Oldschool Chicano Barrios

Sometimes I think I’ll never be more than the neighborhood I grew up in. My father, uncles, and cousins lived their lives surrounded by a violence I can barely act out even in my most desperate moments. He moved us all so I’d spend an adolesence among creeks and pine trees. Is there really anything so bad as that? I’d never be able to comprehend an entire mode of semiotic expression enmeshed in gang signs, hand signals, pointing at the directions of a labyrinth I have the luxury to miscomprehend, in woods I have the leisure to lose myself in. There’s an ocean of distance between us. I can’t explain it, father. I'm just a soul whose intentions are good, oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.

I was plucked right out of the streets. Ripped out like the weeds that grow between cracks of concrete. I’ll never know what it’s like to be jumped into a set, but my father could explain what it must’ve been like. I’ve been hit before, imagine it a few dozen more times, more extreme than the welts of a belt, in one rapid succession. I’ll never know how to navigate a dress code that’s more a maze than a quotidian mode of expression. My head was shaved before I could’ve ever known what it meant. As a child, I knew certain streets were dangerous but no one explained to me the specifics. They were them, and we were we. An amorphous we. Hegel never knew how to represent; index finger and a thumb, so they could know where we’re coming from. 13 wasn’t just a number, it was a family, call it objective spirit.

Please, bring your love. Did you ever get enough attention from our grandfather, in a neighborhood I’m surprised we could afford? I don’t know if I got enough attention from you. I remember, once I was at work, and I saw a kid around my age, getting pointers on how to talk to people, and how to talk to girls; I still remember their smile, a father proud to share his knowledge, his wonders of the world. I was alone then. Alone, slinging pizzas for people who didn’t give a fuck. Not a care in the world. I almost cried, I had to hold the tears back from pouring over the plastic tiles. My fingers stretched across a cash register I could barely comprehend. Would this have happened if I grew up like you? If I stayed in the place I belonged? Representing the only world I knew?

The only time I felt connected to your world was on accident, the time I got a lump on my head when my cousins and I flipped a stupid fucking golf cart. I looked like a unicorn. You put a bandana over my head and for once in my life I felt like I belonged. For a second, I was “Juan”, ready to throw up signs for the set. I sipped at a margarita prepared by your brother. Later, I’d find out he went to jail for stuffing a bag of cocaine into someone’s asshole. We all end up in the joint for some stupid shit. My only hope is you’ll be proud of me for standing by my principles when I end up in solitary like so many of us. This is our place, I guess. I never worked out much, but this is the place to exercise.

I love you, dad. Don’t ever fucking forget it. Even if I never learned Spanish like the rest of our family. Call it my stupid fucking birthrite, as an Aztec warrior, painted in the colours of a jaguar.

616 words, inspired by this collection of songs.