BJJ For Lunch

I’m working on my Murikami fantastic realism with this one. I dig it but let me know what you think. As always AI free.

BJJ For Lunch

I remember going hard in high school, clubs, school, and sports, routinely going until 9 at night, Then I’d get up the next morning like a spring chicken. Same in college, party hard, wrestling, band, study. It was go go go and one of the big through lines in all of that was Brazilian Jujitsu. I talked my dad into taking me in sixth grade and I fell in love. The cool pajamas, the mix of Bralizian and Japanese culture and the violence all blew my little middle American mind.

Looking back, I don’t think I was ever “good”, if jujitsu is something you can even be “good” in. What worked for me as 210 pounds of throbbing dick in college will not work for me now at 40 looking like chewed bubble gum, but I liked it and made training a priority back then. I ate better so I could train better, I would skip the occasional party to train, it was such a big part of my life and now I never go. Things got in the way, life got in the way. Family life and a career are not conducive to taking off for an hour or three every evening to simulate murder.

So I put it down, I left my gi collection in my closet, I didn’t bring it up at dinner parties. I had other titles that I needed to wear. I was a software engineer or a dad or a husband now. 

That engineer one really stood out to me, you work for years at a place and you eventually start to identify yourself by it. I even have “Evil Corps” coffee mugs at home, a cubicle office, awkward and overly polite water cooler conversations, a one hour commute, the whole American Dream package. 

But no hobbies anymore.

You ever notice that? How adulthood leaches away your hobbies? When you’re in college and get asked what you do, you have the world to answer with, “oh I’m a computer sci major”, or “I’m into rowing”, or under water basket weaving or whatever. As a full fledged grown up, no one cares about that. They want to know what you do for a living so they can judge how much respect to give you. I couldn’t imagine going to a dinner party with my wife’s high powered doctor friends and saying “well I play a lot of chess in the park on the weekends.” That’d be a quick way to not get invited again.

I say all of this as a way to get people to understand the kick in the teeth that comes next, I got laid off. 10 years at Evil Corp and they had the decency to cc me in an email on accident before my meeting with HR. That’s the Evil Corp professionalism shining through. With that information the HR meeting was more like over kill and didn’t really need me there at all. Like a party that wouldn’t be any different if you were there or not. The HR rep that I had never seen before must have been flown in just to fire us. Dressed in her no nonsense skirt suit and hornrimmed glasses she could have been the poster child for the entire human resources career path as she spewed the same canned speech that she must have repeated a dozen times that day, “thanks for your service”, “going in different directions.” All ejected from her lipstick lined mouth like pushing out a CD tray, give her a quarter and get an ousting speech. 

Bringing it up to my wife was a blur. I remember trying to figure out if that was textable news or if I should wait until the awkward moment when I meet her at  home to break it to her. Maybe a phone call but I doubt she would have answered during work. Instead there is a scene missing and I’m in the kitchen with a glass of wine trying to make a joke out of the fact that I don’t have to go to work tomorrow.

She took it okay.

It didn’t take long for the lack of routine and interaction to get in my head though. At first it was nice, I thought “I’m just going to take today and I’ll get into the job hunt tomorrow.” It wasn’t that easy though. Pounding the pavement isn’t a thing anymore, you submit resumes to the void and never hear anything back. Headhunters send you to interviews that have nothing to do with your training but want to get paid anyway. Inside of a month I was sitting on the couch watching Drew Carrey live his best life on “The Price is Right”. Couch rotting is what my kids called it. 

That’s when it stopped being fun at all. I moved from the bed to the couch daily but that was about it. Maybe grocery shopping, maybe get a coffee, but barely leaving the house. I didn’t notice how bad it had gotten until my wife asked if I had left the house this week. 

I had not. 

So I looked up a Jujistu academy to try my hand at training again.

