Best Club, Worst People

Sword Class NYC met in a basement. I arrived on a Tuesday evening with my Groupon for “Longsword for Beginners,” after rereading A Song of Ice and Fire. Inspired by George R.R. Martin’s tiny assassin Arya Stark, I wanted to participate in a montage of nonstop, meditative fencing, to be an older, hotter version of the underestimated child–anything to give me a sense of power while I faced weekly rejection. Commercial auditions were part of my routine, and I was learning that casting directors have a hard time pitching an actress who is taller than her male scene partner. I fantasized about wielding a sword on a show like “Game of Thrones,” where my large hands weren’t casting dealbreakers, but an essential characteristic. I dreamed of arriving to set on a Scottish moor, hair braided, decked out in gleaming armor. 

From a sidewalk in East Harlem, I could see fluorescent lights making bright the black, sweat stained jackets engulfing strangers in ovular masks. To a man’s call they struck each other in the head, retreated, and struck again. The first time I walked into the school, I thought about slipping out quietly for the safety of the 3 train. Arya Stark learned how to fight so that she could survive in a cruel world. I signed up for sword school because I wanted to be in “Game of Thrones.” I felt cliché.    

The fencers had taken off their masks to reveal red, sweaty faces jutting up from plastic gorgets. Some partners turned away from each other as soon as the drill finished, others repeated the instruction, seeking perfection. In the haze of my sword maiden fantasy, I forgot an essential factor of martial arts training: it would eventually involve another person. I swam competitively for thirteen years, and I was used to competing in solitude. Here, I would have to engage in a short, intense relationship every time I faced an opponent. These people were not acting; there was no boundary of costume or predetermined story to decide the outcome of an exchange. I knew that by crossing the threshold I would eventually be invited to measure up against them, as they were with each other. 

Inside the basement, half of the space’s corners were occupied by cubbies full of reeking duffel bags and blunted weapons. The other half’s exposed brick wall was lined with European feders and Japanese katanas. In the 1980s, this basement was a thriving gay bathhouse complete with secret entrances. Two sacred plaques stuck to the walls: one, a copy of the only known portrait of fencing master Johannes Liechtenaur, which we saluted at the end of each training session, and two: a piece of laminated mint green paper in an escape passage that advertised free condoms at the front desk. 

Fortunately, beginner’s classes did not involve sparring with others. They were taught with plastic swords and were essentially a screening to ensure that no absolute psychopaths graduated to holding real steel. After three sessions in which I learned how to hold my sword in front of my navel with its point projected at an invisible enemy's head–this is the guard known casually as “longpoint”–I joined Intermediate Longsword. An iron-on patch decorated most of the jackets worn by my new classmates: a sigil of an eagle and the acronym NYHFA, and under that in yellow letters, the slogan “Best Club, Worst People.” 

New York Historical Fencing Association’s most popular class met on Tuesday nights for ninety minutes to study and train Historic European Martial Arts. HEMA covers a collection of disciplines. Intermediate Longsword focused on the knightly techniques alluded to by Johannes Liechtenauer, a 14th century German fencing master who left behind a poem–to keep it cryptic–on how to best opponents. Generations of Lichtenauer acolytes decoded this work with their own interpretive illustrations: sketches of individuals with cherubic faces and mannequin bodies crossing blades and spurting blood. 

The first lessons I learned were in footwork and guards, usually repeated in front of a mirror at the beginning of class. I preferred the warmup segment to the second half of class, which was devoted to recreating the key frames of those ancient illustrations. At the time of my start, the class instructor was fixated on the zornhau (wrath-hew), one of Lichtenauer’s hidden moves. The wrath-hew is a basic cut from high to low that leaves room for a number of suffixes that can be applied to achieve the desired defense. My future classmates practiced the zornhau-ort, a crossing of swords that ends when the person with the most wrath takes control of the bind and thrusts their point into the opponent’s face. 

It is known that beginners tend to hit hard due to lack of motor control. This was not the case for me. I did not want to hurt the high school student or the software engineer offering their head for me to practice on, but certain classmates were notorious for not heeding force etiquette. Sure, it was always accidental. But was it? When a fellow queer hit my head so hard it vibrated, I wanted to throw my mask on the floor and storm out. You violent fucking nerds, I imagined myself shouting. Instead, I avoided that person. 

Senior student Patrick knew how to temper his strength appropriately, so that getting hit by him was informative rather than painful. Patrick had orange hair and the pinched look of someone who, in his words, could eat “an entire pizza and not gain any weight.” Once on a rainy night, I ran into him on the train on the way to class. He was wearing a fedora and an elegant trench coat. I appreciated the implication that he had a life outside of HEMA–it made me feel better about my meager weekly participation. But we did not meet eye to eye. Patrick, like a castle abbott charged with protecting knowledge, took the fact that we were studying a German discipline very seriously. Once, we were paired to do crunches together. As Patrick pressed my feet into the floor he whispered as I curled toward him: “Einz, zwei, drei, vier, funf…”

My stomach wobbled. I was laughing–at him. He pulled back and shook his head once, like he was banishing a fly. 

