The Shit Hits The Fan In Houston |
My 200 pound attacker has me pinned face down to the ground. His left knee is pressed hard into the small of my back, and his left hand grasps both my hands together up over my head. With his free hand, he is slamming a bat on the ground next to my face while he shouts curses and bloodcurdling threats. Then suddenly, he puts the bat down and starts caressing my hair, breathing heavily as he whispers horrifying obscenities into my ear. Then the bat slamming starts again.
As he continues to torment me, I lie perfectly still, what we call “going to zero.” My body is relaxed, I continue to breathe, but my mind is totally alert and my adrenaline is flowing. I’m paying close attention to every detail, waiting for an opening when I can make a move. I know that I am in control of the situation, and I’m thinking only about what I’m going to do to him, not what he’s going to do to me.
Finally the attacker quits banging the bat and tells me he’s decided to rape me with it. Because a bat won’t leave any DNA, he says. He rolls me over onto my back and tells me to spread my legs. I cooperate, but I’ve bent one knee, pulling my foot close to my body for leverage. I wait patiently as he climbs over me until I feel him leaning his weight onto my body, then with one quick explosive thrust of my hip, I flip him off of me as I scream “NO!” at the top of my lungs.
Lightning fast I roll out into my side-kick position and land a powerful kick straight into his face, yelling “KICK! KICK!” with each blow.
After several hard swift kicks, he falls back enough for me to scoot away and get to my feet. I manage one decent kick to his head, but he quickly lunges toward me, grabs me around the ankles, and pulls my feet out from under me. I sit back on the ground, scream “NO!”, and flip into side kick position, so I can fire another hard kick directly at his face. He grabs onto that foot so I can’t kick, but I instantly flip over and switch to the other foot. I kick his face, and when he tries to stand up I kick his groin, and I bellow out “KICK! GROIN!” as I keep landing hard solid powerful blows to his most sensitive areas. I use my own voice to boost my power, until he has collapsed on the ground. Then I back up and make a controlled, watchful retreat to safety.
Less than ten minutes later I have encountered another potential mugger. This time it’s a loud staggering drunk on a dark deserted street. As he approaches me menacingly, I take action to set my boundaries. I get into a solid steady power stance and hold my hands up like stop signs. In a loud firm voice, I tell him to back up and go away. But as I’m trying to ward off an attack from this guy, suddenly out of the blue and without any warning I’m ambushed from the rear by a second attacker.
Before I know what’s happening, this mugger has grabbed me from behind in a tight bear hug, and has my arms pinned tightly to my sides. Like a flash, I drop down and thrust my hips hard to one side, yelling “DROP!” as I wrench my right arm free. I quickly swing it back and slap him in the balls, screaming “GROIN!”
When he bends forward in pain, I swing my arm forward then explosively thrust a powerful elbow straight back into his muzzle: “ELBOW!” I pivot around and holding my hands up to protect my face, I give him a knee to the groin, then another one, and another one.
He goes down, but he’s still trying to lunge for me, so with laser precision I deliver a swift kick to his face. One, two, three “KICKS!” and he’s out. I carefully scope the area for the other crazy drunk, but he has staggered off the scene, so I make a rapid but wary retreat to safety.
Forty-eight hours earlier, I didn’t have a clue how to defend myself. If I had been attacked, I probably would have frozen in terror, and my mind would have gone blank. Maybe I would have screamed and pummeled and flailed around helplessly, but I wouldn’t have known how to do anything effective. But after three days of IMPACT defense training, I was miraculously transformed into an entirely different person.
I can’t sit here and tell you the class was fun, or that I enjoyed it. It was challenging, it was grueling, it was emotionally brutal and physically draining. Today there isn’t a single muscle in my body that isn’t sore as hell. I’m bruised and scraped and banged up all over.
But–and this is something many girls never experience growing up– that’s what fighting is all about. This isn’t some kind of sanitized abstract exercise or formal martial arts ritual. It’s scrappy, authentic, full-force, down on the ground street combat. When that adrenaline kicks in, you forget all about the pain. You’re so over whining about a broken fingernail or messed up hair. You’re out there putting every ounce of your being, body and soul, into fighting for your life. And it’s truly an amazing, life-altering experience when you learn what you can really do.
I have never in my life been so goddamn proud of myself. But even more, I’m unbelievably proud of my fabulous son, who is a trained IMPACT instructor. He's taught classes all over the US, and he and his wife have even started a new chapter called [http://prepareportland.googlepages.com/]PREPARE
Portland[/A]. I've always been proud of him, but I’m really bursting with pride and respect now that I know exactly what he’s doing (even though I cringe to think that he actually knows, and even SAYS, some of those WORDS they use in the simulated rape scenarios–oy vey, my baby!).
There are IMPACT chapters all over the world. If there’s one near you, it’s an experience I can’t recommend highly enough. I guarantee it will change your life.
And me? I’m planning to go back to Houston regularly to keep up my new skills with some practice fights.
Already I kind of miss the nice satisfying THWAK! of my heel landing a good solid kick against a groin.
THWAK! THWAK! Take that, mugger! Sort of like when you get a really good hit at tennis. I can easily see how this could become addictive.
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Vibrating Liz |
| About the author: |
| Vibrating Liz is an avid writer, dancer, gardener, weight lifter, and cancer survivor who firmly believes that 50 is the new 18. She lives in a small rural village in the quirkiest part of the deep south with an engaging assortment of flora and fauna |
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