Schrödinger's Girl, Ch. 03

I placed my shoes in the rack and heard an effusive "Welcome back, Noel!" from behind me.

I turned and snapped off a bow. Harry, our lead instructor, grinned and returned it. We exchanged a taekwondo handshake--right arm supported by the left--before he turned to a waiting parent.

The familiar blue training floor stretched across the dojang, white boundary lines dividing the open space beneath long fluorescent fixtures. One wall was covered in mirrors, making the room seem larger than it was. I bowed to the flag that hung on the front wall and stepped inside.

My wife Liz walked toward me, looking serene and unruffled despite having taught the two colored-belt classes that met before ours. We bowed to one another, then shared a brief hug.

"Hey, your belt got longer!" she joked.

I laughed. Between the weight loss and the rest of it, she wasn't wrong.

Liz trained almost daily. While I'd been sidelined by my injury, Liz had earned her third-degree black belt, marked by three golden stripes. Mine still carried only two stripes, plus a strip of blue electrical tape indicating my progress toward the next rank.

During the weeks before my return, I'd added taekwondo barre work to my routine to reinforce muscle memory for my kicks. Even so, there was nothing like a proper class to get the adrenaline flowing.

I reveled in the lightness and fluidity of my body as I flowed through the familiar sequences, though I couldn't always tell what I was doing differently. Turning and spinning kicks felt almost gyroscopically stable. My lower center of gravity should have explained it, but it felt like more than that--as though my body already understood something my mind was still catching up to.

As usual after a good workout, I was almost hyper-aware of my body. The compression briefs hugged my hips and butt, my thighs felt lean and supple beneath my uniform pants, and my nipples pressed against the restraint of my compression shirt.

After class, Rennie, the assistant instructor, commented, "Noel, it's like you've never been gone; your form and extension look even better than the last time I saw you." He paused. "At first, I was wondering, 'Who is that new black belt?'"

New? The word stuck with me for a moment.

Rennie wasn't the only one. Over the next few classes, I became aware of several students watching me--not openly, but with brief flickers of recognition that never seemed to quite resolve.

In one class, my pants rode up as we settled into side splits, leaving several inches of my smooth lower legs exposed. Joe, a fellow second dan, stared sidelong. I couldn't blame him; my smooth, hairless legs still caught my own attention sometimes. Instead of tugging the fabric down, I extended the stretch; the decision felt oddly natural.

Later that week, I caught one tall young black belt--whom I'd last seen as a gangly red belt--studying my reflection with unmistakable interest. When I glanced his way, he blushed, then dropped his gaze and fiddled with his belt.

Another evening, one of the girls on our demo team blinked in surprise when she caught sight of me in the mirror, then turned and bowed my way with a smile. I smiled and bowed back.

The next week, Tom showed up to class--something he did more often whenever quarterly belt testing approached. I'd always had the impression that Tom only trained for black belt because the grandmaster had bullied him into it.

Before class began, we exchanged bows and handshakes.

"Good to see you, sir," he said, offering the customary greeting from a junior student to a senior. "Isn't Liz feeding you? You're so thin!"

That was just Tom being Tom, as far as I was concerned. He was amiable and gregarious, and prone to blurting out whatever popped into his head. I didn't think any more about it.

After a pleasantly exhausting class later that week (when it came to training, I bought into my wife's motto: "All out, all the time"), Tom was behind me as we lined up at the grandmaster's office at the end of class.

I bowed to the grandmaster's empty chair and turned, feeling like a slender girl in a boxy black taekwondo uniform.

For a moment, my thoughts returned to my most recent outing as Noelle: the mall in the early evening; the short, clingy dress; and the thrill of being seen. I was still savoring the memory when Tom caught up beside me.

"Hey, you look kinda hot from behind!" he said.

I immediately looked down at my uniform, wondering if he meant sweat patches.

One of the teen black belts overheard Tom's comment and said, "Ew, dude!"

"Hey," Tom retorted, "us old guys can joke around like that!"

I stood in line for the drinking fountain, listening to its overworked compressor wheeze. My brain just... stalled. I didn't even want to process what Tom had said. I took my turn, still feeling the heat in my face, acutely aware of how I was leaning over to get my mouth close to the spout.

Liz was quiet as we walked to the car. "You seem pensive, Noel. Good tired, or just tired?"

"Good tired, definitely," I replied. "I've always said, there's no workout quite like a taekwondo workout."

Liz nodded. "You've always been light on your feet, but now you look like you're floating."

"I definitely feel the weight loss," I admitted. "Less strain on my joints, and I feel like I can just launch now."

Liz watched me for a few moments after I started the car, smiling to herself. "There's always been something that compels people to watch you do taekwondo. But now you're even more... watchable."

"Hmmm," I said after a moment. "Erm--thank you?"

During the short drive home, I replayed the incident with Tom in my head. Then I realized that it hadn't only been Tom. Rennie had noticed it, too, as had all those students.

I knew I'd been in a reverie while walking across the dojang, but I couldn't remember how I'd been moving--not the rhythm, not the sway, nothing.

A certain thrill--or perhaps trepidation--accompanied the realization that whatever my classmates had seen, it hadn't been deliberate on my part. When I stopped thinking about how I was moving, my body started telling its own story.