Canto CDXXII: My Ámiga

Gentle cabrones:

A long, long, long time ago, I read My Ántonia by Will Cather.

One day, I’m going to write something about how I think it’s important that we continue to teach kids the American classics of a previous generation that depicted 19th-century America and older, like Johnny Tremaine and Mark Twain and the Little House series – not just because many are good literature, but also important to know how people saw their past in previous generations and what were the foundational myths that many today want to eradicate – because you really can’t eradicate something you really don’t know, you know?

I digress.

My Ántonia is pastoral of pain about immigrants trying to make it in a hard, new land. The main relationship is between the titular character and an orphan sent to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. There’s never any romantic relationship between Jim Burdern and Ántonia Shimerda because she’s a few years older than him and it just wasn’t in the proverbial cards.

But those formative years as teens turning into young adults, they were there for each other. They laughed and cried and dreamed, and then they went on to their lives— she stayed in their small town and he went to the big city. Decades later, they reunite. Ántonia has 11 kids and is happy, and he’s returned from the East Coast to visit his beloved friend and meet her Cuzak boys, who know all about him.

It’s as sweet an ode to the power of past pals as you’ll find in American literature, and My Ántonia is a book I think about more often than not when I think about the many female friends I have had in my life that I don’t talk to as much anymore.

We never stopped caring for each other, but our lives took wildly divergent paths. We like each others’ comments on Instagram, but really only see each other at funerals. We’ve drifted far enough that I don’t get invites to their children’s parties and milestones the way I used to, which I brought upon myself by having a job that’s a vocation.

The funny thing? A lot of of them have names that begin with A. I’m not going to name them here lest I out them, but the fact that they do share the same first letter makes me remember them all at once with fondness and occasional melancholy but never regret. We’re all good, even if we don’t say so.

Here’s one of my Ás.

We used to be close enough that I could do homework at her home late into the night and neither of our parents would have a problem. We talked about our dreams and our frustrations with love, outcasts in our own way but knowing adulthood would deliver us both. There was never any romantic sparks between us because that was just not in the proverbial cards, but we cared for each other deeply and remained friends into our early 20s.

Then our careers came. We didn’t even invite each other to our respective weddings because we had drifted apart so much. The separation was never done on purpose; it just happened, like so many things do.

She did send me a note after my mami passed and I thanked her for that and for subscribing to my cantos — and that was that. Then we saw each other at a funeral of our mutual friend last year. We made a promise to hang out, one we vowed to keep. It helped that my cousin Plas had kept in touch with her all these decades later and so we finally went to, of all places, Disney’s California Adventure.

What can I say? Plas has the hookup, and he vowed the food and drinks would be great.

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My Ámiga and I saw each other and hugged and made our way through the crowds with Plas. We hadn’t talked in person at length in at least 20 years. It was like we never stopped.

My life is pretty public so she didn’t ask too much about me other than how my wife’s store was doing. I didn’t ask too much about her life because I find small talk to be phony. If we were real friends still, our conversation would come naturally and we would naturally weave in facts about ourselves that the other should learn.

She reminded me of things I had forgotten, and I reminded her of things she had forgotten. She didn’t realize how much I hated high school and I didn’t realize certain things that happened to her that I will not discuss here – nothing bad, but just life stuff. We asked about people we used to be closer with, but didn’t dwell on the past or all those lost years between us. We just talked. We were the same people we were back in high school — her big heart and great laugh, my nerdiness and what she politely called my “confidence.”

We’re both married. She has kids, I don’t. Plas ordered more drinks.

We saw the Pixar water lights show, which was terrible – they should’ve kept the Muppet pregame program on a loop instead. We were supposed to hang for one hour and then it became two and three. It wasn’t us trying to grasp onto this time we had together after so long as if it was going to be it. It was just two friends enjoying a Friday night together. I took an Uber there so I could drink (Lamplight Lounge makes surprisingly good Peruvian food and their cocktails are fine but too tart and sweet because tourists) and she didn’t drink at all.

My Ámiga drove me home even though it was way out of her range, but we didn’t care — it was like the old days of me picking her up because I had the car and she didn’t and we wanted to go see movies and thought the newish Irvine Spectrum was the edge of the world. As she wound her way out of Disneyland’s gargantuan parking lot, we promised not to let 20 years pass before we hung out again.

And then I told my Ámiga that I was never not proud of her – that even if we didn’t talk all those years, I knew what she was up to and I was cheering her from afar always.

Here we were, two kids from Anaheim High, living the lives we hoped for so long ago but could’ve never imagined would’ve actually happened. Now at the precipice of whatever is next in our respective lives.

She stayed quiet for a while and said what she always used to tell me:

“Thanks, Gus.”

