Everything softens, your arms, your legs and your previously hardened muscles, which had just been under power for 36 minutes, relax. You feel small, almost lost in your clothes and in your surroundings. The steel girders of the hall slowly bend, the space blurs, it becomes confused, diffuse – intangible. From the corner a human voice comes to you, someone shouts: Let‘s have a clean fight, touch hands, back to your corners! With wobbly legs you stand up and step into the open ring, your stage.
You have prepared yourself well, your teeth are brushed and you are also ready to lose them. You feel small, almost lost in your clothes and in your surroundings. You sit down in your seat, there are head- phones and voices are telling you about worries and feet. Uncertainty – are you training or competing? In this coming together, the outcome is uncertain and yet the rules are clear: two bodies in one space, between sport and fight – against each other and yet with each other. Somehow archaic and yet every single movement is calculated. It‘s all about the perfect stroke.
There is another person in the middle – the third in the ring – who is not part of it; he directs the game. He knows the sequences, even if he is not yet experiencing them himself. Positions change and roles are reversed, perception shifts. And then the structures change, the rules break down, the laws no longer apply. The sugar trickles out of the punching bag, the will drips along. It has melted, the friction was too great as blows of continuous im- provement hit it. It drips onto the floor, indistinguishable from your sweat, your tears and those of your team. A sticky mass. Ants are attracted, forming bodies that freeze in their movement, caught between robustness and fragility.
On the floor of the hall are other objects, between which you ponderously place your feet to train, to strengthen your muscle memory. There is a piece of wood that beats in time with your movements. You feel good again. People notice that you are good and start betting on you and your skills. Speculation in the room. You throw the medicine ball against the wall, it smacks against the concrete and as it hits the stone floor a deep bass wave pushes through the room. The metal dumbbells tremble, a clanging rhythm unfolds. And suddenly everyone is jumping rope, with very little distance to the floor, but fast, pulsating and in time.
You are in top form, get back into the ring, want to rub shoulders with your rival, fear. Somehow you also like it when you get beaten. It‘s about power and strength and admitting your own vulnerability and weakness. It‘s like two antlers crashing and wedging into each other. At some point it‘s no longer clear – is it fight or physical closeness, aversion or desire? When you are so close, can you still be against each other? Instead, you dance through the room, the Four Tops sing SUGAR PIE HONEY PUNCH in the background and you get closer and closer, smell and taste each other too, like each other: irresis- tible attraction fills the cool hall. You are a family, the structures of power break like your bones before, glistening light heats the room. Everyone comes together here, everyone is welcome, many people surround us and the person at the bar waves vodka steroids. We pay with love, money is crushed, sugared and packed into transparent bags.
