It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [111]
Bam, bam, bam.
Damn, it was heavy.
Why did I wear this thing anyway? As a tribute to Sid Vicious? To carry his torch and safeguard punk? Was that how I needed to identify myself?
Bullshit.
I found a guy who was taking care of the lawn at the complex where I was staying.
“Hey, man, you have any bolt cutters?”
“Sure,” he said. He motioned for me to follow him.
He led me to a maintenance shed. He rummaged around inside and emerged with a set of bolt cutters.
“Can you cut this off?” I said, pulling at the chain around my neck.
He shrugged. With a quizzical look on his face, he grasped the chain between the blades of the bolt cutters. I craned my neck in the other direction and he snipped the chain in half with a forceful jerk of the handles.
I’d like to say I heaved it grandly into the Pacific and watched my former identity recede into the depths, but I didn’t. I threw it into the dumpster next to the maintenance shed, said thank you, and finished my run.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Back in L.A., the House of Champions was in constant motion with kickboxing pros getting ready for fights in the United States or abroad. Once they saw that I was dedicated to training and wasn’t some pampered rock star, they began to help me with my workouts with Benny. I started to do technique-only sparring with some of these guys and saw the speed at which I would be expected to compete. Okay, note taken.
Sensei Benny was like a father figure to me, and I never called him by anything but his title in or out of the gym. Not because he demanded it—in fact, he specifically told me I could address him less formally outside the dojo—but because I felt that strongly about his role in my life. He was a teacher; he deserved a different level of respect. I continue to this day to call him “sensei.” After a few months of one-on-one workouts with Benny, we started to work out together with another guy at the gym named Michael Morteo. Like Benny, Michael was strikingly calm. He had been a martial artist since age five. Michael, too, was a sensei; when he walked through the dojo, students turned and bowed to him out of respect. But Michael was my age and the longer we worked out together, the more I came to think of him as a friend. Even so, I rarely shared personal things with Michael, either—all he cared about was the work. Everything was about that day, that moment, that punch or kick.
Benny would sometimes have me and Michael spar in the room upstairs with one of my legs bound to one of Michael’s. I still had a strong fight-or-flight instinct at that time, but tied to my opponent I could not possibly run. So I had to fight, to deal with the challenge at hand. I got tired, I got hit, I wanted to fall over. Michael connected with some good punches—though this was technique sparring and the blows were not full strength or meant to hurt. Still, getting hit helped bring home the lessons I’d been trying to master. After taking a few smacks in the face, I found it easier to remember to keep my right hand up in a defensive position when not punching.
Sparring exposed any lack of focus; I got a lot of black eyes.
The shakier and more exhausted I was after these sessions, the better able I was to focus during my meditations afterward. With my mind still and clear after a throw-up-inducing workout, my mental safe house began to take shape. In my head, it was an actual house. The main room resembled the dojo, with one wall covered in full-length mirrors. I began to furnish the house with the things I thought I would need: a suit of armor, vials of cleansing potion, amphoras of pure water, and an arsenal of weapons—hey, life was tough, so, yes, there were swords in my safe house.
The hope, Benny said, was to reach a point where I would no longer