The academy was a lot like any other place that I had trained. Wall to wall training mats and the pungent cloud of cleaning fluid assaulted my nostrils as I walked in. I drove by here all the time and got a pang of nostalgia watching people shivering outside waiting for the class to start or smoking in the back alley but I never actually pulled in and visited, it felt like I had moved past jujitsu even though I thought “I should start training again” every time I drove by. It was noon on the nose and no one was here. 

Putting my old kimono on felt like wrapping an ikea rug around me, an ikea rug that was tighter than I remembered. Barefoot I stepped onto the mat and tried very hard to sit in half lotus like a younger me did without thinking about it. I settled on cross cross apple sauce. Alone in this literally padded room I noticed how alone I had been the last few years. Work friends were never going out with type friends, I had lost touch with everyone from college, even at home I was living next to my wife but rarely with her. Nothing wasn’t wrong per se but nothing was really great either.

My feet started to fall asleep before someone walked out of the office door, slow and shambling, I got ready to introduce myself since I was the only one here. The scrape of calloused feet against the vinyl of the mats gave him away before he walked into my line of sight. A panda. A four foot tall panda dressed in a white jujitsu gi seemed startled to see me on the mat, “Oh, I didn’t know anyone was here. You must be new.” His voice was gentle and slow, not like I thought he would sound, and from across the mats I thought his eyes were huge but it was just the dark circles of the fur on his face. His actual eyes were deep set in his face and almost beady, soft enough that it felt like you could see your reflection but I had to remind myself that this was still a bear. After an awkward heartbeat, he ambled toward me on all fours and sat in front of me. “I’m Brian,” he started in that calming voice. “Have you been training long?” As he eyed my tattered purple belt, it showed I was not walking in the door brand new but also not accomplished.

“I played in college but life got in the way. I got laid off a few weeks ago and figured I could give it another try.”

He nodded and looked like he was smiling. “I understand how that goes, Gary. Fortunately Jujitsu is one of those things that will wait for us if we have to put it down for a while. I’m glad you’re here though. Is there anything specific you would like to work on? It looks like it’s just us here for lunch.”

“I really don’t even know where to start from anymore. My gi feels weird after all this time.”

“You’re a different man than the person that hung it up.” He cooed and I hoped that I was able to hide my eye rolling at his yoda-like wisdom sharing. “Well, let’s see where you left off then.” He continued and raised to one knee like he was about to get knighted. I remembered the starting position from my past life and that it led to the initiation of the hand shake, a quick slap bump roll, that told your partner that whatever happened in the round we were still here together. I reached out and grabbed the collar on Brian’s kimono, tried to roll my knuckles over his collar bone like I would with a normal person, I meant to push him back a little before I ripped him toward me to the mat but I never got that far. I was suddenly looking up at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling, the off balance fan slowly ticking as it waved at me. 

Some days you’re the bug and some days you’re the wind shield. 

Brian rolled back into a sitting position, “you ready to go again?”

Another slap, bump, roll and this time he had my back. He was pulling on the back of my collar with one foot on my belt, pushing my waist as he pulled my collar. I couldn’t reach back far enough to get his arm and I couldn’t turn around enough to turn into him. My spine was working against me as it bent backward and denied me any leverage. I changed plans and reached behind me to get his ankle. He saw it coming a mile away and locked his hooks around my waist, his elbow locked underneath my chin and I was in trouble.

When I went to attack the elbow at my neck he locked it down and I tapped as my breathing slowed and my vision started to tunnel. “Been awhile since you were on the mat, eh?” Brian asked. I wasn’t mean per se but more of a conversation starter. 

“I played a lot as a younger man but I guess life got in the way. I got laid off a few weeks ago and now I’m trying to find myself again, you know? I figured I’d go back to the last spot I remembered.”

“That’s hard, I’m sorry about work.”

“It’s okay, maybe it was for the best.”

“True, whatever brings you back to us can’t be all bad right?” He said as he shoulder rolled back into a kneeling position. “Wanna go again?”