lunes, 31 de agosto de 2009

the apartments

 

The apartments at 50th and Imperial are still there.  The pool’s gone now, concrete poured in and now where kids used to spend hot summers swimming they are now just kicking soccer balls or doing anything else to let the humid day go by.  It was there, for sure, the place where I had the most fun, the closest I was to falling over the line, to getting beat up by Samoans or Black boys, in there we were just all ready to beat the first person that gave us an attitude.

 

I met Damariz there.  Her fragile ten year old bones didn’t stop her from immersing into the world of proving toughness, of rolling eyes to people, of watching Yo MTV Raps and believing it as true because it looked like the kind people and cars and beer bottles that we saw on our own streets.  So yeah we romanticized it, it was a feeling like yeah look that’s the life for us, it would take me years to realize that such mentality only chains you, they are nothing but codes that try to instill in us that it is in fact how we are, our nature, in us.

 

I have been trying to get a hold of Damariz, especially since I last heard that she was heavy into drugs.  She’s my little sister; we grew up so close; it’s funny because we even looked alike, both with dark brown curly hair, caramel skin and a chola attitude.  Now I am just worried about her, I need to see her, let her know that I want to be part of her life again, just like back in the days, our days in the apartments.

 

I lived on the first floor on number 2 and her house was on the second floor, up some external cement block stairs with black steel hand railings; hers was number 7.  We met and became inseparable.  I guess it had to do with our similarities: single moms, always out working and then out dancing at night, R&B videos, and just plainly enjoying each other’s company.  She was my confidante and I was hers.

 

There was a period in which we became die hard WWF fans.  She liked the Undertaker and I like Macho man, (for some weird reason I liked it when he would flick his toothpick at his opponents, I thought, “Wow, that is suave”).  Once, for a Summer Slam, we collected money from all the kids in the block so that we could order it on Pay-Per-View, we all sat around the black velvety sofas and in the outside stairs and watched it at my house, in a big screen T.V.

 

All the gang, I lost touch with them and I feel guilty.  I ran into Johnnie.  Oh we have some history.  Once we almost got in a fist fight.  He was pissed because I splashed some water to his little sister, he mouthed me off and I returned him the favor and so I got out of the pool and he chased me around, to the entertainment of all the adults sitting on their balconies, he slipped and fell on his huge stomach and all the laughter only served to infuriate him, I ran to my house, locked the door and hid in the bathroom.  That didn’t stop him from running through the screen of the window.  After that it was more like my mom almost fought his mom.

 

I was twelve back then, and I needed to switch schools because my mom did not want to drive me around to a bus stop for a school in Clairemont.  So now I was to be enrolled in Gompers Secondary School, and anyone from San Diego who grew up in south east can tell you that it had a foul reputation; it was just a dangerous school.  I was scared.

 

“Huuh you’re going to Gompers, you better take a shank!” Juan, who lived on number 15, warned me.  “I go there and believe me its crazy.”  So I was told about the racial riots, about the constant wars between the Mexicans, the Samoans, the Blacks and the Asians.  “When it gets down, you really need to choose a front, you can’t refuse or else you are on your own,” Juan explained to me.

 

I ended up going to Gompers, against my will.  The main issue at Gompers was that they stuffed a middle school and a high school in one campus: it was a 7th grade through 12th grade inferno.  And add to that the prime location on 47th and one block north of Market Street, in south east San Diego, one of the most violent and home to various gangs, then yeah, Gompers was crazy.  I probably saw at least ten student riots in the three years I was at Gompers and made it out.

 

The most political one I was the 1993 student walkouts, when the Mexican kids ran out of classes protesting then Governor Pete Wilson’ California Prop. 187.  It wanted to refuse public education rights to undocumented students and refuse emergency services to any undocumented patients.  We kids back then just needed any excuse to revolt, but this one hit home, it pierced our hearts, it made us furious.

 

The MEChA student organization planned it out and let the raza know what was going on and within minutes we took to the streets, chanting fuck Pete Wilson and we went to gather students from other schools and then we all congregated at Chicano Park in Logan Heights.  It was and continues to be one of my most memorable and enjoyable experience.  That day was pure magic, except I didn’t comprehend the magnitude of the event, the meaning of such a riot.

 

Now I do.  And I am glad I stood up for my rights and I stuck out my middle finger to the system.