Work Text:
Your name is DIRK STRIDER. It’s the summer of 1989 and your toes are curling over the edge of a blue vinyl athletic mat that’s been laid on the floor of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Houston’s Elizabeth Crocker Memorial Meeting Room East.
You have on a brand new gi. It is stiff and has crease marks from sitting folded in a plastic bag since it left Hong Kong on the journey of ultimate martial arts excitement which has led it to its great destiny, here, hanging off your skinny thirteen-year-old shoulders. The jacket is blue and has a tiger and a dragon circling each other screenprinted on the back, which is kind of stupid and awesome at the same time. You put it on in the locker room and you would think that there must be some trick to tying it so, like, your chest isn’t hanging out all over everything, except that you are checking out your new sensei and his chest is totally hanging out all over everything.
Dude’s kinda fat and has a lot of chest hair. You are totally not checking out his nipples except for how you totally are checking out his nipples.
He does not look much like Mr. Miyagi, which is disappointing. Nothing about him says fount of ancient Eastern wisdom. He does not look like the guy who is going to mentor you through winning the karate championship and then take you to Japan on an all-expenses-paid trip to your destiny.
But shit, this guy with man-boobs is probably as much ancient Eastern wisdom as your social worker is going to be able to get you at the Boys and Girls Club two afternoons a week. You should be grateful to get any ancient Eastern wisdom at all. Even if it comes out of the mouth of a guy who is picking up late shifts at the oil refinery because teaching karate to orphaned dipshits like yourself doesn’t pay too well.
You really have to work on the gratitude thing. Your social worker has been clear about that.
Your sensei says, “So, the first lesson we’re going to learn today, class, is about respect. And one of the ways we show that respect, to ourselves and to our discipline, is that every time we step on the mat, we bow. We put our hands together and we bow.”
You put your hands together and you bow toward the fat guy. And his nipples. And the way his fat hairy ass can tuck into a back roll, spring up, and kick someone behind him in the head, because that is the most badass thing you have ever seen and if this dude can teach you to do that you will put up with pretty much all the graying chest hair in the entire world.
==> DIRK: ASCEND LIFE’S ECHELADDER
You try out for the tournament team right after you make brown belt, because once you get on the tournament team you get to start sword practice, and you really, really, desperately want to learn sword forms. Your social worker makes some noise about the cost and also the edged weapons but your grades are good and karate is a healthy activity that teaches wayward boys positive self-discipline and teamwork and so she scrapes together some money from somewhere and makes it happen. She and Sensei Rodriguez do a deal where you do some janitorial work at the dojo, cleaning the kitchen and mopping the floors and vacuuming the ancient brown ground-down carpets twice a week after everyone else has gone home, and that covers part of it.
Your hands smell like bleach all the time but you have a key to the dojo. You like having a key. It makes it easier for you to spend as much time as possible watching the second-dan black belt who is teaching beginning sword forms. Because he’s really skilled. And swords are awesome. You have this big glossy book you’ve checked out of the public library about six times about Japanese swords and how they are made and you want a katana more than anything in the entire universe. More than a car even. You know all the words for the different ways the steel can go together and you doodle the patterns in the margins of your algebra homework.
Also the sword instructor has incredible shoulders. Truly incredible shoulders. You are honestly not sure if you are more interested in having shoulders like that yourself or in, um, doing things to someone who has shoulders like that. Like licking them.
Your dick confuses you. You try to concentrate on sword forms. Purity of heart. Mental and physical discipline. It is uncomfortable to be wearing a cup when you get a boner, which is a thing that happens to you pretty much constantly. Especially during sparring. Or around swords. Or guys who are really good with swords. Sometimes you think about warrior monks, after you’ve gone to bed at night. Sensei talks about self-denial being the way of true strength but when you’re lying there what you end up thinking about is fighting someone really good and then unwrapping all those criss-crossed knotted-together layers of sweaty silk and cotton, peeling them off until he’s standing there, in front of you, naked and ready to be finished with denying himself...yeah, that really does it for you.
