Pretending, page 20
Canary claps. “Right guys, are you ready? Find a punching bag.”
The women who all look like nothing bad ever happened to them disperse. I weave myself into the most inconspicuous spot at the back.
“Right, we’re just going to start with a warm-up. One punch with your left arm, then two short jabs with your right. Punch, punch-punch, punch, punch-punch.” She attacks her bag forcefully but gracefully in demonstration, her French plait swirling around her head. Then she walks to the front of the hall and presses her phone attached to some speakers. Little Mix blares across the polished wooden floor. “Let’s go!” she calls over the music. “Punch, punch-punch.”
I feel silly as I throw my hands into the hefty mass of the swinging sack. It hardly moves. Everyone around me attacks theirs with much more vigor. Maybe I could try hitting it a bit harder? I pull my shoulder back, curl my fist tighter and heave my arm into it.
Oof. Oof-oof. The sack wobbles. Oof. Oof-oof. That feels quite good actually. I whack it harder, then harder still. No matter how much I hit it, the hanging sack can absorb it, like it’s ingesting all my pain. I start thrusting the full force of my weight into each swing. The noise it makes as my fist connects is weirdly pleasurable, like the feeling you get when you hear snooker balls clonk off each another.
Thwump thwump-thwump.
I like this. Can I go harder?
Little Mix sing about how they’ve got the power and how they make it shower. I don’t usually like pop music, but their voices ignite something in me, make me want to punch harder, fight harder.
“Now we’re going to add some kicks in,” the instructor chirps over the chorus. “Eight punches, followed by four kicks. Like this.” She attacks her bag with her foot, arching her body sideways to land her shin into it sharply. I clumsily try to copy her, and it takes me a good few goes to get my balance right but, by the time Christina Aguilera’s “Fighter” booms through the speakers, I’ve got the hang of it.
My leg sinks into it, thwack thwack. My arms are going for it too. It’s like I can’t attack the bag hard enough. I start to picture Ryan’s face and imagine my punches and kicks landing squarely. Fuck you, I think as I punch him again and again. Fuck you fuck you fuck you. I feel amazing. Powerful. I picture his nose breaking. Blood spurting out of it, like in a Tarantino movie, soaking that stupid blue T-shirt he always used to wear. “Stop,” I picture him pleading, his arms up to protect his stupid face. “Please.” But I don’t stop. Why should I when he didn’t? I punch eight times and kick four. His face becomes pulp and yet I still keep attacking.
This is how it feels when someone doesn’t stop, I say to him. You don’t like it, do you? You don’t like it at all, you pathetic piece of shit.
He falls to the floor and I rain down more kicks, sweat flying off my body. The words from Christina Aguilera’s “Fighter” fill my head and spur me on. She sings about how she won’t forget, and neither will I. I remember everything. That’s what makes it so intolerable sometimes. The complete inability to forget it. How relentlessly the memory haunts you. I lose sight of everyone around me. I forget to be embarrassed by my sweat, or the potency of my rage. I’m just lost in feeling like I am finally in charge for once. That I’m the one to be scared of. I am the one who decides whether or not I’m going to stop. So many defensive men put their hands up whenever women dare talk about it. “Not all of us,” they say. “Not all men,” they say. “How dare you suggest,” they say. “That’s actually quite offensive,” they say.
I punch eight times, I kick four times.
Yes yes yes yes yes, I think. Poor diddums. Getting all upset. Not wanting to feel like baddies when they’re goodies. How unfair to all be lumped together. That must really hurt. I mean, it doesn’t hurt even the millionth of a fraction compared to being sexually violated, and yet we make the poor men’s feelings more important than the violated women’s.
My kicks get harder. I’m using every muscle in my body and it all already hurts but in the most brilliant way. Punch punch. Kick.
Imagine the blood.
God, I feel powerful.
Is this how men feel all the time?
