What, the fuck, am I doing here? I should have stayed my Dominican-ass at home and taken my chances being on the streets. At least I would still be around the block, with people I know, eating those cornmeal, Colombian empanadas and waking up to Ramon’s pet rooster crowing at the crack ass of dawn. How did Malcolm X say it, “I’ve been hoodwinked, bamboozled, run-a-muck!”?
These Job Corps recruiters had the nerve to hand me a flyer promising: horseback riding, fishing with fresh air…fucking mentirosos! Instead they walk into our rooms; wake us up at 6am every morning, make us stand in long lines waiting to take a 5-minute shower, give us a daily curfew, make us do back bending chores they call “J’s” and then lights out at 10pm. We can’t even mingle with the girls across the yard. They keep us separate so they don’t have to worry about having any babies on deck. I might as well be on Riker’s for this nonsense. This place looks like it could have been used as the prison in Shawshank Redemption.
Everything always seems to change for me, yet somehow still stays the same. I’ve gone from bad to good to worse and I’m only 17 years old. My older brother, Aldan, said this would be a good change for me. I trusted him, so here I am. Aldan has always found the thin line between fuck-up and prodigal son. He’s the one everyone always calls handsome because of his perfect curly hair and tall stature. He doesn’t have pelo crespo like me. He seems to dip right under the line of getting into any real altercations. Growing up in our house, Papi used to whoop my ass for the dumbest shit. My older brother, Luey (short for Luciano), and I had more balls to push back and demand what we wanted, but not Aldan. He just coasted through that madness and got beat the least. He is just a guy that everyone likes. For me, that’s my bro’ – my boy.
Now that I’m in here though, I have zero friends. I can’t even vibe with the two black dudes I room with and we all from Queens! I got into an argument with one of these rude fools that I room with named Tye because he tried to call me a racist after I told him his music is annoying as fuck when he plays it late at night. We almost fought when I told him Sean Paul was garbage. Racist?! Yeah, whatever. I love a black booty just like the next guy plus I’m 43% black! People always try to say Dominicans are racists. Dominicans and Haitians have so much history most don’t even know about. Like when, they forcefully took over our country for 20 years in the early 19th century. Or when, they take jobs from poor Dominicans by working completely for free and never paying taxes to help the country that helps them. I tried to tell this fool that D.R. can’t support that type of immigration – it is still a developing country! The majority of The Dominican Republic is poor-as-fuck! Yet Dominicans were the first to help aide Haiti after that hurricane in 2010. What are we supposed to do, give up our half of the island just so we won’t be called racists? Fuck that!
It would just be nice to have something in common with someone here or just have someone to kick back with and watch TV. I remember when Aldan and I were kids, we used to sit in front of the TV every day after school and watch every show possible on basic-channel TV since we didn’t get cable until last year. We watched every re-run and every sitcom that came on one of the five channels. Then we would make-up some game with our 99-cent store toys, cursing up a storm in English, too. Our Dominican campesino parents didn’t bother us about being in front of the TV, not doing homework or using every curse word we knew in English. They just kept us clothed, fed and alive. I guess I should thank them but somehow I always resented that they raised us like we were in the poor campos on the island instead of in New York City (Corona, Queens). My father was a taxi driver and my mother pretended to be an abandoned, single mother of three to get every welfare benefit there was. She had the system on lock for real. Even with all that extra money coming in, that still didn’t stop my dad from giving the three of us only $1 dollar a week as an allowance. Even as we got older, he still handed us one fucking dollar. I would save them up to buy candy or go to the arcade to place my four quarters for next game. Good times! But damn, we were poor. My boys back home laughed their ass off every time they heard about that crummy-ass dollar we’d get, “Yo, you’d have to save for like 3 years just to get a pair of Jordan’s, bro!” or “Maybe if you start saving now, you can take Vanessa out in like 3 months!” We would get harassed everywhere in Corona for having on jeans that stopped at our ankles and plaid shirts from the thrift stores, never any new clothes, nunca. Nothing in our lives was ever new. As far as our parents were concerned, we had it good because we were growing up in America. They figured they already gave us a better life, no need for extras, entiendes! As long as you showed respect, they had a ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy going on with us. Life was frustrating for me as a kid. My older brother Luey said I was a little asshole until I was about seven. Somehow, I feel like I started on the wrong side from jump. I have to work so hard just to be average at anything.
