by Maxi MacNair
“I just signed up for my first class here.” Kylie said.
He’d looked her up and down, given her a nod, but said, “Not enough tattoos.”
She laughed. “At least that you can see. Also, haven’t found the right one to show off yet.”
“Hey, do I know you?” he said. “You seem familiar.”
“Nope. Never been to Venice Beach in my life before I moved here.”
“Huh. Well I’ll see you around.” He leaned down to wipe some mud spatter off his back fender, and Kylie headed into the gym. She’d never done any kind of martial arts, but she danced for a long time, and with her recent move and the changes she’d made, she didn’t want to do it anymore. She had watched the fights before on T.V. She was drawn to it. The primal physicality of it, but also saw how hard these athletes trained and while she didn’t think she wanted to compete, it seemed like a good, physical way to get out some aggression and get some exercise. It was also the last thing she or anyone else from her old life would expect her to do, which made it all the more enticing for her.
Kylie had just come from San Francisco and didn’t ever want to go back. She didn’t grow up there. That was an even longer story, but it’s enough to say that at the age of 17 she found herself on a bus with just a small backpack with all her belongings in it on her way to anywhere but the small midwestern city where her mother and new stepfather lived. There was nothing abusive in her past. Kylie had always just been independent. When her step dad moved in things changed at home and something clicked inside Kylie. Even though her mom begged her not to leave she knew it was time to move on and start her own life just like her mom had done so with her new husband. After all, it was time for both of them to move on with life. It had been five years since Dad passed away.
For Kylie, it just felt right to pack her stuff and move away. Kylie hoped that her own child would have the same strength and determination she had, but also hoped that it wouldn’t put her through hell like she did to her own mom.
It took a few years and probably a million tense and worried phone conversations with her mom but eventually Kylie started to pay her rent in San Francisco. Soon enough, she started living in houses and apartments with less and less roommates. Every move getting her to a nicer place with more space of her own. Soon enough she was down to just one roommate, and then just as soon, she only started living with someone else when she wanted to and never because she had to. Funny enough, eventually she found herself living in a beautiful mansion married to an owner of a large software company. She had everything she could have wanted.
One of the downfalls though of letting your feelings for what is right guide you is that sometimes the alarms going off in our heads warning us to stay away from someone or something get ignored. Kylie found herself in a mansion, and in a relationship that started out great for a week or two and then started to get bad, and then just continued to get even worse. She had it all though so was able to ignore what her brain was telling her for a long time, and it wasn’t until her ex-husband decided he was done with her that Kylie found herself back where she started all those years ago on a bus leaving her second home. Now headed toward a new life in Venice Beach.
Luckily, she was still young enough to start over. In fact, she felt like she had found herself again. Like those few years she spent being a trophy wife weren’t actually her, and now she was about to start her real life. She could do it. She had done it before, and having no choice but to leave her old life she stepped off the bus at the L.A. station closest to Venice Beach feeling the lightest she had been in as long as she could remember.
Although she was a bit older now than that time she stepped off a bus in San Francisco she still felt like her 17 year old self again. Full of hope and excitement. Of course though, being a little older now meant that she had a few extra necessities with her like an almost maxed out credit card, and at least a few dollars in a bank account, but also a decent resume with experience and connections to help her get a decent job, and most importantly, her dog and best friend Rosie, a Belgian Malinois.
The tragedy of her past relationship felt like the best gift in the world as Kylie contemplated the new things she would be able to try and the old things she loved to do that she could start again. Things like painting. It sounds strange but one of the things she always did since she was a young girl was paint. Specifically, portraits of her friends dogs and cats. It was something she started as a kid and never really grew out of. She loved animals and she loved to paint. Putting the two together was natural for her and made her happier than anything else. Even as an adult. It was a silly thing she liked to do she knew, and let herself be shamed into not doing for years because it wasn’t expected of a wealthy man’s wife in her social circles.
Round 2*
When she entered the Ultimate Pro Elite Spartan, she found out soon everyone just called it the Ultimate, the clean, sparse look of the gym impressed her. The waiting room held a front desk, a leather couch, and the doors to the two locker rooms. Both converged on a workout space floored in polished blonde wood. One wall was mirrors, near the back were a speedbag and a dummy. A side door opened to a smaller room with additional mats for sparring. A giant snarling tiger decorated one wall, a huge dragon the other. The two animals seemed ready to battle one another. The whole room seemed to echo strength. It felt like home for the new her. It felt like somewhere she needed to be right then in her life. A place she could learn the strength to never again change herself for someone else or stop doing something she loved just because someone else wanted her to.
So many people picked up on the whole machismo aspect of MMA, but Kylie didn’t see it that way. Here was a place where the strong trained to get even stronger. Where people who didn’t want to let life throw them around got together to train and compete.
