I'd say "Holy crap don't touch my forearm, it's bruised all over."

I went to a martial arts dojo today with a fellow teacher and her sons. It was a painful blast. They grappled the heck out of my wrist. It was odd to be punching and yet not be boxing. It was odd to kick.

My default when someone speaks to me here is to nod and smile and make little affirmative grunting noises, and generally this works. Sometimes I understand what people are saying, but mostly I watch what's going on and guess. The people bent over backwards to help me out, with the sensei or undersensei chilling with me the whole time, as well as a few other people. There was much praise for my punches (they are pretty awesome these days) and much good-natured ribbing for how my hands kept floating up into a boxing-style guard. They threw me around and let me throw them, and then the sensei told me to lay down and gave me a massage in the middle of the dojo.

That was a little weird.

Not unpleasant, though. No one touches me here, except in my violent sports and sometimes my students. I'm not sure what to do when it's my students. Sometimes they grab my balls and my instinct is to hit their faces. Sometimes they take my hand or wrap my arm around them and I feel like someone's gonna call me a pedophile. I was pleasantly surprised to be touched so much, with such good intentions, by the man who'd thrown me across the floor a few minutes earlier. In the rest of the room, people kept practicing. Next to us, a kendo club started hitting each other with sticks.

I don't know what adult relationships are supposed to look like, but apparently sometimes they look like gentle hands pressing into my back in the middle of a dojo.

I'm learning so much here.