Canto CDXLVI: R U Serious?!

Gentle cabrones:

Next year will mark 30 years since I graduated from Anaheim High, which I still can’t believe because I still think it's freshman year and I’m in Mr. Brennan’s biology class first period, first day terrified that the football players will pants me (Mr. Brennan is now Michael Brennan, Mater Dei High School principal, and declined an interview request upon him getting the job even though he full well knows who I am — or maybe that’s why he declined?)

No, I'm not going to the Class of ‘97’s 30th year anniversary. I told my classmates who run all of that long ago that I'll show up to the 50th and that'll be the only one. I just don't have time for the past and I despised my high school years and really have nothing nice to reminisce about that happened in school with others besides teachers that won’t be there who treated me kindly when few others would, being yearbook photographer, and that my Kiwanis Bowl team won two years in a row and lost to the champions in the semifinals my sophomore year.

Besides, what’s the point? The people I cared for the most never left my life. The people I cared about a lot but lost contact with I now communicate with every once in a while (Canto CDXXII). Those I had little to do with I have no idea what happened to them, nor do I particularly care to find out but I mostly wish them well. My main bully? Fuck him.

But because I'm who I am, it's been interesting to see or run into people from my past and how they react to who I became and what we had shared in the past.

There was the guy who apologized for being mean to me in high school, even though he wasn't mean — he just stopped being my friend once he began to hang out with the cool kids (no, Elena de la Cruz — it wasn’t who you think it is). People who say they’ve read me for decades and are proud of me. The guy who could’ve been a real good friend of mine in Sunkist and Sycamore but whom we just never had the chance to really hang out but who nevertheless said he knew I was going to be someone big even way back then. The dork like me who ended up spending time in San Quentin for selling drugs and said he would think of our days at Sycamore while doing his bid because I always told him back then to stop getting in trouble.

Tony Banda, of course QEPD (Canto CDIX). The woman who’s now a teacher whose class I recently spoke to but I had no idea it was going to be her class or her until I looked at her and said. “Are you — “ and she said yes and we both grinned huge grins at each other and probably won’t see each other again but at least can have that shared moment.

And then there was R.

Went to school with him from fifth grade to eighth grade. White kid, skinny like me. Both of us in GATE classes — although I got pulled from my neighborhood to be one of the few Latinos in my class at Sunkist. Good friend, although not my best friend — but he was in those same circles. We were in the same classes in Sycamore, but he got pulled into the do-gooder vortex that is ASB so we drifted apart. By the time our years ended, I don’t even think he signed my eighth-grade Sycamore Junior High yearbook.

Didn’t think about R for probably a good 15 years until the rise of Facebook, back in the years where you accepted friend requests from everyone and you then began to look people up that you hadn’t thought of in a while. Never did it for R, for some reason — and then I had to think of him in the worst possible way.

Not sure what was the article that I wrote, but someone who was an FB friend of mine shared it — turned it he was a friend of R. The FB friend’s friends started piling on me, and I gave it back to them — and then R chimed in.

“I went to school with Gustavo,” he said. “He was a total nerd back then — wanted to be white, not a Mexican at all.”

One time, I showed someone some of the hate mail I get and their face went pale. “How do you deal with such negativity?” they asked.

“I don’t let it get to me,” I said. That’s absolutely true.

Not R’s comment. That one hurt.

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Yes, I had a resentment toward rancho culture back then because my dad wanted to make his nerd son wear a tejana and no girl wanted to dance with me. Yes — as a former neighbor who was always a smug princess once pointed out with mockery — I would say back in those days that I wasn’t a Mexican but rather an American. Yes, in 1993 my culture would’ve not have been quebradita, rancheras or norteño — it was Breakfast with the Beatles, FOX’s Sunday night block and the cartoons on Channel 9 and 13 (and the news, of course).

But I don’t think I even thought of people in matters of race back then. I still spoke Spanish, as imperfect as it was. I definitely wasn’t ashamed of my parents or my heritage and didn’t have any aspirations toward whiteness, whatever the hell that may have been or is. The only thing I was aspiring to back then were girls — and that wasn’t happening for either R or meself.

No, what hurt me about his Facebook comment is what he had become. If you hadn’t talked to someone in decades, and now they have a chance to share something about your shared past with the public, it takes a certain type of cruelty to use that moment to humiliate your former friend — especially after everything you had shared so long ago.

That wasn’t the R that I knew. That was now the R before me.

As I read the comment, our past snapped back into my mind.

Wasn’t a loudmouth like me but not quiet, either. I remembered photos that teachers took of us at Outdoor Ed in sixth grade, of lunches we shared and just all the good moments we had. Was a friend with me where the other white kids at Sunkist wouldn’t, now that I think of it.

R obviously had thought of me over the years — and not good things. He knew somehow that had spent my career writing The Former Columna and blasting anti-Mexican losers nonstop — and that bothered him, because he was now taking the chance to use my ethnicity and my work to expose me as some supposed fraud.

“Great to hear from you,” I responded, “It’s been too long.”

Of course I had to click on his Facebook profile. Now lived in Huntington Beach — of course. Dressed in high socks, Dickies shorts and Pendletons like any good Mexican — of course. A fan of his new hood’s MAGA council. — of course of course OF COURSE.

