Ping.

I can’t breathe.

Tae Kwon Do. Kung Fu. Jeet Kune Do. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Escrima. Han Guk Moo Sool. Stage combat. Twenty years of one martial art or other, and suddenly I can’t fight my way out of a burlap sack.

I can’t see. It’s not just the helmet. My vision is exceptionally poor. Roughly -7.00 each eye if my glasses prescription means anything to you, if it doesn’t, just imagine me having to have my nose three inches from the screen to write this without my glasses on. And I can’t wear glasses with my helmet on. I can’t afford contacts. So while my color and motion sensitivity are exceptional, Aliquis and his two swords are one big blur.

I can’t hear. My new helmet sounds off like Big Ben on impact, so I have to wear earplugs. Unlike my eyesight, my hearing is exceptional, still sensitive to “cricket tones” at the age of 30. I rely on my hearing a great deal, it compensates for the eyes. Add to that the ill-fitting armor including gauntlets that aren’t meant for holding things and you have a degree of separation from the whole world. Now fight.

PANG.

Aliquis pings my helmet again. I don’t even see it. I never do. It’s the fourth time in a streak interrupted by an accidental but still painful “cup check” a few minutes ago. Aliquis is merciless. He’s taller than me, bigger than me, and older. The older they are, the worse it is. They don’t have time for young stick-jockeys, full of fire and hope. So they end you. Aliquis here is squired to one of the finest knights our great organization has produced. He’s the first man I ever fought, and the first hit was so fast I didn’t see it. A sharp ping off my helmet. It woke me right up, but I didn’t back down. I fought everyone my first night.

Tonight I just want to go home and cry.

I set up again. My arms are exhausted. My left hand holds a mace, a piece of rattan just about a foot long with a rubber mallet head on the end of it, wrapped in colored duct tape. In my right hand is a center-grip shield made of a DETOUR sign. I’ve gone “Full Cleric” tonight. No other weapon I’ve picked up has gone well for me. Two-handed sword would be perfect if I lived in the middle ages. But a rattan stick can’t cleave a shield, so greatsword is at a vast disadvantage in the sport. I’ve yet to find a polearm light enough for my long, slim arms to move with any reliability. A bad shoulder prevents me from swinging right-handed with anything, so two-weapon is out. I’ve been advised that a mace lacks the reach of a sword, and I’m going to get chewed up on the approach. I reason though that I get chewed up no matter what I do, and maybe if I get closer instead of further away, my nearsightedness will be less of a problem, and I’ll be able to fall back on some grappling/scuffling training from my Jeet Kune Do days. It’s my first time with a shield and a one-handed weapon, so I spent the first few hours of the night on the pell. This is the medieval equivalent of a heavy bag, a post wrapped in rope you crack at with a sword or a stick until you get it right. This is a very counter-intuitive martial art. I’ve heard it best described as “using a club like a whip.” You can’t swing it like an ax, like I’ve been trying to. Your arm must make almost a punching motion, leaning back instead of forward, snapping the stick around, using the weight of it instead of the strength of your arm. This is difficult to figure out on a pell. Once you do, the next step is remembering that in a fight against a guy like Aliquis. It’s one lesson I’m now too distracted to master. After two hours of practicing this, winging a club as thick as a sausage against a fencepost, I barely had the strength to fight Alius, who is shorter than me at least, and not nearly as terrifying. Already tired from pell work, I fought him until I couldn’t raise my left arm anymore. Then I sat down covered in sweat, two blisters on my hand, my lungs threatening to go on strike. That was when Aliquis called to me from across the room.

“Hey Skopa. You have one for me?”

“No!” I blurt, picking up my helmet anyway.

Now here we are.

Goddammit. I don’t even know how he does it, but even if he groins me again, he’s not pinging my helmet like that. Not this time. I raise my shield up way too high, my mace just above it, watching for just that one fucking--

PING.

Fuck! I call the hit good with a groan, make a “cut” motion with my hand and end the fight, collapsing onto the bench.

I would find out later that Aliquis is using his superior height to his advantage and throwing “wraps” over my shield, hitting the back of my helmet.