“What’s so funny? It’s a German fencing class.” 

Patrick was someone who studied the ancient manuals, knew the cryptic instructions by heart, and fought with a wealth of options. I relied on my already established endurance and reflexes to inform how I responded in combat. Patrick was calculating and relaxed, leaving me nothing to react to. In the 14th century, his neutrality would kill me ten times out of ten, and he would walk away unscathed. Once my steel feder felt familiar in my grip, and when my feet shuffled seamlessly with the rest of my body, I stopped caring about the ancient manuals. The galvanizing “Thrones” fantasy melted in favor of a satisfying reality: after a day chasing fruitless auditions, I got to exercise with a sword and drink beer afterward. That was enough. 

For a time, I joked that the Sword Class front desk was my favorite bar in New York. In the refrigerator stocked with Monster cans and Dasani for sale lay a hodgepodge of beer and cider for post-class communal consumption. My sword buddies came with an eclectic mix of vocations, but we could all relate on the grounds of having nursed a Tolkienesque fantasy. As we drank, we were often joined; out of towners from other HEMA clubs would drop by, or in the ceiling, a rubbery rat tail would flick and disappear back into its crawl space home. Bolstered by a few months of training, and curious to meet more HEMA enthusiasts, I signed up for the biggest tournament in the country.

The rules of a HEMA match vary, but universally one thing is agreed upon: doubles are bad. A double is when both parties strike each other in the attempt to kill. A double is embarrassing; a fencer worth their club’s jacket should strike only if they are certain they can prevent a counterattack. Someone who doubles often is not thinking about the mission of HEMA–the application of fencing techniques as dictated by the old masters–but rather fighting in the context of the present, where dulled feders and hard plastic armor prevent the threat of injuries. 

 At the Marriott in Baltimore, I faced my first opponent: Sylvia from Italy who flew there to compete in both longsword and rapier. Her armor was white and her style was similarly clean; her first point against me was a gentle check to my wrists, confirming that I was not a threat. It was not on purpose that I continued to expose my hands, but I was out of ideas. I was the novice, she was the professional, and I was a generous scene partner. 

My final match was against Tanya Smith, a club owner who was interviewed in the Village Voice in 2016. Her fighting philosophy is described: “whether it’s against a six-six man or a woman her own size, she empties her head and focuses on just one thing: kicking ass.” I fought Tanya in my final fight that day, and my head was not empty–I could not shake the strangeness of the setting. This was not a Tuesday night workout; I was brandishing a sword in a hotel conference room. No divine mist rose as I took arms, but spectators gathered as if picnicking next to an early Civil War battle. I had given up my personal delusions only to step into a giant, collective role play. 

Tanya allowed little time to ponder. Her strategy was to run me outside of the ring’s parameters, which would cost me a point, and I met her force with suicidal aggression; we doubled until the ring official was visibly offended. She won by a margin, after we killed each other five times. Against the cool Italian I was playing along like a practice dummy–Tanya’s kinetic rage rattled me into fight mode. 

I swaggered over to a corner of the hallway where my club had planted its flag. Some teammates were sparring for fun.

“Katie, want to play?” Justin asked. Justin was another rookie with a height advantage, though at 6’7” he had eight inches on me. 

“Sure,” I said, and assumed a guarded stance next to the hotel window. I tested an advance, and in an instant our swords tangled. Justin raised my arms above my head, pushing me toward the window in total control. Our sword points extended toward the recessed fluorescents as he pounded my head with the butt of his weapon.

“Pommel! Pommel! Pommel!” he shouted.

“Stop!” I cried.  We separated and I shakily took off my mask. Confusing tears burned behind my eyelids and I felt my face threaten to crumple. I sensed Justin’s hesitancy in my periphery. “Are you okay?” he asked. 

“Yes.” I turned from the group to blindly organize the contents of my bag. I had almost swallowed my shock inconspicuously, until Leanne crouched down next to me. 

“Are you okay?” Leanne whispered. Leanne, a former opera singer, was a mother of two and in her forties. She exuded organized mom energy up to the neat headband she wore to tame her silver and black curly hair. She was just over five feet tall but never balked at fighting giants; once, a man double her height nearly lost to her and said to our coach afterward: “That little squirrel can fight!” We had bonded over theater talk, and her courage made trusting her easy.

“I–I,” I said, and she ushered me into the nearest bathroom so that I could dry heave in private. “I don’t–know–why–I’m crying,” I stammered. 

“Getting clobbered for the first time is always a shock,” Leanne said wisely. “You’ll get used to it.” Close combat fighting is totally legal and a technique of its own, but I could not imagine ever getting used to it. Yes, I consented to violence every time I agreed to spar, under the assumption that the consensual violence contained boundaries. Getting whacked with force is not a problem if both parties check in with each other, but I was wrong to expect that all people who were interested in demonstrating murder would contain this level of sensitivity–there are no intimacy choreographers or fight directors in HEMA. With Justin, I no longer felt like a buddy practicing our hobby; I felt like a character in his fantasy, his victim, vanquished against a window at the Marriott in Baltimore. 