The first class kicked her ass, and she met Max on her way out. Sweat drenched her back, her cleavage, her armpits, but in her exhaustion after the class she couldn’t bring herself to care. Plus Max looked equally gross, his short cropped blond hair a mess. Kylie was starting to think that after seeing Jason with his Harley on the way in, and now meeting Max with his big arms and deep blue eyes there was another benefit to regularly training at this gym.
“We call it getting baptized,” said Max as he unapologetically looked Kylie up and down.
“What do mean?”
“The sweat. Your first time is like getting baptized, water and all.”
The sweat thing was something she needed to over relatively quickly in order to train at the Ultimate. This was a gym where sweat was necessary. If you weren't sweating then you weren’t working. It did take a few classes but eventually Kylie stopped noticing sweat and only noticed if someone wasn’t sweating in that gym.
Max with his tattoos all black, thick and tribal spoke with slightly huffing breath the first time she met him.
“It IS your first time, right?”
“Was I that obvious?”
She had to put all her focus into that first training session, but she also did manage to noticed him, not participating in the class, but off to one side hammering down on a speed bag. Kylie felt a little excited Max was taking the time to talk to her.
“You could be really good. You know how to move. Just need to build some strength. Where else have I seen you before?”
She studied him for a moment, acting like she was trying to place him, meanwhile thinking about how this was the second time she had heard that line today. “I haven’t been in town long. Not sure. I guess I have one of those faces.”
Kylie wanted to argue with him that she was strong, but compared to Max’s bulging muscles and some of the other men and women she’d seen today, she knew she had room for improvement.
Coming to the gym became her newest addiction as she hunted for and found a new job at the front desk of a marketing firm. Kylie was really good at interviews and she could basically pick and choose from all the jobs she applied for. The specifi
c marketing firm she chose because it paid the best but also felt the best. It was modern and she knew from the first day that she would also have some creative input on the jobs that passed through the firm. With a good job and her rent covered Kylie felt well and on her way toward her new life. A new job and a new passion each one giving her an enormous amount of happiness. She was also starting to pick up her old passion again: Painting.
She ran each morning with the only major thing she had brought with her from her old life, Rosie. Rosie was liking their new life so far as well, getting to go for daily runs and playing on the sand and in the ocean. She did pull ups every night on a bar in her apartment as well thinking about how Max assumed she wasn’t strong when he first saw her. The focus gave her something to pour herself into, filling the gap left behind.
She got to know the other men and women at the studio. Started to find her niche in her new place. She felt like she belonged. It didn’t take long for her to also find a new circle of friends from the gym, among them Max and Jason.
At first it was only Trisha that she connected with outside of the gym. Trisha was like her. Not looking to fight, only to train. The two of them would spare though on the mats in the separate room from time to time and like the sparring matches Jason and Max had with each other, eventually they too started to have people stop their training to poke their heads in and watch.
Kylie liked how Trisha was driven and strong like herself but she never let the sparring matches go beyond the mats. Always giving everything she had but also knowing she was testing herself more than she was trying to win a fight. A pretend fight, which is what it actually was.
The night Kylie, Max, and Jason took things way farther than Kylie thought she would ever go, Kylie and Trisha were having one of those sparring matched at the gym. Kylie remembered the trainer, Jax, ringing the bell and hearing the cheers and applause of the other people in the room. She remembered seeing Max and Jason in the doorway both nodding in approval while they clapped before turning around to go back to their own training again. Jason on the speed bag and Max on the heavy bag held in place by Ferran, one of the other trainers and part owner of the Ultimate with Jax. Kylie really felt like part of the club then.
“Nice job ladies,” Jax called out to them. Jax was herself quite an experienced fighter and had working with Trisha and Kylie a lot. You could tell from the way she smiled, Jax was really proud of the work the two of them had put into their training. Kylie touched gloves and helmets with Trisha which was the tradition after finishing a match to show respect for your opponent.
Kylie ran into Max though on the way to the woman’s change room feeling totally spent from the sparring match.
“Those where some nice rounds you guys put in there,” he said looking impressed. “Nice moves and a bit of power now I see.”
Kylie took off her head gear and said, “I always had the power, you just never took the time to watch.” She didn’t give him time to respond and walked straight over to the woman’s locker room, but she could hear him laughing a bit. Max and Kylie had developed this sort of teasing and flirty relationship. At first, it was Max that always started the banter but lately Kylie was also going out of her way to tease Max a bit when the two of them were working out at the same time.
“Careful you don’t break a nail hitting that thing,” she called over her shoulder when she was almost through the doorway to the shower. Kylie could hear all the other people training in the room let out a big “OOooooohh”, followed by Max telling everyone to knock it off.
After showering Kylie walked over to her usual locker which was right next to Trisha’s.
“Ohh man, you should really think about finding a new sparring partner,” Trisha said, “I’m getting a little tired of getting thrown around by you,” gingerly pulling her T-shirt over her head.
“Hey, it’s not like I don’t need a hot bath with some epsom salts tonight myself.”
