Un Grito

“Jesus Christ!” I exclaimed as I stood in my bathroom and looked at my bloated stomach attentively, a stomach that mimicked the roundness of a pregnant woman’s. My beer belly was clear evidence of the night before. My toes gripped the mustard rug that served to cover my rotting hardwood floors. My shower ran longer than expected, so I frantically dried my hair and brushed my teeth. As my hair dried, my curls seemed to express their individuality so gracefully. Curls are like snowflakes they are all different. I got dressed, grabbed my badge, and got on one of Los Angeles’ many winding freeways on my way to work. I worked as a Biochemistry Associate at Renewal Research, a miserable job I held up after college. Science had been plagued by Corporate America and the massive stock investment benefitting its proprietors not the people. Corporate America was a vacuum that prioritized corporate greed over scientific achievements. Renewal Research had become a vapid environment where hopeful scientists’ careers go to die. The workplace was uncomfortable it was so structured and cold. I made up the thirteen percent of “office diversity” which marked Renewal Research as a socially progressive and innovative scientific powerhouse. However, Renewal Research did allow me to conduct hydrological enzyme research, research that fulfilled me with a sense of purpose.

It’s Friday night. And that means, a night of either light reading and heavy marijuana use or a night out with Luisa, a girl I have been frequenting for the past four months. Born and raised in Spain, Lusia studied Chemistry at the University of Barcelona and moved to the States and began work at Renewal Research when she turned twenty-six. Luisa would become one of the youngest Vice Presidents in Renewal Research history compromising her career in science to do so. And Luisa it was.

“Carlos, ya me quiero ir son las 9!”, shouted Luisa as she welcomed herself into my apartment as she had done many times before. I came out of my room with one-fourth of psychedelic mushrooms gifted to me by a cousin, Manuel, on my thirty-third birthday. My grandmother’s jewelry box made an adequate home for the mushrooms.

“I’m going to. I’m going to take them. I don’t want to pressure you into anything, but they’re already out so I’m going to take ‘em.”

Luisa’s eye widened as did her smile.

“They’re better with Valentina güey”, and we ate them. By ten, Luisa began to feel, as she described, “a fireplace crackling in her stomach.”

We arrived to the historic El Grito, a prominent Latin club that had opened in the late-seventies, and it provided a safe space for immigrants to continue expressing themselves through dance. Southern California is home to rich Chicano history from the Chicano Civil Rights Movement to the Bracero Movement. Braceros that came to the fruitful lands of California for more work than they were used to for much less than they deserved. Luisa often made remarks about Spanish colonialism, stupidity of the dark indigenous, and real favor Hernan Cortes did for the Aztec. Although said in jest, I worried that she believed a bit of what she said -- worse I feared that others thought the same. Luisa was still the only woman to ever captivate me at the extent she had.

Luisa and I had been staring at the sidewalk watching it slowly crack open to the Earth’s core, when she abruptly pierced the veil of silence.

“Do you ever notice how beautiful people are? I mean strictly judging based on their facial features, physique, and overall attractiveness.”

“No, but I do judge people on their walk.”

I saw the cool colors from the neon sign form a puzzled expression on Luisa’s face, so I elaborated.

“Some people consciously think about their walk. ‘What if I’m not walking straight?’ ‘Am I swinging my arms too much?’ ‘Are my steps too big?’. The people that just walking are the people that know who they are and are just trying to get from point A to point B. You know what I mean, chiquilina?”

“I don’t think people normally think about their walk. It’s something natural we inherently do. I think those who think about others thinking about their walk are unconsciously thinking of their own.”

We laughed realizing our fake philosophical discussion made no logical sense hoping no one else had heard. We got into the club. The strobe lights dressed us in purple and green lights, and the black light made Luisa even brighter than she already was. Quite frankly, I wasn’t surprised we got in,  I mean why wouldn't we? A charmingly manipulative Latin woman, and a beer bellied genius were giving them the gift of their presence.

Short plaid and pink skirts surrounded the bar. In exchange for a couple of winks, Luisa was able to scam the bartender out of two White Russians. Drinking at the bar was the only time we sat that night. I sipped on my odd concoction of vodka, coffee and cream I mean it’s the nineties we’re innovators. Speaking of Russians, we met Marty during our time at the bar. Despite being the only white man at El Grito, his white hair made him memorable it was his branding. The white-haired Russian would die in prison from a heart attack a few years later.

