Before I begin I would thank my friend Kiva for her help on this story and persistence in getting me to this point in the first place.I think this is my first published work.
The story is a sort of a prequel to the final part of Kiva's own version of Ron Rash's 'Serena', the Poacher series, in which I featured as a 'special guest star'. Link:
https://www.freecatfights.com/forums/index.php?topic=89782.0If you like what you read be kind in the comments below. If not,
shrugs, then do better yourself.
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My name is Lucky+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My trolley rumbles down the corridor.
I knock on the door softly. “Monsieur?” The owners are French, so they tell us to speak French. In reality everyone speaks Khmer, Chinese or English.
I knock harder. “Madam……housekeeping?”
Satisfied I open the door and push the trolley in, quickly looking around to see if I can clean the room in 15 minutes or at least make it look clean.
Then I hear the noise from the bathroom.
He is a big man nearly two metres tall and maybe even 100 kg, but pale middle-aged and fat, his belly hanging over the small towel he wears around his waist, his only clothing. The barang has a forest of salt-and-pepper chest hair, a goatee, not much hair on his head and the red weather-beaten face of a drinker.
“Hello Cherie!” he says leaning against the bathroom door frame wallet in one hand.
Oh no. Who takes their wallet into the bathroom?
“Not Cherry. My name is Lucky. But I go, get Cherry for you?” Worth a try, I think.
“Oh no, you are just adorable in your uniform, dear.” He steps into the bedroom, leering like the dirty old man that he is.
“I am…. Sorry! I go now!” I say backing up the trolley rattling as I try to reverse the bulky thing, keeping its length and girth between me and him.
But the space between the bed and the wall is wide in a suite and in a few steps of his bare feet he is beside me.
I take my right hand off the trolley and clench my right fist at my side.
“How about you and me I have some fun, heh, big girl? I have dollars, I have Euros.” Then his hand reaches for my chin, stroking it even as I flinch.
“No sir!”
Then his hands drop down and he touches my breast.
I step into the shovelling right uppercut I hammer into his belly. His face is a picture, half gagging and half spluttering, eyes bugging out in surprise, as he bends double. He is a big man but past his prime and out of condition. Perhaps this spoilt child of a man has never been properly punched by someone who knows how to fight?
He does not see my left elbow coming, slashing through the air, slamming into his right cheek as he is bent over. I do not wish to risk my fingers on his face with a punch without a glove.
At any rate the elbow drops him and he lies on his side on the floor clutching his face, looking up at me now like a scared little rat, his wallet discarded on the floor between us.
I know for what I have done the management would sack me. It does not matter what the barang has done or said or what he might have done. But right now I am in control of this man.
I kneel down on my haunches and look at him sternly, my voice firm now “You tell this happened I come with my brothers. I have many brothers. We find you here… we find you at airport. We cut out your eyes!”
I take his wallet from the floor and pull out the notes, I discard the dollars and the euros and the larger denomination riel throwing them back to him, keeping only the smaller bills that I might have possibly on me. But looking at it quickly it is probably as much as I make in 2 or 3 weeks.
“Room service fee. Stay on ground as I leave.” I say tersely.
“Yes, okay ….” he says shakily.
“Shut up, fat man.”
I pull the trolley backwards rumbling away, much more slowly than I would like to escape in case he tries anything. At the door I pause, theatrically drawing my left thumb across my throat, looking down at him and glaring, before I make a noisy exit with my trolley.
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I walk to the main street looking for Jewell. She is my oldest friend and I knew her since she was 6 before she had that name and before she was a bar girl.
A bar girl’s job is to make men want to buy beer and for that they get pay and tips. Sometimes bar girls make extra money giving men other things they want after beer. So, people look down on bar girls and people look down on me as well given my work, so Jewell and I are still friends. Besides, she has been doing my bleached highlights since I was 14 so I need to see to talk to her about that. Jewell is the queen of hair products, as well as a bar girl.
Jewell is at her usual spot at the end of the long teak topped bar at Monki. I recognise her instantly in her beer company uniform of yellow hot pants, a matching boob tube and a perfectly layered mane of thick black hair.
It is only nine thirty so it I thought it would be slow enough that we could talk. I see her talking to a tall skinny barang woman pale with fine long blond hair standing with her back to the open window of the bar in a short black romper suit and sandals. Jewell spies me out of the corner of her eye and shoots me a warning glance, sticking her arm out behind the woman’s back and wagging her finger warning me away, not taking her gaze away from the barang. I turn on my heels and begin to trudge back to my mother’s room.
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Her thick lustrous dark hair is such an exotic contrast to my fine blonde hair while she smells of spices and oils that I do not know the names of.
The woman is small and warm as we spoon feeling like a child lying naked on the bed with my long body wrapped around her, the only light coming from the bathroom. However, after what she did with her fingers and her tongue, I know she is anything but a child.
We are both pretending to be asleep, both wanting her to leave now.
Before putting my phone, my iPad and my purse in the safe I left four ten-dollar bills on the sideboard.
I had been going to the bar with the other trainees at the kick boxing camp for a drinks evening organised by the camp. We are all western (if you count Australians?) and nearly all white. I hadn’t actually wanted to go but it seemed pathetic to come here and do nothing but see the temple, train pradal saray and have a fight with a local.
The other trainees were mainly men apart from two basic straight bitches who decided they hated me as soon as they found out how much more advanced than them I was. Most of the men were braying meatheads, so it was no surprise that I was on the edge of their group and thinking of calling it a night early.
The two basic bitches suck cocktails sourly in a corner and make dagger eyes at me. I expect they would call me out if they weren’t wholly certain I would destroy them. The meatheads are utterly uninterested in all three of us, preferring the easier local girls, who buzz around them like files around fresh dung.
