sylviemuay

The Jade Dragon Set - The Nature of the Boys (Patreon Magazine)

Added 2019-02-19 08:23:05 +0000 UTC

Patreon Magazine articles are more descriptive pieces exclusive for my patrons.

Bank is flexing into the mirror, cracking himself up and then looking at me to include me in the jest. He’s imitating a bodybuilder on stage, over-emphasizing poses but laughing too hard to be able to hold them for very long. It’s pretty funny, actually. On the other side of me, his father Kru Nu starts giggling and I assume he’s laughing at Bank also, but then he starts calling my name and I look over. He’s got the forked rope of a pull-down machine gripped in his fists, but he’s holding them still, at chest level. His grin is huge and his voice has gone high pitched as he says, “come here, look!” It’s a pitch he gets in his voice when he’s teasing, usually when saying “come on, come on,” while inviting me to do something I don’t want to do – like, say, 200 kicks or whatever new abs exercise he’s designed and wants to use me as a Guinea Pig to try out. It’s a sign of his delight, actually. So I stand up and take the few steps over to him, peering through the double windows that peek into the main room of the gym, where the training ring is, on the other side. This side window is an obscured view, as it looks through into a room, which has a gate at an angle on the other side, through which you can see the corner of the ring. It’s just a little sliver, lighted by the halogen bulbs over the ring.

I can’t see what he’s looking at. But he’s so entertained and grinning from ear to ear. I look at him in puzzlement and he lets go of the ropes on the weight machine. “I tell them they cannot stop until they sweat,” he says, referring to the “Jade Dragon Set,” a group of 3-4 boys, aged 7, who come and train at the gym in the evenings after everyone else is finished. They’re just beginners, but most of them have fought already at the bar down by the beach. They tear into the gym as we’re all finishing up, yelling for attention and acknowledgment of their hello and wai to the trainers. It’s one of those childish charms, where they’re performing customs of respect and politeness with making sure they say hello and wai to the trainers, but their actual performance of it is demanding. Kru Nu has them line up and march back and forth across the ring, practicing shadow strikes and blocks. When they’re really new and little new boys have to hold a single position for multiple rounds, their little legs propped up on a rope to hold it in kicking position while they wobble and lose interest for minutes at a time. When I first started learning violin at 2 years old, my first recital was just holding a violin under my chin for 1 minute. It’s like that. They’re being corrected on forms and balance, but what’s really being taught is discipline at this point. And there is little difference between them in skill, but big differences in their focus and heart. Pi Nu points through the windows again and laughs, telling me that he sees the boys putting water on themselves, faking the sweat that’s required to allow them to stop. They’re supposed to be kicking the bags. “They think we don’t know,” Pi Nu laughs.

Sure enough, a few minutes later two of the boys come running in to the weight room and line up in front of Kru Nu for inspection. They weren’t summoned, they’re coming to be given permission to stop. Their shorts are enormous, baggy and folded around their tiny bodies. The one in red shorts puffs his chest out to present it for Pi Nu, who drags his index finger across it, feeling the moisture from the water they have doused on themselves. The one in light blue waits for his turn and Pi Nu makes him turn around to look at his back. “There’s no sweat here,” he says and sends the boys back to the bags. There was a hole in their plan, they didn’t count on the back sweat. Kru Nu turns and smiles at me, not yet letting the boys know that he’s on to them. He positions himself to look through the window again and I look with him. Sure enough, the boys are standing in a small gutter near the corner of the ring, squatting down to scoop up water from their cup and splashing it over their chests… and backs. Kru Nu yells to the other room, “I don’t hear any sound of kicks on the bag!” The boys leap over to the bags and start kicking, the little popping sound of their tiny limbs slapping the leather barely audible over the music we’re listening to in the weight room. Bank is laughing. Kru Nu gives me a happy, satisfied smile.

“When the boys are young like this,” Pi Nu tells me, “I don’t know yet which ones are strong.” He uses the word geng, which in Thai means a lot of things. It means skilled, strong, but also “good,” in the wide way we use that word in English. “The boy in gold shorts,” he says, “if I tell him to hit the bag he’ll hit the bag, he’s good. But the one in blue, he cheats all the time.” I laugh and tell him that one will be Muay Femeu, referencing when Karuhat told me that he used to be a knee fighter but when he got to Bangkok he was too lazy to train like Muay Khao, so he became Femeu instead. If you don’t like being tired, you will be Femeu, for sure. I watched the blue one sparring the other day. He is skilled and has a good attitude most of the time. He doesn’t cry easily, even if he’s thrown in clinch a lot. He was sparring a boy who is maybe a year old but much bigger. The bigger boy was less skilled and more afraid and the one in blue was actually stomping his front foot in exaggerated little fakes to try to get the bigger boy to flinch. At seven years old! I was amazed. But Kru Nu was shaking his head at my suggestion, “boys like this, when they cheat already, by the time they are 15 or 16 they quit Muay Thai. Only care about motorbikes and girls.”

Here’s the thing: Kru Nu has raised uncountable boys from this age. Some quit after a few weeks or months, some after a decade of training and fighting… it’s a big investment and, while it’s the nature of Muay Thai in Thailand that not every boy or girl who trains will become a fighter or a champion, I’ve witnessed how even the seemingly inconsequential comings and goings of these boys have an impact on Kru Nu. He gives a lot of himself, to everybody. So, when he’s watching these boys, he’s not seeing who is going to be champion – he’s seeing who is going to be loyal.

As we continue our sets on the weights, Pi Nu occasionally yells into the other room that he doesn’t hear the bags. There’s always a little crescendo of kicks after he yells. After a long while the one in the gold shorts, the good one, comes in alone. He’s breathing hard and looks tired, but he walks right up to Kru Nu for inspection. Kru Nu doesn’t even touch to check for the sweat, he just pats the boy on the head and says, yiyam (“great”) and tells him he’s finished. He’s proud, I can see it on his face. The boy rubs his nose and then marches right back out to the other room. When the other boys come in for inspection, Kru Nu makes the one in blue shorts do 50 kicks on the pads right away. The boy is already crying but he bangs them out pretty fast. It’s at this point that Kru Nu picks up his phone and shows the boys video of them cheating, splashing the water on their shoulders and chests. The boys peer into the phone, mouths open… caught. Kru Nu is speaking calmly but sternly, letting them know that they haven’t fooled him and he already knows they were cheating. The expressions on their faces is of disbelief – this is why he pretended not to know until the very end, why he let them believe they were fooling him and then showed his hand at the end, when they’re already tired and complaining that everything is too much. It’s a game, to some degree, the way that you play along with little kids when they’re fabricating or confidently saying something ridiculous. But it’s also part of his process. I’ve seen the 15-year-old boys who are struggling through pads and Kru Nu shakes his head, saying he knows they go out with friends all night. If he asked outright, they’d likely tell him a lie or just stay silent, but it’s the same game, just many years down the road. They have to learn that they can’t lie to him. They have to learn that they’re not fooling him. And they have to learn that they’re only cheating themselves; there are no shortcuts.

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.

Pi Nu's Hands - What is good? - This is an extraordinary lesson taught to me by my kru Pi Nu, on the nature of the mind and what is good. It almost has a "Kung Fu master" thing about it, the answer to what is Good. read it here

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

Remember, as a patron you have access to the Muay Thai Library!