The next two weeks followed a pretty set pattern: Get up in the morning. Go through the motions while getting slapped around in school. Pick up some groceries or take-out on my way home, so I would have something to eat. Go to sleep while trying to ignore the occasional bed-squeaking coming from one (or more) of their bedrooms. Repeat.
That is, until my workload changed. Apparently, being a programmer and doing things with computers others don’t understand, makes you the default go-to guy when someone’s hardware refuses to comply. So, whenever the printer in accounting didn’t work, I was called over. When someone accidentally hit F11 and put their Pornhub browser window in fullscreen-mode, that someone showed up next to me and discretely asked for quick help. Same went for their personal and private devices. I soon made it a habit to come to the office directly after school and stay for at least one or two hours. Normally I would do all the programming and maintenance from home, so I’d only come in if we had something to discuss. But I could do that just as well while in the building, and this way I could actually look at the stuck printer.
It didn’t take too long for the others in the office to get friendly with that chubby kid that was fixing their stuff. For the first time in more than a year, I had people I could have an actual conversation with, even if they were more small-talk, since we had little in common because of the age difference. That helped somewhat. It also didn’t take long for Bill to notice that something was wrong with me and called me into his office.
“Alright, kid. The fuck’s up with the bruises?” he asked in a gruff voice.
“School stuff” was all I could say to that.
“School stuff. As in ‘you’re part of the wrestling team and just bad at it’? Or ‘the wrestling team is using you for sparring matches without you being a member’?”
I shrugged my shoulders. I did not want to tell my boss, who employed me in a security firm, that I was incapable of defending myself against other kids at school. Even if I was just the IT-Guy and not part of his operative staff.
“I’m pretty sure John said he had two nephews ... Doesn’t your brother go to the same high school as you?”
“Logan, yes, he does. So does my sister. You could say they’re part of the wrestling team. My family ... doesn’t like me very much.”
Bill didn’t say anything for a moment. I also couldn’t see any change in his expression. Did he already know? Or maybe it was just his character. Or he did the job long enough to not find this unusual anymore.
“How long you gonna be here today?” he finally asked.
“Well, I like to stay ‘till five, when the office-dwellers leave, so I’m here if something comes up.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. I’m still only paying you for actual work done, not for sitting around.” I smirked at that “Come back in here at five.”
And that’s what I did. After meeting him in his office, he led me to the gym. As it turned out, unbeknownst to me, the operative part of his employees met every day after the others left for their training sessions.
“All right everyone, listen up!” he called out to them. “This is Tim. Most of you probably seen him around by now fixing your shit on company time. He’s gonna join us in the afternoons from now on. Be nice to him, he still has soft bones. Drop him on his head and it’s probably gonna leave a permanent dent.”
Most of them laughed at that, I was still a little confused.
“What is it you train here? Something like Krav Maga or something?” I asked excitedly. To my even greater confusion, most of them laughed even harder at that than after Bill’s joke.
“Listen Kid,” Bill started in an exhausted tone while pointing a finger at me. “If you want to learn how to throw a killer punch, go boxing. If you want to learn how to use your knees and elbows to strike, learn Muay Thai. If you want to learn how to throw people around, learn Judo. And if you want to learn all of those things, just not even half as good, learn Krav Maga. We don’t do that crap here.”
“But ... wasn’t that, like, some army thing everybody learns now?”
“Yeah, once upon a time it was that legendary martial art the IDF teaches.” he explained with much sarcasm in his voice. “But ever since it got popular in Los Angeles, it’s more of a means to slim your waistline using a punching bag. In the end, all popular and widely known martial arts you can learn in schools or dojos are either meant for competitions, against a single opponent and judged by a guy who makes sure everybody abides by the rules, or are simply a collection of made up scenarios you can’t apply to the real world. The drunks at a bar always come with friends as backup, burglars in Texas are most likely carrying, and the desperate ones will use whatever they can to take you down. Martial Art styles will give you some degree of confidence in a real fight, but that’s it.”
“Sooo ... what are you training then?”
“Our own little style. Call it MMA if you must put a name to it, but it’s simply a mixture of whatever we all learned works best in the field. What we train in these sessions is meant to teach you how to take an attacker down as quickly and effectively as possible, so by the time their buddies try to help him out by jumping you from behind, you’re already done with him and ready for the next one.”
“Nice!” I commented. This sounded awesome. Bill, however, made quick work of my enthusiasm.
“Now keep in mind, this is going to be very different from what you’ve seen in ‘Cobra Kai’ or some other shitty show. We don’t really concern ourselves with the future health of someone who tries to kill us. If you break his arm and rip his tendons, tough shit for him, but he’ll sure as hell won’t use that arm to pick his knife back up and try again. BUT! We train this for self defense. So, if you use any of this on someone who’s not ACTIVELY attacking you, it’ll no longer pertain to self defense. It’ll get you thrown in jail, and we will not bail you out for that. So, we’ll also include some lessons in discipline.”
After this little speech that left me in a mixture of excitement and downright fear, he introduced me to the other participants and assigned me a partner. From then on, for 90 minutes per session, five days a week, I learned how to defend myself. On three days a week we spent an additional hour lifting weights.
I’m not going to lie, it was fucking hard! Even though the training started out easy, teaching me how to stand properly and then how to apply and get out of choke- and handholds, I was in constant muscle pain for the first two weeks. It felt like the lactic acid buildup in my muscles would never go away. By the time we moved on to A LOT of grappling, and finally all the way to ‘disabling’ armed or unarmed attackers, I had thankfully gotten used to the daily exercises.
Granted, there weren’t that many people coming after me with knives and guns in school, and there wasn’t much in those training sessions I could reasonably use against untrained bullies without being arrested (“Or worse, expelled!”), but it gave me confidence. I could now look my attackers in the eyes and actually see what they were trying to do, instead of cowering away and be taken by surprise with every single punch. And as long as I could see it, I could defend against it. At least that was what Bill kept telling me.
My favorite part about the training, however, was Tess. She worked in accounting and claimed to only train with the guys because she wouldn’t have to pay for a gym membership that way. Twenty-eight years old, 5’4’’ tall, and always holding her long raven hair in a ponytail. I thoroughly enjoyed having her as a sparring partner when we had to get handsy, because she seemed to enjoy herself with me as well. At least that was the impression I got from the genuine smile she gave me while we were going through the different holds. Despite what I hoped, with me being fifteen and all, I didn’t seriously expect to get anywhere with a woman thirteen years older than me. But I did look forward to each time we met, either during training or in the coffee kitchen, talking.