If only they’d listen rather than call me hysterical, I would scream, YES, I KNOW NOT ALL OF YOU DO IT, BUT ALL OF YOU CAN DO IT. THAT’S THE POINT, THAT’S THE FUCKING POINT.
The fear is always there. The threat always there. Because, really, unless you are a fucking championship kickboxer or something, if you are ever alone with a man, all he has to do is decide to do it and he’ll be able to. They can hold both of your squirming arms down with only one of their own. They can pin you to your back with just the weight of them. You close the door and make it alone with just you and a man and they can always do that. You get into a cab with them and they can always do that. You get walked home by them and they can always do that. Not all men do, but almost all men can. If only they could have a day of feeling as scared as we do. Please just let them have one day. Of not having the power, of us having it instead. I feel like it would give me such release, but it won’t ever happen, not in my lifetime, so I just need to keep punching this bag and pretending I have a little.
My feet are soaked in his blood. My clothes are soaked in my sweat. I have no worries in my head right now. I’m not feeling lesser than, or crazier than, or silly because, or sorry for. I’m just feeling good.
I annihilate my punch bag until the braided instructor tells us to stop. Released from my spell, I blink as I look around me, reality coming back into focus. The other women are all equally sweaty and beaming. I make eye contact with a short girl with a peroxide-blond crop. We smile at one another.
“Great guys, just great. Well done for bringing it so hard in this heat.” Canary claps. “Right, now, let’s do some sparring. Kit is in the corner.”
My triumph wanes the moment I realize this next part of the session involves getting into pairs. Instantly I’m transported back to school PE lessons and never being picked for the team. But Peroxide Girl heads over. “Want to partner up?” she asks. “You’re new, aren’t you?”
“Is it that obvious?”
She laughs. “No, don’t worry. We just all really know each other here.” She gestures toward the box in the corner and we walk over with everyone. “It’s great, isn’t it?”
“It’s brilliant,” I say. “I wasn’t expecting to feel so instantly great. I feel like a superhero or something.”
She laughs widely again, revealing a tongue piercing. Holes line up like soldiers along her earlobes, the ghosts of multiple piercings removed. “The first class is always such a rush.”
The instructor has climbed into the box and is tossing out boxing gloves and oversized pads to the sea of grasping hands. Peroxide Girl collects our stuff, before we step back to make room for the other women. “Right, have you ever sparred before?” she asks.
“I have no idea what that means really.”
“It means we’re just going to hit each other, but in a really, nice, empowering kind of way.”
I place my hand in a boxing glove which belches out an old-sweat smell. I yank on the other, marveling at my giant cartoon-like hands. The instructor tells us to space out and practice our hits. “Remember, not too hard. Check in with your partner, make sure they’re OK with your force. No dick-measuring please.” We all titter. She explains how to punch the pads properly, how to hold them in a way that protects you. “And remember the most important lesson of all: have fun with it. Let it all out.”
“Do you want to punch first?” Peroxide Girl asks.
“I feel like I need to know your name first.”
“Charlotte. And yours?”
I pause for a second before answering. “Er, April.”
“That’s a lovely name.”
“Thank you.”
She leads me to the corner, sensing my newbie embarrassment. The room’s filled with the grunts of punches and the thwack of received hits. “Right, so I’m going to hold the pads up here like this, OK? We’ll do twelve reps in each position. Then we can swap over. Don’t worry. I’ll go easy on you since you’re new.” I nod and she holds the pads up to her chest. “Right, go on.”
I throw a feeble punch, followed by another not much better. It’s hard to get over the initial discomfort of punching someone, anyone, even though they’re encouraging you to.
“Come on, you can go much harder than that. These pads are totally absorbing.”
I attack her meekly for a few more reps before I gain enough confidence to go harder. Spurred on by her enthusiasm, I turn up the power until she’s lunging to absorb me, grinning like I’m her child who just won a school prize or something. Fist connects with padding. Flexed foot connects with a block. My smile connects with a stranger’s. I swipe and attack until there’s no oxygen left in my lungs, and then we switch over. I can tell she’s not giving it her all as she lays into me, but it feels fine.
