Fencing

Today, I miss the clatter of blades. I miss the motion, the way your leg uncoils suddenly as you shoot through the air, casting yourself to a hard commitment, trusting your instincts more than anything. Thinking is too slow, too weak, too likely to keep you on the floor. You have to bounce, you have to move, you have to dodge and weave and duck and parry and dart in and out and back around and then, just then, when the moment is right and for a second you can see their eyes dart downwards through their mask

You flick down, spin around, and lunge through.

At the tip of the sword is a tiny button. It's both small and finely calibrated, and this itself is a minor miracle given how much abuse it takes. You learned to do it yourself, steadying your shaking hands against the floor as you work the tiniest screwdriver into the tiniest screws so you can slip the cap out. You forget to cup your hand over it and push spring goes flying, lost to the gutter. That's why you have a bag full of them.

The cap is simple. There's the contact spring built into it, the one around that that pushes it back out, and the two holes in the side that hold it together when you plug it back into the blade. You're here for the contact today. You turn it the tiniest amount, barely an 16th of a circle, careful as you can. Balance it over the spring, press it in with one finger, and then screw it back together. There's four bags of screws from three different companies and you have to try them all one until you figure out which pairs with this cap. The screwdriver is supposed to be magnetic, supposed to hold them in place, but it only seems to work part of the time.

The leather shim is familiar in your hands, the heft of the weight tester comfortable. It has to pass three tests. The thick one slips between, proving that the tip of the button is far enough away from the base. The thin one goes between and you press down, your eyes studying your pocket tester. It doesn't light up. Pulling the shim out, you press down again. The light, shielded by a cupped hand is a faint red. You never understood why red on this model meant working and green meant failing. You think you bought this one in Quebec. Maybe something about the culture. Finally, you hold the blade vertically and press the weight down. Releasing it, it lifts up. Success. This blade will pass tomorrow. Time to do the others.

Every part is regulated, of course. This blade wouldn't even pass at nationals, because the felt pad in the bell guard is felt not clear. It's too easy to find the wires there, to rub the rubber down thin and press them together, the dull beep echoing with the weight of your cheating. You'd never do it, but you understand the methods. You have to understand the methods to understand the sword and you have to understand the sword because if you can't fix it, you can't fight. And if you can't fight, then what's even the point?

You love your swords. You have three and a half or maybe four or maybe five depending on how you count. Some are in pieces and some are together and some are marked for repairs like the one you're currently lovingly caressing, your hand slipping down the blade to the dented bell guard. You remember when it was new and shiny and you slipped it on the sword. You made this one yourself, taking all the pieces and putting them in order, pressing them together.

Most people prefer the pistol grips, except for the weirdos with their belgians and whatever the other strange kinds are. You picked up a french grip at the start of practice, as did everyone else and it felt right. It felt good. It was how a sword should look, long and powerful and confident. The handle just a straight line wrapped in fingers. You never wanted to use anything else. But that was a mistake, of course. No one uses french grips competitively. The pistol just gives you so much more power and control.

At least, that's true for foil, the sport of decency and rules. You're an epeeist. There's only one binding arbitration in epee. The point goes to whoever hits first. Your second coach cracked it open for you. You don't hold the blade at the guard, feeling the metal crunch into your thumb with ever blow. You hold it as far back as you can manage, turning the handle into precious inches of extra reach. You're already tall, already have long arms and long legs. You may lack the precision, the control, the power of the pistol grip. But if you and your opponent both put your arms out, you always get the hit. You can fight a little further back, maintain more of a threat.

But it wasn't an easy road, an easy adaptation. It took a while to build up the grip strength. All those practices for the first sixth months where you came home, hand unable to pick anything up. You started exploring options. You got into gloves with extra rubber grips, thicker handles, heavier pommels. You found a grip you loved but it shredded gloves like nothing and you started going through gloves rapidly. It was worth it when you started to figure out your style. You loved hand hits, foot hits, the simple joy of counterattacking casually. Why parry when you can just disengage and extend? Power isn't everything.

And then you bent the handle for even more control, first done by a famous armourer at a tournament in Quebec and then in the garage, your dad pinning it to a vice and copying that perfect first bend. Each sword copied from the last, each a perfect assembly of grips and ideally weighted pommels, collected through birthday presents and Christmas gifts. Each blade precious. You experimented on that front too, trying a fun coloured blue one until it snapped super early. Your dad bought you back blades from the good supplier in England on his way home from visiting his parents, the blades that were normally impossible to import to Canada.

