My mom was a doctor and my dad was a doctor, so I officially decided to major in theater. I’ll admit it was a dumb decision to get a degree in something that wouldn’t make me money right away. As an immigrant, how the hell was I going to take care of my mom and dad with a theater degree? I was a child whose parents sacrificed their livelihoods and medical careers so that I could have a shot at a better life, and I let everything ride on the arts! I even applied to UCLA’s School of Theater, Film & Television. The question of my real social security number came up again, and it was wearing on me. Paperwork is terrible under normal, documented circumstances. Now compound that with the fear of having your entire life uprooted and erased by just filling out a form. I can’t even go to restaurants that ask you to fill out your own order—it triggers me!
Over dinner one evening, my dad said he saw that I was applying to universities.
“What major did you choose?”
I tensed up. Things were getting better between us, but he never really probed too much about college. With the most stoic face possible, I replied: “Theater.” As I had imagined, I disappointed my dad to no end. I felt guilty because they had sacrificed so much for my sake and still I chose the most unstable path. Yes, he liked my performances, but he never thought I would pursue this acting thing as a career. By the way, my backup major, world religions, was even more devastating to him. Because what billionaire in America has not mastered the art of theater and the beliefs of every major world religion?
My dad asked, “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
“I am sure,” I answered defiantly.
My dad looked over at my mom with great concern, but she simply responded with an it’s-his-life shoulder shrug. There was so much my dad wanted to say, but he bit his tongue. Worried and quite frustrated, there wasn’t much he could say that would have any bearing on my ultimate decision. He told me to pay for my own schooling when I first got to college, and I did; thus, I had complete autonomy over my higher education. Even though we had no documentation, I still found a way to have a full-time job, be a full-time student, and do theater and speech on my off time. I knew my dad was upset about my career choice, but I didn’t care. I had to live my best unauthorized-life.
Shortly thereafter, I was summoned into the office of Mt. SAC theater professor Ralph Eastman. A tall, classy white man with a love for folk music, Professor Eastman informed me that I had been nominated to attend the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Regional Acting Competition.
“This is a big deal for Mt. SAC,” Professor Eastman said. “If you manage to win regionals, you’d be only the second student to make it to the national competition in our college’s history.”
It was on! I needed to make it to nationals. My dad thought my career choice was a travesty, but the universe was trying to help me prove him wrong. All I had to do was beat a thousand other students and make it to the national competition.
Soon thereafter, I learned that I was nominated at not one but two of the community colleges I attended: for my work in both Mt. SAC’s Roosters and Fullerton College’s Blade to the Heat. Both colleges had to go into arbitration over who would take credit for me. I’m certain this type of nomination must have meant more fund-raising dollars for each of them. Mt. SAC, since they were the first official nomination, ended up winning in the end.
I was heading to the competition representing Mt. SAC, but I still needed two pieces of material for this competition: a monologue and a scene, which required an acting partner. The acting partner was easy. There was no doubt I was going to beg my homeboy Eddie, the cholo Shakespeare aficionado who had gone to Nogales High School, to be my scene partner. It was almost serendipitous since Nogales High School was the school my parents didn’t allow me to attend in fear I would turn into a gangbanger. I would have been a terrible gang member, reciting soliloquies in my oversize khakis and hairnet all the time. Eddie and I started working on a scene from an obscure play called Cuba & His Teddy Bear by Reinaldo Povod. The play was an explosive drama about a small-town drug dealer and his son. I played the drug dealer and Eddie played my son. Because the scene was heavy, I knew my monologue needed to be light and comedic. Luckily, Kenny Klawiter was both hilarious and a huge theater savant. Kenny ran the Mt. SAC speech and debate team with Liesel. A gorgeous man with Midwestern charm, Kenny was the type of communications professor who would get gifts at the end of each semester from his admiring female students. Unfortunately for all his brides-in-waiting, Kenny was a proud gay man. Speaking of which, Kenny also taught me one of the most valuable lessons in life when it came to prejudging others. We once drove to a forensics tournament together, and out of curiosity I asked him, “When did you first know you were gay?” Kenny smiled at me kindly and replied, “When did you first know you were straight?” Damn. I never realized that oppressed people could oppress people.
