I went to see my college counselor once more. Since I had a Mt. SAC ID, I no longer feared talking to administrators. I told my counselor that I was interested in maybe pursuing theater. She pointed out that Mt. SAC did not have the funding for a full theater department, just a much smaller theater program. However, they did have a national championship speech and debate team, which was known as the “forensics” team: “You should consider joining.” While the forensics team sounded way too gruesome for me, I told her that I would look into it. In the meantime, I really needed to find a theater department somewhere. After talking to some other theater nerds in my class, I found it in conservative Orange County.
Fullerton College had a pretty impressive theater department. They had a full production house and a complete theater season. They also had an awful lot of talented white kids. I, however, was not there for Shakespeare or any of the musicals they were rehearsing for at the time. I was there for an audition I read about for an edgy Latino-centric boxing drama the community college was producing written by Oliver Mayer called Blade to the Heat. The funny thing about the older white male director of Blade to the Heat was that he liked casting incredibly attractive and ridiculously fit young men. I was neither. The fact that I got one of the main roles made me feel good about myself. I figured I had to be talented among all those studs, or else why was I even in this damn show?! I didn’t get the lead (a gay boxer struggling with his own sexual identity) and I didn’t get the main bad guy (a homophobic boxer not wanting to face the truth about himself). I got the supporting hell-raiser role: an openly bisexual boxer who declared in the middle of the play, “I’ll fuck anything—but ain’t nobody fucking me!” The character I played was brasher than I would ever be, so I had fun crawling around in his irreverent skin for a change. I asked the director why he cast me, and he said: “It was your smile. You kept smiling throughout the audition, so I knew you could pull off the character.” Good to know that I have a bisexual smile. I had no idea.
Blade to the Heat was where I met my lifelong friend and Hollywood partner-in-crime, Steven Garcia. Steven was one of the boxing coordinators for the show. He was a very chiseled, good-looking dude who had no problem being shirtless in the ring. Steven looked like a real-life Clark Kent, whereas I looked like a scrawny, brown Peter Parker standing next to him. I was skinny/fat. That meant that I was on the thinner side, but definitely not in shape. Steven forced me to run a lot of workout drills to get me boxing ready. Steven was a bookish light-skinned Latino from Orange County who grew up on comic books and skateboarding. He used to be an overweight little kid who loved movies and was really close to his mom. If that wasn’t enough like my own story, Steven also considered his stepdad to be his real dad. More remarkable still was that he preferred Sprite over Coke—and ginger ale over both! But let me tell you, there’s nothing worse than meeting someone who is exactly like you, but is a better-looking version of you. Steven was so much like me that I even wondered if he had immigration problems.
Outside of expanding my inner circle with comic book nerds, there’s one other important thing you need to know about the Blade to the Heat performance. Yes, my family sold out another opening weekend. And yes, I was nominated for Best Actor by the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (more on this in a moment). But the only thing that mattered to me about the Blade to the Heat performance was that Liesel and Steve showed up. Now, you’re probably wondering, Who the hell are Liesel and Steve? Allow me to introduce you to my American parents…
When my counselor told me Mt. SAC had a national championship speech and debate team, I didn’t want to do it at first. But the notion of “national” stuck with me. I couldn’t travel abroad because of my immigration status, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t go national. The idea of doing anything outside the San Gabriel Valley excited me. I cautiously attended the introductory forensics team meeting and was surprised to see a ragtag group of outcasts. There were other Latinos, Black folk, LGBTQ+, AAPI, disabled students—it was a multicultural wonderland! The forensics team quickly felt like home because they were all nerdy and artsy like me. I wasn’t interested in giving speeches, but I did feel very comfortable being around minorities eager to express themselves.
The forensics team head coach, Liesel Reinhart, was a force to be reckoned with. She was young, she was white (her last name was Reinhart, for crying out loud!), and she commanded a room unlike anyone I had ever seen before. If she didn’t have such high morals, Liesel would have been a US senator. Her unwavering confidence might have come from all her years of doing speech and debate, but it actually came from the fact that she was the winningest collegiate speech coach in the United States. If forensics was the NBA, Liesel was Phil Jackson.
Liesel’s life partner, Steven T. Seagle, was not an official coach, but he showed up to help the team whenever there was practice. Liesel and Steve met doing forensics in college, but at this point in his life he was simply looking to spend more quality time with the very busy Liesel. Steve literally volunteered as a speech coach just so he could see Liesel for dinner. You sure as hell didn’t become Phil Jackson by going home early! I took a fast liking to the sarcastic Steve, a tall, skinny white guy with a voice deeper than Vin Diesel’s. Or maybe he took a fast liking to me, which was why he let me into his orbit so quickly. Steve was a very busy Hollywood writer. He never alienated anybody, but he could take on only a few students at a time to coach. Again, he wasn’t being paid for any of this.