Although so do puppets. Like, something about how soft they are. And round. Sometimes you, um, do stuff with your foster sister’s stuffed rabbit that you feel kind of gross about afterward.
You go through a lot of wet wipes.
Your dick confuses you.
You like being able to stash things at the dojo. In case you need them later. Like, if you have some book that you really like, or something that is important to you, there is a place you have up behind the ceiling tiles in the office where you can put that, and it’s locked up there and it’s safe, which is not something your stuff has ever been before. You can’t get at it during the day when everyone is coming and going but you know it’s there and it’s safe. It is surprising what a difference that makes to your outlook on life.
Sensei Rodriguez is not really happy about it when your stash of chocolate bars and shitty fantasy novels and Robotech videotapes and that puppet you’ve had forever that’s all coming apart now falls on him while he is changing the fluorescent tubes, but he understands, because he is a good guy, and you clean it all up and shake the little bits of broken glass from the lightbulb out of everything and you wait a week or so before you go back to hiding stuff. Also you never put that much all in one place again because whoa, that was a bad idea.
You are getting pretty good at sword forms. And shoulders. And sneaking looks in the changing room.
==>
You go to Regionals that year and get knocked out in the semifinals by this guy from Dallas with incredible footwork. You stick around in the bleachers, way up high against the gym roof, to watch him come in seventh – he gets knocked out by an older guy – and then you go congratulate him, and he’s staying at the same place you are so you go back to the hotel together and he’s got his own room so you let Sensei Rodriguez know where you are and you sit around and talk about all kinds of shit and he has some bootleg anime videotapes that he puts in the hotel player and shows you some Ranma 1/2, from the middle of the series but you can follow it all right, and then he’s got a really grainy subbed copy of Akira, which is absolutely amazing, and then it’s midnight and you’re sneaking down to the hotel hot tub in your boxers and he’s talking about Jackie Chan and he’s RIGHT THERE and you lean over and kiss him. Because it’s dark and quiet and everyone else is asleep. And he’s right there.
He kisses back for a second and then he says, “Whoa, uh, no, I don’t – sorry, no,” and because he’s a good guy, you weren’t wrong about that part, it’s really uncomfortable but he’s nice about it, he doesn’t say anything to anyone, he just goes back to Dallas the next morning and you never hear from him again.
Next year you finish second overall in your age group. Sensei Rodriguez takes you out for Italian food afterward and you eat two helpings of linguini with clam sauce, and that’s how you learn about your shellfish allergy.
==>
Your social worker makes you sign up for community college even though you think you would be better off just getting a job, or really a second job because you’re teaching at the dojo three nights a week and Saturday afternoons now and sometimes you get DJ gigs at your friends’ younger siblings’ shitty parties, which is not really a job but you think it could be your ticket to bigger things.
You get awarded something called the Colonel Sassacre Perpetual Assistance Hail and Well Met Good Fellowship, which, whatthefuckever, it covers your books and tuition and a little cash, which you need for your shitty studio apartment because as soon as you turned 18 it was sorry buddy, no room at the inn. Really your social worker is not your social worker any more, she is just this lady who gives you a hard time, but she has been giving you a hard time since you were eleven so you put up with it and she puts up with you. Only now she does it over coffee at Denny’s on Friday afternoons rather than in her office.
Anyhow, you sign up for a lot of computer classes, because that’s where the future is, and audio production, because when you weren’t at the dojo in high school you were at the campus radio station. The Good Fellowship doesn’t have specific coursework requirements.
You don’t understand the requirements, actually, it’s this long list of stuff written up in very florid old-fashioned language. One thing is that you have to meet with this lawyer-looking dude twice a year, and he wants you to explain what you’re up to and sometimes he gives you books or whatever. You don’t take that part too seriously.
You discover rec.arts.erotica late one night in the basement lab where you’re supposed to be doing your systems administration homework and then you kind of go from there. The commercial potential is obvious, if only you can find somewhere to set up a server.