She was a bar girl in a yellow beer company uniform, showing most of her arse in hot pants and her non-existent cleavage in a boob tube. She was like a little bird with fine features, luminescent skin, big brown eyes you could drown in and amazing luscious long black hair. She offered to get me a beer and asked if one of the men was my boyfriend.
I thought she was trying to defuse trouble in case she made a play for him.
I looked her in the eyes and told her I was into girls expecting to shock her, but she batted her long eye lashes at me, ran a hand through her fantastic hair and told me she preferred girls too.
Now she is on her phone, probably arranging her pick-up.
She had so obviously done this before, even knowing how to sneak into the back of the hotel through a gap in the fence and then inside via the staff entrance without having to go through the lobby. Messaging finished she turns towards me. Quickly I close my eyes pretending to be asleep.
“Hey…..tough girl….I go home now. My mother worried.” She says in her sing-song accent as her hand brushes my cheek.
I blink pretending badly to awaken and just smile. I’m not asking her to stay.
I watch her cute skinny arse wiggle pulling on her hot pants and shimmy into her boob tube as she deftly takes the dollars from the side board and shoves them into her handbag.
She smiles at me and mimes…. Left jab…left jab….right hook….surprisingly well. She told me she had a couple of fights when she was younger ….. against barang like me….. but she had a glass jaw and bar girl work pays better. I don’t think I believe her.
She picks up her big wedge heels and waves bye bye smiling to me as I sit up in the bed naked smiling at her and then she is, thankfully, gone.
I have been on a long dry patch just recently and it was good.
I try not to dwell on the fact I just paid for sex for the first time in my life.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I wait for Jewell round the back at the staff entrance on my mother’s moto, Feng the nightwatchman let me in. A few riels kill his curiosity about why I am here in the middle of the night.
She is still in her yellow boob tube and hot pants uniform from earlier, but she has a broad smile on her face for me and gives me a big hug.
“Hey Lucky, sorry about before. How is my best girl!?!”
“Sleepy it’s the middle of the night.”
“I know I make it up to you, you want some money for this? I couldn’t think of a better bodyguard than you.”
“No, it is fine really. I have just had some good fortune with money recently.” I don’t care to think about what the money Jewell just got might smell of. “But I need a favour, I have a fight coming up and I want you to help me bleach my hair. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about earlier, I couldn’t just ask on the phone.”
“Of course, stupid, you don’t even have to ask! Let’s go eh? It’s really cold and my nipples are like reeds out here!”
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There is a group of us waiting outside the Star Khmer Kick Box gym.
When I arrive some other fighters and a few moto taxi drivers are all there, talking, chewing gum, smoking or playing with our phones until the barang finish up. They should have been finished by three thirty but some of them are keen wanting extra practice before their fights in a few days.
I look around the group of young men around me, many of their opponents for those fights are on this cracked side-walk.
Master Lee, who owns Star, will not let us enter and start training until the last barang leaves.
I am standing alone and then Ssabrang waves to me, emerging from behind a group of boys. “Hey Lucky!”
I like Ssabrang a lot and not just because we train together. She is clever and pretty but with the heart and skill of a tiger. She looks like a skinny typical girl from the street but she is much better than her 12-7 record suggests. In her last fight she knocked out a Japanese woman who had solid skills with a head kick in the first round. The way it works these days is that if the toughest barang woman in any given class is short, Ssabrang gets her. If she is bigger, I get her, which is the case this time.
We meet with a hug. “Did you get fifty this time?” I ask her.
She nods happily. “Yes, and you?”
I shrug. “I couldn’t get Lee to go higher than sixty, the Chinese snake, but I did make him promise to put me on the poster.”
“Yes! I know! Come see….” She takes my hand and pushes me through the group of guys crowding around the new Star fight promotion poster in a glass case by the entrance.
There I am half way up the bill. I have no idea where Master Lee got the photo from but it is from when I had my hair fully bleached last year in a blue vest and I have my arms folded which makes my arm muscles look big and impressive. The only other woman on the poster is my opponent right next to me on it. She is pale barang with a square face, foreign blue eyes, high cheekbones and a big straight nose. She has long blonde wavy hair and big looking fists held up in front of her face. This is the first time I have ever laid eyes on her. I read her name in barang lettering slowly under her picture… Bar-bar-a Gor-dol-a.
“You’re a big star now, Lucky! You still talk to me now?”
“Haha. Now it is public I had better win, huh.”
I might joke about it but this matters to me. It also matters to me that we are both now getting paid as much most of the male fighters now.
While I am reading the poster slowly the last of the barangs must have left the gym.
Ssabrang tugs on my arm and pulls me around. “Hey Lucky, come look!”
There is a very tall and pale barang woman putting on a helmet the moto taxi driver just gave her. She wears a stripey vest, loose shorts, sandals and a small backpack, like barang always seem to have on. That can only be her.
In those seconds I check her out: long, thick, pale legs; powerful looking hips; a slim torso with narrow shoulders; a long slender neck; and long skinny arms, but ending in big hands like a man with long boney fingers. I also notice the calluses on her knuckles and blotch marks from healing bruises across her legs and forearms, the same as mine.
Then she climbs onto the pillion seat on the motorcycle, grasps the side of the seat, barks “Tow!” and the moto taxi roars off.
“So? What do you think? It looks like she trains hard at least.” Ssabrang asks.
“I think she has reach and she will fight like a Thai using her height to bring her knees in, like most barang do. But I will smash her body until she breaks … then knock her out.”
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I watch the early fights before I go to get ready.
These are my fellow western Star gym trainees with the least skill. The locals they are picked to fight against don’t have much skill either. They wildly flail at each other often gassing out completely before the final round even. Once or twice one or the other fighter will land a good shot laying his opponent out. But mostly they are both standing and exhausted at the end of three rounds with the decision going to the judges.