I was in Kenny’s office telling him I was in desperate need of a funny monologue, and I felt it needed to be ethnic. I was entering a big regional acting competition going up against roughly a thousand college students. My ethnicity needed to be my superpower. “I think I have the right play for you,” Kenny said with a glint of mischievousness in his eyes. Kenny was a theater nerd just like I was, so he had a wealth of knowledge when it came to modern plays. He reached behind his chair to a giant bookshelf and handed me the monologue that would define my regional acting competition. It was called Men on the Verge of a His-Panic Breakdown by Guillermo Reyes. The play was erratic and irreverent. More important, it was a one-person show written by a Latino. It was a series of glorious comedic monologues, and the one I chose to perform was that of a gay immigrant who arrives in Los Angeles during the 1992 uprisings and becomes convinced he’s witnessing the filming of another Lethal Weapon sequel. It was perfect. I had my scene, my scene partner, and my monologue. Fresno, here I come.
The Western Conference Regional Acting Competition that year was held in Fresno, California. Negatively referred to as the armpit of the state, I found Fresno to be quite lovely. It had a lot of land and a lot of great people. My people. Fresno wasn’t very glamorous, but it was close enough for me to drive. I was a safe driver. The only time I had ever been pulled over was the Free Rafa incident where the cop really pulled Choli over, not me. There was nothing my parents could do about me driving to Fresno. My older cousin Priscilla was getting rid of her car, and her dad, my uncle Sergio, suggested she give it to me. And that is how I came to possess the chalupa, a hard-on-the-outside-but-soft-on-the-inside beat-up white Toyota Camry. The caveat was that I was only allowed to drive the chalupa to and from school. Since the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Regional Acting Competition was school-related, I figured driving to Fresno from West Covina was fair game. It was a loophole, but fair game nonetheless.
The drive to Fresno was a little scary. It was just my homeboy Eddie and me. We could have been pulled over at any time and my collegiate acting aspirations—let alone my American citizenship aspirations—would have been over. Eddie knew the truth about my immigration status because of our little Tijuana trip, but he didn’t seem to care much. We were just excited to have an excuse to get away from our neighborhood.
Eddie and I arrived in Fresno, and as we checked into our motel, we realized that everyone was there to party. The lobby was loud, and the pool, which all the students were drinking in, was even louder. I was even offered to be part of a threesome. I was so young and inexperienced that I simply said, “I can’t—I don’t have call waiting.”
University, Cal State, and community college students separated from their parents for the first time are always eager to wild out. I wasn’t. As you know, I had been drinking from an early age, but I was there for one thing and one thing only: to win the acting competition and prove to my parents that I was not stupid for wanting to do this as a career.
Like speech and debate, there were a lot of preliminary rounds in the ballrooms before you could get to the out rounds in the big auditorium for the semifinals. And if you were lucky, you got to perform on the main stage of the Tower Theatre for the Performing Arts for the entire region in the finals. I rehearsed my monologue alone at night in my motel room, and Eddie and I rehearsed our scene in the mornings. The days were full of cutthroat competitive rounds. Everyone was really good—the four-year students most of all. They were very polished, unlike us scrappy two-year students. The competition lasted several days. I was laser-focused. I had convinced myself that I could prove my dad wrong on my career choice with this win. I was so intent on winning the competition that Eddie claims the following happened (but I have no recollection)…
I begrudgingly agreed to go with Eddie to one of the many competition socials they held around town. Everyone was drinking, dancing, and having the time of their lives. I, on the other hand, was counting the minutes before I could go run my monologue back in my motel room again. In the middle of the dance floor—for everyone to hear—a beautiful young lady yelled out, “I want to *%$# him!” Eddie claims she pointed at me. I didn’t hear this because I was running my lines in my head the whole time. Do I remember the social? Barely. Do I remember this young lady? Not really. Did I hear someone yell out, “I want to *%$# him!” Definitely not. I’m very happy this young lady had the confidence and self-assurance to yell something out like that for the whole region to hear. I’m also happy this young lady and I didn’t *%$# because I would have just been running my monologue in my head for the full two-and-a-half minutes. I continued walking, and Eddie was stunned that I didn’t go talk to her.
