The night before my last day at the coffee shop, my coworkers and I headed out to celebrate. Soon, I’d be returning home, then onto Japan, and this would be my last hurrah in Santa Cruz.
We ate and drank our way through the evening, eventually ending up at the far end of downtown, near the beach. We were leaving our last bar somewhere around midnight when my two remaining co-workers decided to smoke a cigarette in the parking lot before heading home.
I was tired, so I sat down on a five-gallon bucket someone had left in a receded doorway at the back of the lot. They had just lit up when a car pulling out of an adjacent spot nearly backed into them.
Dakota and Kate were two mouthy, petite girls, not averse to confrontation. They promptly started cursing out the driver, who jumped out of the car and advanced on them. He was soon followed by his friend, another guy who had been sitting in the passenger seat.
Words were exchanged, and the driver started to get aggressive. He was nearly six feet tall, athletic, and probably weighed as much as the girls put together. At one point he cocked his arm back like he was going to punch one of the girls.
I saw that things were going south, so I stood up and called out, “Hey, let’s calm down. Take it easy.” When the driver saw me, he turned from the girls and moved on me. I was still thinking that he’d chill out, and, though completely foolish in hindsight, sat back down on the bucket in the doorway.
I don’t even remember if I said anything before the first punch landed. He hit me from above on the left side of my face four or five times. I didn’t move. I didn’t cover up.
At that point I heard the girls yelling for him to stop. He did, long enough to look their way, then returned to punching me in the face. In all, he probably landed ten punches to the left side of my face—he must have been a righty! I may have started to cover up at the end, but by then he seemed to have gotten out whatever aggression he had built up.
When the punches stopped, the first coherent thought I had was something like, “Wow, I can take a punch!” Yay me.
Things calmed down, and he walked back to where the others were. He exchanged a few more words with the girls, got in his car, and left. In an odd moment of clarity, I managed to memorize his plate number as they pulled out so I could report the incident to the police.
I was left with a fractured occipital lobe, and that night I couldn’t sleep because the pain was too intense and my nose wouldn’t stop bleeding.
What Next?
You might think that this is the story of the big, traumatic event that led me to the martial arts, my origin story whereupon I decided never to be a victim again. It is not.
At the moment I was being repeatedly struck in the face, making no effort to even protect myself, I was a black belt. I was training five days a week at the local Aikido dojo, and would soon be moving to Japan to further my training.
Sitting on the floor of my room that night, an ice pack held to my face, I contemplated revenge. When the police were calling in the report they had given his address, and he lived less than a mile away. I thought of slashing his tires, or maybe throwing a rock through his window. I’m not a vengeful person, so I soon let those ideas go.
Then, I thought, what if I just went to his house, rang his doorbell, and showed him what he did. My face was swollen and bruised. In the sobriety of day, maybe he’d see the results of his drunken cruelty and realized the folly of his ways. I hoped I could effect some sort of karmic reckoning by bringing his violence to light. Maybe, but I had work at 5am and was exhausted without sleep.
In the end, I did nothing. I didn’t even press charges. I was leaving for Japan and didn’t want to get tangled up in any legal stuff back in the States.
For years, the mere thought of that night triggered my adrenaline. Images would flash in my mind: me, sitting in that doorway, him, swinging from above.
Making Sense of Violence
Let’s be generous. Maybe my response—more accurately, my non-response—was smart. He was bigger and stronger than me, and he had a friend with him who might have joined in if I had tried something. This may be true, but being helplessly punched in the face does not fit with the concept of Aikido or with the person I want to be.
I suspect anyone who has been violently assaulted has thought back and tried to imagine how they could have responded. Even today, two decades later, I can see him coming in from above with that roundhouse punch. I could have slipped in, gone straight for his centerline with a tsukiage or an uppercut. I could have stood up, pushed him back to establish a better position and seen what I could do from there. I suppose there are an infinite number of possibilities, though ultimately I chose one.
Based on this event, you might be tempted to conclude that Aikido is ineffective. Half of the internet would be happy to jump in and agree. Clearly, my training had not prepared me to reflexively respond by fighting back and defending myself, though in the end I do not blame my training for the outcome of that night.
The thing is, I didn’t actually recognize that violence was imminent or even that it was occurring. There are stories of Morihei Ueshiba literally dodging bullets on the battlefield in WWI merely by sensing the enemy’s intent to harm him. While being punched in the face, I was still uncertain if anything bad was really going to happen. There was a disconnect between what was going on and what I imagined in my mind, a gap that became more apparent in hindsight.
I did not quit Aikido that day, cursing my teachers for not preparing me for real danger. I did not think less of the art, criticizing the founder for forbidding competition or tests of martial skill. He and my teachers have provided us the tools, and it is up to us to use them as we see fit.
I have come to realize this: Aikido doesn’t do itself. Merely participating in ‘The Art of Peace’ does not guarantee one will make it through life unscathed. It is not a talisman to ensure that nice people with good intentions will be spared from violence. It is a path, and it doesn’t walk itself.
Aikido is, as Ueshiba Sensei stressed, not passive. What this event made clear is that an outlook based solely on hopefulness and goodwill towards others is, at times, insufficient.
Thankfully, this painful experience in the back of an unlit parking lot has changed my training. I do not go out and brawl, nor do I take out my shortcomings or insecurities on my partners at the dojo. I do continue to practice cooperatively, falling down when I am thrown well and expecting the same of my partners and my students. The difference is that now I view each of those interactions through a different lens.
Each time I execute a technique, I’m taking notes on what works, how my partner responds, and how I could improve. When appropriate, I ask for resistance, and see, as honestly as I can, how effectively I can apply techniques.
Still, I understand that even when someone is being outright difficult on the mat, they are still not a fair representation of a stranger bent on harming me. My practice does, however, provide me a means to refine myself, to build myself more fully into the person I want to be.
Looking back now, maybe the biggest take away is that that night didn’t scar me. I have continued my practice, and I don’t rehash my trauma on the mat or in my relationships. I train as well as I can and have no fear of what might happen the next time I find myself confronted with violence. I don’t know what I would do, but I know that I have choices. There are no guarantees, and I know I’ll be OK.