As Christos drove he was pressed with the security of hundreds of men hanging on his performance. I made to distract him be asking questions of his fighting past. I am now loopy on nerve meds needed for the high activity of the last week. So I cannot quote him except in a few short passages.

Christos began Kung Fu training from an early age under a Jеwish instructor. [1] As he entered teenage years the instructor added Jiu Jitsu to his curriculum and brought in help. He was a mad genius at adaptation, “But always regressed. He’d be well into Jiu Jitsu and then become obsessed with something he missed in Kung Fu, go back to focus on that and then lose people. The instructor eventually employed Christos as an instructor.

The gym owner was impulsive, “emotional like a woman,” not take good advice, make a bad decision that hurt his art and business, but also be penitent and try and make it good. Christos resigned instructing once on ethical grounds and declined once on the same terms. The two last straws was the firing of a good coach and the hiring of an African coach, who lived in the gym, stole tens of thousands of dollars, and had sex—even illegal sex—with female students.

His time at the Baltimore Judo Club was his favorite youthful memory to recall in rough outline—a feeling of upward strength, skill and confidence progression. Asked to instruct at one school for pay, he declined, citing cleanliness issues, instruction deficits and “professors putting their dicks in students. That’s a no go—all trouble. It’s a problem. Jiu Jitsu is [mechanically] too close to sex. With a man instructing women they come to you. I would get calls all the time from female students, and have to tell them, ‘I’m sorry, I’m committed.’ Too many men—especially blacks and Jеws—will take advantage of that.”

…

Christos’s most vivid recollections were made in Brazil, studying in Rio, in poor sections of the massive city as well as in middling ones. Over six years he spent two years, six months at a time, in Brazil. Both of his Brazilian professors now reside in the U.S. One built a successful roofing business out west and offered to gift it to Christos in return for training together. That says a lot about both men.

Training began as residing in hostel size bunk rooms at the gym with a dozen students sleeping in an area “not much bigger than this truck.” One poor area professor offered him only $5 for privates. His other professor told Christos to pay $20-25, and he did. The poor professor, an elder of the art, paired off his gringo with a female student he dated. But, Christos is strictly against dating students while instructing. He refused to be professor for his lady, directing her to another instructor.

The food was locally picked and butchered, “They had what they had,” at the store, with one cow slaughtered for the area and bought up by markets and sold. The fruit was much better, picked ripe, not like our fruit that is picked green and shipped.” One time he did get very ill from eating a burger. Having an intense stomach virus for three days.

He was keen not to “wear out your welcome,” as a student lodging with a professor, sometimes “sleeping on a tile floor,” by moving to another professor and rotating back to the states to work and save money.

Noting his uncanny ability to weigh a man with his eyes and be within a pound or two, he recalled entering one tournament where the men were directed to line up before professors presiding over the event. “I step up to the old man—there is no scale. He grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me, then tells me what weight class I fight in!”

“Brazil is poor, real poor. First time I took cash and exchanged it. But I discovered there are ATM’s where I can use my card and get their money, which is worth like a fifth of the dollar. That way you aren’t traveling with a stack of cash. I’ve seen shootouts between criminals and cops. The cops do not fuck around!”

“One guy traveled to this other favella. The professor told us not to. Each favella is run by a militia. They run shit! This guy gets killed over something and they cut his fucking head off!”

I had this one MMA fight offer from this militia in another favella. I got along fine with the militia, shoot pool with them. But, these are black guys with a pistol in their belt. This guy calls me up and asks me to fight. I tell him that I’m not trained for MMA, that I’m just grappling, and he says that I was going to fight—this was not an offer. It was a directive. I knew the head of the local militia, called him. He calls this other guy up and tells him that ‘Our gringo’ is not fighting for you. The other guy calls me back and says its cool. You do not say no to these fuckin’ people.

One event I was scheduled for was canceled because the militia raised the taxes on it so high and the promoter was going to lose money.

Once I was sick, training sick. Being sick sucks, but never stopped me from training. This was bad. My professor tells me to go to the hospital, which I did not want to do. This is shipping containers arranged into a make-shift hospital. I’ve got yellow fever. Fuck, I felt bad. The doctor tells me he’s hitting me with antibiotics, anti-inflamatories and morphine. I’m like no, ‘No morphine.’ Then I get sent to the nurse. They give the morphine for the big fucking needle. Once it’s stuck in your leg bone deep twice—this giant fuckin’ syringe—you’re feeling it. The nurse speaks no English. She hits me with the three needles, and I get up and walk out of there and I know she hit me with morphine, because I’m ODing! I walk out and face plant. My girl is dragging me back in. I wake up some point later, maybe a day or two, and the doctor is shaking me and telling me he knew I wouldn’t die, because I was a strong Jiu Jitsu fighter and I had a good doctor! I don’t know about the latter. But that fucker was in a world of hurt if he was the doctor that killed the militia’s fuckin’ gringo!”

…

Christos is a very cautious, high performance driver that understands the machines he handles on a mechanical level and drives with utmost focus while he is retelling tales from his fighting past, making for a pleasing yarn spinning experience for this curious tramp.

…

Notes

1.) In Baltimore City and County, Jеwish men dominated numerous small business sectors from the 1930s.