And in the wee hours of the night before the tournament, in the dim light of the hotel room, you test your blades one by one. You put aside the practise glove, patched with duct tape, and pull out the fresh new one. You test your body wires, examine your plastron for spots, wipe the bottoms of your volleyball shoes (because it's also a lunge sport and there's more selection).

You're going to lose every match you'll play. You're going to cry, from shame, from frustration. You're going to remember this moment every day for the rest of your life and every other moment like it that will happen since.

You'll make your first medal at a tournament that only five people showed up to. Your girlfriend will watch you fence a tournament and declare it the hottest thing you've ever done. You'll start seeing familiar faces because it's a small community and everyone goes to the tournaments. You'll get very familiar with fencing the national champion in your age category because by coincidence he goes to your club too and likes a good practise match. One time, you'll beat him 5-0 although you think he was limiting himself to force himself to improve. You'll argue with a ref about the length of your hair. You'll collect bruises up and down your arms and legs and chest, sore muscles and strong limbs.

Sometimes people ask if its dangerous and it really isn't. The armour keeps you safe, wrapped up in your mask, the mesh keeping the world out and the jacket keeping you warm as the sweat soaks it through. One of the clubs you went to liked to brag that the worst injury they'd ever had was a broken arm and it happened during warm up, not even a bout. You feel safe as anything on the piste, comfortable that any mistakes are yours and yours alone.

You used to be too tense. You'd panic. But the coaches, your dad, the parents of all the regulars keep telling you to calm and it finally sticks. It doesn't really matter what the score is, how many seconds are left. You take every point as it comes. You relax and look for the openings. You figure it out and you take what you can get. It's all about the motion. It's the joy of the grunts, the rush of the wind, the dull impact of the blade in your hand. The best hits are the ones you don't even feel, when your hand moves like a whip, the blade slipping around like a snake to snag their exposed hand, the hit that others hate.

You fenced through university and got used to booze during "office hours" every week, which was code for popping down the bar. An Australian taught you "Australian Bar Pool", which you later learned wasn't really any different from North American bar pool. You were tall and pommeled your sword and the other epeeists kept complaining but they kept fencing you anyway. It was a laugh. You played matches where foot hits where the only things allowed. You took part in the joke sabre tournament (there were only like three sabrists at the club) and did surprisingly well by treating it like an epee. You met one of your first and best queer role models, who sadly eventually stopped showing because of the jackass rightwing club president. You drove down to Kingston with the crew, wedged in the back seat of the car, laughing as one of the guys attempted to handle his lodgings last minute by downloading Tindr. He showed up the next day, hungover and on 3 hours of sleep and scored the best out of any of you by such a wide margin. The captain handed you all iron on patches but no one had an iron, so you all sketchily stitched them in place, and the way it flexed off your jacket when you bent your arms was a running joke for the rest of time. You were standing in the club between bouts when the university closed for covid.

You were never going to stop. You loved it to death. Every club had a collection of old guys, like 70s and 80s old, who were always the kindest and sweetest. They were always down for a bout, and sure they were slower, but they were faster than any old person you'd ever met and had the technique to match decades of practice. They gave the best tips, the best advice, the friendliest smiles. That was going to be you someday. You joked about how everyone seemed to leave for SCA or something more hardcore knowing that you never would. You were home. You wanted to be the 60 year old guy who signed up for a team tournament with himself in all three positions, thrashing entire teams of youngsters despite going for ten times as long as anyone else could. You wanted to smile as the kids goofed off, teasing them back onto the piste. You wanted to find someone who loved it as much as you.

You can't stand up anymore, let alone run. Your body hasn't made the motions for years and probably never will again. You went to pull your blades out recently and realized sadly they weren't even in your main kit bag, but in the other bag at your parent's house. The bag with the hole in the bottom that would let things fall out as you dragged it through the snow at midnight coming home from practice, a smile on your face.

You wish you could just cry. You think maybe it would hurt less if you could. You wish you'd never gotten covid at all.

The irony is that really, this emotion makes you want to stab something.