Man Stank

Before I begin, it's apparent that I've become depressed lately. Hmm, I suppose not so much depressed as terrified. The bad decisions I've made are crushing my present and casting a dreadful pall over my future. I hate it, but mostly I hate who it's made me become. I had already reached the point of being unable to talk about my life without mentioning my career or financial goals. As important as these are to accomplish, it makes me feel incredibly dull. There's just nothing worth talking about that isn't a measurement of where I've been, where I am, and where I'm trying to go. It's getting to the point that I don't want to write anymore, because I'm sick and tired of writing about the same thing over and over. I never wanted to be so one dimensional.
Thus, a new beginning has dawned. Stories float about my head all the time; interesting things do happen to me that have nothing to do with getting from point A to point B on a scale of career or money. They're usually unimportant, but they're fun, and they tend to impact my day one way or another.

As the title says, this one's about Man Stank.

The dojo I began attending last week teaches two martial arts. The first is Aikido, which is largely comprised of purely defensive manipulations of an attacker's body. It's about how to throw off an opponent using leverage and subtle manipulations instead of strength and opposite forces.

The other art this place teaches is Systema, which in concept couldn't be further from Aikido than a jigsaw band from performing at the Chinese Opera. Systema was taught solely to the Russian Special Forces until the fall of communism in the early 90's. It's as offensive as Aikido is defensive. There are no tournaments, and you do not score points. What you do is learn the fastest possible ways to force another human to pain and submission, and it's just important to learn to take a hit as it is to give one.

Strangely, these two disciplines create a strange sort of synergy when combined. I imagine anyone who masters both will always be the last man standing in any macho-movie-style backroom/barroom brawl. Probably this would occur right in between deflowering a princess and devouring a raw steak, in no particular order. But I digress.

Systema has a wrestling/grappling component to it, which includes striking an opponent several times while hurtling his body toward the nearest, most solid object (hopefully another opponent, but usually it's the floor). In class, we take turns being the dummy.

If I said tonight my partner had a body odor problem, that would be polite. If I said my tonight my partner had an Oh Dear God and All That is Holy STANK, that would be closer to the truth. In the moment, I didn't really notice. Much as the action hero seems immune to injury during a fight, I was too concerned with one of two things; either trying to find new and interesting ways to plant my joints in his tender parts before, during, and after sending his broken shell into a crumpled pile; or wincing when he realized my ponytail makes a wonderful handlebar when it was my turn to be the broken shell in a crumpled pile.

But when class was over, I made an interesting discovery as I waited on the train to take me home. The memory of the smell was a little too vivid for comfort. Before long I realized it wasn't just a memory—the stank had stuck! It transferred its putrid essence onto me and was following me home like a diseased puppy. I was convinced that from a distance, I looked like Pig Pen from Peanuts. Worse, I had no distraction. I was praying for someone to mug me so the fight would take my mind off it, and take the Odour of Profanity with him instead of my wallet. Hell, even if he TOOK my wallet, as long as the offending smell was gone.

I couldn't bear to be near myself. I decided I was performing a penance, and started making mental apologies to every girlfriend I ever had for every shower I had never taken before coming to bed. When I got home I burned my clothes, spread my body wash onto a Brillo pad and scrubbed my flesh raw and bleeding. Maybe I got it all. Maybe like a horror movie the Stank Beast will rise again from some eggs it hatched before I killed it (already I see the words "THE END . . . . ?" rising across the screen projecting the closing credits of my day). One way or the other, there is a certainty.

That stank will haunt my dreams.