For me, boxing was a way of me exercising my frustration, anger

Host: The warehouse was almost empty now — long after the gallery crowd had left, their laughter and wine-fueled compliments fading into the cold, industrial silence of the night. The walls, once humming with chatter and light, now glowed faintly under the pale hum of the overhead bulbs. Paint canvases leaned like tired soldiers against the walls, the scent of turpentine and dust thick in the air.

Jack stood near one of them, his hands in his coat pockets, staring at a bold abstract piece — all reds and blacks, shapes colliding like thoughts mid-argument. Jeeny, her long black hair tied back, was packing away her brushes, her hands stained with color.

The faint echo of distant city sounds — trains, sirens, footsteps — seeped through the cracked window.

Jeeny: “You ever think about what it means to take up space, Jack?”

Host: Jack turned slightly, his grey eyes meeting hers in the reflection of the canvas — cold, sharp, yet faintly curious.

Jack: “You mean physically?”

Jeeny: “I mean existentially. Spiritually. Emotionally. As a woman, as an artist, as… a person who’s been told to shrink all her life.”

Host: She wiped her hands on a rag, leaving behind faint traces of crimson paint.

Jeeny: “Zoe Buckman said once — ‘Boxing was a way of exercising my frustration, anger, sense of injustice, but also a way of owning my space… taking up space. You have to become comfortable going like, “OK, I’m going to take this wall, this wall is mine.”’ That line — it’s stuck with me.”

Jack: “So, violence as empowerment?”

Jeeny: “Not violence. Assertion. She wasn’t fighting someone. She was fighting invisibility.”

Host: Jack tilted his head, his voice low and measured, like a man dissecting a complex equation.

Jack: “But invisibility isn’t cured by aggression, Jeeny. It’s cured by ability. You make something undeniable — people will see it. You don’t have to throw punches for that.”

Jeeny: “And yet they don’t. Not always. Not when you’re a woman. Not when your work threatens what’s comfortable. You can be brilliant, and still they’ll look past you, credit someone else, ask whose wife you are at the exhibit.”

Host: Her voice sharpened, not angry, but edged with years of quiet exhaustion.

Jeeny: “Boxing, for her, wasn’t about hurting. It was about claiming her body again — saying ‘This space is mine. My anger belongs to me. My art belongs to me.’”

Jack: “You think anger creates art?”

Jeeny: “No. But it reveals truth. You can’t paint honesty without touching pain.”

Host: Jack walked closer, his shoes echoing softly across the concrete floor.

Jack: “I understand frustration, Jeeny. Everyone does. But you can’t build permanence on fury. It burns too fast. Look at art history — Caravaggio, Van Gogh, Basquiat — all passion, all flame. They didn’t survive their own fire.”

Jeeny: “But they changed the world before it burned them. They made space that no one else could fill again.”

Host: The lights flickered, humming like tired insects. Jeeny leaned against the wall, folding her arms.

Jeeny: “You always talk about logic, Jack. About reason, structure, realism. But you forget — most of us don’t get the luxury of being calm in our revolution. For some, survival itself is an act of defiance.”

Jack: “And you think art is a battleground?”

Jeeny: “It is for those who were never invited to the table.”

Host: Silence. Only the faint sound of dripping water somewhere in the back, rhythmic as a ticking clock.

Jack: “So you box. You paint. You shout onto a wall. And what do you win?”

Jeeny: “Space.”

Jack: “And what then?”

Jeeny: “Then I fill it.”

Host: Her eyes burned — not with fury, but with clarity.

Jeeny: “Taking up space isn’t just about attention. It’s about existence. It’s saying, ‘I will not be reduced to the margins of someone else’s masterpiece.’”

Jack: “But if everyone starts fighting for walls, there won’t be any room left for art. Just noise.”

Jeeny: “Maybe the noise is the art. Maybe it’s what happens when silence finally breaks.”

Host: Jack exhaled — slow, contemplative. His hands brushed against the rough canvas, tracing the dried edges of Jeeny’s paint.

Jack: “You know, when I was younger, my father told me something. He said, ‘A real man knows how to hold his ground without swinging.’ I spent my life thinking that meant restraint. But watching you…”

Jeeny: “What?”

Jack: “Maybe I mistook restraint for fear.”

Host: Jeeny looked up at him, startled by the honesty in his tone.

Jeeny: “It’s not fear, Jack. It’s just different kinds of courage. Yours builds walls. Mine breaks them.”

Host: The air grew heavier — not tense, but alive. Like a storm forming quietly between two calm skies.

Jack: “You think fighting makes you free. But there’s a cost to always pushing.”

Jeeny: “There’s a cost to standing still, too. Ask any woman who’s watched her own idea signed under someone else’s name.”

Host: A pause — long, charged, unflinching.

Jack: “So this—” he gestured toward her painting, a violent cascade of red and black, “—this is your fight?”

Jeeny: “No. This is my space. My wall. My mark that says I was here, and I won’t apologize for it.”

Host: Jack looked again at the painting. The strokes were wild, unapologetic, alive. It was chaos and order in the same breath — the kind of piece that demands to be looked at.

Jack: “It’s… unsettling.”

Jeeny: “Good.”

Jack: “Because it makes you feel something you can’t name.”

Jeeny: “That’s the point. That’s what taking up space does. It reminds people they’re not the only ones who exist.”

Host: The faint hum of the lights filled the silence. The warehouse felt larger now — as though her words had expanded the air itself.

Jack: “You know,” he said quietly, “maybe we’ve been defining space wrong. Maybe it’s not just the ground we stand on, or the walls we hang things on. Maybe it’s the silence between two people — when one finally says, ‘See me.’”

Jeeny: “Yes. And when the other finally answers, ‘I do.’”

Host: He smiled faintly, almost reluctant, but genuine.

Jack: “You’re right, Jeeny. It’s not about aggression. It’s about presence. About the right to be seen — without asking for permission.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. And for some of us, that’s the fight we never stop training for.”

Host: Outside, the city’s pulse grew quieter, the rain beginning to fall in soft sheets that whispered against the metal roof. Jeeny turned back to her painting, dipped her brush once more into a streak of red, and drew a final, deliberate line across the canvas.

Jack watched — silent, respectful.

Jeeny: “There. That’s my space.”

Jack: “And it suits you.”

Host: She smiled, tired but triumphant, her fingers stained with the same color that once symbolized anger — now transformed into something alive, something owned.

As they stood there, the lights dimmed and the last echo of the night dissolved into the sound of rain.

Host: In that vast, empty warehouse, two people understood what Zoe Buckman had meant — that to take up space isn’t arrogance, but survival. It’s saying, “This wall is mine,” and painting on it anyway — even when no one else thinks you should.