I’m miserable. I hate wearing armor, you know that? I really, really do. I should be fencing. I can’t fight like this. I can kick above my head, and successfully grappled a 300 pound bouncer until he tapped out, but put a furnace on my head and I’m stickbait. I’m not short at 5’11”, but roughly ¾ of these people positively tower over me and outweigh me by at least a hundred pounds, and I’m unable to dodge and weave with all this unfamiliar tonnage on my body. I’ve been coming here for months and I could still easily trade places with the pell and not notice a difference. It’s downright embarrassing.

How the hell did I get here?

It took me a long time to find the Society for Creative Anachronism. It started when I was 8 or 9. One of my friends in school invited me to join a tabletop gaming group. This is in the 80’s. His dad was the illustrator for a company called Chaosium Inc. The game was Pendragon, set in Arthurian England, and I was hooked. My younger brother liked dinosaurs, I was addicted to knights, because I’d BEEN one. “Gwain” was my name, I used a halberd, and I fought the Saxons. History was so much more interesting when experienced from the inside. Having played many games since, I can tell you the system was dismal and bureaucratic, but it was the first time I was really interested in the real nuts and bolts of something. I bought books about castles, had a collection of the medieval legos, and knew that if the person in the picture had a round shield he was from one of the uncivilized tribes. I didn’t even know what that meant.

When we moved from California to Maryland, I went from a fantastic private school to a godforsaken public elementary school. My body rejected the school, and my family quickly moved me to TLCI, a homeschooling organization. There I was free to study what I liked, which did not include history, a passion public school beat out of me, but I did enjoy a number of nerdy pursuits, including every flavor of tabletop RPG, hosting a few games at my house, writing fantasy fiction, and eventually LARPing. Even still it wasn’t until college until I’d hear of the SCA.

Renn Faire. Dating a theatre major will always lead you here. And I was hooked. I bought two year-round passes and spent every weekend there, making the rounds, never missing the Pyrates Royale, meeting friends I couldn’t see otherwise, filling out my “garb,” practicing my foppish English accent, and looking down on people who talked during live theatre. It was there I met Aliquis.

This is not the same Aliquis. I’ll explain later.

Aliquis is gay. He’s extremely gay. Monumentally gay. He worked at the clothier that made my blue cloak and my wrap pants. I’d visit the shop every week just to see him. Whether or not my girlfriend of the day was there, he’d fawn over me, try to sell me tights, surreptitiously cop a feel, it was surreal how gay he was. He was tall and had this easy, sly smile, was twice my size but three times as graceful, spoke like one of those contest hosts on the Food Network or TLC, and one day told me, “we have to get you to Pennsic.”

What’s pen zig?

Pennsic! Aliquis described to me a place several magnitudes bigger than Renn Faire without tourists that lasted two straight weeks. A place you could camp and not see a car for days on end. An endless party full of people like us. And according to Aliquis, host to naked spaghetti dinners. My friend Alius (again not the same Alius) confirms he’s gone to this magical place, and has been trying to get enough money to go back ever since.

I concluded no place this glorious and idyllic could be real.

Years later. I’m seduced away from my sweet, compassionate, animal-loving theatre-major girlfriend, falling for a demonic harpy hook line and sinker and breaking the actress' fragile little heart. Something for which I’m sure neither of us will ever really forgive me. I’m engaged and we’re at a club where we meet two new friends. A married couple named Mike and Laurah. Before long we’re invited to visit their apartment for a safety meeting, and we’re treated to quite a spectacle. Armor just lying around. Wood carvings by an amateur but determined hand. Paintings, metalwork, crafts and arts scattered around an apartment owned by five cats. After regaling us (mostly me) with esoteric music, strange artwork and stories from the fringe, I think it was Laurah who popped the question.

“So are you guys in the SCA?”

The what?

It was over. Once this begins, Murdaigean and Ceanag are unable to depart from the subject. Suddenly I was hearing about this strange and mystical organization where people had different names, lived like their ancestors lived, carried on the traditions of the past, demonstrated mind-blowing talents and staggering devotion to kings who had day jobs and martial arts that courted serious injury and rituals so beautiful they moved onlookers to tears.

Impossible. Then they mentioned Pennsic.

The circle was closing. Could something as fantastic as Pennsic be real? They told story after story after story. It was intimidating, the scope of this thing they described. I still didn’t believe. How could something like that be so big, so popular, and I’ve never, ever heard of it until now? They showed me video footage of this Pennsic War.

Mind, blown.

Even still, it would be a long time before I could actually make an event. Almost another two years.

