I would have liked more information as to the disciplines, but did not want to dominate question time. As it turned out, nobody else asked anything, and it was our turn to introduce ourselves. Everyone provided only their names. Due to mumbling, Jack had to ask several times for a name to be repeated before he could match it on his list. When Dave’s turn came, Jack shook his head.
‘You’re not on the list. Don’t worry, they screw this up all the time. Spell your name for me, slowly.’
Dave provided the information.
‘Bechler. Yugoslavian?’
‘Serbo-Croatian, I think. Way back.’
‘We get quite a few Serbs. Something in the genes. Not that I want to encourage stereotypes. Any other Serbs here?’
No hands went up.
‘Your wife’s pregnant?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who told you to come here?’
Dave indicated me.
Jack looked at me for a few moments. ‘You’re his buddy?’
‘Correct.’
‘You brought him along because you thought it’d be good for him?’
‘Correct.’
‘Smart move, Don. If we all looked after our buddies like Don here, there’d be a lot less mothers showing up at the emergency room, a lot less babies shaken to death by men who won’t ever be able to look at themselves in the mirror again.’
Dave appeared more shaken than the hypothetical baby.
‘Now,’ said Jack. ‘Everybody’s here for a reason, including Dave. You’ve all done something to someone that you probably regret. I want to hear about it, and I want to know how you feel about it now. Who’s first?’
There was silence. Jack turned to Dave. ‘Dave, you look like—’
I interrupted. I needed to save Dave from being revealed as a non-violent imposter.
‘I’m willing to commence.’
‘All right, Don. Tell us what you’ve done.’
‘Which incident?’
‘Sounds like there’s been a few.’
Few was accurate. There had been three in my adult life, but the frequency had increased recently.
‘Correct. Two in the past month. Prompted by the pregnancy.’
‘That’s not good, Don. Maybe they’re a bit raw to think about now. Maybe go back a little, to an incident you’ve had time to do some thinking about. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘Of course. You’re suggesting that analysis of recent events may lack a broader context and be clouded by emotions.’
‘Yeah. That. So go back a bit.’
‘I was at a restaurant. My costume was criticised. There was an altercation which escalated, and two security personnel attempted to restrain me. I responded with the minimum force needed to disable them.’
One of the other men interrupted. ‘You took out two bouncers?’
‘You’re an Aussie, right?’ This was another student. ‘You took out two Aussie bouncers?’
‘Correct and correct. I disabled them in self-defence.’
‘Two guys diss his threads and bam. Bam, bam, bam.’ The student performed a punching action in time with his bams.
‘No bamming was required. I used a low-impact throw and a simple hold.’
‘Judo?’
‘Aikido. I am also proficient in karate, but the aikido is safer in these situations. I used aikido on the neighbour who damaged my clothing—’
‘Do not mess with this man’s threads.’ The student was laughing.
‘—and on the police officer—’
‘You threw a cop? Not here? In New York? Where was his partner?’
Jack interrupted. ‘I guess there were consequences for Don. Whoever won the fight, you got arrested, right?’
‘Correct.’
‘And then?’
‘Total disaster. Threat of criminal prosecution, deportation, lack of access to my child, restrictions on working with children, forced attendance… And the necessity of deceiving my wife, which is incredibly stressful and has unpredictable consequences.’
‘You were too ashamed to tell your wife what you’d done, right? That you’d got yourself into trouble again.’
I nodded. Although my justification for not telling Rosie had been to protect her from stress, there was some truth in Jack’s observation.
Jack addressed the group. ‘Doesn’t sound so clever now, does it? We all get angry and we fuck up. Why? What makes us angry?’
Again, nobody raised his hand. I could empathise with Jack. It was like the first class of the semester with new students. As a fellow teacher, it was my responsibility to help Jack out.
‘To understand anger,’ I began, ‘it is necessary first to understand aggression, and its evolutionary value.’ I continued for approximately a minute. I had not even begun to explain the consequent evolution and internalisation of anger as an emotion when Jack stopped me.
‘That’ll do for now, Professor.’ The use of the formal title was encouraging. I was surely the top student at this point, and I could not see any challengers. ‘We’re going to take a break, and afterwards I’m going to be looking for some contributions from the rest of you. Don, you’ve earned your gold star and you can shut the fuck up.’
Everyone laughed. I was class clown again.
Most of the students walked outside and the requirement for the break became obvious. Several, including Jack, were nicotine addicts. I stood in the courtyard drinking my instant coffee with Dave.
One of the students, a man of about twenty-three, BMI approximately twenty-seven as a result of muscle rather than fat, approached us, dropped his cigarette, and stamped it out with his boot.
‘Wanna show us some moves?’ he said.
‘We will be returning inside shortly,’ I said. ‘Exercise will make us hot and uncomfortable and unpleasant to others.’
He performed some shadow-boxing moves. ‘C’mon. I wanna see what you can do. Beside talk.’
This was not the first time someone had challenged me to demonstrate my martial-arts skills. I did not need Jack’s advice to know that it was unwise to spar with an unknown opponent in poor light with no protection. Fortunately I had a standard solution. I stepped a few paces away to create some space, removed my shoes and also my shirt to minimise the perspiration problem, then performed a kata I had prepared for my 3rd Dan karate grading. It requires four minutes and nineteen seconds. The students gathered in a circle to watch and at the end clapped and made noises of appreciation.
Jack walked up beside me and addressed the group. ‘This stuff’s pretty, but nobody’s invincible.’ Without any warning, he grabbed me in a chokehold. It was competently executed, and I suspected he had used it many times with success. I predicted that this was the first time he had applied it to a 4th Dan aikido practitioner.
The safest defence is prevention and I automatically moved to block him from applying the hold. Part way through the manoeuvre, which would have ended with him immobilised on the ground, I made a decision to allow Jack to complete the hold. He was attempting to illustrate a point, and my action would undermine his lesson. I expected that Jack would hold me for a few moments to demonstrate the technique’s effectiveness and then release me.
Before he could do so, a strange voice said, ‘That’s enough. Let him go. Now.’ The voice was strange because it was Dave doing his Marlon Brando-Woody Allen combination. Jack let me go, looked at Dave, and nodded.