COOL HEART.(Bunkerd Faphimai)(Biography)

Bunkerd Faphimai, a three-time world champion in Muay Thai, or Thai boxing, has a gym called Fight and Fitness, on Bryant Street in San Francisco, across from Dad's "No Collateral OK" Bail Bonds, on the tail end of bail-bond row. In the evening, the street is dark and deserted, the warehouses locked for the night; inside, the gym has the mesmerizing aura of a beehive, all yellow light and subsuming, languageless activity.

I first went there for a trial class last winter. Electronic music was droning from a set of speakers. An electric bell was beeping at thirty-second intervals, jump ropes ticked clocklike against the mats, and the movement of the speed bags produced a hypnotic triplet rhythm. I remembered a Turkish expression, "The bear knows forty stories, but all of them are about pears," which is used to describe someone who is always harping on the same subject. The boxers at the speed bags had a dogged eloquence that reminded me of that bear. On a high shelf near the entrance sat a green enamel Buddha with a glass of Gatorade.

I didn't notice Bunkerd until he was standing in front of me: a diminutive man in his early forties whose nose clearly had been broken several times. He instructed me to hold out my left hand, which he proceeded to bind in boxer's hand wraps. When he had finished both hands and closed the Velcro around my wrists, he patted my arm. I had never met anyone who so manifestly radiated good will.

After a week or two, I was hooked--I invested in my own hand wraps and a pair of beautiful red fourteen-ounce boxing gloves with "Bunkerd Sportswear" printed on them in white. (Bunkerd has his own line of gear, manufactured in Bangkok.) I started spending all my free time at the gym--drawn by the universal pleasure of kicking and punching one's fellow-man, and also by Bunkerd's personal magnetism. Every day, I was increasingly impressed by his gentle and lively demeanor, pedagogic skill, and volubility. It was difficult to label him. He couldn't be the "boxer with a heart of gold," because that is a fundamentally conflicted, ironic figure, and Bunkerd didn't seem to be in conflict about anything. He was more like a small person made entirely of gold. (He often wore a tiny hoop earring, a big gold watch, and a gold ring.) Although his English was limited, he spoke with an air of sincerity and persuasiveness, and didn't seem bothered by the thought that people might not understand him. His teachings were devoid of any tormented, get-inside-the-other-guy's-head rhetoric. A move either worked ("Easy knockout") or it didn't ("No fun"). "No fun," he said flatly, demonstrating an incorrect stance. "Lose balance."

One day soon after I started, I was having trouble with high kicks, and Bunkerd came over and began explaining something in a heartfelt, meaningful tone. "||| || ||||!" he said, an utterance that I pictured as a row of vertical lines, like Woodstock talking to Snoopy. "|||| ||||| ||| kick," he added, pointing at my leg.

As I stepped back to try another kick, my partner called, "Look out! I think he's going to grab your leg."

Sure enough, Bunkerd seized my leg, rotated it ninety degrees, moved my arm back, and executed the entire kick for me, as if I were a puppet. "That's right!" he said, beaming. "Perfect!"