I notice the crowd cheer a lot harder when the loser is a foreigner like me, but that is to be expected anywhere. Whenever a local won they would then go around the crowd with a bucket and the crowd would throw money in. Perhaps there was a bounty on the heads of us foreigners tonight?
The two other western women from Star fair very differently in their bouts. The first woman fights a smaller local girl as hopeless as she is. After three uneventful and painful to watch rounds she is awarded a decision win over the small Khmer and promptly bursts into tears. Yuck. The second one is not so lucky. It is a total mismatch and her local opponent knocks her out in just over a minute with a roundhouse kick to the side of the head. The local crowd was overjoyed and her bucket reflected that. Since it is local riel though I would be surprised if it was even 20 dollars in total.
Then I go the changing room to get changed. My only conscious female camp mate and I studiously ignore each other as she changes back into her street clothes. My hair is already tightly braided into blonde pigtails. I strip with my back to her and pull on my black plastic groin guard, then my white racer back spandex Adidas sports bra, carefully inserting the plastic breast protectors underneath against my small breasts.
I went to town on the shorts ordering them in advance from Star, 120 dollars and just for this fight. Hand-made satin shorts to my own design. I love them already! 4-inch black boxing style, slit high at the sides for maximum flexibility with little white skulls embroidered at the bottom all around the legs and best of all “~*L*A*D*Y*~*P*U*N*I*S*H*E*R*~” embroidered in thick black letters across the wide white elasticated waist band.
I slip my bare feet into pool siders, sling my white Fairtex ten-ounce gloves around my neck, gather up my hand tape and mouth guard go to get my hands wrapped. It is so hot in this country there is no need for a robe.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Master Lee comes for me as I wait shadow boxing alongside the few other male western Star trainees that are left just outside the main arena. We are just a handful now from the twenty or so at the start of the night; the ones who can actually fight.
“Come Barbara, you get your fight now.”
I put my hands on his shoulders and walk into the arena, open to the warm night with only a roof.
Normally I would look down at my feet but I want to see every detail of this alien experience. There are perhaps 150 spectators, mainly groups of men but also some families scattered around two rows of benches on all four corners. The crash and wail of local traditional music plays from under-powered speakers overhead. Not a bad crowd when they have no idea who half the fighters are.
They do not go in for as much rituals as the Thais here. There are no Monkuls and no armbands.
My opponent is already in the ring finishing her Twai Kru dance to the blaring music like a set of bagpipes being strangled. She balances on one leg with her arms extended like a ballet dancer incongruously wearing worn red 10-ounce boxing gloves.
This is the first time I have seen her. She is thickly built for an Asian straight up and down with no curves at all, she could almost be a man with her broad shoulders. Tall for an Asian too, nearly 170 cm so within 10 cm of my height. While not overly muscled, she has a look of solid farm girl power about her. She was a wide round dish of a face with small features, impassive looking rather than pretty like many of the people here.
I am told she has had nearly 40 professional fights, but she looks like she might not be out of her teens. Most importantly she has knocked out no less than 15 other women, which is impressive by itself.
In her navy nylon shorts with three white horizontal bands across the legs and loose grey vest she looks relaxed and ready. Her short hair is shaved around the sides and back and pulled into a top knot with a single platinum blonde streak running through it. I smile, does she not know she looks like a bull dyke?
She stops her dance now and stands watching me blankly with a sneer on her small mouth as Master Lee holds the ropes down and I climb into the ring.
We start to walk round the four corners of the ring, as the Thais do. The idea is we bless each of the four corners. I believe in no god from here and have no one to ask for blessings from so I fake it. I glance at her as she walks by the ropes across the ring from me and I see her looking back blank faced at me. Our rituals finished we arrive at our corners standing facing one another me in the Red, her in the blue.
Then slowly she draws her left glove across her neck the thumb of her glove against her throat like she will cut me. The crowd cheer her promise to them.
I’m told her name is Lucky but tonight I aim to disprove that. Conclusively.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I understood nothing the referee said to us when he called us the center but I understand the gong they ring well enough.
I adopt an orthodox stance, leading with my left as I advance on Lucky, my guard up high. The Khmer circles me in a looser stance staying light on the balls of her bare feet.
I have maybe 10-15 centimetres of reach on her and I snap out a couple of quick left jabs to test my range. She takes the first on her gloves, slips outside the second to her right and then sends out a left teep kick aimed at my torso but I pull back and het foot just falls short.
I reset and step into the edge of my range and flick out the left jab again. She ducks down and makes to throw a right hook to my body, committing, but my left jab never comes. I pull the feinted left glove back and plough a right cross into her cheek which lands with a PISH! audible even over the dirge local music playing on the tannoys. I throw a straight overhand left aimed at the centre of her round face but she steps outside of it to her right, then she posts her left foot and slams her right shin into the side of my left thigh with a solid low kick, which stings I won’t lie.
She dances away and waves her gloves slightly and nods her head at me clearly inviting me to come fight her, as I spin around to face her. She doesn’t wait again planting her left foot, pivoting off her hips and throwing a right high round house kick her foot aimed at where my jaw is. Or was. I pull my upper body back and her foot sails past my, not more than inches in front of my face.
I retaliate with a fast-left jab, my white glove smacking her just below her left eye with a PISH! Then, I snap out a low right low shin kick, my shin slamming into the side of her left calf. I draw my right foot back quickly and throw a right hook aimed at her lower ribs, but she blocks the punch with her left elbow easily and rewards my aggression with an overhand right that crashes into my right cheek sending me backwards with a heavy thud.
