"Knowing Mo, I'd say you are probably right."

"You can take self-defense courses and martial arts classes, and you will learn some cool stuff. But in the vast majority of those classes, you will probably miss—unless you have an extraordinary teacher—the one thing that will determine your success in the real world: the inner ability to kill someone. If you don't have that, all the training in the world won't help you."

"How can you teach that? After all, I'm a pretty civilized guy. Killing someone doesn't exactly come naturally."

"Right, and that's where most self-defense courses go wrong. When I first got married, Kevin insisted I take a self-defense class. His heart was in the right place—at least, at that point in our marriage. He wanted me to be able to protect myself. So I took the class and I learned all the moves. They were all simple and effective ways to repel an attacker, and we practiced on our classmates. But in the end, I didn't feel any safer. Even though they were simple moves, I was afraid of ever having to actually use them. Why?"

"Bad teacher?"

"No. He was actually a good teacher for technique. But he forgot an important part of it—or maybe he just didn't know it himself—the part of it having to do with the fact that we were all civilized. Civilized people don't do that sort of thing. In prison, on the other hand, there is nothing civilized. Everything you do is for survival. If you are in a fight, you don't have time for fancy moves. If you are attacked by a man, you go for the groin with the intent of making sure your attacker will never have children. You go for the eyes, not with the intent to hurt, but with the intent to blind—to push your thumbs right through the eye sockets. In classes you are taught about the vulnerability of the pinky finger and how you can subdue someone by bending it back. If I'm going to grab the pinky, it will be with the intent to rip it off their hand. You have to bring yourself down to the level of your attacker. Even if their purpose isn't to kill you, the minute they seriously threaten you, it's all fair game."

I just looked at her and shook my head in wonder. She was a strange combination of vulnerability and strength. The image she put out to the world was the person she would like to be, but was still light years away from actually becoming. In bed, she was like a child who was craving love and acceptance. But her strength was an animal strength, a survival instinct that had been honed sharp as a knife. She was someone you didn't want to mess with.

"You can't go into a fight hoping to overpower your opponent," she continued. "You have to go into it wanting to break your opponent into little pieces. There is nothing subtle about it. I can tell you all this, but in the end it comes down to your ability to find that part of yourself, because I think we all have it in us. It just depends on how deeply buried it is."