When we’re both sweaty, giddy messes, the instructor calls it quits. We return the equipment to the corner, everyone smiling, everyone moist, everyone friendly.
“Right ladies,” she claps again. “Game time.”
“You’ll love this,” Charlotte whispers. “It’s the best bit.”
“Right, sit in a circle everyone. Newbies, this will be weird for two minutes, and then will be super fun. It’s just some kid-like cardio games to release any excess nervous energy before you have to face the universe again.”
We all sit inward, cross-legged, like pass the parcel is about to begin. “So, this game is based on Fishes in the Sea,” a game that you may’ve played when you were little. But we’ve changed up the words a bit, so you ladies can reclaim any negative labels you may’ve been called in the past.” She walks around us and starts patting us, one by one, on the head. “Needy, crazy, nagging, desperate.” She doles out the words like she’s allocating school teams. “Needy, crazy, nagging, desperate. Needy, crazy...” She gently pats my head at “crazy” and it’s the first time I’ve been called it that doesn’t make me want to instantly cry. In fact, I hear a giggle and realize it’s me. When we’ve each been allocated our word, she explains the rules. When our label is called, we have to get up and start running around the outside. Sometimes she’ll call “times are changing” and we’ll have to run in the opposite direction. Sometimes she’ll call “when they go low” and we have to run on our tiptoes and yell back “we go high.” Sometimes she’ll call “progress is one step forward” and we have to run backward. Finally, whenever she calls “the patriarchy’s coming,” we have to race back to our space, and the last one to sit down is out.
It’s a whole new realm of bonkers. I crane my neck around, trying to make eye contact with Charlotte to make a “this is crazy” face, but she’s nodding and smiling like it’s totally normal. Everyone is.
“Right, let’s get going. NAGGING!”
A quarter of the room full of otherwise normal-looking women stand up and start running around the circle.
After five minutes, I totally and utterly get it.
“CRAZY!” I’m up and I’m jogging, my heart thumping, trying to keep pace with the rest of the crazies.
“WHEN THEY GO LOW!” I rise up onto my tiptoes and we all laugh at how hard it is to run like that.
“TIMES ARE A CHANGING!” I almost twist my ankle as I spin to change direction.
“NEEDY!” Another quarter of the room hop up and start running with us. Every single one of us is smiling, in that free way that hurts your face. My trainers thud on the wood. My arms swing by my sides.
“THE PATRIARCHY’S COMING!” We all squeal and peg it back to our spots. I thrust my body forward, chuck my legs into a crossed position and land my arse heavily onto the ground. Charlotte, a needy, comes in last. She grins as she faces outward, shrugging, unbothered, her face red from running. I smile at her as the word “DESPERATE!” is called and feet thump around me once again.
“CRAZY!” Oh, me again. We all laugh, acknowledging the total lack of break we’ve had from the last run. Our breath comes out thick and heavy. It’s hard to run fast when you’re laughing so much. We run backward, we scurry back to our places, we swap directions. NEEDY, DESPERATE, CRAZY, DESPERATE, NAGGING, NEEDY, NAGGING, CRAZY... I’ve never laughed at these words before. They are words that I’m usually incapable of having a sense of humor about. Because these words are always loaded. Even if the man holds his hands up and says, “Oh come on, I was only joking,” you cannot laugh, not properly, because these words are never a joke, they are only ever a method of control. But today, times are a changing. I run and run and I see these silly labels for the silly labels they are. I shoot back to a memory of Ryan standing over me as I cried in the corner because he told me I was too fat and he couldn’t get an erection because of it. “God, why are you crying, AGAIN? You’re crazy.” And I see the craziness of that word being used, when my behavior was the most normal response to what he’d just said. “I wasn’t crazy,” I whisper as I run, thud thud thudding on the floor. “You made me crazy.”
