Generals have always been accused of being on the ready one war late… – Bruno Latour

I.

One of the known but least acclaimed benefits of jiu-jitsu is the ability it gives you to dictate the severity of a physical encounter. Most of us marvel and fantasize about the million ways we can set up an arm-bar or a choke against a drunk jerk or mugger on the street. The number of times we fantasize about simply controlling someone, like a family member, from harming us or themselves is probably near zero. After all, what’s the fun in a fantasy if you’re not pulling off the absolutely fantastic in it? And who dares imagine the necessity to use jiu-jitsu on a family member or someone we know closely?

Yet, we are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime by someone we know, a family member or friend, than by a stranger. About two-thirds of rape victims and 73% of sexual assault victims know their attackers. When the victim-offender relationship is known in a murder, 38 % of homicide victims are killed by an acquaintance, 22 % were killed by a stranger, 18% were killed by an intimate partner, 15 % were killed by a family member, and 5% were killed by a friend. That is something not only impossible to fantasize about, but damn hard to even think about.

The fact is the majority of us jiu-jiteiros are training, in essence, for a confrontation against someone we know.

II.

A few years back, when I was a novice in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I went back home, where I grew up, for my brother’s graduation from college, the University of Florida. Although born in Puerto Rico, we three (my sister included) were raised in Daytona Beach. My father had recently been rendered homeless, so my mother, in her blind kindness, allowed him to stay in her apartment. I walked into the apartment late evening to find it in strange disorder. Nothing was necessarily out of place. Just something was odd. I walked through the apartment for about fifteen minutes before seeing what was before me. Drug paraphernalia. Crack pipes. Lighters. Brillo pads. For fifteen minutes I saw each item individually. Anyone else, I believe, would have walked in and immediately seen it all and made sense of it. It took me fifteen minutes to accept the truth that my father was a motherfucking crackhead. He came to the apartment about an hour later, fucked up from alcohol, crack, and who knows what. We spoke. I asked. He admitted. He cried. I cried. Then, I had to kick him out of my mother and sister’s home. I told him to please give me his keys.

The change was instantaneously. He turned from remorseful and timid to indignant and brute. The keys, unfortunately, were in his pockets. And now he was trying to leave the house. I could not let him leave with the ability to return at any time, especially with my sister coming home soon. I asked a few more times. I blocked his path. He got angrier. Eventually, he hit that point in tone and volume and wild gestures where there were only two options: let him leave or physically take the keys from him.

At that point in my training, I knew two ways to take my father to the ground: osoto gari and a double leg. There was too much furniture in the way to do a double, in my mind. It was easier to walk up to him calmly, in a straight posture, put my right hand on his shoulder and my left on his right tricep (as if pleading) and I ask him one more time. When he said no, I threw him down. As it was happening, a part of me that wasn’t scared shitless and ready for war, thought in slow motion, damn, that was pretty swift and smooth and easy. Yet, instantaneously that meta-thought vanished under a barrage of curses and the fight that ensued. To call it a fight is merely to describe it within a category of possible human interactions. I was in side control, kesa gatame to be precise. After two minutes he calmed down. I told him I was not letting him up until I got his keys. He reached into his left pocket and handed them to me.

III.

There’s nothing to say about the years since. He eventually wound up in jail. Then he went to a half-way house. And now he’s rehabilitated and goes to daily meetings. We’ve never actually spoken about that night. I have two kids now and they love their abuelo. We see each other about once a year. I’ve gone on training, am now no longer a newbie white belt. I still do the thing in my head like everyone else does: that drunk jerk in the street who was screaming at his girlfriend is slowly begging for mercy from my north-south kimura. I don’t ever imagine techniques on people I know even after what I went trough. Yet, I know who’s most likely to be the beneficiary – and I mean this in all sincerity – of my training. I can’t imagine what would have happened if I were a boxer, perhaps perched like the statue above, and had to fight the way boxers fight, against him.