We are both happy enough to back off after that and reset before recommencing hostilities. I notice she fights off the back-left foot putting most of her weight on it. I need to use that? Oooofff! The price of my momentary inattention is another fast right side mid kick from her which catches my side with her shin in the flesh between my ribs and my hip.
I press forward again, leading with my left jab, but she is shy after I caught her with the feint, staying at distance and looking for an opening. I drop my left glove a little and Lucky thinks she sees one, winding up from her left foot to throw another big right high roundhouse kick. But my left glove is up fast protecting myself with my left forearm and my right leg is up even faster, my right foot thrown straight out in a right foot jab kick burying my foot in the Khmer woman’s belly, hitting her fast enough that I beat her to the punch running her roundhouse kick and with such surprise that I knock her off her feet and onto her arse. She isn’t hurt though, just sitting up surprised.
The local referee motions for me to go the neutral corner for a count with waving hands but I can’t resist. I draw the thumb of white left glove across my throat in mockery of her earlier gesture while she sits on her butt. Only then I go to a neutral corner. That gets a laugh from the crowd for sure. Her dark eyes glare at me and she pouts.
The referee counts her out with his fingers, the only language we can all understand. But the count is meaningless from that slip, she is standing at three and at five the referee moves away from her. She is raring to go, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, gloves low, shaking them at me, beckoning again for me to come at her.
I am in no rush, advancing slowly. She waits for me with her left leg planted behind her and her right foot half off the ground like a praying mantis, her round face a picture of concentration. It’s so obviously a challenge. Suddenly I dart to my left looking to outflank her throwing a left hook aimed at the side of her head. But in one fluid motion, she plants her right foot and fires out her left leg in a mid side kick powering off her hips. She is slightly off target hitting me in the upper right thigh with her foot, but her sheer speed is enough to knock me back.
She powers off her left leg thudding it into the canvas and bouncing off it like a triple jumper going into the air with right knee in front of her as her battering ram gambling on landing a flying knee strike, but I throw myself backwards into the ropes, the ropes bowing loosely with my weight she misses me careering into the ring ropes with her own momentum.
As she turns my white glove is waiting for her, a right hook hitting solidly into her left cheek sending her spit flying PISH! knocking her back into the ropes. My white left glove goes to the back of her head pushing her head forward and down and my right knee flashes upwards towards her aiming for her face or her chest.
But Lucky is fast, crossing her arms in front of her and blocking my knee strike. I keep her head down with both gloves on the back of her head and settle for stabbing knee strikes into the sides of her right and left thighs, where all the nerve bundles are, wanting to take some of the speed out of her legs.
She wraps her forearms on the tops of my shoulders using one of them to lever my head back and force my side into the ropes besides her. She lands a few knee strikes of her own into the side of my left thigh paying me back as we trade knees. Then she pulls herself away from the ropes herself and pushes her body into mine, shoving me back into the ropes and nearly off my feet with only the ropes supporting me. I have to throw my arms over her shoulders for balance.
She pulls herself back and then a sudden sharp pain screams across the side of chest like a shark bite as she slams the blade of her right elbow against the side of my lower ribs. I sag into the ropes and she pulls herself fully free, half turning her back to me before bringing her left elbow up hard and fast behind her like a stabbing spear slamming the point of her elbow straight into my mouth. My lower lip slams into my mouthguard like a blister being lanced with a hammer. My head flies back lolling over the ropes and almost immediately I can taste the metallic tang of my own blood in my mouth. Bouncing off the ropes I throw my arms around her again clinching, forcing her arms down to stop her from capitalising on her vicious elbow work.
Lucky wraps her arms around my waist and hacks at my ankles with her shins trying to trip me, but we just sag again into the ropes, our clinch devolving into dirty boxing and the occasional sloppy knee strike at the other’s expense and as battle for control of the clinch.
I don’t hear the gong and if Lucky hears it, she does not acknowledge it. We have to be peeled apart by the referee, both glaring at each other. For my part I am very annoyed with myself for being bullied and hurt by her elbow work in the clinch like that. Although I knocked her down, she finished the round strongly with her hard and precise elbow strikes.
I have paid for my mistakes with a bloody lip and sore ribs, a manageable price so far.
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Ponlok is waiting for me in the corner, with stool, bucket and sponge. Ponlok helped turn me from a schoolgirl with no clue but a good chin into what I am now.
To the barang he is just an old man who can’t speak English and helps out in the gym as a gopher and cleaner. But in the 80s, when everything started again, he was a well-known and feared fighter. Back then they fought on bare earth in the markets, no gloves, fists bandaged and wrapped in duct tape like the savage Burmese still do. But back then there were no barang and no dollars, so Ponlok has to scrape a living along with the rest of us. I promised him and extra seven dollars to be in my corner tonight and another 3 dollars for his great-nephew Akra.
“Told you she was good.” He says matter-a-factly pulling out my mouthguard rinsing it before offering me a sip of water as I sit on the stool.
Akra hovers nearby but so far there is no work for him to do as my cut man, which is just as well given his limited experience.
I spit the water out. “Good boxing. Great reach. The rest is okay. I bloodied her.”
“Her kicking improved a lot during the camp and watch her knees in the clinch. Also, she has the fire in her belly to fight like you.” The barang do not even see Ponlok as he moves around the Star gym doing his chores right in front of them as they train, but he sees them and he knows how to read a fighter.
“I want you to mix up your stance, sometimes go in lower bent forward, with a high guard like a barang boxer. Go under her jab and hook into her body… bam… bam.” He mimes it. “She can be slow to respond to a change from an opponent. Hit her at mid-range with your fists and kick her to the body to soften her up, then finish her off with a kick or an elbow, just like you did just now. A tall tree falls the hardest.”
“Yes uncle!” I say nodding and smiling. In my country, an uncle is not just your relative, it is a sign of respect to an elder you still have much to learn from.
