He smiled gently. “I can’t tell you what to do, Daisy.”
“You’re the professional, though, aren’t you? Isn’t that what people pay you for? Isn’t that why you’re writing this book?”
“I’m writing this book because this is a phenomenon that interests me. This is the first time this sort of thing is happening, in this magnitude, and I admit, I find it fascinating. But so far as telling people what to do—I think the best I can do is to say keep a clear head, listen to your thoughts and feelings, and don’t lose hope.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“I can tell you’re a smart girl. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to make mistakes, or things won’t be difficult for you sometimes, but I think you will ultimately find what it is that you’re looking for, even if you yourself don’t know exactly what it is at this moment.”
“Well, I appreciate that,” I said. “Thank you for letting me talk about all of this.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll leave my address,” I continued. “Or do you just want to use my email?”
“For what?” he asked, tilting his head.
“Um, for the bill. You know, for talking to me.”
“Daisy,” he said, smiling. “I’m not going to bill you. If this helped you, then I’m thrilled to hear it. You also helped me. I’d very much like to include significant portions of what we’ve talked about in the section of my book that goes over feelings, and how learning to trust our feelings is a crucial part of overcoming the quarter-life crisis. Any crisis, really.”
“Of course,” I said, feeling silly. “And . . . thank you. For talking to me. It really did help.”
I left his office, went home to change, and then headed down to the gym to meet Jonathan, feeling as though maybe I should just trust my feelings after all.
Jonathan had a big smile on his face when I showed up at the gym. I felt a little intimidated, as most of the people there were guys and they were all in stunningly good physical shape. “Hey,” he said with a smile. “Glad you could make it.”
I tried to ignore the looks of the other guys as I followed him through the gym, which was located in a converted warehouse, with an exposed ceiling. We went into a room near the back, which had a mirrored wall and a floor covered in green mats.
“I think it’s great that you’re interested in learning some self-defense techniques,” he said. “I think it’s a good thing for any woman to learn. But are you interested in it because of that guy? Is he bothering you?”
“He’s . . . been around. He hasn’t done anything yet, but it’s getting pretty creepy. I mean, I would’ve thought that he’d get it through his head by now that nothing was going to happen, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. So I was thinking that it wouldn’t be a bad idea if I learned how to protect myself.”
“Absolutely,” Jonathan said. “And you’re right—it has been a pretty long time for him to be dogging you like that. You know, I’m thinking . . . maybe we should have a few guys watch out for you.”
“A few guys? You mean from work?”
“Yeah.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. “It’s not that bad yet. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it.”
“I know you don’t, but this guy doesn’t
seem to be getting the hint.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I appreciate the offer. Why don’t you just teach me what you know about self-defense.”
“All right,” he said. “But if you change your mind, let me know.”
“I will.”
“Great,” he said. “Let’s get started, then.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon going through various self-defense techniques. At first, I felt completely uncoordinated and unable to get the timing down for anything, even though he was obviously slowing things down, talking me through each step. He showed me what to do if someone tried to grab me from behind, how to break a hold if someone had my arm, how to pull an attacker’s head down so I could knee him in the face.
The last thing we worked on was how to break away if someone came up behind you and grabbed you in a bear hug. For each of the holds we’d previously done, Jonathan had pretended he was the attacker, and this one was no different, but now he was standing behind me, with his arms wrapped around me.
“First,” he said, “you’re going to shift your body to the side, enough so you can get your inside leg behind—yeah, just like that—and you’re going to jerk your own leg forward into the back of my knee. Do it with enough force behind it so it buckles the knee and then you’ll have the person off-balance. He’ll fall forward, and as he does so, use an elbow, right to the face. Just like that. Okay, let’s try it again.”