I grew up on Honey Dr. behind Pace High School and Olivera Park. The park had basketball courts, several soccer fields, and a tall and battered brick tower near the east corner. It overshadowed our neighborhood. It must have been 40-50 feet high and served a mysterious purpose that all the kids in the block lored over. It was like the last remaining column of some archaic civilization still gaping at us from the near beyond. Birds nested at its peak. Teenagers smoked grass under it. It was there that my brother, while walking home from school, was jumped by some Pace cholos. They beat him up and sent him home with a gashed bloody nose, deeper and darker red than his hair. His eyes avoided us for weeks. He sat silently at the dinner table each night. I guess he just wasn’t meant to walk home. Maybe getting picked up like the other white kids really wasn’t a bad idea.
My closest friend from the neighborhood was Carlos. We spent nearly every day in the summers biking around the street, kicking the soccer ball, and waiting for the ice-cream man to show up. Occasionally, we went inside his house for a soda or a quesadilla his mom would microwave. In those few moments, I would run into Jesus.
Jesus had a demanding quality about him though he never really spoke, and when he did, it was never to me. His lips were immobile. I never saw his smile. He stood twice my size, with small deeply set–in brown eyes, copper-almond skin, and fatty cheeks. His clothes were baggy and he wore a skin-fade haircut and a thin fuzzy mustache over his lips. At that age, I didn’t even realize Jesus translated to “Jesus”. I only knew him as Hey-Seuss, Carlos’ brother.
I didn’t have any video games at my house. My parent’s childrearing books suggested against them. They promoted lethargy at best and violence and miscondukt at worst. My brother had a Nintendo when he was a kid, but that was before I was around. Carlos’ house, on the other hand, had a Playstation, and on one summer day, Carlos invited me into his room, the room he shared with Jesus, to play it.
I remember the violence on the screen. This was no Mario Bros. or Sonic the Hedgehog. He was playing Mortal Kombat. As I entered his room, there sat Jesus himself. His legs were crossed, sitting on his bed, eyes glued to screen. Carlos stood next to me and said, “Hey, you should play Jesus. He’s really good.” And for reasons I could only guess were to spite me, Carlos left me there to face him in Mortal Kombat.
I was trembling with intimidation, but I wouldn’t dare let him see it. I didn’t know much about teenagers, but because of my brother’s bloody lip, I learned that if they weren’t white, there was a chance they were mean and violent. I avoided them at all costs. Of course, it didn’t occur to me that none of my friends were white. Honey Drive was akin to my town: most everyone was hispanic. First or second generation US citizens, many not even that.
Despite my ill-feeling, I sat on Carlos’ bed and picked up the controller.
With Carlos gone, Jesus just sat there. Staring at the screen. The only acknowledgement he gave me was exiting his fight and selekting Multiplayer on the homescreen. He pressed Start and with a gong the screen changed. We then selekted our charakters.
The setting was a pagan temple with our bare chested avatars in the foreground already sweating and in fighting position. A bell rang, and round one began. I used all the gaming skills I knew: try to tap every button on the controller simultaneously and as fast as possible. My charakter started jumping around and flailing his arms and legs, but when I would get close to Jesus’ stationary charakter, he would trip me. I’d get back up, approach him, and he would trip me again. He repeated the same move until my health bar was at 0. After only twenty seconds of him tripping me, I was dead. That entire time his charakter had his knee on the ground and his leg just chopping away when I was within range.
Both rounds, this went on. It seemed like the longest game I had ever played. Even at six years old, I thought, “How can this be fun? Why not do combos and stuff?” But I was in his room, and it was his game, so I remained silent.
Immediately after, I left the room and found Carlos. We went outside to play, and that was it.
That was the only time I was ever alone with Jesus. He never looked at or spoke to me. That afternoon, I biked home wondering if he too was afraid of something. I couldn’t help but think that two gingers on Honey Drive losing fights was a reminder that we had a place. That place was on the ground. This was not our home.
reflekt 