Pi Nu's Hands - What is Good? (Patreon Magazine) (Patreon)

I turn my face away from Pi Nu and feel my chin start to quiver. Don’t cry. He takes a step closer to me, kind of bending at the hip and dipping his shoulder to look into my face as I try to hide it from him. I blink and look at him, catching the worry in his eyes as I meet his gaze.  
Bpen arai? He asks. “What’s wrong?”
I tell him I don’t know how to explain in Thai and he kind of tsks at me. My heart rate isn’t fast, it’s a slow and heavy thud, but it feels kind of fluttery. Like a bird inside a too-small cage. I swallow the lump in my throat and keep looking down. “Bad person,” riak waa arai pasa Thai? I ask. How do you call “bad person” in Thai language? Pi Nu just looks at me, still not understanding. I offer a few ways one might say it, but none of them catch him. I’ve run across this before, where there isn’t actually a term in Thai for something that is conceptually solid in English, even if the words used to express it aren’t very expressive of it. Things like, “I don’t like myself,” don’t translate.



I’m staring at the floor while Pi Nu starts talking to me. There’s an old Thai song on the stereo, part of a playlist that he’s been singing along to as we lift weights on a Sunday afternoon. My eyes trace these white crescents on the blue mats, like Saturn’s rings that are majestic and yet just space dust. They’re from Bank’s skateboard wheels, as he practices his tricks in the weight room. He wears his own wireless earphones and listens to whatever young men listen to, while Pi Nu and I workout together. Bank looks for my eyes every time he falls; he checks to make sure I saw it every time he sticks a landing. He doesn’t listen to the music we listen to, but he likes being in the room. My eyes are tracing those satellite arcs and Pi Nu is telling me that not everyone is a champion. In a million people, he says, only one. He thinks I’m saying I’m bad at something, not understanding that I feel like I am bad. In the world, he says, how many people are you? I look up, “just me,” I say. He looks satisfied with himself, but I’m still on the verge of tears.
He tries again. “Bank,” he says, talking about his son, who I know he loves more than anything in the world, “maybe never champion. But he’s Bank. He’s happy. He’s a good person.” This is in Thai; he says kon dee and I look up as he hits the exact translation for what I’ve been trying to say. “But that’s just it,” I say to him, “kon mai dee.” Now my chin is in full quiver and my face is hot. Pi Nu’s face blurs  as the tears well up and I tuck my chin down again, not looking at anything. Don’t fucking cry!
I feel Pi Nu’s fingers pinch around my right hand and he lifts it up. He never touches me. Occasionally I get a hand on the shoulder, or if we’ve just had an argument and he’s forgiven me he might put his hand on my head – a very fatherly gesture, the head is holy in Thailand – but I can’t think of a time he’s ever touched my hand. His fingers and palms are rough, like bark or sandpaper. It’s a roughness he’s always had, I reckon, as it comes form having grown up working the farm. Pulling the ropes that tethered enormous ox, these stubborn beasts; wooden handled tools that had to be scraped and forced over unyielding dirt; planting, pulling, shaping nature that did not want to be shaped. Those are his hands, but only by touch. If you look at them, he has these long-fingered hands that are always at ease. I’ve photographed them as they shape the guard or block of little boys, learning how to create the forms of Muay Thai. In those photographs you can see a softness that doesn’t exist by touch. He’s sensitive about their roughness but he laughs when I tease him about them. If he hurts his finger on a pad because the edge hits him wrong, I’ll say it’s because his skin is so soft. He always giggles and says, “yes, my hands very soft.”  
He’s holding my right hand with both his hands, gently but firmly between his fingers, and he lifts it like a baby bird up to show me. He points his index finger onto the back of my hand. I feel the point of his bone against the lattice of tiny bones just under my skin, “everybody have this,” he says, and I’m not sure what he means. I think, for a moment, he’s indicating my tattoo, which nobody has. Then he slowly turns my hand over and presses his finger into my palm, “everybody have this,” he adds. He flips my hand back and forth a few times, “cannot only one; everybody have two.” Good, he says in English, bad. I nod my head and he lets go of my hand.  
One side of the weight room is all mirrors, with a dark wooden bench that runs, uninterrupted, along the length of it. The wood looks inky in this light and there are heart-shaped smudges, side by side, on the mirror from where sweaty boys have sat in a row. There’s a tattered brick-colored towel crumpled on the bench. Pi Nu takes a few steps away from me to stand over it, then demonstratively reaches down and grasps it in his hand. He lifts the fabric and the tail of it dangles lifelessly as he turns to look at me. Then he drops the towel, turns his hand over and tries to pick it up with the back of his hand, showing how it cannot be done. He doesn’t say anything as he shows these two exhibits, but there’s a kind of wordless understanding that takes the place of explanation in my mind. This kind of duality of “good/bad,” is echoed by the functionality and non-functionality of a hand. We think of our hands as being very useful and we, in fact, use them all the time. But we never try to use the wrong side of them, without blaming that back side for being “useless.” You just use the functional side. But you don’t reject the back; it’s still part of the whole hand, even if it’s not helpful. The back of your hand isn’t bad; it also isn’t your whole hand.
I’ve only cried in front of Pi Nu a few times. He’s only acknowledged it maybe twice, allowing me the dignity of composure even in moments when I’m undone. I’ve consoled him exactly twice. But these are like stones that stick out of a river, these notable moments that appear to dictate the flow of the water around them, but are in fact equally shaped by the indistinct rush of moments that are always moving over and around. Pi Nu teaches me with ever moment I spend with him, not in a formal manner, but in the sense that we inform one another simply by the fact of being in each other’s presence. In some ways, it can be painful that he doesn’t expect anything of me. He’ll never see this potential inside of me that I don’t see, that he’s driven to reveal like some inspirational sports movie. You are what you are and that’s okay. What’s incredible about it, really, is that he allows his vision to evolve. He lets his hands mold the clay without having a vision for what he’s molding it to – like, the clay decides, he just keeps his hands there to assist in the shaping. You can choose to be in those hands or not. And they’re not rough because he’s forced his way onto so many students. They’re worked and rough because so many have seen the value of choosing to be there. The back sides, the non-functional side, is soft. It’s the palms of his hands that are worn through. Everybody has both sides, but I want to follow his example on which side to build callouses on.

