(5:30am, we’ve just arrived in Vermont.)

The tent was actually not a bad size, meaning I’d seen smaller apartments in Japan. I laid my sleeping bag next to Miriam’s, removed my belt and socks, and slithered into it hesitantly, like an occasional pussy should.

This is only the second time I’ve used this sleeping bag (or hell, any sleeping bag) and I was disappointed to find it didn’t come with a big pillow inside. I removed my flannel, rolled it into what I call a Seattle Grunge Pillow and shoved it under my neck.

A noisy platoon of frogs surrounded our tent, slowly but surely, and started in with their god-awful ribbiting. Sounded to me like they were communicating with each other, coordinating some sort of attack.

I double-checked to make sure I’d zipped the tent securely shut, and a moment later did the same with my eyes. As I drifted off to belated and glorious unconsciousness, I was surprised to discover the ground was actually not that uncomfortable, although I’ve had more satisfying naps on the six-train.

Three hours later I’m awakened by the most unusual thing: Sunlight. There’s not much of it in my bedroom back in Manhattan, but here in the great outdoors there’s plenty, filtering through the white part of the tent and making my face uncomfortably hot.

I sit up and see the girls are still conked out. Miriam, lying next to me, has got a sock laid over her eyes like a blindfold and is sleeping placidly. That seems like a good idea but when I reach for my own socks, I find them damp because I threw them in an especially wet corner of the tent. Dammit.

Jane wakes up a moment later and the two of us unzip our way out of the tent, stepping into bright Vermont sunlight. Birds are chirping, the pond is gleaming, and running through my head is the sentence Where’s the fucking coffee. The two of us trek up the hill to the house, where my car is parked.

As we’re pulling our bags and the pineapple I brought up out of the trunk, I hear soft footsteps and turn to see the biggest black dog I have ever seen walking directly towards us, as if to greet us. She’s huge, fluffy, and clearly outweighs me. I love dogs and pet her friendly head enthusiastically before realizing she smells like a type of strong cheese I once tried in Germany.

“Hey there, hey there. Shall we go into the house?” I say.

“Sure,” says Jane, stuff in tow. In actuality I was talking to the dog, but I think that would be a rude thing to point out.

My hapkido-mates start coming out of the woodwork, from other tents on the property and bedrooms from within the farmhouse. Lila’s coordinating breakfast and there is a beautiful pot of coffee being brewed.

There are nineteen of us total. There’s

- Lila, the ripped, model-beautiful, Swedish-Columbian super-fit mother of two who makes G.I. Jane look like a couch potato;
- Jessica, the Taiwanese-American girl with a background in capoeira;
- Tom, her brother, who kicks faster than anyone can see;
- Jack, the physically gigantic club bouncer--I’ve always suspected he picks up cars and throws them when he’s angry;
- Laura, who’s descended from New York’s old-money Vanderbilt family;
- Ivana, who emigrated from the Ukraine to NYC by herself as non-English-speaking teenager;
- Lara, a half-Japanese half-Korean girl I’d be scared to fight;
- and on and on.

There is one Filipino-looking guy I don’t recognize, though I recognize his non-hapkido martial arts style: Wu Shu. He’s fucking good, too. I later found out he’d studied it for upwards of twenty years. Later he would teach me to do my own crude version of the butterfly kick (think Liu Kang’s finishing move). Turns out he’s Lara’s boyfriend.

An hour later we’re spread out on the front lawn while Lila teaches us some escrima stick techniques (think Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon’s prison scene, right before he got his hands on the nunchakus.) After an hour my hands are slightly bleeding from welts but I feel good about it.

Lena gives us a little orientation speech about the grounds. “If you go down to check out the horses, watch out for the fence, it’s ‘hot,’” she explains.

“‘Hot?’” someone asks.

“Electrified.”

Twenty minutes later I spy Jessica down by the pasture, standing alongside the fence and examining the horses. “Hey,” I ask the group, “Jessica was there for the ‘hot fence’ speech, right?”

“Yeah, I think so,” someone says. About ten minutes later Jessica comes back up the hill and joins us.

“Say, you know the fence is ‘hot,’ right?” I ask her.

“‘Hot?’” she asks.

“Electrified,” I say, as if it’s common knowledge.

“You mean the fence that I climbed under?” she asks, wide-eyed. Woops, guess she wasn’t there for the speech.

We train intermittently throughout the day, and I take some shifts letting my ass get to know the rocking chair on the front porch. The air is clean up here and everything seems to be a different shade of green. You’d never think there were so many different types of green. Reminds me of how Eskimos have eleven words for snow or whatever.

When the sun goes down Jack shows me how to get a campfire going, then a couple of the fellas barbecue up some chicken and burgers. After we chow down everyone starts forming into impromptu conversation groups, but I head out to my car to listen to the stereo and get some A-time. I’m a shut-in now; I’m not used to spending this much time around this many people.

It’s pitch-black behind the house but the stars are out, the sky up here is just filled with them. I stare straight up for four songs, until my neck hurts.

Back in the city the only types of stars you see are the annoying kind who require traffic be redirected so they can film a fucking scene without interruption.

Around midnight I climb back into the tent with Jane and Adriana. Twenty minutes later Miriam enters and accidentally kicks me in the head on the way in. The frogs start piping up again, but I’m exhausted and soon after being kicked I fall asleep.