Chapter 7

Self Defense Instructor: The Karate Queen Chapter 7: And Round 1 goes to ... not Beverly!

“Hey, get up!” was the first thing I heard as I felt like I was sleeping on something in between a gently rocking ocean and a mild earthquake. Boom, the bed shook again as Beverly delivered another controlled kick. It was hard enough to shake the bed and to shake me awake and hard enough to convey a message. Beverly felt disrespected. I had broken into her home and then had gone and fallen asleep in a bed in her basement and that too, Beverly knew, sent a message. Her feeling of disrespect was completely justified and that was fine. After all, keeping Beverly focused on her feelings of disrespect might keep her from wondering the reason why I had broken into her home. Who knows, after living what I assume is her whole life in her upper-middle class whitebread world, maybe all she saw me as was some dumb animal who didn’t form intent but just had a base animal instinct to which he then reacted. Hey, as long as she couldn’t read my mind and realize just what I had planned, I didn’t really care what she was thinking. I just recognized that the more she felt threatened by my presence, the more on guard it would be for me and the more likely it would be that this night wouldn’t end up the way that I wanted it to.

Thud, the bed shook again as, with each passing second, the shaking and Beverly’s voice pulled me out of my dream state and back into the real world. I don’t know if it was just dumb luck or if I was actually streetwise enough to play possum as I continued to rejoin the land of the living but that is what I did. I also don’t know if it was dumb luck that, as I was being shaken awake, I automatically remembered where I was. You know how it is when you have been asleep, if you’re in a place that, up until that moment, that you had never been, you probably just expect to wake up in your own bed since that is where you wake up most every other morning. I guess, in the end, I have to give the credit to poor and brilliant but not at all streetwise Beverly because it was hearing her voice as I was being shaken awake that brought everything back to me and made me realize that I was still down in her basement.

“I said wake up!” Beverly now says sounding more impatient and as I realize that I have stupidly allowed myself to fall asleep in her basement only to have her come home and catch me, I now panickedly try and think what to do. After all, the whole point of me coming here was to beat her into submission but I wanted it to be a fair fight. I wanted to actually defeat her, not win by cheating and for a moment I hesitate while wondering if I start out by sucker punching her, if my win still counts then. In the end I decide that she is the self defense instructor known as the Karate Queen and that sucker punching is o.k. I don’t decide this because it benefits me although I can see how someone would think that but I decide it because sucker punching is legitimate. If not then what kind of bullshit is she pushing. That she teaches women self defense but only if the attacker first comes up and taps the victim on the shoulder, saying ‘excuse me, but I am about to try and rape you and I wanted to give you a moment to prepare to defend yourself before I started.’ After all, even this dim bulb with her sheltered and insulated upper middle class upbringing isn’t stupid enough to believe that. No, if she is the kind of bad ass she holds herself out to be then any time she lets’ her guard down, that’s on her and besides if she is truly the karate queen she should be able to recover from a sucker punch or a first strike or any strike. I mean that is what sparring is all about isn’t it. Expecting that your opponent is going to land some blows and having to learn to compensate for that and still come out a winner. This is the justification that runs through my mind while I pretend to be asleep and, now that I have a plan on which I can move forward, it’s time to get things started.