It isn't easy to take pictures in the Boxzentrum. Air is moist with sweat (and, like I said, also with testosterone). Camera lens fogs up quickly. Magda and I contribute our part. Johann ruins our bodies and minds in training. I guess he confuses us on purpose. It's a sign of progress. All those technical steps we learned seem useless when he throws new combinations at us and makes us shadow box and spar. He puts us through the usual sets of torture - running in place and punching air as fast as possible - minute on, few seconds break, another minute. Rope jumping, launches, I don't even wince anymore. Except that my legs feel as if they were broken after the training, and even walking is an excruciating pain.
Kostas once explained to me that such pain (and the cramps can last for days) is a good thing. It's a sign of growing muscles. Oxygen doesn't get in as much as it did before the muscles swell and so it hurts. That's also progress.
After the torture that we pay for, we work out on the machines and stretch. The boyz in the club are now accepting us. Except for My Boyfriend, who still attempts to flirt shamelessly and desperately with Magda, they treat us on par. We sit behind the bar and chat. Some of the older guys - Number 18, God, and few others, are not here today. But Master and Donnie Darko are. It's nice to see them tending to the younger boys, teaching them how to work the heavy bag and coaching them on the machines. The Good Boy, who cannot be more than 12 or 13, got a new earring in his left ear. He gets teased mercilessly for it. I showed him how to doublejump rope the other day - swinging the rope twice in the air during one jump. We're now buddies. He's very eager and will surely become a killer one day. Master sits with us at the bar, where Klaudia puts stickers on some energy drink that comes in unlabeled cans. Suspicious looking, but they probably make a buck or two on the side this way, selling the drinks at the club and at boxing matches. We talk to Klaudia about her career.
Klaudia met Johann sometime in 1980s, it must have been. She was a girl in her twenties and she was in love with a boxer. She came to the training with him once. She came again, and after a few times she thought :"Why do I just sit here, let me give this thing a try. I'm no wuss." And she did. Johann trained her, she was the only woman training in Vienna at the time. She became good fast, training every day, aiming for the world of matches. But, as things happen, she got pregnant, and that was it for awhile. Working full time, rasing a kid, and running a boxing club, she had little time to train herself. When their son started school and she had a bit more time, she came back to the ring. By the time she was good enough to compete again, she was over 35 and thus out of amateur competitions which have an age cap. She could only do the professional matches. "Are you kidding? Those monsters would kill me instantly!" she opines. So that's it for Klaudia. She trains and runs the club, tends to her kids and works full time. Watches the boys rise to fame and takes her pride in that. She looks so girly and timid. The quiet water that washes away the banks. Don't mess with Klaudia or she will mess you up in a jiffy. She's still got it in her.
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