I sat there in stolen Adidas sweatpants, rainbow fuzzy socks, wannabe Toms with paisleys and my mom's cheap white wannabe-North Face jacket on the floor of the library. I sat criss-cross apple sauce between two tall bookshelves, my hair a bird's nest, eating a banana. He laughed and said, "You look kinda funny, like a monkey." He often teases me about being late to class or wearing a turtleneck or grandma high-waisted jeans, or eating granola and greek yogurt. Sometimes I wonder If he thinks I'm so weird why does he keep talking to me? I shrug it off because I don't want to accept nor defend his insult; that it would really be asking for more. I was completely aware that people use teasing as a form of trying to break the ice in order to get more comfortable, but I liked to think there were better ways of reaching intimacy without insulting people, like bringing someone trail mix to class just because. After he quizzed me on neo-evolutionism, the Marxist and Levi-Strauss perspectives and the theory on culture progression he blurted out, "No wait! You're a light skin! You're hella lightskin! You be textin' back all extra late and shi." Obviously I've heard this term before but I was not sure why or where it came from. He continues:
"Oh and I still didn't really agree with you on what you said."
"What? No! Remember? I was at that meeting for the transgender lady for like three hours.”
I was hoping this conversation would be really only about describing the difference between biological sex and assigned gender roles, but instead I ended up saying something like,
–“Well, I think it does matter and I think you should care. Why wouldn’t you want more love in the world?”
–“Because it’s not like that.”
–“Yeah but that’s not an answer to the question. Why wouldn’t you want more love, more justice in the world? I think it matters because this is the world I live in and I don’t want to be around this kind of people.”
In a puddle of my muddled thoughts I recall bits and pieces of his violent and proud answers,
“Fuck ‘em! You don’t need ‘em! You limit yourself. That’s not the way the world works. You have to push people down to get to the top. I like to argue, but you argue about things I don’t care about.”
All I could think was How do you not care about the world and souls around you when they are everything you have?! The only thing! I looked up and down at the bookshelves that seemed to swallow me in my pool of shrinking. He sat on a stool not more than two feet off the ground and yet I still felt he was looking down on me. As if though he saw my empathy and urgency to love as a form of weakness. When my voice trembled just the slightest bit at the frustration of not being able to open his heart, I knew that he knew. And he asked me, now in more serious tone,
–“What do you want? What do you want in life?”
I was somewhat taken aback because sometimes, somehow, that question makes it seem like I’m being offered this dream. Like he’s the genie heroically offering to grant me my three wishes. But this was no fairytale and he almost mocked my dreams much like they have been before.
“You want to be rich and travel like those women you talked about?”
This question left me speechless because he’s asked permission to look inside. Although I’m a very transparent person, revealing my desires gives my audience power over me to tantalize me with them in the near future. The books to my left have titles like The Art of Reading or Why Children’s Books Matter. Just a few days before the theme was vaudeville, burlesque and the 1920s and 30s. The day I met him we were looking for a book about dragons and the cosmos. All these people around me devoted their lives to giving their best and he still thinks his best is to put others behind him. To give only when given. So I say to him, “If I can make the world a more loving place…” I can’t even remember before he cut me off.
Here I was facing my mirror. This brown skinned boy hoping to achieve what his fellow classmates couldn’t or wouldn’t dare to. Dreams on dreams on dreams of his and my indigenous ancestors and we were arguing about love. The most clichè, under and over estimated dream in the world. How unfortunate that I can’t write about love without being labeled as boring-seen-it-already. I told him that apart from all the legal restraints or appraisals you could receive for your worldy conduct, God said in the bible, “For those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Matt23:12)
“What about hard work then?”
I told him that sometimes, all the time, we need mercy and God gives it to us on multiple occasions when we don’t deserve it. Hard work always counts, but so does being children of God. And just because of that, God will sometimes grant us things even if we don’t work for it. He couldn’t and wouldn’t accept that loving without expecting would make the world better. There was something in his eyes that told me he was still arguing because he didn’t believe himself and he wanted to hear more. As if he had never heard someone say something so wrong or too good to be true. Somewhere past the spiky hair and street talk and haughty smirk I could see that he wanted to believe me because he said, “I am violent.” And I told him, “But you don’t have to be.” And he paused briefly. I wanted him to know, just as much as the rest of the world, that even though he was hurt and he grew up tough it didn’t mean he had to live the rest of his life like that. Looking and pointing at my notebook I told him science has proven that one can learn and relearn. Sometimes he stayed quiet and sometimes I stayed quiet and it was hard to look him in the eye. How did I go from being a little monkey to being a warrior for myself and future generations? A few moments later he shot up quickly and looked at his phone and cursed at the time. 11:17 am. Then he looked again and cursed a second time because he realized he had a presentation due. I asked him if he would be alright and he said, “There goes my mercy.” That’s when I knew I had planted a seed.
At least now I had disturbed his macho thinking with sweets and candy. I wanted him to know that breaking stereotypes is important because as a young, Latino woman of significant caramel color and less significant political weight, I am bound by the chains in society's thoughts into a gold cage. Something that appears to be new, progressive and polished but still restrains the feral creature inside who can only see and touch to a certain extent before it gets repressed. I do not like when people question my capacity to do something. He told me to push people aside, but I believe in manners. I keep a sign above my window that reads, "Do the kindest things in the kindest ways." I often feel I am far from that but it's a good mantra. How many times do you see people doing kind things for all the wrong reasons?
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| Proof that you don't need money to cry of happiness |
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