R left an even nastier comment on mine that I can’t remember because I probably blocked it out of my mind, so said I was. We’ve never communicated since.

We all change — except me of course. We almost all drift apart to a certain degree. We might even be completely different people by the time we no longer speak — but most people tend to remember the good instead of try to find a fault where there was never one before. But now every time I think of R, which really doesn’t happen but did today because someone asked me how I was in Sunkist, I will forever remember how the days when we actually knew each other well didn’t matter one bit to him.

To him, I was just a fake Mexican.

Well, we’ll always have Sunkist, damn who he became.

**

Enough rambling. This was the semana that was:

IMAGE OF THE WEEK: Terrible photo of ever-delicious Sonora-style tacos at Tacos La Rueda in Lakewood, right off the 91 freeway.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “[There are] those who are in the Movement and those who have the Movement in them. The Movement is in me, and I know it always will be” — Victoria Gray Adams

LISTENING: “Seis Pies Abajo,” Los Donneños. Yes, I recommended this song in its most famous iteration, by Banda El Recodo — but this is the original, it beats the El Recodo version AND the Ramón Ayala one AND it’s by a pioneering group that only the REAL Gs know. Have always loved this song in all of its iterations because it’s sad yet so danceable and does an interesting thing where the title is only sung once and as the opening line in the second verse — THAT is artistry, although the ending is a bit abrupt. 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: “Chavela Vargas' ‘Last Drink’ at Salón Tenampa”: One day, I’m going to write a Random Cool People I Know canto about Fresno Bee investigative reporter Melissa Montalvo, my former Orange Coast College student who BRINGS IT. For now, know that she has a monthly Substack about cantina culture in Mexico that’s always great and so you should follow. For this week, she translated an incredible article that came out in Spanish some years ago about the last time famed ranchera singer Chavela Vargas went to her favorite Mexico City bar, where she and her beloved compa José Alfredo Jiménez would drink for DAZE.

Gustavo Events  

Feb. 28 aka TODAY:, 4 p.m.: I’m going to be doing…something…for Breath of Fire Latina Theater Ensemble’s annual fundraiser. Last year, I got folks to donate money AND got two cantos out of the experience, so you KNOW it’s going to be good. Tickets start at $80, but don’t be a cheapskate — now, more than ever, we need art so RSVP TODAY. Will start at 4 p.m. and will be at my honey’s Alta Baja Market, 201 E. Fourth St., Ste. 101, Santa Ana.

March 29, 7 p.m.: So remember in the winter of 2024 when I said I was going to be a part of an incredible recital of medieval Nahuatl Christmas songs and urged ustedes to go — and only Guti Gang co-enforcer Diane went? You’re lucky, because Jouyssance, the Southern California choral group that focuses on songs from before the Renaissance, is staging Spirit Child again — and this time, it’s FOR FREE. At Drinkward Recital Hall at Harvey Mudd College, 320 E. Foothill Blvd, Claremont — more info here.

Gustavo in the News

“State of Play: Electoral Strategy in Los Angeles (Part 2 of 2)”: The California Democratic Socialists of America take note of a columna of mine.

“Chef collaborative dinners are on the rise. Are four hands better than two?”: A Los Angeles Times newsletter you should subscribe to plugs a columna of mine.

“This street medic is a hero to L.A.’s homeless”: Another Los Angeles Times newsletter you should subscribe to plugs a columna of mine.

“Seasoned: Culinary Pioneers – Elena Zelayeta”: I’m interviewed in an episode of a podcast about pioneering women in the world of food.

“Opting out at the Intuit Dome“: In which architectural critic Christopher Hawthorne — whom I once drove down the entirety of Harbor Boulevard in Coker’s Cadillac for an Los Angeles Times columna of his — reveals a project he, I and others worked on last year!

“Letters to the Editor: Expanded benefits for families with children would help Latino families too”: L.A. Times readers sound off on a columna of mine.

“Lou Calanche”: In which a L.A. city council candidate attacks a columna of mine…by misquoting and misrepresenting it. ¡Pobrecita!

“MacArthur Park Walk Through”: The MacArthur Park Neighborhood Council talks about that same columna…

“Albatross”: …and so does Merriam-Webster in its regular feature of highlighting stories that mention certain words!

Gustavo Stories 

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

“OC taxpayers foot the bill for D.A. Office harassment claims”: My latest KCRW “Orange County Line” commentary talks about the latest Todd Spitzer toddfoolery

"Howard Stern”: My honey gets me on the show as a birthday present, and I last all of a minute — but I made Howard and Robin laugh, and made Pearlman share a stupid macho story!

“The anti-Latino agenda behind Trump wanting Americans to have more kids”: My latest L.A. Times columna blasts the pronatalism movement. KEY QUOTE: “But even as this administration urges families to grow and single people to marry and welcome little ones into their lives, it’s persecuting children in the name of Trump’s deportation deluge.”

“This Latino Republican Trump speech watch party was neither large, nor especially Latino”: My latest L.A. Times columna goes to Woodland Hills for a gathering of the Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club for the State of the Union address. KEY QUOTE: “Maybe the audience knew that was just too big of a whopper.”

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