(at the cottage; excerpt from Lover's Spit)
Shane's home gym has a punching bag, and Ilya asks about it. Shane explains he used to be really into MMAâ still is, as a spectator, but he hasn't fought in an official capacity since year ten.
"You fought in an official capacity?"
"Well, kind of. I had some consistent sparring partners at the gym but I only competed a handful of times."
He says this in the most infuriatingly nonchalant tone, as if this isn't coming as a huge shock to Ilya. He forces Shane to show him everything he knows, and Shane is good. Quick and calculated, in full control of his body, not a single part of him out of place. Ilya is fascinated, enamored. Falling somehow more in love with this man. Falling so damn willingly.
Ilya teases Shane about how of course he is the only one in the NHL to know how to actually fight, and the only one in the NHL who refuses to. This earns Ilya a lecture on the importance of pacifism in the face of conflict, which in turn earns Shane a lecture on how it's just hockey, let a guy throw a punch when he wants to. Ilya should have known better, because now Shane is going on about how nothing is "just hockey," and how "just hockey" doesn't exist, that all life is a metaphor for sportâ
"Life is metaphor for sport? Do you mean it the other way around?"
"No. I mean, maybe it is. But not to me, anyway."
Then Shane is sitting on a weight bench, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and Ilya is on the floor with his legs spread out in front of him, and they are talking about Sport, capital S. Shane talks about his mind and his body and his soul and how the only time he ever feels at home in all of them is when he is playing hockey, and Ilya's thoughts drift vaguely to Russian Orthodox homilies about three-in-one. He talks about connection to the physical, the buzz of being completely in one's body. Neither of them say what they're both thinking, that this awareness of self also happens during sex togetherâ that beautiful, forbidden communionâ so they just stick to talking about hockey.
Shane tells a story about an assistant coach he had in juniors, a young player who retired from the pro leagues far too early due to an injury. He would always quote a line from some book, "How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away." This coach would recite this any time he felt a player was running from something; the puck, the defense, the game entirely. Sometimes he'd pull it out when he felt like a player was running to hockey, and away from something else. It is bad hockey to playing it as a distraction, he would say. The coach was a little strange, Shane explains, but that quote of his really stuck. Now, sometimes, when Shane feels a bit untethered from the world, he audits his attention.
"Well then what did you discover in your last 'attention audit,' Mr. Accountant?"
"Well, you're here, aren't you?"
They stand in the kitchen, sweaty and flushed, picking at cold grapes and staring into nothing.
"Surely there's something you're good at that I don't know about."
"Like me and MMA. Surely you have something, too."
Ilya thinks for a second.
"I am a good dancer." Ilya pops a grape into his mouth. "Like, ballroom dancing."
Shane's eyebrows shoot up.
He explains that he had to learn for formal events back in Russia. That he acted like he hated it, but he didn't really. That he could show Shane how to, if he wants.
"It's kind of like fighting. The footwork and all. If you know one, you usually know the other."
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