I was 29. My fiance had finished destroying my life and departed for her next victim, leaving me in an unprecedented state of depression, stranded in, of all places, New Jersey. No car, no job, and $1500 of her debt. Living with my family, in therapy and separated from all my friends who slowly started forgiving me or not forgiving me for letting her treat them that way and debasing myself for her for three years. I was miserable and angry and felt completely useless.

At least I wasn’t alone. My family is a good family. They took good care of me, keeping me fed, guiding me through the repair process, and keeping me in the company of good people.

I’m not from NJ, none of us are, but dad found himself here after being hired by A&P, and a circle of support sprang up around them, the most auspicious being Joan and Jay, a happy, friendly old couple we dine with weekly. Both teachers, both extremely skilled artists, and both very willing to teach. We were declared family before long, and one day I saw Joan’s sewing room.

It was unbelievable. One of her sewing machines cost $4000. She has equipment in there I still can’t identify for you. So as part of my self-administered therapy, an attempt to regain my dignity, I approached Joan and asked her to teach me to sew.

The year before, I’d seen a miniseries on Netflix. It was called Borgia. Not The Borgias with Jeremy Irons, the European one. I was astonished. It was like it was made just for me. Game of Thrones and Burn Notice in the Vatican. Even more nudity and sex. Even more violence and gore. History I could sink my incisors into. I was immediately in awe of the Cardinals. Above the law of the land and of heaven. More than just priests, more than just aristocrats. These guys, they were the motherfuckers.

I had to have one of those sexy red outfits.

I approached Joan and asked her if she could teach me to sew. I understood it could take some time. It had been a long while since I could devote myself to something and actually get good at it. My life with my ex had been a fiasco of unfinished projects, wasted money and lost time. I didn’t know what I was good at anymore, so I thought I wasn’t good at anything. I had to change that.

Joan of course was happy to teach me, and a few weeks later I was in her sewing room on her tiny portable sewing machine, sewing on swatches, practicing straight and steady lines. This is apparently a tall order. Joan said I had talent. Really?

“Oh my glory, yes. Not like your mother, she uses a sewing machine like she’s driving a car!” Apparently mom sews too fast, something she readily admits to, and Joan scolds her for.

We took some fabric she had lying around, an old pattern, and decided to start simple. A vest. I was sure it would look bad, be a nice first attempt but would be something I’d keep as an example or a reminder.

I still wear it.

It came out way beyond any expectation I had. I never believed it would be a thing that would actually have a place in my wardrobe. I’m a picky dresser, I have two suits and two trench coats, and have no setting between “service boots” and “dress boots.” But somehow the vest came out as a thing to be proud of. Joan decided I was ready, and we immediately started on the red cassock.

I steadied myself, tried not to worry about how far away the goal line was, how complex the project was, and how the pockets stymied a 60-year sewing veteran like Joan. I put my head down, followed instructions, remembered to backtack, put down the presser foot, press my seams, serge the edges, hide the thread and sew straight. Then, suddenly, a month passed, and the red Cardinal’s cassock was at my house, and the task of sewing 33 buttons was the only one left.

I recall staying up all night.

It blew my mind. A real achievement. A tangible result. I had worked and worked and listened and learned and even bled a little, and now, hanging about my shoulders was a thing of beauty. I’m not bragging, I swear. The thing is made of 100% unforgivable polyester, cut from a Butterick pattern, the buttons are the wrong kind and it pulls to the back if I don’t wear my white frilly shirt under it. But I loved it intensely. It was the second thing I’d ever really made by hand from scratch, and my first piece of handmade garb. It changed my whole life.

My grandfather on my mother’s side died when I was a baby, so I never knew him. But I came to find out he was a tailor. They said I was channeling him. I think for the first time ever I had something I could do with myself.

It was shortly after that I made first contact with the SCA. Joan’s granddaughter was a Scadian. Finding me stranded in a strange place alone, she offered to put me in contact with a certain Knight that resided in West Milford.

This is how I met Tanaka.

There is not a thing I can say about Tanaka that hasn’t been said already. I stand where everyone else does on the subject. Tanaka is awesome. A great teacher and great role model. Being not ten minutes from my house, he agreed to take me to my first heavy practice.

