dressed in what appeared to be black ninja gear, some with very triumphant-looking colored belts. I was wearing gray sweatpants from Ross and a Temple of the Dog t-shirt.

The warmups were exhausting, all sorts of crazy spider-style pushups and spinning around on our elbows and opening up our hip bones and other physically impossible contortions. Somehow I got through it and was even barking my exhales and keeping my wrists solid on the punches. Before the class was even over, my goals went from not passing out and vomiting to daydreaming about how many classes per week it would take me to obtain a double black belt faster than any person in history.

At the end of the class, all the students gathered around the heavy bag, sweaty and high from our exertion, to do what I assume was the usual ceremonial exercise at the end of class.

Here's what's supposed to happen: each man throws their body against the bag while Sifu Roger swings it back and forth. Once you make contact, you wrap your legs around the bag and hold yourself up with your core for as long as possible. If you start to drop, the rest of the class is there to help and encourage you–and catch you if you fall. Despite my physical limitations and one hour of training, I was ready to do this and be welcomed into this unique brotherhood.

Friends, I would love to say that this moment began my journey towards a double black belt, that I now walk through this world with supreme confidence, head held high, but I cannot.

Instead, here's what happened: I flung my whole body toward the swinging bag, looking like a dead crab getting tossed back into the sea, and as my crotch hit the bag, I farted. I farted so loudly that I startled myself and fell off the bag. But I didn't hit the floor because all these karate men were there to catch me. If they had just let me fall, I would have kept some dignity.

But no, no – there I went, hoisted back up onto the slippery bag by all these strange ninjas as I guiltily looked up at them, cradled in a sad baptismal pose.

The poor man directly to my left had turned his head as he gently let me down onto the floor. He stared off somewhere distant, miles and years away from this moment, the one where he held a stranger who'd just pathetically broken wind so loudly in the karate class he took so seriously. I wondered what he'd tell his wife or his friends after class, but I had a hunch he'd never speak of it again.

The next day, when my friend from AA asked me how it went, I just told him, "It's not for me," and we moved on.

Maybe someday I'll go back to that studio again, but not today, not this year, perhaps once everyone who attended that class has died.

*****

A.J. Daulerio is the editor of The Small Bow. Check out the Really Good Shares podcast.

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