Month: December 2019

Ballet Boy

In Dueling with O-sensei, I presented the story of the ballerina who had a challenge match with a taekwondo black belt. Here’s another ballet story that definitely deserves retelling.

My wife was a principle dancer for the American Ballet Theatre, and for some years after she ended her career, she would teach during ABT’s summer intensives for young people. One year I went along with her, and after her class, ended up in a bar-restaurant, with a group of her colleagues, some of the greatest dancers of the mid twentieth century. One thing about retired ballet dancers: they end up in two forms. Half of them are stunning: elegant, noble men and women, the best looking older people on the face of the earth. And the other half are “F**k it. I trained since I was a child, I watched what I ate, I obsessed over every calorie and every movement of every muscle. No more.” And you’d never imagine they ever danced – they are overweight, lumpy, poor postured . . . but even so,  they still have the best looking legs you could imagine.

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If you haven’t read it, the best loved aikido story (after Ueshiba getting enlightened after taking a challenge from a military man who attacked him uselessly with a sword) is Terry Dobson’s “Train Story.” I used to have people come up to tell me the story, and I’d tell them I knew it, knew Terry, was hanging around when he wrote it, and they’d insist on telling me anyway. Look – it’s a wonderful story. It influenced me profoundly and I hope, one one occasion or another, I have exhibited the compassion of that old man. But somehow, I’ve always had bad luck on Japanese trains.

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There’s this obsession whether aikido is street creditable. Heck, I know of an aikido club amongst correctional officers in one of the most hardcore prisons in America, and they tell me aikido has been more than useful.

So did I ever use aikido on the street? Yes, I did. Back in the early 70’s, I used to train at Terry Dobson/Ken Nisson’s Bond Street Dojo and also Yamada Yoshimitsu’s New York Aikikai (known to some as as 18th Street). I was a member of the former (I lived in the dojo) and a guest at the latter. I subscribed to Terry’s patchwork ideology: “Aikido is an art of love that will save the world, and if you are concerned about self-defense, you have to ask yourself, what is this ‘self’ you are concerned about, and how can you protect a ‘self’ without love . . . and if you piss me off,  I will probably f*ck you up, given the right provocation.”

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When I was twelve years old, I wanted to do karate. Actually, another boy to whom I’d already lost a fight was taking karate, and I didn’t want him to have the jump on me that much more. My parents, however, thought it was low class, and refused. I kept nagging. Finally, my father took me down to the basement, picked up a length of two by four, maybe eighteen inches long and said, “If you can break this with your bare hand, I’ll let you do karate.” Honestly, I don’t know if Oyama Masutatsu, the ‘God Hand’ himself, could have broken a piece of dry wood that short, unsecured. Surely, my father thought, I’d try it once or twice, and give up and leave him alone.

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