Half a semester into the class, I was in the forensics room one evening helping Steve build a set for a speech performance when Liesel popped her head in and informed me that Steve was also a comic book writer. I freaked out. I was an avid comic book reader, and Liesel knew that. I had so many questions.
“Have you written any comics I know?” I asked.
“That depends,” Steve answered, “on what comics you know.”
Without knowing what comics he had written, I went straight into asking Steve about hypothetical fights between superheroes we would never see due to trademark violations.
“Who would win, Batman or Wolverine?”
“Wolverine.”
“Wolverine or Superman?”
“Superman.”
“What about Superman or Spider-Man?”
“Still Superman.”
“Okay, but what about Superman or the Hulk?”
“It’s always going to be Superman, Rafa. It’s in his name. You get it—truth, justice, the American way.”
That night at home, I thought a lot about Superman. Superman was not a character I ever liked much. I liked Christopher Reeve in the original film; I thought he was great. But the character? I have pictures of myself dressed as Batman as a child. I even have one of me dressed up as the little-remembered Greatest American Hero. But Superman? He felt so bland. He was like an overgrown Boy Scout in red underwear. But it was what Steve had said that stuck with me: “truth, justice, the American way.” As I lay in bed with my eyes open, it dawned on me that the most interesting thing about Superman was not his superpowers at all, but that he was secretly not American. Here was an alien trying to fit in the best he could in his newly adopted country. He loved the United States so much that he fought for its values: truth, justice, and the American way. He was basically fighting for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But nobody could ever know that Clark Kent was also Superman. It would put all his loved ones in great peril if the truth ever came out.
Thanks to Steve, I started seeing so much of myself in the Kryptonian American. Superman—above all superheroes—was the perfect example of what a migrant child could accomplish in the United States when shown the proper love and support by the American community. I had been a Superman all this time, but I didn’t realize it because I lived in such fear of anybody learning my secret identity.
I looked through my comic book collection to see if I had any Superman comics. That’s when I came across Uncanny X-Men, issue 350. It was one of my favorite X-Men stories of all time: Gambit’s greatest secret revealed! It was an issue of great importance for the Marvel company. And there in front of my face was the writer’s name: “Steven T. Seagle.” My Steve. Wow. He had been affecting my life since before I had ever met him. As for him and Liesel being my American parents, more on that in a second.
The secrets I kept were usually between my family and me versus the rest of the world. But there was one secret I even kept from my parents: I wanted to major in theater. Up to this point, they figured it was just a hobby. But since my immigration limbo kept me confined to community college indefinitely, I had the time to discover in college what I really wanted to do in life. And storytelling—any form of it—was it for me. So for as bad as my not being able to transfer out of community college was, my immigration problems truly led me to my career in the entertainment industry. Looking back, I probably loved theater because I needed the attention. Perhaps the love and admiration from their community is all an undocumented student ever really needs.
There was nothing like coming out of the dressing room to your family after a long, exhausting physical performance—especially one that contained a lot of boxing choreography like Blade to the Heat. But after opening week, my family stopped coming. Fullerton was very far for everyone. Besides, they had already seen the show, so I had no reason to go out after the performance. I didn’t know anybody in Orange County except Steven Garcia, who was in the show with me. So I would just stay in my dressing room most nights. One evening, toward the end of the run, someone from the crew walked over and told me I had family waiting outside. Family? Surprised, I ran out to see who had come back. I was shocked to discover Liesel and Steve waiting for me. I don’t remember inviting them, but they were there nonetheless. The crew member was right—I did have family outside.
As much as I loved theater, I loved Liesel and Steve more. For someone who was always looking for acceptance and security wherever I went because I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, I finally found it with Steve and Liesel. I made the decision to stop pursuing theater for a while and fully concentrated on forensics. What can I say? Showing up is one of my love languages.
We took a writer’s retreat to Big Bear Lake as a team to prepare our new speeches for competition. I had never done anything as luxurious as taking time off just to concentrate on writing. This was wonderful. A getaway to be creative. It was as if they were talking dirty to me!
I was asked to join the Speech to Entertain category. This was Liesel and Steve’s specialty. Steve’s dry wit and Liesel’s show-stopping one-liners were a deadly combination. I loved bouncing ideas off them. It was fun, but it was also grueling. You really had to be sharp to hold your own with those two. This would technically be my first exposure to what a professional TV writers’ room would feel like, minus all the imposter syndrome!
