After Choli and I graduated from Rincon Intermediate, we enrolled in West Covina High School together. We were supposed to go to Nogales High, but our parents were afraid we would turn into gangbangers, so we used friends’ addresses and went to the higher-achieving West Covina High. Sure, we broke some zoning laws to attend, but if the Kennedys got ahead in part by dealing with the Mafia, and the Bushes got ahead in part by dealing with Nazis, then us dealing with fake home addresses to attend a better school did not seem so bad. This was the early nineties, the beginning of the fight for school vouchers and charter schools in California. Public money was rapidly being privatized and leaving our public schools. My parents learned about using a fake address so I could attend a better school through family friends who were willing to lend a helping hand. Without knowing it, my parents and I were playing the system in the same way the system always plays communities of color.
That freshman year of high school, I did something truly illegal. The year was 1994, and I had just turned fourteen. I remember it well because my parents and I used to rent movies at a local video store called Video 94. It was one of those small video stores that stayed in business mostly because of those mysterious, prohibited videos behind the curtain of an adults-only room. If you are too young to know what a video store is, just imagine a grocery store with aisles and aisles of cereal boxes with your favorite movies on the cover, but you not being able to watch any of them because the cereal box you wanted was always rented out. You don’t know the pain of not having “suggested for you” on your home menu, or having to read each cereal box one by one to know what the hell you were even renting, or having to take ten minutes to rewind a movie before you could even start to watch it. If you only grew up with the Internet and streaming, then I have no place in my heart for you. You don’t know the horror of having your hormones run amok and only having blurry porn on cable TV to keep you company. Pornography was not a real thing for me or any kid my age in 1994. No kid I had ever met knew what was behind those curtains at the video store, but we were all dying to find out. Up until that point I thought pornography was what I saw in James Cameron’s The Terminator when Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn made love before the big climax (no pun intended) of the movie. If you must know, Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn inspired me to masturbate for the first time in my life. You did not need to know that, but I feel much better that you do. I am disgusted with us both.
My dad forced me to accompany him to the Plaza at West Covina one Saturday morning. We parted ways in the parking lot. He was going to look at new vacuum cleaners to torment me with and I asked if I could go to Tower Records, since record stores were how teenagers wasted their time before the advent of TikTok, Spotify, or ADHD.
I walked around Tower Records, excited to see the new CD releases. Tower Records also had a small section that was prohibited for children. In other words, they, too, had an adults-only room with a curtain protecting it from nosy kids going through puberty. For some ungodly reason on this particular morning the curtain was open. I stopped dead in my tracks. Holy crap! The secured-off area was not secured off. I looked around to see if there were any adults around. There were none. It was just me and an open curtain. I stuck my fourteen-year-old body to the wall and stealthily made my way into the prohibited area. For the first time in my life I saw X-rated magazines that, well, made what Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn were doing in The Terminator seem like Sesame Street. This was a big deal. This was Skynet launching a nuclear holocaust. This was pornography.
I do not remember how long I was in the prohibited area. It felt like a lifetime to a boy coming of age. I definitely grew some chest hair while in that forbidden room. I also lost my innocence that morning. I now knew where babies came from. Although I must admit that some positions did not seem appropriate for impregnation. I had to leave the area, and that particular magazine in my hand had to come with me. I looked around one more time, and still saw no staff members anywhere in sight. I quickly lifted my shirt and tucked that cold magazine inside my pants. I was still a wannabe gangster at the time, so I had plenty of room in my baggy jeans. I casually walked out of Tower Records, and as the sun hit my face, I could not believe I had stolen something. I had never stolen anything—not even a kiss! What’s more, I couldn’t believe that I had gotten away with it. I took a deep breath. This was going to be the start of a new era of puberty for me. That was when I heard someone with a deep voice say, “You want to put that back?” I turned and saw the Tower Records head of security, a fit rocker who looked like he had just gotten out of a Metallica concert, staring at me. I did not know what to do. I panicked, so I ran. The security guard yelled, “Stop him! Thief!” I ran faster. I had a great head start on Master of Puppets so there was no way the security guard was going to catch me. Then, out of nowhere, a tank of a man tackled me shoulder-first to the ground. The linebacker was just some random buff white thirty-year-old shopper eager to defend the honor of American capitalism. I hit the ground incredibly hard. The guy was twice my age and three times my size. I wish I could say I was angry at this random white dude eager to punish minorities who didn’t know their place. But truthfully, I was just angry with myself. How stupid could I be to live up to two stereotypes? I was now both a thief and oversexualized. Damn. Why did I have to be young, broke, and horny?
