A shy reference librarian, and a college student who was disowned when she refused to submit to conversion therapy, meet in a bookstore. He's been waiting his whole life for her. Meanwhile, she's starting her whole life over. What ensues between the...
That was how I discovered magick. I discovered something else, arguably another form of magick, a couple of months later, shortly before the beginning of winter break; although at the time I had no idea how to contextualize it. Silly me.
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It's dark, so I flick on the lights.
The padded walls and floor of the wrestling room have an acrid under-smell of perspiration, the result of years of bodies writhing, straining, and sweating in a struggle for victory - mastery of techniques, dominance over opponents. No matter how well or how often the room gets scrubbed and sterilized, it will always smell faintly of sweat. Above us, I can hear shouts, thumping noises, and the occasional muffled whistle tweet - the wrestling room is beneath a basketball court, and there is apparently a game going on. Probably just intramural, or we'd have heard more about it. Or maybe it's a class. I've never really paid much attention to the sports schedule.
"Oh, good," he says, "we have the place to ourselves for a while."
My sparring partner is built along my lines: tall and gawky. He's even taller than I am, which is saying a lot. Most people stop growing before they are old enough to enter college, but not I. I gained two inches in my freshman year alone and going by the way my clothing fits (or, more accurately, doesn't fit) I'm still gaining. I'm taller than most men; I tower over other women. But he's taller.
He's also thin, although it's more of a lean and wiry kind of thin than a "feed me, I'm starving" kind of thin. When we fight together, we probably look like storks trying to do interpretive dance.
The only thing the wrestling room needs to be perfect would be unbreakable mirrors along one or two of the walls. It would be much easier to practice kata if I could see my body's reflection and correct any errors before they get entrenched. Maybe one of these days someone will invent a padded, shatterproof, non-warping mirror specifically for use in martial arts training.
We decide to warm up with some tai ch'i forms first.
As we run through our tao lu and universal breathing, I can't help but notice that my partner is cute, in a gangly, fluid sort of way.
He's watching me.
"Yes?"
"Your stance is a little off," he says. "Try copying me."
I watch him and see how my stance is different from his, and copy his somewhat wider foot spread and more upright position. My natural tendency is to lean back a little bit more, but I can see right away how his posture works better. It feels more stable. Even better, it enables flow, something I hadn't noticed before when practicing in class because, of course, I'd been doing it wrong until now.
