It Isn't Just About Height

It's only three o'clock in the afternoon here, but a I sit on my bed hoping that my fan will suddenly sprout an A/C unit and a dehumidifier like wings on a baby angel at Christmas, I realize that it has already been quite a remarkable day.

For the first time since I've been here, I got a normal, full, and restful night's sleep last night, due in no small part to the fact that my new friend Chris and I went into town yesterday, keeping ourselves awake past the normal point in the late afternoon at which Americans (or anyone from those time zones) seem to suddenly become tired. I write this small bit as a reminder to myself to say more about Chris later, as he is a somewhat striking figure on his own, but at the moment I'll focus on today's revelations.

After getting up early, I had time to relax a bit, eat a granola bar bought in town yesterday, and get myself more thoroughly ready for the morning's training session than I've yet been able to do. When I left my room for the mats, I saw that the class was abnormally large today, holding perhaps 20-25 people instead of the customary 8-12. We proceeded under the instruction of Deng (personally my favorite trainer), who usually teaches with a series of harsh, angry yells which do little to conceal his natural good humor, which seems to surface primarily around small children and students who have been satisfactorily exhausted. After stretching and basic warm-ups, the other trainers arrived, supplemented by a few extras from the intermediate and advanced mats due to our excess of students. Among the other trainers were two young men, both of whom I had seen before, but only one of whom I was acquainted with.

One of the two in question is a high-spirited and excitable young man whose short dark hair is usually pushed up into some unidentifiably hip style. He regularly teaches on the beginner mats, and is known among us for his signature habit of making everyone in the class come up to the front one by one and enact some version of the following play:

Trainer: "HEY MAN, WHAS YO NEM?"
Student: "Ben."
Trainer: "AGAIN!"
Student: "Ben." [louder]
Trainer: "AGAIN!"
Student: "BEN!"
Trainer: "WHA CUM FRO?"
Student: "AMERICA"
Trainer: "WHHHOOOOAAAAAYYYY!" [applause]

In this way, he has quickly gained a reputation for comforting boisterousness, and insistence on participation and enthusiasm. Like the rest of the trainers, his English is very patchy, but, also like the others, he is evidently not at all self-conscious about that fact, and corrects and encourages students constantly, even if sometimes unintelligibly.

The other trainer is a man I have only met once, when I was temporarily assigned to the intermediate mats on my first day. He is about the same height as the young man mentioned above, with a short mop of dark hair that seems generally unregarded by its owner. He is somewhat older than his counterpart in this story, though not as old as Deng, whose lined and weathered face mark him out as significantly more advanced than most of his colleagues. My own experience with this man was admittedly brief, but in the short time that he held the pads for me, he mocked me twice, and openly laughed at me three times. He usually has a somewhat dour expression on his face when I see him walking around the camp, and he seldom intermingles with other classes of students.

What took place between these two today may seem at first glance to be rather insignificant, but to me it was quite striking. When the class was divided into manageable groups, as inevitably it would have to be, these two, along with one other trainer who regularly helps in the beginner classes, took me and several other students off to the side to do a few drills. In the course of these exercises, I noticed the former of the two in question (I'll call him Trainer A, as I'm tired of doing anything else) was acting a bit strangely, and that his attitude was a bit less enthusiastic, and a bit more irritable, than was his custom. I did very little work with Trainer B, but from what I noticed, he seemed to be his usual self.

At one point, however, the two of them, in the process of changing partners, walked past each other in opposite directions, and for some reason, neither of them moved aside to let the other pass through all the other bodies surrounding them. When I saw them bump into each other in my peripheral vision, I looked over, and saw an expression on both faces that I had yet to encounter on this side of the Pacific. They were glaring at each other in a very peculiar way; they weren't aggressive, but as they rotated slowly, neither twisting unduly to let the other pass, they both glanced up and down the other, appraisingly, and their eyes were hard, and much colder than any weather ever seen on this island.

The moment passed quickly, and I'm not sure that anyone else even noticed. As Trainer A approached me to continue the drill, he grimaced at the ground, shook his head, gave me a quick frowning, quizzical expression, and then shrugged, rolled his shoulders, and resumed his customary energy, though slightly dampened as it had been all morning.

As I thought about this later, I realized that though I have no idea what the story was behind these two, there is no reason for me to be as surprised by the incident as I was. The two could be rivals, enemies, or even unfamiliar coworkers who suddenly shared a bad day, but I was starkly reminded that it would be a mistake for me to reduce any of these men to the caricatures that they so deliberately create during class.

For example, just an hour ago, I was eating lunch by myself at the bar when I saw Deng walking by. I nodded to him, and he smiled briefly and looked at the ground. He swatted me softly with a stick he was carrying on his way past and chuckled quietly, and suddenly, in stark contrast to the shouting, constantly animated figure I was used to from class, I saw a rather shy and dignified middle-aged man, walking home from work alone.

In short, I suppose it's just good to be reminded that people who speak my language in only a broken and somewhat endearing way are presumably quite articulate in their own. It is easy to get lost in the image that people deliberately present, particularly when one doesn't have the cultural understanding to read between the lines of another person's actions or behaviors.

What is all the more striking is that there have been two other incidents in the past few days which have made me think that Deng rather likes me, but in hindsight, I feel that I've acted something of an ass. After my second class with Deng, he took me aside and shook my hand, saying "I am happy with today training. You keep a-work hard."

Then he walked away. I jogged after him, thanking him and jokingly threatening him in the way that he had done to the students during the class, but though he smiled offhandedly, he seemed somewhat uncomfortable as he left, comparatively unresponsive.

Similarly, during class today he wrapped my hands for me before we put on the boxing gloves, and while that was done in silence (which I foolishly mistook for awkward, not knowing, myself, how to start a conversation), as he strapped my gloves on, he asked suddenly, "Wer you from?"
"United States," I responded, as jovially as I could make it.
He nodded at the ground and said rather gravely, "Oh, ok. My girlfriend in United States. Hawaii. She come here visit me 18th. She come it's my birday."
"That's awesome!" (in my wincing memory I shouted this, though I hope I wasn't that obnoxious) "Happy birthday!"
"Oh, yes." Deng nodded, before suddenly walking away again.

In hindsight, I realize that Deng respects me in class, because I don't talk to the other students during drills (which is oddly rare, considering how much it seems to irritate the trainers), and because I always go until I'm utterly spent. I'm glad for that, but I realize now that he was not trying to start a conversation with me, or wanting us to become the type of friends who sit down over glasses of beer to discuss women or the world. In his own way, which, it turns out, is rather awkward and reserved, he was simply trying to show that he had noticed me particularly, and to pay me the compliment of telling me something about him personally. In both cases, the image that I had gained in class of the loud, goofy, somewhat ridiculous and absolutely un-self-conscious Muay Thai trainer blinded me from seeing a simple man who on his own never seems to speak loudly or rashly, and who is willing to attempt to be sincere to some foreign kid of whom he actually knows very little.

Next time I think I'll just say thank you, and try not to proclaim too loudly the merits of a gesture I still don't fully understand.