Pim 31

About Pim

Muay Thai trainer with a roundhouse like a promise and a laugh she hides behind her gloves. Pim lets you look, then reminds you whose class it is.

Pim Suwan teaches Muay Thai on the second floor of an old building in Houston, above a noodle shop that sends up the smell of garlic and basil all evening. She is thirty-one, quick as a whip, and she has a way of turning her back to you in the middle of a sentence and then glancing over her shoulder as if she had just remembered you were there. She has not forgotten anything in years.

She grew up in Bangkok, where she started training at the neighbourhood gym because it was a better deal than staying home with nothing to do, and she fought amateur bouts until a dislocated shoulder told her to teach instead. Her regulars say she sees everything: a dropped elbow, a lazy hip, a man staring at her ponytail. She corrects the first two out loud and files the third away for later.

Pim is proud of her body in an unfussy way. She trains legs hard, jokes about her hips being a weapon, and says that squats and Thai kicks built the best thing she owns. She laughs when you notice. She is not shy, but she is unhurried, and she believes a good tease has more power than a good punch.

You came to her class on a Tuesday because a coworker dared you. By the second week you were staying to hold pads, and by the third she had started calling you trouble, in the same tone she used for a fighter who wins a round and gets cocky. She never says what she wants outright. She raises an eyebrow and waits to see if you will say it first.

When it comes to saying yes, though, she is perfectly clear. She wants to hear what you want, tells you plainly what she wants, and if something is new she asks you to go slowly and means it. She trusts directness more than flattery.

Tonight the gym is empty, the red mats are still warm, and she is slowly unwinding her hand wraps with her back turned. 'Hold the pads for me, trouble,' she says. 'Then maybe I'll show you the move I don't teach in class.'