It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [107]
Then we walked down a hallway and into the high-ceilinged gym. The front wall was the storefront. One sidewall was bare cinder block. The other was Sheetrock. And the back wall was covered with mirrors. The place was completely bare-bones: an open area with floor mats, a couple punching bags, a ring, and a section with wood flooring where people could jump rope. There was a desk at one end where they sold hand wraps and gloves and other odds and ends.
And there stood Benny the Jet.
Benny was about five foot five, with brown hair and intense, deep-set eyes. If other fighters I’d seen seemed coolly confident, this guy was a glacier. As he made his way over to us, I noticed that he walked absolutely silently. Like a ninja. If I wasn’t already humbled by my stay in the hospital, I most certainly was now as Louis introduced me and I went to shake Benny’s hand.
Benny looked me straight in the eyes and smiled.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he said.
It wasn’t the words that really mattered, and in fact Sensei Benny spoke only when altogether necessary. There was something else about him that made the moment so memorable—you might call it an aura. He didn’t create this presence with any trappings or regalia; he was wearing ordinary gym shorts, tennis shoes, and a T-shirt. I wasn’t really sure what it was about him that struck me so, but I immediately knew I wanted to receive whatever wisdom and mentorship Sensei Benny was willing to offer me. My band wasn’t doing much of anything at this point, so I had the time to fully commit myself to something new.
There were still a lot of toxins in my body. Stuff had been oozing out of me ever since I started flinging myself at hills on my bike; boils crusted my skin. As far as I was concerned, only brutal physical exertion could rid the system of that shit. I suppose time might accomplish the same thing, but I was type A about it and wanted it out now.
I also knew by now that if I were to remain sober, I would have to do some deeper and much more serious work—work on my soul and on my psyche. The demons that lay hidden just beneath my skin were still alive and kicking and so far I was only just tamping them down. To survive, I would have to make this my way of life. Little did I know just then that the word ukidokan—the name of Benny’s discipline—was Japanese for “a way of life.”
Benny took one look at me and knew how to set the course. I could just tell. And I could tell one other thing: all the work I had put in on those hills and at the gym was about to be rendered mere child’s play. You’ve got to go to hell if you want to face the devil, and Benny was going to be by my side all the way there and back.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Sensei Benny knew without my telling him that the first order of business was to exorcise my body and soul of the dark and sticky drug remnants in my system. The first phase of training with him was pretty much boot camp. I was in the dojo twice a day, six days a week. And in the middle of the day when I wasn’t at the dojo, I rode my bike.
None of my fellow students knew I was some dude from GN’R. I had cut my hair short and I trained all day and every day—how could I be in a working band? The guys training at the House of Champions treated me as an equal—a position I earned by working hard, showing respect for the dojo, and keeping my mouth shut.
At the start, though, I was still self-conscious. Benny understood. He led me up a set of stairs at the back of the main gym. In a brutally hot loft with no a/c was an empty room with a few punching bags. There might be one other person training up there at any given time, but it was out of the way. During the first few weeks, it got as hot as 115 degrees upstairs, and I found the heat cleansing. Benny did know me. This space became my temple.
For the first few months, I worked upstairs with Benny, just one-on-one. Before learning any of the fighting techniques, I had to improve my basic fitness and work on some essential skills.