I did not quit, but I needed a coach in the ring. I met Jay during an exercise in my early days of Intermediate Longsword, when we were drilling the zornhau-ort. We had formed two lines and were hitting each other in a conveyor belt fashion. Until then, I had gravitated to Leanne or Patrick for a sparring partner. In this schematic, I would have to face Jay–six foot five and two hundred and thirty pounds–hulking at the end of the line. I had heard people talk about his past–the military, something about secret operations, phrases like “he has seen things no one should ever have to see.” His bald head was usually covered by a black mask painted with a white skull. 

I faced him and nervously sliced through the air. The dulled tip of my feder bounced and slid off of the skull’s teeth. 

“Comonyawannthitme!” he yelled in a Greek accent, grabbing the point of my sword and hitting himself with it. “HIT ME!” he cried.

“Okay!” I squawked, panicking but admittedly a little aroused. It was 8PM on a Tuesday, and I was simulating homicide in a basement rat dungeon. My sword flew toward his crown with full intention, and I felt the snap of a kill strike. 

“Ah haa, very good!”

Battle-seasoned Jay was an encouraging coach, though frustrating; I once had to explain to him why referring to women as “females” in the context of their martial prowess was problematic. Jay took over Intermediate Longsword with a drill sergeant attitude that stressed one thing: to win, you have to seize the vor, or, take advantage of the “before” moment. While in the ring, I had to suspend my disbelief and act with intent–so what if my adversary was a kindly salesman from Ohio? Jay reminded the class that we should work with fury, not against it, regardless of the mundanity of our actual circumstances. I learned how to use my reach–my arms are deceptively long–and perfected a lunge and thrust move that allowed me to skewer my opponents from a safe distance. I was not invulnerable, but I at least presented a challenge.

The last tournament I fought in was in 2019, hosted in the Sword Class basement. I made it to the bronze medal match in the B level Open–medium skill, all genders–against a fellow NYHFA teammate. Sam was as tall and broad as Jay, though softer; he was a recently new father and quiet compared to our braggadocio peers. As a fighter, he exuded the same freezing neutrality as Patrick. His ring coach knew my weaknesses well. I imagined him saying wait for her to move and close distance, and I circled predictably, resenting Sam’s deceptively wooden stance. I did not want to get close to him but I wanted to end the match; I wanted a medal and I wanted to stop thinking about how we were in a basement in Harlem playing with swords while rats skipped over our heads. I was out of the collective role play, and I wanted a beer. 

I lifted my sword to ochs, an overhead guard, to try and distract from my usual pattern. I knew that this was an impractical choice; at my tall height, a strike from this position would expose my torso for an exchange that risked close combat. I pivoted, sword held high but distant, while his whacked my head in a stupidly simple zornhau. If we were one of Lichtenauer’s illustrations, I would have upward gazing eyes and a fountain of red ink darting across the page from a gaping gash in my forehead.

He won the match and exclaimed in triumph. We slapped gauntlets and I prepared to walk away with as much sportsmanship as I could muster, but our ring official grabbed my arm. 

“What?” I snapped. 

“Fourth place dude. Smile.” He yanked my arm to the ceiling, and a camera flashed. 

Sam found me sitting against the brick wall. “Great match!” he piped, still out of breath from the thrill of his win. I could tell he wanted me to meet him as a teammate in joint exaltation.  

“I’m not happy, but good job,” I said, the sorest loser. I resented that we were expected to be friendly. I felt Lichteneaur’s wrath and Jay’s murderous purpose, and I did not know how to let them go. It was not enough that I was an underestimated girl wielding a blade. My sword fantasy had evaporated into a simple desire to win. 

The Sword Class basement fell during COVID’s siege on the city, along with my auditions. Without the need to unwind from the harsh realities of pursuing an acting career, or a basement bar around which to gather, I had little interest in keeping up with my training. I have not picked up my swords in over a year, but I did finally remove them from their hiding place in my costume closet to mount them on the wall in my basement. Having just moved to a house with a yard, my wife asks me if I will practice outside. I once dreamed of being able to train in a space with high ceilings, nevermind the actual open sky. “I’m not sure,” I say, timid to be seen by neighbors.  I signed up for sword school because I wanted what I have now: a grassy hill, the ability to wield a weapon gracefully, and an audience to watch me train against an imaginary foe. I stayed in sword school for the beer and the camaraderie–for the best club, and the worst people.

KATIE KOPAJTIC is a writer and actor based in Tarrytown, New York. Katie is a Tin House Summer Workshop 2021 alum. Her creative nonfiction can be found in Catapult and Peach Mag. This June in Dobbs Ferry NY she will perform “Modern Witches,” a solo show about queer relationship anxiety, Virginia Woolf and witchcraft. www.katiekopajtic.com