==> DIRK: ESCHEW TEMPTATION
The hell you will, it pays too well.
You don’t tell your social worker or the lawyer from the Good Fellowship that the porn you’re shooting with a couple of buddies is what’s actually paying most of your bills nowadays. They’re happier thinking your DJing work is picking up and you’re definitely happier with them thinking your DJing work is picking up.
You get people from all over the world, it’s amazing when you look at your logs, and a surprising number of them will mail a check to your PO Box to get access to the explicit stuff. It’s a niche market, but it’s only going to get bigger.
The December before you’re due to finish your AA, the lawyer from the Good Fellowship sits you down at a cafe just off campus and asks if you’re planning to transfer next year.
You honestly don’t know.
He slides this little flat box across the table at you and says he thinks you should plan to stay in town, whatever you decide to do about your education, and that the Good Fellowship is available to “...help defray any unexpected expenses associated with complications of your newfound maturity.”
You’re trying to figure out if that means he wants in on the porn server deal – you’ve heard about that, shadow investors, very hush-hush – when he gets up, takes the bill off the table, picks up his Panama hat (who wears a hat like that anymore, ballcaps are where it’s at) and leaves.
There’s a teeny-tiny pair of dark glasses just like yours in the box. It’s maybe the weirdest thing anyone has ever handed you in a restaurant, and that’s keeping in mind that your friends are all geeks, pornographers, and black belts.
==> DIRK: DEVELOP COMPLICATIONS
Your social worker is sure you knocked some girl up and just don’t want to admit it, and you’re so exhausted, after two weeks of looking after this baby, that you end up coming out to her. You’re not sure why you thought saying, “I’m gay, Brenda, I didn’t get anyone pregnant!” would shut her up, because wow it so has not.
She spends a solid month handing you safe sex brochures and a box of condoms every Friday until finally you get exasperated and explain that you are taking care of an infant, you don’t have time to be having gay AIDS-getting sex, or straight babymaking sex, or any sex at all, because the kid has you up twice a night wiping poop off his everything and nobody in their right mind wants to get with a guy who always smells a little like babyshit.
Also, like hell are you abandoning a child to Harris County CPS, no matter what she thinks. You have been there, done that, and just because you came out of it normal is no reason to subject someone else to a fine high-quality government-sponsored upbringing. And yeah, you are completely sure his mom’s not coming back for him.
As near as you can tell, his mom’s...from outer space. Or perhaps a horse. A dead horse from outer space. It is only because you have spent your entire life hip-deep in the trenches of bad science fiction that you can face your current circumstances with any equanimity. You have read Piers Anthony novels that were weirder than your life, okay, you can deal with this. And you aren’t going to say anything crazy to your social worker. He’s YOUR weird little alien baby. If he grows big teeth and decides to eat Texas, well, you’re good with a sword, you’ll work something out.
Hell, you might help.
You don’t say most of this out loud. Hardly any of it, really.
She still gives you this look, the how-stupid-do-you-think-I-am look, and you give it right back. Over your glasses, no less.
She sighs a lot and goes away and comes back two weeks later with a birth certificate, a referral to teen parenting services, and a stack of books about the many and varied ways in which cocksucking will kill you. You use one of those to prop up the wobbly leg of Dave’s thrift-store crib. The other four you take up to the roof of your building, stick in a C-clamp, and use for sword practice one afternoon, the baby monitor sitting on the roof ledge beside you as you spin and thrust through forms you haven’t worked in weeks.
It feels damn good.
The Good Fellowship doubles the stipend it’s sending you each month. Which is mysterious and creepy and also totally necessary because formula is fucking expensive and daycare even more so. When you have your next meeting with the lawyer guy he fishes his necktie out of Dave’s grubby little hands in a smooth way which suggests he’s had considerable practice dealing with infants.
