Free The Black Stiletto by Raymond Benson

Asian. Many couldn’t speak English. Their ages ran from really little—six or seven years old—to middle-age. Soichiro himself was in his forties, I think .It’s hard to tell with Asians. They always look younger than they are. But I think he was probably the same age as Freddie.
    Some of the gym’s regular patrons came to watch the tournament, too. Jimmy was there with a small entourage of colored guys. I think everyone was curious about this martial arts business. Apparently it had existed in Asia for centuries, but we were just learning about it in the USA.
    The tournament was a major revelation for me.
    These guys got in the ring without boxing gloves or any other protection—they all wore white robes that looked like something you’d wear when you’re having breakfast—and then they threw each other around like they weighed nothing ! It was simply amazing. The stuff they called judo was like wrestling—that’s the only way I can describe it—but they didn’t really grapple much with each other; instead, the opponents would do a ceremonial bow to each other and then stand in a funny position, grab the other guy, and before you could blink, one was thrown over his opponent’s back! Wham! I didn’t understand how they did it, but they made it look easy. The other martial art, karate , seemed more brutal. In this one, opponents would hold their hands flat and spear-like—and they’d chop and jab with them, as well as kick with bare feet. The kicks were like circus acrobatics. Guys would jump really high, swirl around quickly, and bam !—a foot in the face. I’d never seen anything like it.
    Well, after watching that all day, I was hooked. I wanted to learn it. I told Freddie that and he shrugged. “I don’t know if they let girls, but you can ask Soichiro,” he said.
    “You don’t mind, do you, Freddie?”
    “I don’t care, Judy. I just don’t want you to get hurt. That looks like pretty dangerous stuff.”
    “I can handle it.”
    So I went over to Soichiro. They called him a “sensei,” whatever that was. I guess it meant “trainer” in Japanese. I introducedmyself and told him I wanted martial arts lessons. Soichiro had an expressionless face. He didn’t smile. He didn’t frown. It was just blankly serious. He looked at me as if I were an insignificant bug.
    “You girl,” he said.
    “I am. Does that matter?”
    Soichiro blinked a couple of times, but his expression didn’t change. I could sense, though, that the wheels were turning inside his head. I also got a very nice feeling from him. My intuition confirmed he was a nice man.
    “All right,” he finally answered.
    I wanted to hug him but instead I held out my hand to shake his. He didn’t take it, though. Instead, he bowed . So I awkwardly did the same. He removed a business card from his pocket and handed it to me with both hands. It had the name and address on it. Studio Tokyo. In the West Village. That wasn’t far.
    “Great,” I said.
    “ Arigato ,” he replied. I later learned that was Japanese for “thank you.”
    So, for the next year, dear diary, I took martial arts lessons from Soichiro at Studio Tokyo. I continued my training with Freddie, too. It cost me money for the sessions with Soichiro, but I went twice a week at first and then increased visits to three times a week. I started in a beginners’ class and I was the only girl. Soichiro called it kihon and it was very basic. We learned fundamentals of judo and karate , and practiced extremely simple stuff. Lots of floor exercises and such. Mostly he taught us how important it was to be humble and polite to each other. That was why we bowed to our opponents before sparring.
    After six months, Soichiro moved me into a more advanced karate class because I was better at that than at judo . I started learning what the sensei called kata , which consisted of very formal movements representing attack and defense postures.
    Eventually I moved on to kumite , which was