I feel even more lost from where I am sitting now. I’m all the way up here in upstate New York, called Oneonta or some shit. I didn’t even know campos like this existed in New York. What I know and breathe is Queens – particularly Corona. It’s nothing like here and I’m wondering if it was even a good idea to have left.
I feel like they took all the ghetto-born, fatherless, chain-snatching juveniles from every borough, sold them on riding some horses and stuffed them up in this shit whole they call an “academy”. This is no prep-school. I may be from the hood but these guys here, are thugs for real. Just last week, I was in the TV room watching the Oakland A’s play those fucking Yankees (Mets for life!). I had money on that game for the A’s to win hoping they would send the Yankees right out of the playoffs. Right at the end of the 6th inning, this Iverson-looking black dude strolled up to the TV and clicked off my game to put on a movie. He sat down and got real cozy in his chair like he didn’t even see me intently watching the game at the edge of my seat. Some real Dee-Bo shit from Friday! I’m a baseball fanatic from way back and just off of pure principle I had to step to him.
“What the hell is your problem man! Can’t you see I’m watching that?!”
“Shut your Puerto Rican ass up, I watch what I want to watch motherfucka…”
I rushed the TV to turn my channel back on and, before I could get to the dial, I felt a deafening ring on my right jaw and then a blaze of fire creeped around the other side of my face. I was down, but I wasn’t staying down. I got a few swings in there but he fought dirty and hard. I could hear the cheer of every kind of hoodlums in the background, like a sea of roughnecks at an ass-kicking contest, as I got the wind knocked out of me, three times straight. I sucked for more air just to get some strength behind my loose swings. I got my ass whooped over that game. My 43% black genes couldn’t cut it for me that day. That was my first week and a “welcome” gift I suppose. Now, I just lay low and stay in a cloud of smoke to get my mind off of things. Like pretending I’m someone else or even just, somewhere else. I don’t belong. I know I’m different then the fools up in here.
That’s not the first time someone has called me a Puerto Rican or Mexican out of spite. It’s seems as if that is the easiest way to insult your identity or even declassify you, by being a Puerto Rican or Mexican. I always wondered how a Mexican may feel if he got called a Dominican. “You platano eating motherfucker!” or “Go put some socks on you Dominican maricon.” Say what you want but those little Mexican fatheads are tough bastards. They have heart. Somehow, that beat down took me back…
Aldan and I were out in Elmhurst late one night after meeting up with his new chick, Rita. She was this older, skinny, Ecuadorian chick with huge tatas and what seemed to be a scarred cleft palette lips. She was one of those teases that always delivered, ya tu sabe! Definitely the freak-of-the-week but she seemed to be cool enough. She gave us plenty of food and let us use her cable box from time to time. I was thirteen and my brother Aldan was fifteen. I sat out in the living room watching re-runs of Quantum Leap while she gave Aldan some quick head in her bedroom. I started to wonder why I couldn’t find a girl that would give it up that easy. Aldan could dance his ass off and that’s Dominican 101 for getting tang. Makes sense since he met her at a salsa club. The only tool in my box was a good bachata grind I learned in D.R. a few summers ago. We left her house around 2:00AM and we had just finished eating some tacos at this Mexican stand. As we were crossing Woodside, we turned the corner, to see about 5 or 6 kids jumping this lone, drunk Mexican dude. We saw them crack bottles over his head, stomp at his back, kick him in the face, spit at him and they even held him down while one kid pummeled his body like that training scene from Rocky tenderizing frozen meat. We couldn’t believe that this intoxicated, round, 5’3” Pueblo was still trying to get up and fight these little bums. Aldan huffed under his breathe, “just stay down man…” We made sure we stayed in the shadows under the 7 train by 74th and Broadway. Once those little assholes were gone, we ran over to check him out doubting he was even still alive. We could hear their laughing voices fading off into the streets. By the sound of their Spanish, they must have been Colombians. Colombian Spanish is all fucked up with words no one but Colombians can understand. We looked down at this Mexican but could barely see him. All the blood he was covered in looked like shiny black oil against the concrete in the hues of the moonlight. He blended into it all so perfectly, almost like they made him part of the ground with every impact of their fake Timberland boots. The street lights only gave us a glimpse of how badly he was beaten. Gracia’ a dio’ that I couldn’t see clearly. That’s not the type of image you want bouncing around in your head. What the hell did he do to get his ass kicked like this?!