As Trisha finished with her shirt and started pulling her hair back into a ponytail she said, “I saw Max and Jason both taking an interest in our fight again tonight. What ya think of that?”
Kylie brushed Trisha off with a smirking huff. Trisha was always talking to her about the guys in the gym. Trisha had a boyfriend, which also meant that she was constantly teasing and prodding Kylie about hooking up with one of the guys there. Kylie didn’t want to mix up sex with what she had going on in the gym, but she was also starting to realize she hadn’t been with anyone in a long time, and the hard bodies all around her all the time were starting to get more and more tempting every day.
“Two of the best fighters here at the gym people say,” Trisha continued on after she realized Kylie wasn’t going to take the bait and reply to her question. “Both of them are probably equal favorites to win the tournament this year people say. I wonder if that would also translate to the sheets as well.” After pausing another moment or two, “you know maybe their fighting styles match their fucking styles.”
Kylie couldn’t hold it in anymore and the two of them burst out laughing the sound echoing in the locker room.
Kylie had heard of this tournament and seen the posters for it all over the gym. Apparently, this tournament was a pretty big deal and had a pretty big cash prize making it worthwhile for people to train hard all year round to win it. Also, making the competition pretty fierce. Once a year, all the any fighters who train in the twenty or so gyms in L.A. are given the chance to try themselves out in a real MMA tournament. Anyone could do it if they wanted but everyone knew it was really only for the serious fighters. It wasn’t just for anyone. Only for those experienced enough and who trained hard and fought just as hard every chance they got. It was something Kylie thought about sometimes as she trained at Ultimate. The day she would sign up and face off in a real fight with a real opponent in front of her, but that wasn’t going to be for a while, if ever, she thought. It didn’t matter that much though she got enough from her training as it was.
Trisha waited for Kylie as she finished getting dressed. “Drinks tonight?” she asked.
“Of course, you know it’s Friday in this part of the world,” Kylie teased back at her.
Round 2*
One of the routines Kylie had gotten into that she really liked was letting loose on either Friday or Saturday night. She was young enough and living life again. Lately though, she started thinking a lot about how she hadn’t had sex since moving to Venice Beach, and was starting to think that she would just probably need to take someone home soon one of these nights or she was probably going to go a little insane from how horny she was feeling.
That night the two of them went to the usual after workout spot for people who went to the Ultimate Pro Elite Spartan gym. It was nothing much, just a little old neighborhood bar close to the beach called the Yacht Club. It was one of those sarcastic names since it was obvious that this bar wasn’t, and probably was never intended to be anything like you would expect from a Yacht Club. Part of the charm of living in a quirky area like Venice Beach were funny spots like this. It was clean though and it didn’t take Kylie long to get to know the bartenders and other regulars from the neighborhood. Trisha and Kylie came in and saw Max and Jason at the bar and sat down next to them.
Outside of the gym you couldn’t really think of a more unlikely pair than the two of them. Max was big and broad with more of a clean cut style to him but with tribal tattoos all over his arms that he showed off in the gym and by wearing a sleeveless shirt that night. Jason was certainly muscular but more lean than Max. All his tattoos were more classic with a 1950’s edge to them. He was wearing his standard tight jeans, black belt, and white shirt that he always wore. Everything about him just seemed to scream rock and roll. The two of them were friends though, and you would often find the two of them hanging out at the Yacht Club talking and laughing with each other and the bartenders. Most of the time hitting on whatever girls were around. They weren’t creeps at all because most girls were more than happy to
get attention from either of them. They were hot guys. Kylie knew it from the moment she saw them at the gym, and the way she was feeling then Kylie was more than ready to take one of them home that night, which would make for some interesting locker room talk on Monday between her and Trisha. Kylie just didn’t know which one it would be.
There was something about that night. All four of them seemed ready to tie one on and it wasn’t long before they had gone through a few back and forth rounds of buying terrible tasting shots for the four of them. Soon the bar filled up and got loud as everyone in there started catching up to them. Through the night, Trisha found herself sitting next to Max, then sitting next to Jason and slowly but surely starting getting more hands on with both of them. Waiting for one of them to make a move.
Eventually, Kylie started to get a little frustrated and started thinking she was going to be heading home alone to her vibrator and a trashy book again. Things turned in an instant though.
Kylie sat in between them at the bar while both of them were turned away talking with someone else. Soon she felt a hand on her left thigh. Then she felt another on right. They both were touching her at the same time in a way that was no accident, and certainly not innocent. Both of them moving it closer to her inner thigh. She laughed a little as she reciprocated back to the two of them at the same time. Trisha and Kylie made eye contact and started laughing as Kylie slowly squeezed her legs together making both their hands touch. When the two guys felt the others knuckles they quickly looked over and though it didn’t register with Kylie, Max and Jason both flashed a look that was gone almost as soon as it was there. Something ferocious. Something that said back off, but it quickly melted into embarrassed laughter.