The Assassination of Damien by the ecstatic happy bunny

Back in Paris, I spend most of my time crossing out items of my to-do list one after the other. Day after day, the list shrinks until I have done it all. With a week and a half to go, I have a lot of time on my hands and little to do. For some reason – that I have since then identified – I have an itch: I need to visit my past.
This does not look like it yet, but this has to do with sweat and blood. I need to introduce my subject first.
So I sit around all day on my couch, bored and stressed out because I am not doing anything. Finally, I decide to call friends I have not seen in months, some in years. We have a drink, a chat, nothings much has changed and nothing much will.
But I’m still itching, so I decide to answer an email from my former high school and meet teachers over there – to talk about dejavu-production.com – and others things. It’s a strong and strange feeling: to walk around those corridors again, meet the same teachers, directors and open the same doors. Nothing there has changed either, apart from a tall building at the back of the school; everything seems to be in the exact same state as we had left it. Windows, tables, chairs and lockers have the same colours, dents and marks. This is an interesting experience, a bit of a shock too, but I am still itching. So where’s the sweat and the bunny?

I started fencing – sabre – when I was seven or eight years old. I use to go to a club near Invalid in Paris, and train two or three times a week, for a couple of hours. By the time I was fifteen or sixteen I was training around seven hours a week and doing national competitions once a month or so. After high school, I was fed up by this time consuming activity and wanted to try new things, so one week unexpectedly I completly stopped and never went back. That was seven years ago.
The itch made me want to pay them a visit this week, may be train a little over there, see my former coaches and have a chat.
Before I start explaining the sweat and blood I need to say two things: (1) I consider myself as quite athletic and a little fitter than the average guy on the street. (2) Also, many believe fencing is a shitty numb sport but it is not. It is a combat sport involving blood, bruises, pain and necessitating great physical strength similar to boxing – power, endurance, speed – reflex, and most of all intelligence…

I get there on Monday, meet at the doorway a coach that I had seen a few months before and talked to over emails. You are late for training, he says, and go see the coach, he doesn’t know you’re coming. And tell him I said you could come, he adds. This last sentences catches me slightly off guard. I suddenly remember it wasn’t always fun and games, but a lot of scolding and shouting too.

I stroll down the long long walkway next to all the fencing lanes, and go stand next to the other coach. He had seen me arriving from far away and was staring at me with a how-dare-you-show-up-here look. I shake his hand while he is still making me feel like I should not be there. Out of nowhere I say, Damien. Then his face lights up like the Eiffel tower on the hour, and says my surname to confirm. He was actually really happy to see me, we had a chat and then I went training. Yes, sweat was on its way.

As I said, I consider myself fit (I have to confess I had missed half the warm up session). So I take a skipping rope and start jumping. We do a few exercises, never stopping the jumping (2-3 jumps/sec) then from time to time series of very fast ones (6-8 j/s) etc, some with legs spread, knees bent, moving forward, backward, turning around, single jumps, double jumps, crossed jumps, rope going forward or backward.
After about the third exercise, within ten seconds I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore. Not that I was tired – I was – or that I didn’t want to do it – I did – , but my muscles didn’t respond anymore. Lacking oxygen, my left arm was wobbling more than I wanted it to. My legs were not jumping as high and fast as I wished, the rope mingling with my ankles too many times. My heart was pumping in my chest as if an Alien was going to pop out, my lungs felt like there were smaller that two apples, my shoulders were swollen, my legs numb, my carves burning, my head spinning my sight going on and off. Next to me some pretentious fifteen year old was jumping around fast and steady, like an ecstatic happy bunny. But I have my pride. I held on pathetically, hoping as much as I could, as long as I could until my body let me down, took two deep breaths and started again. Seconds felt twice as long, and minutes four times longer. I could feel sweat pearls running on my face at every bounce, my hair – medium long – were soaked: Just-got-out-of-the-shower wet.
After twenty long minutes of life threatening exercise, we had a one-minute break. Then three series of one minute jumping as fast as you can, with thirty second breaks in between. If it wasn’t good for your health, that would be torture. But I held on, as best as I could.
Then we fenced, got a few cuts on my fingers and elbows, a few bruises on my shoulders and chest, and lost most of my matches against these over-trained teenagers.
Now that I think of it, I really think this is too much of a sacrifice. Training four days a week, from seven to half passed nine plus weekend competition, is definitely something I wasn’t ready to pay for that long.

The next day and the following night were pure pain. I was nothing but muscle ache and fatigue. I was walking like a seventy year old, needing both arms and a long sigh to stand up.

I went back yesterday, and did much better, especially as this time I didn’t miss the beginning. I am still nothing but muscle ache and fatigue, but my itch is gone. I am contempt and feel like I have turned the page over my childhood.