Most Punchable Face
'The fatties will get skinny, the skinnies will die!'
We lived in Podolsk, a small town south of Moscow. Around the age I am now, as I write this, my dad took me to meet his friend and judo instructor, Maga. My image of Maga is blurry—my dad made a point of keeping his private life separate from his family life—but I remember him as a husky man in a white judo robe, his bearded face massive, eyes bulging slightly, a drop of sweat always on his forehead, never ceasing to smile. However, that smile must have been an illusion, a magic trick, because Maga—like most people in Podolsk then—was known for shady activities, mostly involving beating people up.
The day we were formally introduced, he was in the middle of teaching a class of bald teenagers. He grabbed one of the boys, took him by the arm, and flipped him over his shoulder onto the mat. After a loud THUMP, he turned to the rest of his students, spread his hands, and said, “That’s how it’s done. Now break into pairs and repeat.”
Then, walking over to where my young dad and I stood, he said, “So where were we? Ah, little Serezha—yeah, let’s train him.”
My “training,” of course, involved little more than running in circles around the gym alongside boys three heads taller than me—and maybe the occasional push up.
“I can’t wait for you to join us when you grow up,” Maga said, his wide grin blinding everyone in proximity.
“Yeah,” I squeaked, looking over at the bald boys with tattoos, the future electricians, cab drivers, and alcoholics. “Me too!”
When I was a teenager, my dad made a second attempt to instil in me a love for physical violence. By then, we had traded our red-bricked apartment in the hero city of Podolsk for a two-story one in Moscow, near a metro station named after Fyodor Dostoevsky. A fifteen-minute walk from our new home stood the now-demolished Olympiysky Stadium. It had hosted the 1980 Olympics, housed the largest pool in the country, and was home to an elite fitness club called World Class—Russia’s answer to Equinox or Third Space. Overpriced even by Moscow standards, it was a true luxury for gym rats—which, soon enough, I became.
I was twelve, and thanks to three years of stuffing my face with chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter sandwiches in California, I was overweight. A fateful school trip to Kostroma—a city so bleak it could make 1984 look like a rom-com—made me realize I needed to do something about it. Our school bus arrived, and we were told to climb a hill to read a historical plaque we could have just looked up on Wikipedia. I made it halfway up, then stopped, gasping for breath.
A girl I liked walked past and, loudly enough for everyone to hear, said, “So what, Serezha? Too tired to go up? Too fat to go up?”
I cursed her internally and decided immediately that I would lose weight.
What started as an experiment—cutting carbs on vacation in the Canary Islands, morning jogs, push-ups—quickly morphed into full-fledged teenage anorexia. Which guys don’t get—isn’t it an illness for Glamour models? But there I was. An exception to the rule proves the rule. By December of that year, I had stopped eating. If I so much as swallowed a spoonful of pea soup, I’d lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling, cursing myself.
My mom cried herself to sleep.
“My son is wasting away in front of my eyes!” I heard her scream at my dad night after night as I pretended to be asleep, texting girls on VK, the Russian Facebook.
“He knows what he’s doing,” my dad invariably replied. He was proud of me.
In fact, he was so overjoyed with my weight loss that he gave me a present—a World Class membership.
“We’ve seen all the work you’ve done, son,” he said, handing me a branded red envelope. “This is to continue your physical journey.”
Like most Russian men, my father wanted me to grow up tough.
I don’t remember the exact day I met Igor. He was a skinny, bald man with a stare that seemed to see straight into your soul. My dad had told me countless stories about him before finally taking me to one of his boxing lessons.
Igor started training me once a week, then twice, then three times. His lessons were expensive—$100 a session, but who’s counting when it’s on your dad’s account?—and soon, I started to get the hang of it.
Whenever I came to the gym, Igor would put on melancholic Russian rap—something that didn’t quite match his otherwise steely, unbreakable character but somehow made him look even cooler.
Occasionally, he’d train multiple people at once, yelling his famous phrase:
“The fatties will get skinny, the skinnies will die!”