==> DIRK: PARENT LIKE YOU MEAN IT
Your weird little alien baby turns out to be pretty good company, when he’s not shitting himself. Before and after shitting himself? Despite shitting himself? The shit is such a constant thing in your life now, it’s incredible, you don’t understand how that much feces can emerge from such a tiny little butt. Late at night you find yourself muttering about shitpockets in the space-time continuum and is that diverticulitis or something else. Who knows. He’s a shithappy space baby and his mother was a dead meteor horse.
You buy a horse calendar because maybe seeing something familiar will be restful for the little asshole. You will take all the restful you can get.
You make the server bill, you make the application deadline, you make the pureed carrots too hot, you make the baby cry, you make yourself a bowl of cereal at three in the morning when you realize you haven’t eaten anything since lunch the day before. You make an insanely popular series of GIFs about cocksucking puppets, which, yes, were directly inspired by those books your social worker gave you. You make Sensei Rodriguez move the filing cabinets over so there’s room for a Pack-N-Play in the office at the dojo. You make your most promising swordwork student go to Regionals, where he finishes in the top sixteen, and you make yourself not do anything but look at his ass in those pants, because sure you’re a creeper but not like that.
You buy a dozen white shirts because you can bleach the hell out of them when they get nasty.
==> DAVE: QUIT BEING SO SHITTY
The hell you will, it’s what comes naturally.
==> DIRK: GET LAID
It’s not getting laid that’s a problem. You’re in porn. Fetish porn, but still. You can get laid. If you can find a sitter on a Friday night. It’s finding someone you want to fuck who also wants to buy into your whole...life, that’s the problem.
You spend about two years being hopelessly in love with this guy you meet on rec.arts.sf.written, because he’s funny and thoughtful and he likes hearing about whatever stupid thing your little brother has done this week, and he not only doesn't mind about the porn, he says it's hot, and he understands your feelings about Shinji Ikari, and finally you leave Dave with Sensei Rodriguez and his wife for the weekend so you can fly to L.A. and meet him in person. You are arguably anticipating this more than you have anticipated anything in your life. You are the anticiprince, lord of anticipatonia, ruler of the anticisphere, it is you.
He turns out to be a sixteen-year-old girl.
You try to be understanding but you wish she had said something before you bought the plane tickets.
You listen to “Fear of a Black Planet” on repeat the whole way home. It costs you an extra $80 to change the tickets and come back two days early but you figure that’s cheaper than paying for the hotel room.
Dave is at the dojo, making little ppthbth noises as he drives his hot wheels cars around the office floor. You ruffle up his hair because there’s something calming about messing with his little round babyhead, change into your gi, pummel the shit out of the heavy bag. Strife, honestly, sometimes it’s the best thing there is. It’s dark when Sensei lays a big hand across your shoulders and tells you it’s time to call it a day, Dave’s getting hungry, why don’t you both come back to his place.
You spend that night on the Rodriguezes’ disgusting plaid rec room couch and think about warrior monks.
==>
You reread the collected poems of Matsuo Basho until your Penguin Classics edition falls apart.
==>
You watch Sensei line Dave up at the edge of the mats with the other tiny kids. He is about the cutest little motherfucker in the universe, in his little gi with his little bare feet sticking out the bottom of his little white pants. You think that it’s very strange how you love him more than anything else in the entire world, given that you spent almost three years wiping his ass on a more-than-daily basis.
Maybe that is the secret precondition for true, deep, and abiding love: cleaning someone’s butt. Maybe if you cleaned anyone’s butt for that long you’d feel like this.
That’s got to be something you can work into a video. Maybe something for the new DVD series.
Sensei shows the kids how to widen their stances and about a third of them fall over, because it’s their first day and little kids are tippy, but Dave just falls into it, steps right from feet-together to a ready position, because he’s an observant little badass, and you think aw yeah, teacher’s kid, and grin real big.
Which is okay, because you’re behind him and he can’t see your stupid-proud asshole face. Sensei Rodriguez can, though, and he raises one eyebrow at you even as he has them make a fist and hold it up, like a hammer, that’s good.
Yeah, that’s good.