A woman is kicked in the face: score one for ERA. The woman’s assailant, also female, has her left foot up so high she could step onto the next floor. Incredible leg extension: 1 wonder, is a crotch still a crotch when it’s a straight line? Yaaii-eee-honng and suchlike Oriental noise. At each corner of the ring red flags go up: point and match. All four judges, it would seem, admire this clubfooting: a well-focused front kick. The loser is suddenly feminine again: weak, pregnable: jaw slack as a silent butler. If the shoe fits, baby, swallow it. They bow. And we have a new lady champ at the 16th All-American Open Karate Competition—where you can catch athlete’s foot in your mouth.
The Felt Forum is full of lethal people. I figure a peanut vendor could punt my nose off. There are ten-year-old kids here who might change the “child” in “child abuse” from object to subject. So much self-defense is kinetic, offensive around me. Not the place to spill beer on your seatmate. Karate has become chic and popular as high tech. In fact, that’s what it is: the body electric rewired for microminiature reaction: jogging made subvicious and Eastern. Even the editor of this periodical, they tell me, is expert at Martial Artistry: which, I presume, means that—when attacked —he will translate a Latin epigram. Quickly.
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