Ponlok puts my black mouthguard back in and I bite down hard upon it, banging my well-worn red glove together as I rise from my stool.
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My corner team fix up my bloody lower lip with an ephedrine swab and a thick smear of petroleum jelly but I guess I will have a nasty cut and a fat lip in the morning. I’ve had a lot worse.
We both come out fast raring to go, meeting in the centre ring.
She tries to throw a right mid kick out at my side but I’ve seen her do that enough to read her now and I raise my left leg quickly in a teep push kick beating her to the punch my foot landing on the waistband of her navy shorts, pushing her off and running her balance her right leg flailing.
Then she plants her heels on the canvas bending forward, guard high. I respond using my left jab, relying on my reach, cocking my white right glove for a cross. But she ducks low under my left arm. PISH! ughhh! a right hook into my ribs….PISH! ugh! A left hook into my side. Out of instinct I pull back retreating to reset and the Khmer’s right glove slices up from her crouch murderously missing my chin by inches. Her red gloves are so worn I could feel her knuckles as she hit me in the ribs.
As I retreat looking to reset she advances, feet planted, bent low and the same high guard. I plant my left foot and hit her with a low kick my right shin slamming into her left calf. I keep my elbows tight in, guarding my long slender body. PAFF! PAFF! Her left and then right hooks batter my arms but she drives me back again just with the sheer power of her punches beads of sweat flying off her forehead in the night heat.
Driven back again I know I have to stop her somehow and I post my right foot to throw my left shin into her ribs in a diagonal kick. But I am too slow! She catches my kick wrapping her right arm around my extended calf. My leg extended she smashes the point of her left elbow into the meat of the top of my thigh sending a shock of pain up from the nerve centres in my thigh into my spine.
But Lucky isn’t done with me yet taking a few steps forward to unbalance me as I hop on one leg, arms waving, she kicks at my right shin with a low left kick and then she plants an overhand left to my right cheek as she finally knocks me over forcing me to fall on my arse.
She ignores the referee bending forward looking at me with her coal black eyes blazing, grinning showing me her black mouthguard. We don’t speak the same language, but I understand her well enough. That was mainly to pay me back for knocking her down in the first round.
The referee waves her off and she struts to a neutral corner with both arms in the air nodding getting cheers from the local crowd. Like I say the locals like it when one of their fighters bullies a foreigner. I guess it’s their sport, although really, it’s just a copy of Muay Thai.
I am not badly hurt and I watch the referee count from the canvas. It gives me a little time to think how to counter her new and embarrassingly effective tactics. I sort of have a plan, something new I learnt here. I just hope it works. The referee counts with his hands knowing I won’t have a word of Khmer and I am up at six. His old wrinkled eyes look into mine to check I still have a fight in me, but my white gloves are up and I’m raring to go. He steps aside to let us have at it.
She advances again with that now familiar low crouch, feet flat planted on the canvas for power with the same high tight guard she has been using all round. I snap out a high right front kick aimed at her forehead. She puts her guard higher and blocks it, but that is the idea. My foot comes back down with speed I didn’t have until two weeks training with Master Lee and his team. I bounce off my right leg, closing the distance with her launching my left knee high like a missile aimed at her chest in a jumping knee bomb. I catch her flatfooted still adjusting her guard my left knee slamming into her sternum with mighty force and I hear her grunt as she staggers backwards badly hurt. The crowd cheer to see a barang to score with a properly done flying knee bomb.
I throw a straight right breaking apart her ragged guard catching her flush on the bridge of her nose and then cuff her with a left cross to the side of the head as she staggers backwards. Lucky doesn’t seem so lucky any more and the crowd are clapping…. this time for me. For the first time, one of us is in real trouble.
She tries to get her guard together as she staggers backwards, but she isn’t the only one who can go the body. I slam my left fist into the meaty right side of her ribs with a good hook PAFF! and wrap my left glove around the back of her head trying to force her head down again. She is bleeding from a cut on the bridge of her nose now, probably from my right glove, with thin very red blood streaming down the side of her nose across the edge of her mouth and down her chin.
But despite the beating she has taken Lucky is a fighter. She gets her left glove around the back of my neck and shoves the palm of her right glove right my face, trying to lever my neck back to take control of the clinch. She grinds the laces of her right glove into my mouth and I feel the cut on my lower lip burn and tear, through the protective petroleum jelly coating. We clinch and sway like two dancing drunks, swapping knee strikes to each other’s hips and thighs as I try to roughly wrestle Lucky into the ropes.
I get her there and push her off me into the ropes, planning to plough another knee bomb into her sternum to break her.
As she bounces herself off the ropes, I do not see her flashing right elbow until an instant before it hits me in the left eye socket, just to the left side of my eye under my eye brow. Sharp flashing pain sears through my brain and it is all I can do to grab Lucky and fall towards the ropes on top of her, as again the ropes bow to take both our weights. Lucky batters me with her free left hand throwing short hooks with her big worn red glove into the back of my head by my right ear.
Through the fog in my brain I hear the dirge music like some crazy funeral march, the crowding yelling like dogs and someone yelling at me, it must be Master Lee, “Fight! Fight! FIGHT!”
Everything out of my left eye is blurry and I can see tiny white spots like sparkly stars out at the edges of my vision. I find some strength and focus from somewhere deep inside me. I won’t fall to this slant eyed bitch.
Lucky is body to body to me her sweat sodden grey cotton vest like a wet rag against my chest. I push my right forearm against her throat, making the ropes sag even more and I find an opening for my left white glove hammering short shovelling hooks aimed at her liver. They don’t have enough power to drop but they will score with the judges and surely hurt her.