I was escorted to the Metallica dude’s lair. It was like a cave out of a Batman movie, if Batman was a sloppy, lower-class slacker. There were walls and walls of monitors, and the security guard’s only job was to study each of them and wait for a stupid kid like me to try something illegal. He had watched me the entire time inside the adults-only room. I sat there in shame while the security guard waited for my dad to walk into the store. Once he did, I pointed him out on the surveillance monitor.
“That’s him. That’s my dad.”
Ride the Lightning went to grab my dad. He escorted my concerned father to his poor man’s Batman lair and proceeded to tell him what I had done. My dad did not look at me. Not once. He simply told the guy, “You are wrong. My son would never do that.”
“I’m more than happy to show you the footage, if you like.”
“I don’t need to see the footage,” said my dad, now visibly upset. “My son would not do such a thing.”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
My dad refused to look at me. At that point, I felt it was my duty to tell the truth. I sheepishly said, “I did it. I tried to steal the magazine.” I could see my dad’s blood starting to boil.
Metallica dude took a picture of me and said I was never allowed back inside Tower Records again. He then handed my dad a one-thousand-dollar fine that we had one month to pay before he reported us to the police. My dad and I drove home in silence. I had never seen him so furious in my life. When we got home, he walked up to my mom and explained that I was going to military school. It was one thing to look like a gangbanger, but now I was behaving like one. My mom, who always did everything my dad wanted, shocked him by saying: “Absolutely not.” My dad was taken aback. My mom had never gone against any of his wishes. When he said let’s move to the United States, she went. When he said let’s change careers, she did. When he said let’s move to another city, she moved. But there was something he had never expected: my dad never expected that I was off-limits.
My parents got in a big fight that evening, and they did so in front of me so that I understood what turmoil my actions had caused. My dad pointed out that I had put them at great risk—that they could not have Tower Records reaching out to the authorities. I did not understand the magnitude of the risk my dad was talking about, but I did not ask because he was incensed. When you’re a white, documented citizen this is a harmless teenage adventure, the kind of thing your dad brings up in your wedding toast to embarrass you. But when you’re undocumented, it could be catastrophic and upend your family’s life. My parents were well aware. I was not. The Tower Records fine needed to be paid and my parents did not have any money to pay for it. My mom, in a firm tone of voice I had never heard before, said, “He is not going to military school and that is final.” She then looked over at me. She was not upset; she was more disappointed. Believe it or not, that hurt even more.
“Fine,” chided my dad. “He won’t go to military school. But he will pay for that fine because I’m not going to.”
“He will,” my mom said defiantly.
I was fourteen. How was I going to raise a thousand dollars?
My dad stopped speaking to me for a time. This was his psychological warfare. If he was angry at you, my dad would not even acknowledge your existence. That to me was worse than any physical beating. After a month of being ignored every day, you wished for a beating just for the attention!
One day, I walked around Video 94 and noticed that the return movies were piling up and the lines of customers were getting longer and longer. The family-owned business needed help, but the video store owner was an Indian immigrant. He was never going to ask for help. It was an immigrant mentality I knew too well from my father. So I waited until the last customer had left and walked up to him. “Do you need help?” Sandip, the video store owner, looked at me incredulously and inquired, “Are you eighteen years of age?” I steeled myself and replied, “I am.” I most definitely was not. Sandip looked me once over and then asked, “Can you work at night during the week?” I said, “Yes, I can.” I was not sure if I could, but I needed to pay the fine before the police were alerted. Sandip then leaned in and said, “I can only pay you cash under the table. Is that okay?” I grinned from ear to ear. “Under the table would be perfect.”
