Memoir
Touché
“Fencing isn’t really fighting. It’s more like chess with the risk of puncture wounds.” — Lisa Kleypas
The clang of foils rang in the night as we fenced across a rooftop in downtown San Francisco. Lunge! Parry! Riposte! She broke off, removed her mask, and waved her raven hair free. I took off my mask, flung it aside in a comically dramatic gesture, grabbed her fencing jacket, and pulled her into a kiss. I entered the world of her tongue and lips; lunge, riposte, touché.
After a few fiery moments, we pulled away and matched grins. “I think we’re ready,” she said.
Fog smeared the city lights into halos and cooled our sweat. We gathered our fencing gear and descended the metal fire escape, down two flights, and through a window into a small studio.
She was 18 and I was 23, but she was the mature one.
#
“Swordplay is like conversation. You have to learn to listen to your opponent.” — Max Suba
At the beginning of summer, I started a ten-week Summer Training Congress at ACT (American Conservatory Theater). I climbed the stairwells of the rehearsal building passing a parade of dancers swinging their pony tails on erect necks, comedians holding court, singers running scales, and actors debating the meaning of a line. The energy was palpable. I was a drinker, pool player, con man, and thief, but it enthralled me. I had never experienced such kinetic passion and creativity.
I was chewing a donut and drinking coffee when Anne Lawder started our first speech class with perfect mid-century diction. “There will be no food or drink in this class. It is difficult to enunciate with a mouthful of donut.” She looked at me. “We will wait while you throw that away.” I dumped my breakfast in the trash and apologized. Most of the students averted their eyes but a dark-eyed Latina threw me a good-natured smirk.
Our class group included Terri, the beauty who smiled at me; Debbie, a dancer who flung her mane of red hair around like a weapon; Temus, a wisp of a southern belle from Tennessee; Roberto, a fat Hispanic boy with pimples; Sam, a lively thin Asian boy; Bonnie, a serious graduate student; and Annie, a coltish high school girl from Colorado who innocently asked all the questions everyone else wondered about.
We rotated with a dozen other groups between large bright studios to learn voice, movement, acting, singing, dance, speech, scansion, improvisation, mime, and stage combat.
The voice coach was free with his hands on my body, “Breathe into your pelvis. Hmm. Yes. Good. Do you feel that?” I didn’t know whether or not to smack him, so I relaxed and drew my breath into his hands.
Dance class was fun because my mother had taught ballet and tap. I was no stranger to the “plié” or “shuffle, ball, change.”
Singing class was hard. I feel like I am being strangled when I sing and I sound like it too.
Acting class interested me most. Chuck Hallahan, our teacher, was an Irish character actor who was full of practical advice on life in the theater. The classes were immersive and exhausting.
I started running every morning from my flat on Russian Hill down to Aquatic Park where I took a frigid swim in the bay and walked back up the hill. As a winter of drinking wrung from my system, I took the pain as a talisman, proof of change.
For a quarter I rode the Hyde Street cable car downtown. I hopped off at Gerry Street for another day of theater life — back to back classes, breaking for a sandwich at the Pinecrest Diner, and rehearsing scenes through the evening.
I quit my job in an art gallery and took every opportunity for extra scene work and small performances. Although I had played lead roles in high school, my talent was unrefined.
“Don’t act like you’re doing something. Just do it! Answer a telephone. Sit on a bench.”
As an athlete with dance training, I felt more confident in the physical classes — dance, improv, circus, mime, and fencing, which was the class I found the most entertaining.
When the stage combat instructor, J. Steven White, opened the studio for extra fencing time, I found myself facing off with Terri.
We had paired off earlier in the week for the mirror exercise. One led while the other mimicked — raising an arm, wiggling fingers. I had looked into her eyes, deeper than I had ever peered into anyone’s, even a lover’s. But our focus with mutual concentration went too deep to lose to a flicker of sexual distraction. Our ability to read each other’s movements even when we were looking away felt psychic.
“Whoa! That was intense.” I had blurted out afterwards. Terri replied with a bemused smile.
She proved a quick and challenging fencing opponent. We sparred until drenched in sweat and laughed whenever one of us scored a touch.
Steven let us take foils, masks, and vests to practice on our own. One night we fenced on the street, climbing over cars and dodging behind parking meters until police officers informed us of the law against brandishing weapons on a public street. The rubber tips on the stage foils did not blunt the law.
After a few scenes with other partners, Terri and I paired up for our final acting scene. Chuck encouraged us to work on play by Harold Pinter, a difficult choice because the dialog was full of double meanings.
All students would perform a two-person five-minute scene during the last days of school to be attended by everyone, including the instructors who would select a talented few for a prestigious two-year apprenticeship.
At fencing class we were moaning about our final scene when Steven suggested we also do a fencing scene. “You could still do your dramatic scene. I’ll see if we can add another one.”
That would be great!” I said.
“Will you choreograph it with us?” Terri asked.
“Of course.” He seemed as excited about it as we were.