As I progressed, I began sparring. Which meant I got to hit grown men—some my father’s age, some older. More often than not, I got hit in the head myself and would fall asleep with a pounding headache that lasted for days.
On a few occasions, I sparred with my dad. It felt strange—being face to face with someone as important as he was to me at sixteen (who am I kidding, still is) and hitting him in the body, even in the face. Though I have to admit, a part of me enjoyed it.
“This is for all the childhood trauma you’ve caused me!”
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Igor had a wife and several kids and was religious—but not in a crazy way. It only added to his presence, this aura of purpose and dignity. I remember looking at him, thinking:
“If I become half the man Igor is, I’ll know I’m doing something right.”
Like many men who grew up in the 1990s, my father was big into boxing. Back then, if you were into sports, it was either boxing or karate—not so much hobbies as necessities. A way to protect yourself, but also a way to reinforce a verbal argument with a quick, painful kick to the chin. As my dad liked to say, quoting a well-worn phrase from that world:
“If the heart’s door is closed, knock on the liver.”
Boxing, along with the weight I lost, changed me. It made me angrier and more violent. I’d walk the streets of Moscow and write in my diary:
“I feel like I can beat up anyone.”
If someone pushed me on the subway, I no longer stepped aside. I stared them down, daring them to make the next move. Boxing felt like a superpower—a new way to communicate with the hostile world that Russia was and, perhaps, always will be.
But all of that teenage bravado was just that—bravado.
In seventh grade, long before I started boxing, I had a friend with a classic Russian name—Plato (Platon – in Russian). I don’t remember exactly why we fell out, only that one day, we found ourselves in the nearby park, Platon screaming at me at the top of his skinny lungs. And I, more curious than angry, lifted my fist and punched him in the face.
The shock on Platon’s face was undeniable.
“Wh-what are you doing?! We were just talking!” he stammered, red-faced, ashamed, scared.
I remember thinking I should probably feel victorious. But all I felt was guilt.
Punching Platon didn’t ruin our friendship. If anything, it improved it. From then on, whenever I got into arguments with other classmates, I’d hear Platon saying—loud enough for me to catch:
“Don’t mess with Serge. He can hit, you know! Speaking from experience.”
His respect was genuine, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t the kind of respect I wanted. No matter how many violent movies I watched or how much I bragged about fights while smoking by the garages after school, I didn’t actually want to be that guy. And I wasn’t. But in Russia, being tough was expected of you as a man, so I played the part.
She called me, not the other way around.
We weren’t dating officially, but there was an unmistakable chemistry between us, at least the kind that existed when you were sixteen. Her school was a five-minute walk from mine. She called, crying.
“Please come get me. Nikita has locked me in the gym and says he won’t let me go unless I kiss him.”
Maybe it was my feelings for her, growing up with a younger sister, or perhaps I was trying to be a gentleman—but my instincts took over, and I ran towards her school.
I don’t remember how I got past security, ignored the screaming witch at the front desk (who, judging by her expression, was deeply engrossed in some propaganda news segment), or made my way straight to the gym. But when I got there, neither she nor Nikita was inside. Then, I spotted him in the hallway—short haircut and a bright red school vest. I walked up and punched him.
Unlike Platon, Nikita didn’t look shocked—some people seem to expect to be hit in the face. He swung back. But by then, the security had caught up with us and dragged us both out of the school.
Two months later, I was in a Starbucks with my friend Ilya and our (potential, as we hoped) girlfriends. Both were tall, beautiful gymnasts.
At the far end of the café, a woman with large, curly hair sat alone. I pointed to her and whispered to Ilya, “Look, she has a ramen noodle on her head.”
He laughed.
We were about to leave when she walked up to me.
“Were you just laughing at me?”
“No,” I lied.
“No, you were. I saw you!”
“Hey, relax, you,” I said, using the informal ty—something she clearly didn’t appreciate.
“How dare you talk to me like that? I’m older than you!” she snapped.