I started working at Video 94 immediately. Granted, I got paid only $2.25 an hour, which was much less than the California minimum wage at the time, but this job was my path to redemption. My uncontrollable hormones had caused me to steal a porno mag, I got caught, fined, and was then forced to find employment to pay for my mistake. And I did all this without documentation. Do you understand why I hate teenagers today who have the Internet while going through puberty?
I got acquainted with the Video 94 filing and computer system rather quickly and I was great with the predominantly minority customers. I went to school all day, did my homework as soon as I got home, and then I walked to the video store for my night shift Monday through Friday. I went in at 6 p.m. and would get out around midnight. I did this every school night. The reason the video store was open late was because we had a huge wave of single men who would come after hours to rent pornography so they would not be seen by regular customers during the normal store hours. It was a bunch of single men in desperate need of the Internet. The irony was not lost on me that the reason I was there was because I was eager to peek behind the curtain, and now I was in charge of restocking the entire adults-only area. I had access to all the porn I could ever want, but now I was too busy working to watch any of it. I would walk around high school exhausted with my eyes bloodshot red from the lack of sleep. So much so that the assistant principal pulled me aside one day and tried to convince me to stop doing drugs because, as he pleaded, “You’re not a bad kid.” I wish he would have told my dad that.
It was around this time that my cousin Joe came to live with us. Joe was eight years my senior but looked five years younger than me. He had been living in Utah for several years. He had even lived on a Native American reservation for a time. Joe had his heart set on being a professional snowboarder before an upside-down, helicopter-style snowboarding jump snapped his forearm in two, forcing doctors to insert a metal plate to keep his arm together. Joe came to live with us because he was in desperate need of medical supervision but had no health insurance. My parents, with their medical backgrounds, could provide him that with no HMO. Joe was not in good shape when he came to live with us, but little did we know he would end up healing us.
My dad did not want to take Joe in. Joe is my aunt Lupe’s son and my aunt Lupe is my mom’s older sister. Lupe was named after the Virgen de Guadalupe, but boy, was she far from it. My aunt Lupe, or Lupita mi Amor, as she would have me call her since I was a child, was the life of any party. Lupita mi Amor and my dad clashed a lot. She hated how my mom always did as he pleased. She felt that my dad did not deserve her younger sister. Lupita mi Amor is still the only person in history ever to throw an apple at my dad’s face after an argument. Why would he ever want to take her son in?
When Joe moved in, I told him I liked his shorts. Without any hesitation, he gave them to me. I was happy wearing my new skater shorts. My mom, upset, pulled me aside and explained, “People who give you the shirt off their back always end up shirtless. Don’t do that with Joe. He doesn’t have much.”
Joe took me on as his young Padawan. We shared an incessant love for the original Star Wars trilogy, but above all, I loved the music Joe listened to. My house was always filled with Spanish music or smooth jazz. Joe changed all that. One day, Joe was sitting next to the house stereo. “Come here,” he said. “Check these guys out. They’re called NOFX.” The Cali punk sounds that blasted through our speakers engulfed me. NOFX, Pennywise, and Operation Ivy blasting through our living room speakers was exactly what I needed at fourteen years of age. My dad and I were still estranged. He and I did not speak much around this time, not after he tried to get rid of me via military school. The unity vibes and anti-authoritarian sentiments of Cali punk spoke to me. I started dressing more like Joe, a half American, half Ecuadorian who had spent his entire life bouncing from family member to family member’s house. One night, as we were hanging out in the backyard drinking beers together, Joe pointed out, “We are the only two grandchildren that grew up with Grandpa.” Before I was born, Joe had spent so much of his childhood with our grandparents, and he was my grandfather’s favorite. “My German,” my Tata would call Joe, due to his light skin and sparkling blue eyes. Joe and I had a bond that nobody could break. He was the only adult who truly understood me.