“You lookin’ to party! Oh, you seem extra fun mama”, Marty shouted at Luisa as his piercing blue eyes made it up and down her body. Marty stood at five feet seven inches with an overpriced brown leather jacket and a velvet blue shirt hidden underneath worn in hopes to mask his broken English.

Luisa had had her fair share of idiotic men harassing her, she knew the wiser and left. I, however, was oblivious and too naive to know how he was capable of making her uncomfortable enough to leave.

“I have 8-ball for eighty-five. How does that sound chief?”, said Marty as he wiggled his white mustache persistently.

Frugally, I asked him for a line and said I’d give him a fifteen for it. He lined it up at the bar, and I snorted every grain on the table. The shrooms and the coke coalesced, and now the drip of the cocaine filled my throat with the taste of gasoline. My throat burned and my heart raced and my brain pulsed. My hands began to shake as I thought about Marty’s behavior towards Luisa, and the thought that this wasn’t the first time it had happened to her, and the thought that all women face men like this. Men like Marty. I figured if you’re walking on thin ice, you might as well dance; so I punched Marty in the face.

The dance floors swallowed me like a Dionaea muscipula, and Luisa’s body had now taken the form of one of Molotov’s electric guitars. Molotov was a perfect blend of rap and rock with lyrics of politics and dark humor, an attempt to shame the fraudulent Mexican government. Their raucous call-to-arms music style fueled a fire of frustration and intolerance for political corruption to any listener. Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro’s apparitions pulsated to the rhyme of the hard rock, and it dawned on me: Socialism is the solution in creating a prosperous Mexican future.  However, I was Chicano. I couldn’t relate to the monetary and emotional distraught growing up in Mexico so viciously imposed. Molotov’s harsh guitar and drums became the rhyme of my heart beat. “¡Viva Mexico cabrones!” blared in the crammed nightclub. All of my blood cells sank to my feet, and as did my body. Chicanos come in different shapes, and sizes. Mexican culture is Chicanismo, but it doesn’t work the other way around because Mexican-American culture is so diverse from Mexican culture. It’s our duty to protect Mexican heritage and culture, but what if we don’t know which culture were protecting? I was American, so I could never fully be immersed into Mexican culture, but on the other hand I was never part of American culture. I was too little and too much. My bilingual brain would never reach fully fluency in either language. It comes with not wanting to seem out of place by embracing my innate latino culture, while also not wanting to seem unappreciative by fully cherishing American culture. The mounting existential pressure, the drugs, and Lusia’s provocative movements were all a growing cumulative experience.

It was late, and Luisa left with a girl she had met earlier that night. They would date for two years following that night, but eventually broke it off since neither party was willing to publicly announce their relationship. Culturally, Latinos are Roman Catholic.  Even though the nineties are a progressive era, two women in a relationship is still a sin. I let Luisa take my car and insisted that she page me when she got home. She would have done the same for me. That was the last time I saw her, and oh, how I miss her dearly. I left two hours later everything in between seemed hazy and incomplete. My eyes were absorbing every color in the crammed, colorful club as my night came to a close.

I rode bus home around four. The baby blue bus bounced as it hit potholes and patches of uneven road. My night was coming to an end, but for many the day was just starting. Immigrant workers loaded onto the bus, and I sat back and observed their hands, and their stance. Their hands looked like those of my mother, overworked and misshapen. And their stance of a fighting yet diminishing pride topped their unaligned spines. The sunrise shone on the baby blue bus and glistened on all of the beautiful brown faces on that bus. Mexicans are up working before the sun is, and Los Angeles exemplified this.

I walked home, and approached my apartment complex that seemed more gloomy than before. The continuous thoughts of my renaissance raced through my mind since the cocaine high had not fully died down yet. Chicanismo is a culture of its own, and I was honored with the title of Chicano. The lawn sprinklers watered more of the sidewalk than the grass resulting in our yellow-green grass. I heard wet footsteps close behind me, and then felt the cold metal. I turned around to see Marty, he allowed me a few moment to ingrain the image of his wrinkled face forming a grimace, and he shot me in the face.