 
If you enjoyed this article you may like my other patron-only articles on my experiences in Thailand:
ARTICLES - Patreon Magazine

• Patron Only Articles - These articles are written specially for my patrons and are my attempts to expand as a writer. They are full of richer descriptions, and take on themes not always talked about in the experience of being a fighter. At least one is published a month, if not two.

Little Blue Champion - The Next Generation of Fighters - I'm just taken by a little blue fighter at a local fight in Chiang Mai, round, pudgy, a complete visual underdog. It speaks to coming of age as a fighter. read it here 
Alley Tears: The First Time I Cried After a Fight In a Long While - it had been years since I had cried after a fight, maybe even ever, but something in me broke down after a loss to a World Champion several weight classes above me. read it here 
The Storm That Overtakes The Boy - Giving In | The storm within us, the storm outside of us. It is our choice. Or, this could be called "Learning to ride the donkey, and not look for the donkey." read it here 
Insisting On Left - The Space Between Pi and Kru | The story of how it is a delicate balance with my Kru when insisting on changing my stance to southpaw read it here 
Arjan Surat: The Unbreakable Breaker of Bangkok | Maybe the toughest, hardest man in Thailand. Arjan Surat is 63 and made of the stuff that feels like it's from 100 years ago. The unbreakable breaker. read it here 
When I First Met Dieselnoi: A Giant in my Soul | The powerful impression the legendary Dieselnoi made on me right from the start, a resonating impact that has made on me as a person. read it here 
The Perfection of Festival Fights in Thailand | A trip to the clinic to receive a boosting IV leaves me drifting through thoughts of belonging, as I listen to my kru talk about me to the nurse. read it here 
Cheet Yaa - "if there were no cuts it wouldn't be Sylvie" | A trip to the clinic to receive a boosting IV leaves me drifting through thoughts of belonging, as I listen to my kru talk about me to the nurse. read it here 
The Hurting Game - The Psychology of Hurt | Even though I've fought over 200 times being the one who hurts others, that the game is hurting, is still a psychology I need to embrace. read it here 
A Girl and Her Bag - the Intimacy of Work | Every fighter who has spent a long amount of time in the gym has to fall in love with their bag - how bagwork contains its own beauty. read it here 
Jai Rohn - My Story of Blood, My Pride and Stitches | My heart was racing, I was upset at my performance, and then there was the pain of stitches, more painful than any stitches I've had before. read it here 

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