I get a massage once a month; my massage therapist is a quiet thin guy with hair that falls over his face and makes him look like a shy child, but his hands are strong. We don’t talk much as a rule; he tells me “Face up,” and leaves the room while I take off my clothes and hang them up. I lie down on his table under the light blanket, feeling very awkward and listening to the playlist of temple bells and trickling water. He comes back and gets to work, often causing pain, which I welcome. It’s the pain of explaining to my muscles that they need to stop trying to protect me.

Yesterday, we got to talking about fencing while I worked. He asked if it was dangerous, and I said there had only been a couple of deaths, but there were injuries. I knew someone who got a lung punctured by a broken blade, and I myself had taken an intact point to the hand and into the wrist. I asked him if he had done martial arts, and it turned out he did all kinds of martial arts, including jiu jitsu for about 7 years. I told him I wouldn’t do that because at my age I can’t afford to fall, and agreed; he said his partner made him stop, because he kept getting injured.

I asked if he knew my neighbor who does jiu jitsu, and it turned out he did. “We used to talk. He used to be a bouncer,” said the therapist with admiration.

“Yeah, he and I share a willingness to fight,” I said amiably.

The massage therapist told me to turn over, and he proceeded to cause different pain, which was also welcome. I fenced for thirty years and ran long distance before that, and much of my body is a recalcitrant collection of mostly-mended overuse injuries.

He told me he did kendo for a while and shared a story of the teacher getting angry because students kept hitting him. “He said, “You keep hitting me! Hit through me!” and then hit his student twenty times to demonstrate.

I said, “Yeah, you have to hit through,” because that’s true in sabre as well. Paradoxically, if you just try to hit someone on the head, you hit slower and harder. The point is to make the action correctly, and if you do, you end up hitting your opponent cleanly and correctly in the process. You can also recover faster if you miss.

It’s what makes novice fencers often unpleasant to their opponents. They are trying to punch or smack instead of just executing the action, because they can’t believe that if they do the action correctly, it will result in a hit.

With novices, I mostly tried to avoid getting hit. You can get knocked down by a novice, and I don’t like getting knocked down. It annoys me,

After he finished and I dressed and was leaving, we set up my next appointment. I’m always planning to stop going after my next session, because it’s expensive, but at the end of the session I feel so good I cave and sign up for another one.

“My jiu jitsu teacher always said I was being too nice,” he said, continuing our conversation as he let me out.

I smiled and said, “That makes sense.”

Because there has to be some core of not-niceness in martial arts, even if it’s ritualized. The “willingness to fight” is essential. And the “hitting through” is important, too. You would think my massage therapist would be good at that, seeing as he spends much of his day impersonally causing just enough pain by the correct application of pressure to the body.

As usual, I walked away feeling taller and lighter, trying to decide if he would make a good epeeist. They tend to be more stolid and calculating. He would want to be a foilist, and is built right for it, but he’s not cranky enough, and he’s just not goofy enough to be a sabre fencer. Classical fencing would be perfect for him, because it’s really more of a ritualistic practice, but I don’t think there are any teachers of classical fencing anywhere near here. He would also hate it, because he clearly wants to be a warrior, but he’s right, he’s just too nice.