“Yo bro, should we leave him here?” I asked Aldan.
“Hell no, Samuel! He could die, he is piss drunk…”
“But Aldan he looks heavy ass fuck bro, where we taking him?”
By the time we got him on his feet, his blood was all over our shirts and jeans! And we were going to have to find some way to get that shit out… FUCK I hate being poor! We almost didn’t give a fuck because they were handed down thrift shit anyway. We could come up with something and find a possible reason to try to get some new clothes out of Papi. We carried that bloody, chubby Mexican all the way to Elmhurst Hospital. Seven whole blocks away. It took all of my mental strength to not throw up from the smell of his exposed, iron-spelling, sweat mixed blood all over me and his musty breathe, soaked in the aftermath of vomit and tequila. He kept murmuring block after block and all I wanted him to do was keep his funky, mouth closed.
“Estoy mal buey…estoy muy mal…”
Aldan banged on the window next to the sliding door of the hospital as we dropped him off at the emergency entrance, then we ran like African track stars all the way back to 35th Ave.
Out of breathe and back at our 3 bedroom apartment, everyone was asleep. We had this apartment with ancient hard-wood floors that would cry every time you shifted your weight on them. It made it a bitch to try and not wake anyone up, especially Papi. In the living room was a dangling crystal chandelier; a few of the pieces were missing because of my impressive curve balls as a kid. It had probably been around since the early 1900s, algo asi. Mami and Papi were sleeping, although Papi had probably gotten home an hour before we did, finishing up a night of drinking and domino-playing on some corner with his gang of common-life friends. Mami was always home, never out. Luey had his own slice of a room but was never in it. Papi turned a section of the living room into a bedroom for him once he out grew rooming with us. Luey was certified mamaguevo, too. He was four years older than me and two years older than Aldan, but Luey and I were like aceite y agua from the beginning, como nunca se mezlcan.
“Samuel! porqué todavía está usted despierto mijo?” my mother called out to me in her sleepy but silky voice.
“No te precupe, Mami. Tato, Mami”. She could be a little naive at times which made it easy to give her any vague ass response. I could always get her off of me with a simple, “tato, Mami.” She needed to believe everything was okay.
Still drenched in this bastard’s blood, me and Aldan took our soaked clothes off, leaving that problem for tomorrow. Aldan jumped into the shower and I just laid across my bed wondering if Rita had a friend I could kick it to. What can I say, stressful situations would get me horny as fuck at that age.
But now, I’m sitting against this off-white, finger-stained wall in this quasi-jail cell called a dorm room, wishing I could just walk outside and get a fucking taco from the stand. Wishing to just hear the sounds and ruckus coming from Junction Boulevard. It’s hard to sleep here, too quiet and I get paranoid. The screeching trains used to be soothing because you knew nothing stopped, or ever ended in the city. Simple pleasures you take for granted you know. I feel dead out here. I wonder if that chubby, Mexican is even alive. What do I know, he could be laid out on the corner right now with a bottle of Cuervo falling out of his hands. I guess you could say I cared. I don’t like to see people in pain…but who cares if I have heart? Who gives a damn anyway, one thing I know for sure…he isn’t thinking about me.