Eddie and I made it out of prelims, we made it out of quarterfinals to semifinals, and we miraculously made the list for the final round. We were beside ourselves, in large part because the competition was open to all community college students, but it was mostly dominated by theater students from four-year universities. They were the big men and women on campus, always walking around with their heads held high and an air of invincibility around them. It was a big deal for Eddie and me to make the finals. It was an even bigger deal for Mt. SAC, which was not really known for their performing arts—just their cross-country course. The final round would have been nerve-racking for me, except that I had done a lot of speech and debate up to that point. I felt comfortable in front of a large audience. I knew exactly if and when I had their undivided attention. I didn’t need a spotlight to wash away the public. I felt at home looking people in the eye. Plus, I had my homeboy Eddie by my side.
I took the center stage of the Tower Theatre and introduced myself. I rolled my R in “Rrrrrrrafael” for the whole Western United States to hear. I went straight into my monologue and the laughter that came back at me from the packed, standing room–only performing arts center felt like a tidal wave. It is an experience nobody can ever prepare you for. You have to be able to ride the wave and not get lost in the laughter. That’s what makes elite stand-ups so great: the ability to ride that wave. I did my best to manage the audience’s cackles and then transitioned into my dramatic scene. Eddie joined me onstage. At that point, it was no longer a competition. It was just two boys from a historically rough neighborhood doing what they loved.
At the awards breakfast the next day, we were all aware that only two people—two teams, more precisely—would go on to the national competition at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, to represent our region. The region was made up of five states. That was who the two winners would be representing. If you were into emerging theater artists, this was a gigantic deal. The first winner was announced and there was a polite clap. He was an older white college student with perfect Jesus of Nazareth hair. He was from Cal State Fullerton. I remembered him doing a very cool Shakespearean monologue that nobody could understand—because who the *%$# still spoke Shakespearean? The dude went up to the front to receive his award in a very diplomatic manner, as if he already knew he was getting a giant promotion at work. He went up alone without his scene partner. I guess that made sense since he was the official nominee and not the scene partner. Then they announced the second winner. This, too, was a bit of a blur for me, like the young lady declaring her affection at the party in the middle of the dance floor. All I remember is Eddie and me both jumping on our chairs. We weren’t supposed to win, but we did. We weren’t supposed to jump on our chairs, but we also did. Eddie and I ran around the banquet room high-fiving everyone. Our excitement was contagious. Even the cranky tournament directors couldn’t help but laugh. Eddie and I screamed, did a victory dance, and bear-hugged the uncomfortable male announcer. Holy shit. The Latino boys from San Gabriel Valley won. I couldn’t wait to tell my dad.
In the chalupa on the way back to West Covina from Fresno, Eddie and I were still in shock. Eddie eventually looked at me and said, “We came to win this thing… and we did.” Eddie paused, taking in the Central California landscape. He then thanked me for choosing him as my partner. Eddie was like a lot of my homeboys in my area—vastly talented (more talented than me!), but always went unseen and ignored by non-Hispanics. But I saw Eddie in his baggy clothes and shaved head, and hoped that he thought I was cool enough to hang around with. Luckily, he did. And on top of that, he helped me perfect my first role onstage. Lost in my thoughts, I swerved. As the adrenaline from the win started to wear off, I suddenly remembered that I was an undocumented immigrant driving a car with no license. I wondered if the highway patrol would care that I was about to represent our entire state at a national acting competition.
I got home and told my parents what had transpired. My mom screamed in excitement. My dad just nodded his head. As always, they were bewildered by the things I did. I had just won a five-state acting competition and was now being flown to Washington, DC, to compete for a national title. My dad continued to look at me. He was clearly thinking about something, but he didn’t say anything. Maybe he felt he didn’t want to kill the moment.