We worked with him every few days and practiced in studios or on rooftops. Our other scene took a back seat to fencing, but we had already performed it in class so we were not too concerned.
Steven found a dueling scene in the play Don Juan. We decided I would die at Terri’s hand. We sparred and improvised attacks and acrobatic defenses. Steven choreographed moves to build the scene, and he came up with a genius disarm.
I would parry Terri’s thrust, spin my blade around hers while sliding forward to the hilt, jerk my foil up, fling her sword into the air, and catch it by the handle as it fell back to me.
It was a gamble. The sword had to fly straight up high enough that I could track the spin of the handle to snatch it out of the air. We practiced it over and over, the sword clanging to the ground or banging against a window. I found that a soft six to eight foot toss would give the heavier handle time to fall first. But I had to throw it with my foil.
Some of our group spent the weekend before final scenes in Tiburon. Bonnie was housesitting an elegant house on an inlet of the bay where we sprawled on the beach wrapped in sun, sand, and water. We set one rule, “no talking about our impending scenes.”
After dinner we all piled on an enormous bed in Bonnie’s room. Temus started fretting about her final scene, so we gave her a group massage on her limbs, back and head all at once. Then we took turns getting the treatment.
Bonnie started crying during her massage. “I’m going to miss you guys.”
Terri and I had never shared a bedroom. She had been couch surfing friends’ apartments and I lived with a girlfriend. She pulled me into a bedroom with an arched alcove looking across the bay. Our awareness to movements and intentions as fencing opponents heightened our acuteness to each other. We danced with lingering touches sensing the other’s arousal and, like the mirror exercise, we intuited each other and moved together in passion.
Hours later I awoke and moved to the window seat. In a little while Terri woke and dragged a comforter from the bed. She nestled into my arms. We pulled the blanket over us and sat in peaceful silence, my cheek against her hair, her body wrapped in mine, watching the fog creep on soft grey paws across Angel Island.
The final two days of school came. One hundred and forty aspiring actors in hour after hour of iconic scenes like Stanley in Street Car Named Desire screaming, “Stella! Stella!” Some interpretations were inspired but most were rote or awkward and the hours wore everyone down. We performed our acting scene as well we had ever been able to do it, but it played more confusing than intriguing. Our fencing scene was listed as the final one on the last day.
#
“Creativity is the essence of fencing.” — Charles Allen
Terri wore a cape borrowed from wardrobe. Her long dark hair was braided and draped over one shoulder; her foil slid under a large belt. We weren’t wearing any protective fencing equipment — it was stage combat. As we waited in the wings, Terri slipped her hand into mine and we intertwined fingers.
They announced us. We entered, set a long table at the back of the stage, bowed to the audience, and began.
My head was racing. This stunt was a gamble. Everyone had endured days of five-minute scenes from a hundred pairs of actors, some good but many grimace inducing. We were the last scene and the audience was bored, just waiting for it all to end.
The first line of a performance can be the hardest, but she flung it out. Our characters exchanged insults and squared off for the dual. The audience disappeared, our focus narrowed to each other and the foils.
We circle flicking our swords, and clicking the blades, testing each other. With a nod I begin a string of choreographed attacks. Lunge! Parry! Thrust! The foils clank in staccato bursts. Break away. Attack again!
She slides to the ground under my foil and behind me. I jump on the table to avoid her attack. Gasps follow our moves. I leap off the table, spin, and catch her lunge with a parry behind my back. The room erupts in applause. We pause for the roar. A smile flickers across Terri’s lips, her chest rising and falling from the exertion, her eyes burning.
We launch into battle again — the coup de grâce. She attacks. I parry and swirl my foil around hers to the hilt. With an upward jerk I fling her foil into the air. I kick her down and look up at the flying foil. The handle is slightly flipping forward as it drops towards me. My hand closes around the handle and I swing the blade down.
The crowd is crazy, clapping, whistling and stomping. I attack her with both foils but she unclasps her cloak and whips it around my foils and kicks me to the ground. She recovers one foil. I defend myself from a kneeling position but she runs me through and I die.
I stand. We clasp hands and bow.
The audience jumped to their feet releasing all their pent up anxiety, frustrations, boredom, and exhaustion in a great cheer and a thunderous applause, a celebration of the ten weeks and a tribute to our scene. Terri tilted her head back, her smile an embrace of the standing ovation, her eyes glistening with stage light.
After closing remarks from the teachers we were released back to life from the whirlwind of our ten weeks training. She was going to meet her high school boyfriend who had just returned from a summer job in Colorado and I would see my girlfriend at our apartment on Russian Hill.
“Will you buy some wine for me to take home,” she asked. It seemed as much a test as a question.
“Red or White?”
I bought her wine and we embraced in Union Square before she walked away. I felt something strange, missing, empty.
I called out to her and she turned with a tilt of her head.
I had no idea what I wanted to say. I didn’t want to see her go. I touched my heart and said softly, “Touché.”
She broke into a grin and called back, “En garde!”
