There’s just something about a woman who can punch. You know what I’m talking about. Not some wild catfight swings....a PUNCH. When the Pandemic ramped up and I had to stop going to the gym, I hung a heavy bag in my basement. I go down there once a day and do a few rounds, to break a sweat, and to help settle my mind a little. A quick aside before we get too far, for context, I live in what once was, just a few decades ago, a funeral home. The basement, while it has been refinished with all the charm of a cinder block, still retains the general spirit of its former career. There is just no hiding it. You turn off the light down there, and man, you can feel it. It’s cold in a way that doesn’t have anything to do with temperature. The shadows in the far corners are ink black and feel almost as liquid. You stare at them for a half-second too long and they move, like a gentle ripple in a puddle of crude oil. When I go down there, it’s for only two reasons, either to reset the breaker or beat the shit out of that bag. Despite the spiritual tumultuousness, or maybe because of it, putting a little time into that bag, just feels right. While I tend to zone out on a treadmill, the bag is all focus. My dial on a treadmill, sort of hovers at a 5 or a 6, but at the bag, it’s actually difficult to keep it below a 9. It’s an activity that calls on intensity and well...violence.
When my wife suggested that she would like to go a few rounds with the bag, I was approximately zero percent surprised. She is a person whose dial does not go below 9 unless she is sleeping. When she drives, she is Ken Block. In the grocery store, she is the unholy spawn of Sonic and Gollum, each of the items on our list, a precious ring, collected at an inhuman speed. That dial is also reflected in her recreational activities. She has been an athlete for a lot of her life but in the very specialized area of dance and circus/aerial arts. That CRAZY shit you see people on the internet do? That’s her. When you think of the strength of people like that, it’s hard to describe. It’s like a veteran lumberjack or a teenage chimpanzee. There is a wild strength present that is meant to do some very specific things....but if you can point it in a different direction, sometimes….well, you can get a real show.
My wife puts on her boxing gloves in the way that you think a penguin might, and for a minute I think this is gonna be funny. She steps up and lets a few little jabs out.
FAP..FAP..FAP...FAP…FAPFAP. Slow. Nothing crazy, the sound of kindergarten hopscotch.
Then I see her adjust her distance and just sort of...get it.
FAPFAPFAPfappityfapfapfappityFAPFAP. Straight machine gun. A drive by.
The comedy show that I thought this might be, clearly is not arriving, and you can feel the air change in way that feels almost carnal…predatory. A lion, just starting to run, knowing it’s got a big meal in front of it. The casual wants of the world darkening into NEED.
She picks up the pace for 15 seconds or so, testing it, starting to lean into the red, and then I see her sideslip right and lay out a body blow that buckles the bag nearly in half.
If the bag had cirrhosis it would be gushing unfiltered liver blood against its insides and be dead within the minute. I feel the slightest ghost of a touch on my earlobe and I realize that she is shaking dust from the rafters. I glance up and casually watch it snow for a minute while my wife clicks back to auto and lets her double Tommy gun fists sing the murderous duet of their people. A passing thought about how old that dust is and how much of it is particulate corpse occurs to me as I’m taking a deep breath. I let it pass, and casually brush what I can only assume is the 100-year old dusty remains of several hundred bodies out of the hair of my forearms, thinking about how my wife could probably punch her way through a fucking car door. She hits that bag like she found the one door out of a burning house. Like she’s trapped underwater in a rapidly filling car. I watch her pound sledge after sledge into that bag, seething with intent, realizing that it stopped being a punching bag a few drum clips ago. I don’t know what that bag has become, but whatever it is, it’s regretting the choices that got it here.
I think of that moment when I see Simone Missick on screen. Leaving her incredible acting chops and condescending snark aside, a believable punch goes a long way. That hip turn…that follow through, just barely contained brutality, suddenly spilled. I know she’s acting, but she doesn’t act like she acting. It feels pretty method; is acting really still acting if you are responding to something real in your mind? From her face to her fist, she’s trying to hurt someone. I can see that little glint in her eye as she pulls her fist back, that looks like she’s lighting a match to some head-on collision of a memory. She just lets it rip and basks in the heat of it…..burns it down to the ground. You can see it, around the edges of her eyes, in her clenched teeth….that she’s instinctually onboard with turning someone’s face into a high-end Bolognese. The joy on her face when she sees some stuntman’s neck muscles buckle as the jolt moves through their frame. I can’t really hear it... but I can feel her pushing the word MOTHERFUCKER through her front teeth. Alternating her enunciation on every other syllable in the way we all do when we are fucking FURIOUS. MOtherFUCKer. The bag…. isn’t the bag for her anymore either. And that look on her face is the look I see on my wife’s face. That determined, glorious intent of beautiful violence, rampaging its fists against the last remnants of an old ghost…in a basement that’s full of them.