Then reach I down and try get my right hand behind her calves to topple her aiming to throw her bodily over the sagging ropes and then head first out of the ring. All the while that Asian bitch keeps throwing her left glove into the back of my head on the right side, never stopping
But me trying to throw Lucky out of the ring is too much even for this referee and he grabs me by the shoulder pulling me off her trying to get us apart to restart. We fight him to get at one another, throwing our fists at one another around him. My left eye still stings like hell and I can’t really see out of it.
Then the gong rings and he shoves us roughly and bodily apart.
Lucky stands there looking at me inscrutable, a little blurry on the left side. She is bleeding from the bridge of her nose and her right cheek is pretty swollen, arms limp, gloves at her sides, panting hard.
With my left eye and my bleeding mouth, I know I look worse than her.
She extends her big old red right glove to me. I tap it with my new white Fairtex glove and our eyes meet for a second. No great understanding is exchanged I’m afraid. Weary we turn our backs and return to our corners to both be patched up for the final round.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ponlok and Akra are waiting for me with the stool, bucket water and towel. Ponlok is smiling which is a good sign?
Ponlok puts me down on the stool and takes out my mouth guard. Akra puts a cotton swab soaked in alcohol on the cut on my nose. It stings like crazy and I screw up my nose.
“Good, let Akra hurt you! Next time I tell you to switch stances, switch stances! Don’t just do the same thing again and again till she figures it out. She could have broken you there.”
“It was working well! Did you not see her eye?” I protest. Akra presses a cold iron against the swelling in cheek “Owww! Akra!”
Ponlok looks over his shoulder at the commotion in the red corner. There are four of the Star team working on her right now, all bent over her left side, trying to keep that eye open, plus close the cut I reopened on her mouth too. Maybe they should stop the fight, her left eye looked pretty bad? The doctor is trying to get to her, but Master Lee stands in front of him arguing, guarding her. Heavens forbid any one of us should stop a barang from doing whatever it was she wanted to do.
Ponlok looks back at me, eyes stern. “Lee will keep the doctor away and this will go on. This one was always the last out of the gym every day, she has determination. If it goes to the judges Lee will pour poison in their ears. You want to win, you have to knock her out!”
This is the Ponlok who lectures, not the one who tells me dirty jokes just to see me blush, I know to stay silent. “I want you to get your glove in her left eye every chance you get, until she can’t see out of it any more. Either the referee will stop the fight or you go round to her left side where she can’t see you and kick her in the head. Got it?”
“Yes uncle.” I say simply, nodding. I have three minutes, I can finish her.
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The whole of the break they work on my left eye, first with the cold iron to try to reduce the swelling. Then when that didn’t work they put my mouthguard in and just used their thumbs to try to force the swelling away from my right eye. All of four of them, eight thumbs working the swollen flesh around my eye open. It hurt like hell but I just bit down on that plastic like a dog with a bone and took it. No way am I stopping now.
I get up wanting to finish this but as my team leave the ring I see the doctor and ref, two old Asian men, waiting for me….. standing between my opponent and I. What bullshit is this!?!
Master Lee is back on the ring apron, gesticulating, shouting in Khmer. The referee squares up to him on the other side of the ropes and the two bellow at each other, spit flying. The doctor meanwhile shuffles up to me and looks at my eye, his face about level with my white gloves. He prods my eye socket with his fingers, it hurts but I dare not flinch. Then he moves his right forefinger back and forth, seeing if I can follow it with my left eye. I can, just about.
I know about four words of Khmer from the two weeks I’ve been here. But if I keep it simple enough they usually understand English. I raise my right glove and gesture towards Lucky waiting in the blue corner standing shaking out her thick legs, her worn red gloves hanging loosely at her sides like unexploded bombs. “I ….. fight…. ?” I ask loudly but almost plaintively to the old man. I would honestly get down on both knees and beg for the chance to fight at this point.
He arches an eyebrow and curls his lip “Oui madamoseille…. you can fight.” Then he turns on his heels to exit the ring, raising his palm upwards. The gong for the final round rings.
Neither of us waste any time closing. I keep my left glove high guarding my eye. For her part she is always circling to her right, looking for the opening where I can’t see. We watch and feint for a little while but this is the last round, our last chance to seal victory.
She shifts her weight onto her left foot and I know. She rotates off her hip for another side mid kick into my open left side, but I’m quicker. I raise my right leg again and use a foot jab teep kick to her abs, ruining her balance for her kick and pushing her back, out of her reach, but within mine!
I flash out a hard straight left and my white glove buries itself in her swollen right cheek. At the same time she throws an overhand right aiming for my damaged left eye, but her big red glove falls just short of her target because of her shorter arms.
She ducks under my follow-up right cross to her jaw though! PAFF! her left hook slams into ribs just under my right breast…ughh… PAFF! her right hook buries her red right glove into my left breast protector and the edges of the plastic breast protector dig into my chest like a cookie cutter into a roll of pale pastry.
My right glove grabs the back of her neck trying to pull her head down and I hammer a low left uppercut aimed at her liver. I feel her body shiver and her mouth opens wide showing her black mouthguard. Now, finally, she is damaged and I can pull her head down and draw back my left leg before slamming my knee into her head once, then twice. She is falling now, falling face first to the canvas!
There are no taunts and posturing from me. I need the referee to start counting as soon as possible, without him asking I pretty much run to the neutral corner my victorious left glove raised.
Lucky is kneeling bent forward, her big red left glove planted on the canvas and her right glove cradling her side. Her head bent down I can’t see what my knees did to her face, but some blood drips onto the floor of the ring.
Let her stay down I pray silently!
I can’t really see the referee count as he has his back to me but she is struggling to get up now. She is tough as nails, I’ve finished more than one fight with a punch to the liver like that. As she gets to her feet, I see I reopened the cut on the bridge of her nose and that the nose itself is badly swollen, just like her right cheek from the constant smack of my left jab, plus she has a new cut on her right cheek now probably from when I kneed her in the face?
