Blood, Sweat, and Toots

The other day in BJJ class, I managed to chomp my tongue during a take down. I'll consider myself fortunate for having my first self-inflicted blood draw to be so tidily and well contained. Other than surmising that perhaps I should use a mouth guard in the future, my vanity off the mat outweighing my vanity on the mat, the few mouthfuls of blood I had to rinse out were not overly traumatic. Of course, I had to contend with talking like I had a speech impediment all week, inconvenient but manageable. Blood is an uncommon bodily fluid for me to deal with in BJJ. Of more perspiring concern is in my output of sweat. Inch for inch, I am convinced that I generate the most perspiration of anyone in my jiu jitsu class, independent of our relative activity levels. That is, I don't sweat more because I work out harder, I just sweat. When we are cooling down with yoga stretches after class, I am always surreptitiously swabbing up the mat with my gi wherever I've left a residual trail. I'm like the sweat snail--you can always tell where I've been by the silver slime.

On the one hand, sometimes having a veneer of sweat is useful for wriggling my eel-like arm out of a grip because I'm basically just too slippery to hold on to. On the other hand, sometimes I lose my own traction and grip. I never stopped to think about it until now, but I suppose it's a good thing I'm not particularly squeamish about having people sweat all over me, probably because my own contribution of total combined sparring sweat (TCSS) constitutes about 80 percent of the moisture yield. My Amazonian rainforest output dilutes away everyone else's civilized London drizzle. It's a good thing I am not any bigger than I am. Could you imagine if I were 3 times my size and commanded the proportional sweat output as I do now? I'd be able to submit someone by drowning them.

Still, I choose bodily invasions of the liquid kind over those of the gaseous variety. During one evening class, I was sparring with a new partner when he threw his leg over my abdomen for a mount. Just as his weight pressed into my belly, my traitorous lower intestine gave a single raspberry squeal of protest at a decibel level equivalent to a 0.44 Magnum at point blank range. Fortunately, this was just a blank grenade, more sound than stench, and not one of those insidiously quiet and potently malodorous bombs. Everyone sparring in the room froze, then glanced around for the point source of pollution. Suppressing a snort of laughter, I did the first reasonable thing that came to mind.

"That was him," I blurted fiendishly, pointing to my partner.

Several expressions warred across his face as he was torn between chivalrously accepting responsibility for the toot and crying out for truth and justice in exposing me for the bubbly little prevaricator I was. He managed to splutter, "Yes, and sitting on your belly had nothing to do with it," just as I realized my error as the lady who 'doth protest too much' by being the first to deny responsibility.

Young Mr. Mason, sitting out of this round of sparring, asked incredulously from the far end of the room, "Was that Miss I-Pei??!"

Way to call me out there, buddy.

By this point, it was almost a relief to be able to tap out from my partner's well-timed arm bar, instead of ignominiously tapping out from sheepish embarrassment. Here after all this academic pondering whether I was becoming a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu inflatable doll in class, what a relief to discover that I'm nothing but a squeaky toy.

Blood, sweat, and the occasional toot. Let it not be said that I don't give it my all on the mat.