I wasn’t worried about flying because I was told my school ID would suffice. My mom was a little worried, but I knew it would be fine. I was being chaperoned by Professor Eastman, after all. When Eddie and I arrived at the airport for the national competition, Eddie was stunned to discover that we weren’t going to Washington State.
“We’re going to Washington, DC,” he exclaimed. “What the fuck? I didn’t pack for the East Coast.”
Until Eddie said that, it didn’t hit me that we were going to our nation’s capital. I, too, thought we were going to Washington State. But I didn’t let Eddie know that. Instead, I made fun of him for being so dumb. “Washington State… stuuuupid.”
I had never been to Washington, DC. I had no idea what the DC even stood for! Diverse Colony? And now I was asked to perform at the Kennedy Center a few blocks from Homeland Security. The nerves started to kick in, but they had nothing to do with the performance.
Like the regional competition, there were a lot of events at the Kennedy Center during the week. But I wasn’t there for any of that. I got this far, and by God, I was determined to win, if just to continue to prove to my dad that I had chosen the right path. I also wanted to do it quickly before anyone discovered I was not supposed to be in the city, let alone the country. That was when I got the biggest surprise of my life. Walking back into our DC hotel after a long day of theater workshops, I discovered two people in the lobby that I never expected to see in our country’s capital—my mom and dad. My eyes welled up with tears from the shock. My parents had arrived in Washington, DC, to support me—me and my crazy pipe dream of working in theater. That was what my dad had been deciding when I first got back from Fresno, but didn’t want to say. He wondered if he and my mom should risk coming to Washington, DC, or not. To know what that decision meant to me, you have to understand that my parents had never flown on a plane since we’d arrived in the United States out of fear that they might be detained. My parents had also never taken a vacation in the fourteen years that we had been in this country because—like so many other immigrants before them—they, too, were slaves to the minimum wage. They worked every day. Nonstop. But they finally stopped working for a few days… for me.
When the night came and I finally took center stage at the Kennedy Center, nothing that I had been holding against my dad mattered anymore. Nor did I care about the venue, the audience, or even the win. I performed that night for the only two people in the world who mattered to me. I performed for the reason I was in this country to begin with. The bright spotlight made it impossible to see any of the audience members from the large stage, but I saw my mom and dad clearly, proudly smiling up at me from the front row. Three undocumented immigrants taking up space in our nation’s capital.
Out of all the college students performing that evening, I was one of three who were from a community college, one of two who were Latino, and the only one who was undocumented that I know of. I didn’t win the national competition. Some random dude doing Shakespeare did. If I learned anything from this experience is that Shakespeare always fuckin’ wins! But my real victory was having my parents find their strength to set foot in this nation’s capital. It wasn’t easy for them. It took them fourteen years and a really good reason to do so.
Before we left, my parents and I walked to the Lincoln Memorial and I looked up at the Great Emancipator who tried to end the institution of slavery and was assassinated for it. He was gunned down for America’s original sin. I looked up at President Lincoln, made up mostly of Georgian marble, and wondered what he would have thought of us as immigrants. It turns out, one of President Lincoln’s signature pieces of legislation, the Act to Encourage Immigration, signed on July 4, 1864, was the first and last law in American history to ever encourage immigration to the United States. It was repealed soon after his assassination.
My parents and I arrived at our condo in West Covina shortly after landing at LAX. At the doorway, my dad asked me a very simple question: “What now?” I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t know what now. I was maxed out on my college credits, and I had taken this college acting thing as far as I could—literally to the front steps of the United States Capitol. Like I did after high school, I simply responded with: “I’ll figure it out.” My mom returned from the mailbox holding two large envelopes. They were both for me. I opened the first one and discovered my acceptance to UCLA. My eyes started to well up. The University of California, Los Angeles, wanted me. I opened the second envelope and found our acceptance for our permanent residency requests from the United States of America. After fourteen years we were finally… legal. My parents and I hugged each other. Tears started running down our faces. The moment felt too unbelievable to be true. They finally found the vindication they had been waiting for—their monumental sacrifice to come to this country had finally paid off. We continued to hold each other as we collapsed on the cold tile floor. At this point, all we could do was cry.