One Punch

Met, Well

I never got hit, before.

Afterwards, I became different.

One punch...eventually got her laid out. On the ground. Ambulance. I was defending myself. So I was fine. I joined wrestling years later to wrestle with that fear. But hopefully, so I could feel less guilty. In wrestling, there were rules to laying a girl out. Ironically, though, I ended up being the only one here.

Glancing at glazed thighs grasp a glazed neck in a thick hold, I munched on the last Welch's product I would probably see in a while. Throwing the fruit snacks packaging onto the ground, I bit my lip and held onto the toes of my gym shoes while the boys wrestled for five more seconds. It was over before I had blinked once. 

After unraveling like thread and demoting to comrade-mode with setting the gym up to its normal properness, the boys became a background to the stars of the show - me and the coach. We were the main characters here. I was gonna get my education on how to beat up a girl the right way. Or either of these guys, at that.

"Hey." The coach didn't even look over my baggy joggers and ponytail, but his eyes glued to mine the whole time as if to hide them (or me) from something. The afternoon sky shown through the pair of windows above the gym, and it irritated my eyes but I didn't even want to blink. The dank sky wasn't going to distract me from proving my point to this guy, and make me look like some intimidated person from not staring directly, unblinkingly, into his face.

"Yes, sport?" He said, clamping my shoulder.

"I -" I rolled my eyes from how off-set I got from that physical contact. "I wanted to know did you want another person on your team."

The crinkle in his eyes, and the smirk on his lips, made me think he was mocking me. Before he removed his hand and said, "Sure, girl. Get yourself a uniform. And I'll give your parents information."

I went to it. Being in so deep, so early, was good. Took an obtuse piece of head gear between my palms and eased it over my scalp. My hands slipped between several singlets, I'd heard them be called before, but none to actually fit the female figure. Ahem, one's breasts. 

Good, because I didn't know if they were clean, anyway. "Coach....um...yet, I need a uniform."

"No biggy. Just get the shoes on, girl."

"Sure..." 

"No confirmation...just do it."

The outfits weren't the only things unfittable, but I let it slide. I wasn't going to give him a way to get irritated with me, just yet. Now that I had on the annoying shoes and the itchy headgear, I stretched and awaited a second for the rules of my coach before he simply didn't even remember me. I went up to him, and he looked up to me a little surprised. "Oh, right. Here. I was writing this for you. Right down below the wrestling information is the weight class you may be in, judging from your size. We wrestle in '32 and '45 here. You near that?"

I scrunched up my brows in annoyance at how we couldn't have weighed me officially before assuming, but I said, "Yes. I am 135 pounds."

"Well, getting buff, you may get up to 145 pounds but....if you wanna get buff and reach your weight class, may wanna actually eat a little better."

I glared at him for a second before easing up my eyes. Then again, even if he did sound like he was calling me overweight, it was for a good reason, and partly because I was. I was over the weight of the class. Simple enough. 

Maybe I was being a little too personal with his attitude. He was obviously a Type-A personality, at least for the class. 

"Buddy over there is 140 pounds."

I glanced over at the guy he nodded to, who was rolling up the mats with several of his members. "Want me to show you what I can do," and then I added if Coach was unclear, "on 'im?"

"Sure." The coach's look got a little grave and almost in the unbelievable department. Because of the dip and coziness of his eyebrows over the ridge above his eyes, which were trying to decode me. The brows pretty much perched above his face like furry dogs on a windowsill...and they extremely perturbing to look at.

Anyway, if this was going to always be a fight to prove myself to my coach, I wouldn't mind. "Bud."

The boy came at Coach's beck and call. 

"I want you to wrestle her."

He looked at me only after a long glance at Coach. "What's her name?" He pointed thumb-wise at me.

"Ah - it doesn't matter. I just need to see who she is first. Then we can know her name."

"Uh - okay. Let's do this, really quick." The boy called "Bud" I guess ran to the middle of the area after they all finished rolling up their "blunt". The floor made my shoes feel transparent, they were so poorly cushioned. I could be light on my feet, because it felt like I was basically using my feet, only. I didn't know what position I was to be in. Honestly, I just circled "Bud" until his stance eventually became my own. Now I was done being a chameleon. I was gonna tie him up.

His hands smacked my nape, forced it down. I pressed my hands into either side of his neck, near the shoulder. "Good tie," Coach yelled back at me an him. I guess my first plan was executed.

Now, the boy pushed my arm aside from underneath and grabbed for my leg. I kicked, but he locked it in firm, and then made sure he pushed down on it to get me down, and to get on top of me. I tried pushing him off, but he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and kept my arm up so I couldn't move it, while my other arm was suffocating under his torso. And the wrest of me was squirming....well, on a muscular level. A minor muscular level, seeming as I couldn't move.

The coach was already breathing in my face: didn't even know he'd gotten so near. "One, two, got it!" The coach's stopped exhaling on me. His only visible attribute was his fresh Champions since my head was screwed to the side under the pressure of the boy's arm that was simultaneously holding  my arm above my head. I mean...possible since the bulk of his bicep was contorting my neck  in a way that the side of my face was flat into the rarely cleaned floor. That's what I thought of this school's gyms, at least. And telling from the dirt I often - or was that dust, ew? - scraped up off of the gym floors with my Index while sitting bored in Indian style during classes - I could say that.

And now that nasty 70% black, 25% Hispanic, and 5% white dust was smeared onto my face. 

The boy got up off me, not before I noticed his nice, fine, chiseled abs, just through touch, not even through seeing. But the moment was over. His pale hands went to the floor, hoisting himself, and I...went directly to looking at the floor in shame, while lying on it. My head wasn't sideways, staring at the slightly visible dirt for long. The boy had squatted next to me and shoved his hand in my face, one that I wasn't willing to grip until I had at least been sitting up, directly on my butt. 

I sat up, directly on my butt. I looked at his hand that he actually just grabbed me with instead. Mine went up, above towards my head at most and I went with it, straining my weight against the boy. I was a feather to his rock. I was now on my toes. He was now five inches taller than me.

"Good job. You're gonna wrestle against him for now on, and learn the ropes. He's pretty gentle anyway. I don't think he'll hurt you. But our competitors don't care."

Sure, I said to myself. I wanted a challenge, anyway.