The Renaissance Man Project is an original non-fiction novel by Nathaniel Kostar, occasionally known as Nate Lost.
Read Intro, Part 1
Read Intro, Part 2
Read Intro, Part 3
Read Intro, Part 4
Tiger Muay Thai Camp, Phuket, Thailand
July, 2010.
I’ve played ball for hours in Jersey summer-heat on blacktops like stovetops, closed-door gyms with no air conditioning packed with hot-blooded adolescents and young men, but I’ve never sweat this much in my life.
I’m sweating like armpits. Like a wrestler in a sauna dropping weight; hoodied-up, down jacket and sweat pants daydreaming steak and potatoes.
I’m covered in a film of sweat. It rains from the cliff of my nose, and when I put my hands on my knees and lower my head for a moment’s rest, it slides down my torso, shoulders, arms (and other channels; spine-groove, ass-crack, thighs)—like tubes at a water-park—then leaps off my fingertips and puddles on the blue-rubber mat on the floor.
It’s my first day training at renowned fighter camp Tiger Muay Thai in Phuket, Thailand, and I’m sweating like a motherfucker.
It’s taken all of five minutes to realize this “beginner” Muay Thai class is no joke. And I’m totally unprepared. I’ve been drinking wine and German beer with soft-bodied poets in Northern Italy for the past month. I’ve been eating cheese, bread, salamis, olives of all complexions, artichokes, prosciuttos, hams and whatever else I could get my hungry lips around. I’ve been flirting with European waitresses to the best of my ability and writing poetry on the sides of mountains I didn’t climb. The closest things I’ve done to exercise in months involves curling German beers, strolling through Florence with my rucksack, and getting lost in Venice.
The ring feels a rice cooker and these gloves are kitchen mitts!
A flurry of kicks into the heavy bag (awkward, weak, painful; the hips don’t rotate, don’t bend like I want ‘em too) and the question lights up in my mind and flashes like a neon advert in the middle of Times Square or the red crosses that shine the nights of Seoul— What the fuck am I doing here?
The short answer is The Book of the Courtier found its way into my hands at the right or wrong time and inspired me to travel the world and study the skills that were expected of Italian Renaissance Men. And according to Castiglione, the perfect courtier should be more than just a poet, dancer, musician, artist and philosopher (as if that’s not ambitious enough), he ought to be a fighter too--“I hold that the principal and true profession of the Courtier must be that of arms; which I wish him to exercise with vigor…” He should “know all the bodily exercises that befit a warrior.”
So I’ve come to Tiger Muay Thai, an acclaimed Muay Thai (Thai kickboxing) training camp in Thailand, located in Phuket (pronounced Foo-ket), with the intention of learning as much as I can about the art of Muay Thai. The goal is to train like my life depends on it, and right now it feels like it does.
Two and a half hours of stretching, jogging, running, squatting, punching, kicking, kneeing, elbowing, sparring, pushups, sit-ups, and a myriad of other exercises I don’t have names for yet, and I’m ready to crawl into bed and sleep through the apocalypse.
At least I have no ambitions of being a professional (or amateur) fighter. A life filled with ass-whuppings by tiny Thai men with iron-hard knuckles and the flexibility of ballerinas isn’t for me.
But The Renaissance Man project, a project of my own imagination and creation, propels me to train as hard as I possibly can in Thai kickboxing for one month.
I suppose I’m armed only with the stubborn idiocy of the writer.
I have three goals I hope to accomplish in Thailand.
The Muay Thai sessions last two and a half hours, and there are two classes every day, morning and afternoon, so before getting on the plane I reckoned I could feasibly train for 100 hours in one month—like some kind of mini Malcom Gladwell theory dreamed up by an idiot with delusions about the limits of his own body and its current condition. Of course, I’m regretting this goal on day one. But I wrote it down, and once a goal has been written down, I believe it should be attempted.
Second, I want to make progress and improve beyond the “beginner” stage of Muay Thai. Although learning a martial art, or any art at all, is full of intangible lessons, I hope to quantify my progress in some way. So this way of framing it—“beginner” to “beyond beginner”—seems reasonable.
Finally, I want to learn something new. What exactly? I have no idea.
What I do know is my goals feel a long way off as my shin explodes into the heavy bag, my shoulders burn, arms ache—and all I’m learning is Thailand is hot as the dickens, heavy bags aren’t stuffed with feathers, and my shins, which in this sport are supposed to be weapons, are soft as kitten paws.
I’m also relearning a lesson I learned many years ago running suicides at the end of long basketball practices. Sometimes you only have two options—quit, or don’t.
I trudge and I groan and I moan my way through the workout, but I don’t quit, and when the whistle blows, or rather, the instructor, Dang, snaps a thin stick against his palm and says “Fiiinished” in a voice that’s rough and rhythmic—a melodic piano sample scratched on a turntable—I stretch out on the mats like a corpse, exhausted, soaking in a puddle of my own sweat deep enough drown to a mouse.
Click here for Chapter 1, Part 2
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Renaissance Man Project
Muchisimas gracias for reading and supporting independent art.
MAD Love,
-Nate
Read Intro, Part 1
Read Intro, Part 2
Read Intro, Part 3
Read Intro, Part 4