I’ve never truly believed that before, no matter how many times Megan protested it. But with endorphins surging through my blood, and other women jogging around and laughing at that word with me, the message begins to bed in. It curls up in my soul, nestling in, and part of me releases a tiny squib of tension I’ve been holding in for years.
Nobody stays out for very long. The instructor keeps saying “Oh, don’t worry, just join back in” so we can all continue playing. The air is loaded with giddy. We land our feet in unison. Our hair swings madly from side to side. We apologize whenever one of us gets too excited and accidentally runs into the back of someone else.
“WHEN THEY GO LOW!”
“CRAZY, DESPERATE!”
“THE PATRIACHY’S COMING!”
In the last round, she calls “WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER,” the signal that everyone has to get up and run in a circle. It becomes more of a conga line than a circle—too many of us in the hall to really run properly. We hold each other’s clammy shoulders, getting one another’s sweat smeared into our palms, we push each other through the tiredness, draining ourselves of the very last droplets of energy. My face feels redder than it’s ever felt in my life. I’m sweating out of every pore of my body. We all are. Ugly and breathless, but smiling and powerful.
“Right, game over! Let’s dance it out to finish!” The speakers crank on. “Just a Girl” by No Doubt blasts out. We all whoop like we’re in a nightclub. I’m skanking like I used to as a teen, and everyone around me is doing the same. No one is dancing to look pretty. Half of us are screaming along with the lyrics. I jump, flick more sweat around. I’ve never felt happier than in this moment. Charlotte is next to me, yelling along even louder. Her sweaty arms are around me. We pogo up and down. I feel drunk with happiness. Lost in whatever is happening. We all are. We scream out the final words, punching our fists into the air, swinging some of the bags. Then the song dies, and it’s quiet again. We become two dozen female strangers, soaked through in sweat, hugging one another in a tiny dilapidated hall.
“Well done ladies. That was a great one. Oh my God, it is hot in here. Luckily the shower is just about working.”
We let go of one another but the bond doesn’t feel broken. Charlotte is eyeing me, her cheeks raised with her smile. “So, how did you find it?”
“That is the weirdest but best thing I’ve done in a while.”
“Isn’t it? It’s like kickboxing slash crazy children’s-birthday-party slash trauma recovery slash dance party.” We walk toward our pegs and stop by Charlotte’s otter sticker. “Some of us go for a drink after, if you’re up for it? There’s one tiny shower we all have to take turns with, or you may want to go home and just shower there?”
I lift my bag away from its giraffe home. It’s filled with Gretel gear for tonight. A nice outfit to meet Josh’s friends in, but one that doesn’t look like I’ve tried too hard. And overnight stuff to take to his house later. I reach into my bag and retrieve my phone.
Joshua: The countdown to poppadoms begins! See you at eight x
The time at the top of my phone says six thirty, and it’s a thirty-minute journey at least to the restaurant.
“I’m supposed to be meeting someone, but I can be a bit late.”
“Great. The pub is only around the corner. Come on, let me show you the terrible shower.”
The shower’s a tiny trickle in a gross, gray bathroom that must’ve once had white tiles. I let the water fill my cupped hands and splash it over myself. It’s way too weak to wash my hair, so I just wet the front of it to dilute the sweat and figure it won’t look too awful. Even if it does, I don’t give the flyingest of fucks right now.
About five women wait for me when I emerge, including Charlotte. “Hey everyone, this is April,” she says, giving me their names, which I instantly forget. They all wave hi. Ask how I found the class. They laugh when I rave about how good it is. We call goodbye to the instructor, asking if she wants help with the punching bags, but she doesn’t. The fans have been turned off and the hall’s eerily quiet. I can taste the salt of our sweat on my tongue, and the air isn’t much better when we get outside. Heavy and unforgiving with a sallow, gray cloud coverage.