One night, when I came home late from Video 94, I found Joe and my dad in the backyard drinking beer, philosophizing on life the way Joe and I did. The sight was a little hard to comprehend and I was a little jealous. Only Joe and I drank beer and philosophized about life. I was fourteen, but as long as I had a full-time job, got good grades, and only did it at home, I was allowed to drink a beer with Joe. So what was my dad doing invading my space with my cousin? Technically, it was not my space. I did not pay rent, although I was working to pay off the fine. Then I heard my dad laughing and I was stunned. I realized in that moment that I rarely ever heard my dad laugh. Joe did something for me that I did not know I needed. He helped me see my dad as a person and not as the tyrant I had made him out to be in my head. Watching my dad hang out with Joe, enjoying himself the way I did, made me feel like maybe there did not have to be an ocean between us. That’s when I told my dad, “I have all of it now. The fine can finally be paid off.” My dad did not smile, but I could tell from his demeanor that he was pleased.
One particular Sunday at Video 94, a kind man from Indonesia sporting a gray beard, David, asked me why I did not have a car. David had seen me walk to the video store every evening on his way back home from his auto repair shop. He was an immigrant like I was, so he felt bad for me. “Haven’t you heard the song ‘Nobody Walks in LA’?” David was a mechanic, and he said he could get me a car to use. I told him I would think about it. It felt odd to be offered a car out of the blue, but the universe works in mysterious ways. Because a few days later, an unknown older white man in a blue sedan pulled up next to me as I walked to work.
“Do you want a ride?”
“No,” I said as I kept walking. The man slowly kept driving next to me. Again, he asked, “Are you sure I can’t just take you?”
“No,” I now said forcefully. The man begrudgingly drove off. Not fifteen minutes had passed when the man pulled up next to me once again. “Come on. Get in. I’m heading that way anyway.” Just then, a police car approached and the man drove off. I got to work and wondered if I was just making a big deal out of nothing, or if that man who I had never seen before truly just wanted to give a fourteen-year-old Latin boy a ride. That night when I saw David at the video store, I said, “Is that car offer still valid?”
I now had an old Nissan Maxima that I used to get to and from work. David trusted me to do the responsible thing with his car, so I did. My parents did not understand where the hell I got a car from. There was so much they did not understand about America. Did people just give cars away in this country? One night, while I was hanging out with my cousins Choli and Joe, I did the unthinkable. I took David’s car out on a cruise. I had never gone out on a late-night joyride, and it felt exhilarating. To just pick up the keys and drive wherever you wanted at any time of day that you wanted. I had never felt that sense of freedom before. I parked at a gas station just as a police car pulled up right behind us. I quickly gave the keys to Joe and said he should drive since I did not have a license. That’s when the cops started interrogating us.
“What are you guys up to? Where are you coming from?”
I was not nervous when they asked for the registration. The papers were all up-to-date. I only got worried when they asked for our license and discovered that Joe’s was suspended. The police impounded the car right then and there. I felt horrible. David trusted me with his car and I stupidly had it taken away.
I had already paid off the thousand-dollar Tower Records fine in full, two dollars and twenty-five cents an hour at a time. The manager must have been surprised that a fourteen-year-old kid could bring in a thousand dollars. I myself was surprised that I was able to do it! But now I had a new problem: David’s car had been impounded. I went straight into saving the money to get the car out of the tow yard, which I did after a month and a half and a lot of overtime at the video store. But then the clerk at the impoundment lot informed me that I could not retrieve the car; the owner had to pick it up personally. I walked to David’s house in shame and was forced to tell him the truth of what I had done. He listened compassionately and then thanked me for my honesty. Wow. I wished my dad had been more like him. David drove us both to the tow yard, where I paid to get his car out. When we got back to his house, he was kind enough to try to give me his car again. That’s the type of person David was. But this time I told him, “No. I learned my lesson. I need to walk.”