Fred

I believe I’ve shared with you that I have written a memoir. This August will be two years since it was edited. I am petrified to do the re-write. I know I’m going to enter a bona fide raw and emotional place. I don’t like when people ask me if the book is done yet. I already spend every single day thinking about it, feeling paralyzed and beating myself up over it.

Instead I spend my free time rearranging the furniture in my house (it’s my coping mechanism. Been doing it since I was a kid) all the while I thinking of how I’m going to structure the book. The other day while I was driving home after yoga I visualized myself being interviewed for the book. Then I realized that I need to actually have a book finished to put that vision out there.

Last night in bed I  made the decision. I’m going to do it. I made a pact with myself. No more distractions (rearranging furniture) for the entire summer. Shit’s about to get very raw in my house.

Here’s a little something I worked on this morning ~

 

“Hi! I just finished my run,” Alfredo said as he breathed very heavy into the same pay phone he called me from after his morning run along the beach in Ensenada.

I could hear the morning traffic in the background. It was early May. One month before I was supposed to go visit him.

“So, are you sure you can’t come alone? Are you sure you can’t come before June?”

He asked me this same question every single time we spoke, as if asking me one more time might change my mind. My silence was an obvious answer to him. I wanted to tell him why I couldn’t come alone, but I didn’t.

“You know Mari, I’m not going to ask you to come anymore.” It was more of a statement and he sounded serious.

The conversation was becoming tense.

“Mari, can I ask you for something?”

“Sure Fred. What it?” I looked out my kitchen window.

“Promise me we will always be friends.”

“I promise you to always be your friend. We always have been.”

“Next month when you come, what if I want to kiss you when I see you?”

“You won’t. You can’t. We can’t.”

“Yes, we will,” he said confidently then hung up.

I was pissed! I stared at the phone then slammed it down. For the next week I did not call or email him to check in and see how he was getting along. I was still upset by what he suggested we might do. In my gut I knew why I was upset. We both knew what could and would happen if we saw one another. He didn’t call me either. I knew he was mad at me. I knew he was tired of asking and waiting.

 

In the summer of 1992 I met Alfredo. It happened on 16th street in Santa Monica. There were several places scattered throughout the neighborhood were you could always find someone to hang out with and catch up. 16th street was one of them. I walked over from my house on the corner of 17th street one afternoon. I passed the cemetery wall covered in vines that me and my friends climbed many nights in our attempt to drink our forty ounce beer in peace away from the cops and instead with the deceased, splashing some beer on their graves, so they too could have a taste. I reached the empty lot at the top of the hill filled with dried grass and dirt. I noticed my friend Turtle. He was sitting at a table in the yard of the only white family in the neighborhood. We had nicknamed them the Bone Heads and with him was someone else. As soon as Turtle saw me he leaped from his seat, his hazel green eyes filled with happiness. He was wearing his usual black King’s baseball hat and sweatshirt. When he reached me he swallowed me up into a tight hug.

As soon as Turtle released me we walked towards the guy sitting at the table. He stood up and extended his hand out.

“Hello, I’m Alfredo. Nice to meet you,” he said from eight inches above my head.

He was tall with jet black eyelashes, thick black eyebrows, full lips and a small nose. His pale hand engulfed mine and his long fingers encircled my wrist.

“Man Alfredo, me and Mari had some fun times while she was living at her Tia’s house a few months back,” Turtle grinned wide exposing his chipped front tooth as he threw his head back with a chuckle and patted my shoulder.

“Sit down Mari, Alfredo just got out and we are catching up.” Turtle pulled out a plastic chair for me to sit on.

Turtle liked to talk and he did most of the talking that afternoon and I took advantage of that. While Turtle caught Alfredo up on the neighborhood politics, I studied him as he sat back on the chair with his hands clasped together on his lap. I wondered about this guy with his pale smooth skin. I liked how he wore his baseball hat backwards. He resembled Matt Dillon in the Flamingo Kid. I was instantly attracted to him. I was young and I was used to having crushes, but this was not a crush. I didn’t tell anyone about him. I couldn’t explain what I felt, only that I knew I liked him. A LOT. He hypnotized me that day. Looking back I can say the universe was setting things in motion for me. He and I were meant to be.

It would be another few months before I would run into Alfredo again.

One night after my friend Mathias and I walked the Santa Monica Pier we made our way to Froggy’s house (another meet up spot). Froggy lived off of the newly renovated Santa Monica Promenade behind 4th street. He was happy to see us and as soon as we settled into our beers, Alfredo and a friend showed up. The last time I saw him was in the summer, and it was now November. We spent the rest of the night laughing over stories Mathias and Alfredo told about their childhood. I always carried a camera with me to document moments and to send copies to the homeboys in prison. We took turns posing. Since Mathias was a good friend to both of us, the three of us ended up spending a lot of time together. Alfredo and I found out both our families were from Sonora, México which quickly strengthened the bond already forming between us.

Since Mathias and I were so close, Alfredo asked Mathias’ permission to date me. On our first date Alfredo came to pick me pick in a beat up white Jeep Wrangler. We drove to the Santa Monica Promenade to watch a movie. The Promenade had changed since he last saw it. The brick that covered the entire walkway was now cemented. Woolworth’s was gone. Pete’s Barbershop where my older brother got his first haircut in 1971 was gone, replaced by a movie theatre. The Japanese man who carried my favorite jap slap (Bruce Lee shoes) shoes in different varieties was gone. The record store that had been featured in my favorite movie, Pretty In Pink was gone. The pizza shop that sold the enormous pizza slices for two dollars and where the cutest surfer worked as a delivery person was gone. All the small shops with bay windows were gone and replaced by chain stores. The water fountains where I used to make a wish with a penny were replaced with metal creatures covered in vines.

Bird Man (a local character) whizzed by on his bike shirtless, as always, making his bird sounds.

“Man, I can’t believe he is still around!” Alfredo said shaking his head.

The Bodyguard was the box office hit of that weekend so we chose to see that. Little did I know Alfredo would end up being my bodyguard for the next several years.

It was easy between us. We instantly became best friends. We came from the same spool of thread. He was the first person I ever trusted with my whole heart and soul. He was home to me. I felt safe and protected. The bullet proof steel wall I had built around me tumbled down just for him and only him.

Alfredo and I discussed our heartaches and disappointments and how our family’s dynamics affected us greatly. We told each other our secrets. We cried together over painful memories. We spent most of our time speaking in Spanish, something that we both enjoyed. He taught me what it was to truly feel what it was like for  someone have your back. He was fiercely loyal. The only thing that mattered to us was having someone to understand the intensity of that and the profound impact it could have if you wavered from loyalty. We became dependent on each other. He had been in an accident that left him with the same long scar down his abdomen that I had from a recent surgery. We traced each other’s fresh pink scars with our fingers and called it fate. Those scars brought us together and more scars would be created through the coming years.

We would end up becoming each other’s biggest scar.

 

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