Monkey Steals the Peach

Imagine yourself in high school at a house party. You know a few people but, for the most part, you don’t know anyone because most of the kids at this party go to the other high school in your school district.

Now, imagine someone asks you how you know the friend that brought you to this party. You look around with an affected manner and then say something casual about how you and your friend went to elementary and junior high together. But prior to this comment you notice a slight sense of awe directed at your friend from the partygoers. Maybe you’re feeling a bit bored or underwhelmed so you add something like this to the knowing each other from school comment: “Yeah, and we used to train together – Ninjitsu.”

This piques the inquirer’s attention and you begin to realize a little group is forming around you.

“Here’s the thing. Ninjas can’t actually disappear. But during training you learn how to incorporate your environment fully. You can become a rock, a bush, or a tree and you become completely still because . . . movement catches the eye.”

Imagine yourself starting to have a bit of fun. You see your friend come over.

“When we were in eighth grade, he brought a few books to school. You can’t find books like these at Walden’s. They showed you the craziest shit. How to rip off scrotes, how to perform dim mak--Oh, you don’t know what that is? Death touch, dude. Chinese. Anyway, here’s the interesting stuff. The types of herbs to wrap your fist in after you’ve broken these two knuckles. Not only that, you have to do a tapping regimen while your knuckles heal so that they’ll literally fuse together. Why? Dude, so you can punch through cinderblocks hung from trees with rope. Me, I couldn’t do it. Didn’t have the heart. Him, though, he had it.”

Now, everything you just told them was true. Except for this little accoutrement at the end: “He’s taken it to the next level. This man can jump up and perch on this leaf.” You point a leaf on a sapling. The leaf is a fresh green and it blinks rapidly with every breeze.

A few bystanders laugh but for the others there were flickers of faith. What was it about your friend that made some of them, even for a few moments, believe that he could balance on that leaf?

I have known two people that seem like fictional characters from an outsider’s perspective. They’re both intense, passionate people that either find themselves in or create highly improbable situations for themselves.

JC from the true story above is the first person. The first time I saw the pages in the picture above I was sitting next to JC in eighth grade. Whereas my dad would take my sister and me to textbook bookstores deep in the valley for additional study materials, JC’s dad would take him to martial arts supply stores and get him ninja stars, videos, and books. He had weekly private ninjitsu lessons at his house. It was a lot of fun back then to join in. I remember his dad, a neurosurgeon, joined in on one lesson. My friend partnered up with his Dad and we would all die laughing when his Dad would make a sharp hissing sound and say “Ssss. Ow. You hit too hard,” in a thick Chinese accent. His dad was Chinese and his mom was a Caucasian woman that grew up in New York and they didn’t get along at all. Maybe that’s why his dad encouraged his interest in martial arts. Maybe the supplies were a peace offering or a way to support JC’s connection with his dad’s heritage.

In any case, JC’s dad took one lesson and somehow ended up with a black belt in ninjitsu a few months later. He got vanity plates that said ‘Dr. Ninja’ and got some black and white 8.5” by 11” photographs developed of him kneeling, in a black uniform, holding a sword in front of him. My family and I would go to various Chinese restaurants and other asian food establishments around town and see his framed picture on the wall next to B-List actors like Heather Locklear and local news anchors.

Last I heard, JC’s mom got a restraining order against his dad. He wasn’t allowed to be within a certain distance from the house. So he bought an adjacent lot and built another house right on the border of the restraining order.

JC moved on from ninjitsu and became really amazing at a host of chinese martial art forms. He was always into animation and he went to CalArts but I heard from a mutual friend not too long ago that he dropped animation and has now taken up music. As for martial arts, I think he's dropped everything. From what he told my friend, he got to a point where he couldn't progress anymore.