I looked her over. She couldn’t have been older than nineteen.
“I’m sorry, okay? We’re leaving. Just relax and enjoy your coffee—”
Before I could finish, I felt a sharp, scalding pain on my face.
I opened my eyes. The Ramen Woman had just dumped an entire (venti) coffee on me, splattering my clothes and the girls’ expensive outfits.
“You fucking bitch,” I muttered, walking outside to smoke, wiping myself off with my sleeve.
Outside, Ilya and I took long drags of our Parliament Aqua Blues and debated our next move.
“I can call my brother. He’ll fuck her up,” Ilya offered. “Or at least intimidate her.”
He always talked about his brother’s alleged schemes, though I never saw proof.
“I have a better idea,” I said.
We walked to the McDonald’s, which was a few steps away. After waiting in line, I ordered a large Coca-Cola. Extra ice.
They handed me a massive cup, for which I needed both hands. I returned to Starbucks, where our friends sat, reeling from the Ramen Woman’s attack.
The next few seconds were a blur. If this were a movie, it would be in slow motion, with classical music swelling in the background.
I open the door.
I enter the Starbucks.
I walk toward the window table, where Ramen Lady sits, sipping her coffee, oblivious.
I open my litre of Coke—
—and dump the entire thing on her head.
Zoom in: Her face is frozen in shock. She jumps up. Screams. Eyes squeezed shut.
Zoom in: My face, grinning. I yell something incoherent and bolt for the exit.
I sprint toward the metro station, the Ramen Woman hurling profanities behind me—
—and then, out of nowhere, a firm hand grabs me.
Everything goes dark.
I stopped boxing a few years ago because of my back. My doctor told me I shouldn’t do any sports at all—but who listens to their doctor? So I started running.
A year before writing this, I completed my first ultramarathon—55K from City Airport to Heathrow, running along South London’s parks. After the ultra, I thought I’d retire from running. But it only took two weeks before I laced up my sneakers again. Running is like a drug—if I don’t get my fix, I lose my mind.
Of course, where I come from, violence is the norm, a way of communication, a certain language you have to know how to speak if you want to survive. Kindness and politeness are often seen as weaknesses. There are very few men in Russia (at least I don’t know any) who hadn’t been punched in the face at least once. In the UK or the US, things are different. And I am glad.
They say we have two primal responses: fight or flight (or freeze). It took me years to realize there are other ways to deal with aggression. That being a man isn’t the same as being an animal. That you don’t have to react to every stimulus, like an underwater crab. That the quality that makes a man – a man – is more about picking your battles rather than trying to win every one (and everyone).
When my dad and I launched the most expensive YouTube vlog in the history of the internet—two cameramen and a producer documenting our every step—I asked Igor for advice, on camera.
He looked at the crew, my dad, and the producer (who looked like he’d never stepped foot in a gym) and said:
“Don’t fuck everything up.”
That advice has stuck with me. It comes back every time I do something stupid, every time I let my emotions get the better of me, every time my inner monkey—the one we all have, the one that just wants to fuck, eat, drink, and shit all day—takes over the control room in my brain.
The older I get, the more I understand what he meant.
When I return online, after running away from the Ramen Woman, I’m on the ground.
Around me, four grown men—mid-fifties, beer bellies—are throwing punches at three police officers.
Ilya yanks me up by the shoulder, yelling, “Serge, let’s run for it!”
We take off toward the nearest park, my vision blurred.
As we sit down, catching our breath, Ilya looks at me and starts laughing.
“What?” I ask.
He hands me his phone.
I turn on the front camera and see my face—puffy, already bruising. The beginning of what will be a beautiful black eye.
“Those idiots thought you stole something from Ramen Lady and started beating you up,” Ilya explains. “They kicked me in the ribs, too, before I grabbed you.”
I glance up. Our gymnast friends are standing there, staring at us in disbelief.
One of them touches my face. I place my hand over hers.
“You guys are complete idiots,” she says.
Ilya and I look at each other—
And burst out laughing.
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