It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [112]
Benny placed a lot of importance on honesty. “Start every day with a clear conscience,” he said. “You should be able to wake up, go to the mirror in your bathroom, look yourself right in the eye, and say, ‘I didn’t lie to anyone I encountered yesterday,’ ‘I didn’t skirt an issue yesterday.’ If you lead an honest life, there are no regrets.”
At first I would actually do that—look in the mirror. I started sleeping really well. Then, concentrating, deep inside my mental safe house, I began to raise my gaze and look myself in the eyes in that full-length mirror in my mind. Maybe getting so loaded all the time had just been a way to avoid dealing with unpleasant truths about myself, a way to flee the consequences of speaking and acting honestly, a way to dull the heavy burden of living with dishonesty?
I looked at myself in that mirror: Consider yourself checked, McKagan.
“Today is a good day to die,” I heard Benny say.
Huh? I still didn’t get it.
The next big step for me would be fighting in the ring, which I had yet to do. Fighting represented the coming together of all the skills I had begun to develop—the physical, the technical, and the mental. I would have to connect my footwork to the other movements, and I would simultaneously have to play the chess match in my head—move my opponent, anticipate, deflect. And then, of course, there was the cardiovascular test of ring fighting. No matter how many reps you did on a bag, punching and kicking nonstop for a three-minute round in the ring was a completely different ball game.
Without warning, one day Benny took out two sets of headgear and put one on my head. I felt panicked in the headgear—my claustrophobia kicked in—and Benny saw it in my eyes. Or rather in the fact that my eyes were darting all over the place, looking away, looking down. He helped me calm down, concentrate, and work around it.
I also had to get it together because I now knew I was about to spar with someone in the ring—there was no other reason to wear headgear. I had seen people freak out after taking their first real punch in the ring. One huge guy had gone into shock and started weeping. A lot of emotions were released in the gym. I wasn’t sure what to expect from myself.
Sensei took out a jar of Vaseline and daubed some under my eyes. Then he did the same to his face. No. It couldn’t be. He was going to be my first sparring experience? The world champion? I recognized the look on his face from videos I’d seen of him in the ring.
As the bell rang to start the first round, all my technique vanished in a rush of fear and I started to swing wildly. I probably threw some of the worst kicks ever thrown in that dojo. A few minutes into the second round, I saw for an instant the back of my sensei’s head hanging in the air above me and I suddenly woke up on the ground with my head cradled in Benny’s arms.
I had been knocked out by a jump-spinning back kick to the liver. Apparently, a sudden shock to your organs can and will knock you out. This was Benny’s signature kick. An air strike. Like a fighter jet. Aha. Right. Benny the Jet.
Sensei admonished me for not using my defense. I was still on the ground, still sort of waking up. He said that I should have parried the kick and thrown a counter.
“Yes, sensei.”
He asked me how I felt. To my own surprise, I was actually fine. Getting knocked out wasn’t so terrifying after all. It was like falling out of a chair onto a soft rug. No big deal.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
One year after my pancreatitis, I went back to see Dr. Thomas in Seattle for a physical. He just couldn’t believe my metamorphosis. Not only the changes in my outward physical appearance, but more important, in my organs and blood. He could see no discernible damage—except, of course, for the hole burned through my septum. At the end of the exam, he had a look