She can still call me that. Some things never change. The best things don’t.

**

Enough rambling. This was the semana that was:

IMAGE OF THE WEEK: Bad photo of GREAT trio of dishes that marked the opening night of Alta Baja and Rancho Gordo’s Heirloom Bean Encuentro weekend. From top: Lima bean succotash salad by Lisa Marie Donovan, SanTana pie (lentil chili on corn chips) from Alta Baja, and vegan galla pinta sonorense from Che Luis Perez. Remember when I said I recommend great events? I DO. You’ll find out next week…

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “God has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.”” — Mary’s Magnificat

LISTENING: “Who Do You Love?” George Thorogood. One of the few songs that started awesome — Bo Diddley’s version — and got better with a famous remake a decade later (The Band and Ronnie Hawkin’s proto-hipster rock as seen in The Last Waltz) before getting an ever better treatment a decade later. George Thorogood makes the music as taut as a bed spring while anchoring the entire song in Diddley’s clave homage known as the Bo Diddley beat. Underrated: the drumming! Hence included in Gustavo Arellano’s Weekly Radiola of Randomness YouTube songlist, where I’ve included every song I’ve ever featured in a canto — give it a spin!

READING: “Let America Be America Again”: What Langston said.

BUY MY NEW CO-BOOK! People’s Guide to Orange County tells an alternative history of OC through the scholarship and reporting of myself, Elaine Lewinnek, and Thuy Vo Dang. There’ll be signings all year — in meanwhile, buy your copy TODAY. And, yes: I’ll autograph it!

Gustavo Events  

Oct. 25, 1 p.m.: Join me in conversation with the legendary L.A. scribe D.J. Waldie as we talk about his new book! At my honey’s Alta Baja, where he’s regularly gone for years, 201 E. Fourth St., Ste. 101, SanTana. Convo FREE; books, BARATO.

Nov. 8, 9 a.m.: Join me and my People’s Guide to Orange County co-authors as we do a walking tour of Anacrime and its hidden history. $15 — buy tickets HERE.

Nov. 13, 6:30 p.m.: Truly a night you don’t want to miss at the Frida Cinema: a zoot suit fashion show coordinated by Fullerton School District trustee Vanesa Estrella (whose family runs the iconic El Pachuco shop in Fullerton) followed by a screening of Luis Valdez’s scintillating film adaptation of his incredible play Zoot Suit, followed by a Q & A with me about OC’s own pachuco history (although Muzeo, the Anacrime museum that’s sponsoring this misspelled my last name TWICE). At the Frida Cinema, 305 E. Fourth St., #100, SanTana. A CHEAP $16, so buy tickets here!

Gustavo in the News

“Den-Mex Green Chile Is a Disgusting Mess Compared to New Mexico Original”: Westword readers sound off on a columna of mine.

“If you’re mad about Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl, you can simply not watch”: A Los Angeles Times newsletter you should subscribe to plugs a columna of mine.

“Brooke Jenkins ‘won’t hesitate’ to charge federal agents”: Politico’s California Playbook plugs a columna of mine for the first time in a while.

“Katie Porter: A California Karen for Governor?“: In which loser Arthur Schaper still can’t get over the fact the Infernal Rag called out his loser-ness looooong ago.

“Rough & Tumble”: The longtime California political news aggregator shouts out a columna of mine.

“The Untold Story Bookstore’s First Oral History Project”: In which Anacrime high schoolers interviewed me!

Gustavo Stories 

“Grítale a Guti”: Latest edition of my Tuesday night IG Live free-for-all.

“Huntington Beach could pay large fines over housing delay”: My latest KCRW “Orange County Line” commentary talks about the latest HB tomfoolery.

"Some want to restart the Bracero Program. A former bracero says it would make farmworkers suffer”: I appear on Phoenix’s KJZZ more often than not — and here’s proof!

“One of O.C.’s loudest pro-immigrant politicians is one of the unlikeliest”: My latest L.A. Times columna profiles Orange councilmember Arianna Barrios. KEY QUOTE: ““We didn’t even really think of ourselves really as, like, Hispanic — I mean, we all were, but it wasn’t the end-all be-all,” Barrios said. “We were all trying to be Valley girls.””

“Trump has turned the White House into a government of ‘snowflakes’”: My latest L.A. Times columna talks about this damned administration of whiners. KEY QUOTE: “The way these people’s tough talk turns into waterworks at the slightest provocation, you’d think they were the ski slopes of Mt. Baldy come summertime.”

You made it this far down? Gracias! Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram while you’re down here by clicking on their logos down below. Don’t forget to forward this newsletter to your compadres y comadres! You can’t get me tacos anymore, but you sure as hell can give them — and more — to the O.C. Catholic Worker!