She looks damaged but still determined, her gloves are up and she looks at me with eyes like burning black coals as the referee checks she can fight on. I already know what the answer will be, getting ready in my orthodox stance, leading with my left, left glove held high to protect my damaged eye, right elbow low to try to protect my battered body.
He gets away from between us, bringing his hands together signalling for us to fight. Damaged or not, there is no hesitation from her as she comes straight at me and I do the same. We are both moving much slower now though, through a combination of tiredness and the cumulative effect of the hammering we’ve handed each other.
I have my guard up high thinking she will go for my eye, but she snaps out fast painful right diagonal kick her shin crunching into my battered lower left ribs. My left jab lashes in response out but she blocks the punch with her right forearm and smacks me in the mouth with a left cross. I can feel her knuckles in that old glove each and every time she hits me. I go for her liver again with a low left uppercut, but you can’t try the same trick twice with this one and she blocks my white glove with her right elbow. She returns the favour with a banging left hook into my side but I take the punch against my bicep.
Then she makes her move, a slicing right elbow aimed at my left eye with enough malice in it to finish me. I take it against the blade of my left forearm and pain slashes up my arm through my elbow up my bicep and right the way through to my core. I bite down harder on my mouthpiece and keep going.
I throw a clubbing right aimed at her left eye, she ducks down, but still takes the brunt of it to the side of her head. She ducks her head down PAFF! PAFF! Two hard hooks bang into my body again and more pain shoots through my core. My chest is burning and I wheeze in air raggedly. Keep going!
She is bent forward as I throw my arms around her shoulders and throw my right knee into the nerve bundles on the side of her left thigh. I feel her body shiver through her shoulders. My body aches but I take heart from her pain. I steel myself to throw another big knee strike into her chest.
But Lucky tucks the top of her head under my chin and her big red fists pummel me again like pistons on a machine with short hooks into my sides, making my long legs shake PAFF! PAFF! I can only shallows now breaths because of the damage I have taken to body and even just breathing like that hurts now. Keep going!
I try to pull her head down again the weight of my arms pushing on the back of her thick neck as my knees lash out at her thighs. She bulls into me forcing me back against the turnbuckle, my back crashing into the heavy padding. I wrap the back of my left calf around the back of her right leg and pull it back while pushing her head down, taking away her balance and leaving her arse hanging on the middle rope, her legs swept out from under her.
I get a good short right hook into her left eye socket while she is floundering there, but she gets her feet planted on the canvas and rears up pressing her left forearm against my neck and pushes me back off her with grunting power from her thicker shoulders. My back to the corner again now, she shoves the palm of her right glove in my poor left eye, trying to rub her laces into it, her legs spread wide for leverage. I draw my right leg back and knee her as hard as I can between her spread legs, hitting her hard on her pelvic bone. Her body shudders but even then, she refuses to go down, pushing her whole weight forward on me pressing her chest into mine..
We both know the end of the round is close and we both need to score. Totally spent we wrap our arms around each other and we clinch slamming knee strikes into each other legs. She breaks off a couple of times to slam her left elbow into my side, as we wrestle in the corner of the ring our furious battle reduced to scrappy and exhausted dirty boxing fought at close quarters in just one corner.
Very soon there are mens’ hands on us pulling us apart, holding our arms as we stare blankly at each other, panting, spent, sucking in air. Our fight must have ended?
I can see the worry in her eyes, as she calculates whether the serious damage she has done to me will be worth more or less than my two knockdowns to her one, as the vibrant blood from the cuts on her nose and her cheek ooze down her face. The men shove us together now and we mime a brief embrace, both pre-occupied and eager more than anything to know the result of the fight.
Then my corner team take me, sweeping me away with the four of them, taking my out mouthguard, easing my aching swollen hands out of my gloves, mopping away the blood and sweat as best they can. Master Lee is not with us, but I see him with my good right eye at the judges table, gesturing and talking fast.
Numbly I begin to appreciate how much my ribs and face hurt now as the adrenaline wears off and I see the splotches of blood on my white sports bra.
Somewhat cleaned up I am thrust into the centre ring besides the referee and Lucky. The referee holds my left arm and Lucky’s right one at the wrist. This is it. Please, let it be me?
The announcer comes, a small man in a white polo shirt and trousers who looks like mole with his short stature, bald head and round glasses. He says a lot in Khmer that I understand none of and then reads from a small piece of paper. It sounds like it is probably the judges’ scores.
Then, the referee raises my left arm.
It takes a second or so but I realise I have won! The crowd mostly clap, but some of them boo. My team all swarm round me hugging me. Master Lee clasps my cheeks in both hands and tells me this was the best womens bout he has seen in years. Then he is gone, getting ready to prepare his next fighter for the ring. I feel good but also hurt and exhausted.
Lucky is across from me, she looks utterly deflated, eyes downcast. For a moment I think how easily that could have been me. She sees me looking at her and manages to turn the corners of her mouth up in a half smile. We go to embrace, more genuinely this time
“Good fight!”….. “Good fight.” We say it almost simultaneously looking into each other’s battered faces. We smile, but I am surprised. For some reason I am shocked she can actually speak English.
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The alarm on my phone goes off at 10 am which is an indulgent luxury as the last two weeks have all been 6 am starts to train.
But I need it today as I awake in a rough sea of hurt. My legs, belly, chest and forearms all throb with a low level of pain I know means bruising, but its my head that really hurts and my vision is pretty blurry on my left side. I cautiously pull off the sheet and swing my legs over the edge of the bed to survey my naked body. I can see in the half light of the slightly open curtain as I sit up that my thighs and shins are mottled with red and purpling bruising.