I found my voice as a writer doing forensics. I wrote a comedic speech about our broken immigration system. Young writers should always start with what they know. Funny enough, I didn’t know much about how our immigration system actually worked. In researching the topic, I discovered that “illegal” was the worst possible word to use when describing undocumented immigrants. People can’t be illegal; only actions can. If you believe human beings can be illegal, then I beg you to think of this: When a person kills another person, they are not an illegal—they are a murderer. When a person steals something from another person, they are not an illegal—they are a thief. When a person forgets to rinse before putting the dishes into the washer, they are not an illegal—they just forgot this one time, Mom! So why would we call a group of people in search of a better life, working on the front lines, essential workers during a global pandemic, yearning to breathe free “illegals”? If that wasn’t enough, I also discovered that the word “illegal” was designed to criminalize a section of our population specifically to try to deny them their First Amendment right to free speech and their First Amendment right to assemble. Needless to say, I was having a political awakening. I even came to realize that my previous lack of political awareness was a political statement unto itself.
I loved doing forensics. With my Mt. SAC ID, I was able to get on planes and travel to obscure cities across America, like Walla Walla, Washington, on the weekends to compete in empty classrooms in preliminary rounds and in packed auditoriums for the out rounds. And for me, it was all about those packed auditoriums. Liesel and Steve were the perfect writing mentors: Liesel would help me with substance, while Steve helped me with structure and my comedic voice. My first year, the majority minority forensics team and I destroyed the national community college competition. We were so good that Liesel had secretly decided to take a select few students to an international speech and debate tournament in Prague.
Liesel called me into her office to tell me the good news. With a smile she reserved only when changing students’ lives, she said: “We have decided to take you to Prague.” My heart sank. I knew the international trip might be a possibility for me, but I never actually thought I would be selected. And worse, I never thought I’d have to turn it down in person. Couldn’t Liesel have just sent me a letter in the mail like all those other universities trying to ask me for my social security number. I was undocumented. I couldn’t go to Prague. Or more clearly, I could go to Prague but then I wouldn’t be allowed back into the country. I broke eye contact with Liesel—a major forensics no-no—and said that I couldn’t go. I started sputtering excuses, saying I was busy that month. I should have known Liesel wouldn’t leave it alone. The reason speech and debate is called “forensics” is because the word is defined as the search for truth, which is what we do in a debate. And nobody embodies that sentiment better than Liesel herself. She always needed to get to the bottom of any matter.
“Why can’t you go? That’s ridiculous. Do you know how many students would die for a free trip to Prague?”
I looked up at Liesel, unsure of what to say. Up to this point, only my family, close high school friends, and my few Rooster cast mates knew the truth about my immigration status. Maddie was the only person who was not Latina who knew, but she was cast as a Latina. She was also my age. Liesel was older than me and an authority figure. But Liesel was also somebody who never meant anyone any harm and always went out of her way to support me. She drove an hour and a half to watch my performance of Blade to the Heat for me! We had become close. I didn’t know what to say. I was utterly confused. I was also very exhausted from all the lying, and goddamn it, I really wanted to go to Prague! I looked at my new mentor and finally said, “I can’t go because I’m illegal.” (I know I just learned to use “undocumented,” but old habits die hard!)
Liesel was the first white person in a position of power that I ever told about my immigration status. It was a very frightening experience. I didn’t know it then, but her reaction had a great effect on my young adult life. She could have been troubled by the news, or offended by my unauthorized status. A simple disgusted gesture would have made me feel great shame. Instead, like she would time and again in my life, Liesel leaned in and assured me everything would be okay. She first made sure that I was calm and felt safe. Then she was inquisitive like only Liesel could be. “How is that possible? When did you come here? Did you try hiring an immigration lawyer?” But no matter how much I explained the details of my immigration problems, she couldn’t quite understand how I could still be “illegal.” Without letting me leave her office, Liesel called counselors, the vice president of Student Services, and other administrators. She didn’t mention my name, but she perfectly described the predicament I was in. But nothing. There was not a thing she or anybody else could do to help me. I already knew that, but still it filled my heart to watch her try.
The forensics team went on to Prague without me. Steve sent me a picture of my face superimposed on the group photo. I thought that was very sweet. I brought home the movie Superman from work one night. The old 1978 Christopher Reeve version. A young farm boy who grows up to be one of America’s greatest heroes… and all he needed was a secret identity and two loving adoptive American parents.