by Amelle Margaron
- Savate is a top-choice combat sport for short and/or whimsical athletes. It’s like if you combined boxing and fencing, and you used your tibias like sabres.
- Did you know, my little bird, that a quarter of your bones are in your feet? And then add four more, traveling from the ankle to the knee.
- Our coach Raf definitely has the gym look: topknot, biceps, beefed-up aura, white strip of teeth. But then: slender dancer’s calves. The petite frame he’s been contained by ever since he was a boy. Raf demonstrates a fouetté and his leg extends, high and smooth, and then, like a flytrap, it snaps through a friend’s nose. This friend stumbles. Of course, someone claps. Raf and his chicken legs, and us, in his gym, his disciples. With the shell of his foot, Raf can reach anything he wants.
- The core principle of savate is: Je touche et je ne suis pas touché. If no one touches you, you win. Win what? I don’t know, but it feels good.
- Savate is violence for romantics. It was invented by sailors—French guys on boats, chewing on tabaco and their old codes of honour. Dancing on thin rubber deck soles, spun to and fro by the waves. Je touche et je ne suis pas touché. So it’s like ballet? No, Raf says, no no, it’s not like ballet at all, it’s not easy. Okay Raf. Because if you wanted it to be easy, then you should’ve done ballet. Okay Raf.
- When I was young, I dislocated this kid’s arm. He was a big, strong boy, and then he was yelping and crumpled in half on the red tatami foam. Between the silence and the ambulance I dug my toes into the tiles. So embarrassing. Hadn’t known I was supposed to care for things I liked.
- Who is savate for? Masochists with gym memberships. Management lessons for freaks like us, who will never win but hate to lose. Rule of thumb: if it hurts, then you worked hard for it. If it’s hard, then you worked hard for it. Don’t think, my restless dove, just feel.
- One time, we must have been drinking, and then you cradled my foot in your hands. Pressing against the flush pink sole. Here? No. There? No—to the left. Here? Sharp ow. We google the spot and find out there’s liver damage. Does it feel good? Does it feel bad? Hold it longer. My foot in your hands. My one and only body, foolishly confusing pain and pleasure.
- Most common sports injuries: knees (36%), ankles (11%), shoulder (unrelated). Most common injuries: tendonitis, back pain, blood speck on white collar—
- In a healthy society, your body is never in crisis. In a healthy society, we might never stop touching at all. Blood-boy, brain-child, guy next to guy wrapping his gimp knee for the seventh time in two weeks. You gotta feel, stop thinking, right? Wrong. I never stop thinking. I can smell you on these walls, man. Smells like sweat and pepper chicken. But at least I can see it now, perfectly extended: your precious and only and untouchable body, reaching for mine.
Amelle Margaron
Amelle Margaron is writing an MA thesis about blogging and humanism at Concordia University. She also enjoys sudoku and people watching at hockey games.
Headlight Anthology 