CHAPTER 8. I WOULDN’T WANT TO MEET THAT NANNY GOAT AGAIN

The next several wrestling lessons focused entirely on learning how to fall—protecting the head, avoiding fractures. Only then came the theory: all the ways to send an opponent to the ground. The only throws missing were finger throws. Judo turned out to be the perfect system: no strikes, no facial bruises to ruin the image. But there was plenty of flying in all directions, and plenty of crashing onto a floor that was far from soft.

Here, for the first time, he caught himself thinking: this wasn’t fighter training at all. It was stuntman training.

In the sexual education classes, at first, he had nothing to do. Just watch.

They showed what experience each partner had with the original. How his manner had shifted over the years. What different women had expected from him—and now, from the new him.

It was an archive of private life, laid bare with surgical shamelessness. At first, he sat frozen. Then like a scout. Later like an actor. And finally—like a double.

Perhaps he had unknowingly passed a silent test. Or maybe something clicked in the instructor’s mind. Either way, the two courses merged into something new: “stimulus–response.”

He was told that in the Bible—the book he had read—there’s a line: for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross. Therefore, the instructor said, success in judo earned the right to a “reward”: an actress portraying one of the original’s former women.

If he failed—“here’s what he gets.” What exactly wasn’t explained. But against the backdrop of recent interrogations, his imagination filled in only darkness.

Before, he would rise quickly after each throw. Now he stayed in holds, enduring joint locks. The task: don’t slap in surrender. Endurance time increased with each session.

Meanwhile the instructor would begin speaking.