I was hooked right away. The East Kingdom is a brusque bunch, and I can’t say I fit right in. Hell, I can’t say that I ever do, but the people I met were amazing, devoted, rounded and talented. Several make their own armor, and fight clad in their own works of craftsmanship. I decided I wanted to be like these people. I decided I’d always wanted to be like these people. I’d been looking for them for a long time.

I think it was after about my second or third practice I got the call from Murdaigean. “Wanna go to Gulf Wars?”

I had no idea what that was. Ordinarily I’d say “maybe” and wait for life to get in the way or to find out I was out of money, but not now. I had to go do this, I needed this, I had to go get out. And they said if I drove, they’d cover my expenses.

Gulf Wars is a story I promise I’ll tell you sometime when I can devote to it the time it is due. But I will say this. Going to heaven must be like going from Renn Faire to this. My “persona” chose me the moment I appeared on the road in the red cassock. Gulf Wars was everything they told me Pennsic would be and more. I came home complete.

I was a Scadian.

I am of mixed popularity with The 404. Tanaka’s New York based fighting unit takes great pride in what they do, and on top of that they’re almost all very big dudes. I have spirit, but the fact is I’m also a scrawny, androgynous, obsequious little shit who won’t shut up. They do not say this to my face, which means I’m never sure why ‘they’ are, but after being in the warm cradle of the jovial Kingdoms of the South, it can be a little demoralizing. But that’s the thing about heavy combat. There’s no upper limit. And whatever you have against someone, you can take it out of their hide on the floor. So I let them. No matter how tired or defeated I am, I never turn down a fight.

Now I’m sitting on the bench regretting that.

Alius comes over to me. This is the same Alius.

Alius is so sexy. I hate it. He made all his own armor. Solid plate and chain. You cannot miss this man. There is no mistaking his shiny steel craftsmanship. He makes a distinct sound when he walks. And what I hate the most is that he’s a really genuinely nice guy. I can’t justify hating him at all ever, and there’s no escaping the fact that I’m just banging my head against the wall (or his shield) at how far I have to go to be as awesome as he is. How I hate this man.

He asks how I’m doing. I tell him the truth.

Piss poor. It’s uncanny. I’ve fought with weapons before, I took stickfighting and trained with a staff, I have a leap that can touch most ceiling, not an ounce of fat on my body, and I can run over 20mph. And now I can’t even move. It’s been several months and it actually feels like I’m getting progressively worse.

But Alius tells me not to sell myself short. He tells me I’m getting hit harder, because I’m getting better, and warrant getting rapped on more intensely. He says it took him three years to “stop sucking,” and that I should stick with it.

I hate how much I love this man.

Present day.

I’m sitting here next to a sewing machine. I have a mockup of a shirt to make for one of four commissions piling up. It should be easy, the pieces of muslin are already cut and piled on the dinner table, my sewing board occupying the entire space remaining. The pattern, Islander 208, is lying in front of me. FUN, FAST & EASY it says. Fuck you too. This person saw a shirt I made and commissioned me to make two pieces for him, one mozzetta and one shirt made of 100% Italian gray linen bought in New York at Mood, the fabric store they use on Project Runway. When that’s finished I have real silk brocade to make another beautiful Mandarin shirt, a present for myself. The Cardinal has over 470 friends on Facebook cheering me on, a “MEN SEWING” series gaining popularity, and the potential for more commissions for actual liturgical vestments from real priests on the horizon. I should be happy. I should be busy.

I’m so not. I just want to play Minecraft. My brother is playing it right now, he’s visiting from Maryland. I can hear the Skype chatter.

These instructions don’t make any sense. It’s like I can’t even read. I don’t even have to make a real shirt, just a model to see if this one fits right. For some reason I want to be anywhere but here. I don’t want to sew something that has different seam allowances. My brain is packed with cotton. I haven’t shaved and I’m wearing Dr. Pepper pajama pants at 6pm. I’ve gotten nothing done.

How the hell did I get here?

Browsing Facebook instead of working, Laurah advises me once again that I should start a blog.

---

This is the story of a guy starting over. An outsider’s perspective entering the realm of re-enactors and craftsmen. An amateur’s pursuit of the dream of one day joining the O’masts, the great tailors of Italy. An atheist learning what it means to be a priest. And all the bumps in those myriad roads to an elusive recovery.

I’ll proofread this later. Now I have to go slug it out with the next obstacle on that journey, my job.

I’ll see you next time.

--Skopa