Turning on the bed-side light reveals more damage, the bruising on my forearms and the reddish and purple welts across my belly and ribs are like a flat map of hilly country. But my bronze winner’s medal on a red ribbon sits on the bedside table by my phone.
I take a deep breath (which hurts in itself) and start to hobble towards the bathroom. I only have 4 and a half hours before the plane leaves.
I am awful person to travel with. I am anally punctual. If an airline ticket says to arrive at the airport three hours before the flight I must be there no later than three and a half hours before come hell or high water, so in my current condition my anxiety level is rising.
I can see why my vision is fuzzy when I look in the mirror, the swelling my team make such an effort to contain during the fight has blossomed overnight like some kind of virulent fungus into bulbous reddish purple lumps of flesh sprouting around my left eye. Together with the deep gash on my lower lip and other assorted minor marks I look like a railway station tramp.
I clean myself hurrying as much as I can in my condition and painfully throw everything into my rucksack. I put my phone in my bum bag and my medal around my neck. I earnt it the hard way.
I did buy a pair of counterfeit Ray-Bans from the local market last week thinking I might not look great on departure. I shoulder my back, exhaling from the pain across my back and slot the sunglasses over my injured eye, the stem pressing painfully against the inflamed flesh and bone on the left side. While the sun glasses look authentic, the lenses are so dark that with my injured eye I can barely see out of the left side.
I fumble for the door, leaving the room and almost having to touch the walls of the corridor like a blind woman to guide myself. Luckily, at this time it is deserted apart from a chambermaid kneeling beside her trolley. There is something oddly familiar about her in my peripheral vision….
….but I only have three and a half hours till my flight leaves, so I stumble on hurriedly wanting to check out and get a taxi to the airport.
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My shift at the hotel the day after a fight is always harder. When you’ve been knocked down twice then harder still.
I am disappointed by the way the fight ended. I know if had been for more rounds I would have won because I could have forced the doctor to stop it because of the barang’s eye injury or just laid her out. She was stumbling dead on her feet by the end of it. The image comes back into my head of seeing her arm raised in victory, but I try to block it out.
The pain killers the doctor at the fight gave me to take are strong but leave my mouth very dry. I bend with my knees worried my chest will hurt to get water from the mini-bar refill drawer in the cart. I will say I broke one of the mini-bar bottles if anyone checks.
Although my face does not look too bad I have a huge purple bruise on my ribs from her knee. The doctor also told me I was lucky not to have some fractured ribs.
A guest, still drunk or drugged from the night before stumbles past me, but I pay her no mind. I just hope she hasn’t left some nasty stinking mess in her room that I will have to clean up.
These pain killers are really strong and they make me feel different from normal but I need them to get through this shift.
I knock on the door softly. “Monsieur?” The owners are French, so they tell us to speak French. In reality everyone speaks Khmer, Chinese or English.
I knock on the door harder. “Madam…..housekeeping?”
Satisfied I enter, my trolley rattling. It looks like the barang only just arrived and has not had time to make much mess. This one will save me time.
I start work on the bed then I hear the bathroom door open. I turn around startled.
“Oh sorry, I didn’t…………… Woah! What happened to you!”
The barang is tall, young, fit and just wearing shorts. Do barang men spend their whole lives the bathroom?
I have a cut across the bridge of my nose, which is swollen from being nearly broken last night, and I have a mouse under my left eye but the only other damage is the big swelling to my right cheekbone, oh, and another cut on my cheek there as well.
Plus, the bruising across my forearms and shins of course…
“Oh sorry. I….. kickbox. I had big fight last night!” I step away from the cart, post my left foot and execute a scything high right roundhouse kick. With the pills it barely hurts. Maybe I will be able to fight week after next? Master Lee finally promised me 75 dollars a fight.
“That’s really really fast. I wish I was that good, but I’m just learning. Tell me what you think?”
I screw up my face, it is ugly. He has the beginner barang problem. He does not understand the power with a roundhouse comes from your hips. But I think these pills are really strong. I had been trying to avoid people this morning, because random things come into my head.
“No. No. Not good. But show me…..” I search for the phrase in my fuzzy head “…snap kick.”
“That I can do.” He shows me. He has a snake or a dragon tattoo curling around his arm. I like it on him. His snap kick is much better, it is the hips that are the problem.
I squat down and grind my hips in a small circle, growing wider. “Do this. Like me.”
He does it, he does look so funny doing it. It is all I can do not to laugh. These pills are very very strong and I think they are affecting the way I behave.
We loosen the hips for a while. “Now watch… I do three times…. Slow … Slow…. Then fast! You watch and do then.” I pat my hips “Focus here.”
He is a bit looser, faster and better. Not good, but better.
I stand behind him, holding his hips, taking him through the movement with my hands. My English is not good so it is an easier way to show him. I can feel how firm his glutes are under his shorts. He improves a little more.
“Thanks, it really feels better!”
“You take orders from a woman well.”
“Yeah. I grew up with my mom and four sisters.”
“I grew up …. with my mom…also. So, I clean room?”
“No really, I just got here. It’s all good. The help you’ve given me is much better. You’re very good. Say, what’s your name?”
“Lucky.” I think that is the first time a guest actually asked my name. “Well I go now.” I smile at him, wanting to get on but somehow not wanting to leave.
“Lucky, my name is Paul. Can I have your number? I mean I have to do a fight in two weeks. I have a camp lined up and all…. but I kind of need some help …..”
His eyes are a very pale blue just like my opponent from last night, but kinder. My cheeks feel hot. It might be the pills or I might be blushing. When I blush, I go very red.
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It was several years later until my English was good enough to attempt Jane Eyre, but ….
Reader, I married him.
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