A Different World Just a Few Miles Away

A Different World Just a Few Miles Away


Her blue jeans were tucked into her brown boots.

But I shouldn't start there. I should start with why I was at the party. A friend of mine on the wrestling team, who called himself a Spic and not a Puerto Rican "Because I'm not one of the nice ones" said I needed to be brave and see how the other half lived.

I thought this was funny, since I thought that rich people were the other half.

"Nah, he said. Us minorities. Spics. Not white folks like you."

"I'm not afraid," I said. Which wasn't true. I wasn't afraid on the wrestling mat. And I was no longer afraid walking the halls at the high school. But I was afraid of knives and guns. And I knew the party was in a part of town where, well, white people didn't go. Even if they had a knife. Maybe especially if they had a knife.

"Meet me here," he said as he handed me a small strip of paper. "You have a shitbox car." Then he shrugged indicating either that the car would be okay or was not much to lose if it weren't. "Nine o'clock. Don't be early."

The address was an apartment building that was slightly better than the projects. The address was on first floor and the door was open.

A large Puerto Rican man was standing outside the door smoking pot and he shook his head as he saw me, with disbelief. He said something in Spanish, but I said, "No espanol."

He muttered something else in Spanish which I assumed was an insult and then said, "Were you invited?"

I nodded.

"Go in then."

Our white parties were calm, not like the parties in movies with beer and vodka bottles everywhere and hot women walking around. They were also full of teenage high schoolers. And most of the party was petting on sofas stoned listening to Dark Side of the Moon. This was more like a movie party, except that everyone was brown. I was the youngest person there. I looked for my friend, but he was not in sight. It was a straight line to the kitchen and the back door which was open and led to a patio area.

I decided I would find my friend, have one drink, and then go. That would be enough to prove my bravery. I didn't drink beer, so I needed to find a mixed drink, but I looked into the cooler anyway. Surprisingly there were wine coolers, but I didn't want to be the white guy with a wine cooler, so I grabbed a beer from the ice thinking I would sip at it until I found a mixed drink.

When I walked into to kitchen, the room went quiet. It was mainly women in their twenties. One of them started laughing and then said, "I think you're at the wrong party." Then they all laughed.

Inside, I agreed with her. A seventeen year old white boy, barely five feet and weighing, as my friends said "a hundred pounds with a sandwich in your hand" was not what they were expecting to walk into their kitchen on a Friday night.

You would think I would tell them who invited me, but his name was José and I expected half the men here would be named Jos

What I said was this: "I won't stay long, then."

"Good answer," said a female voice behind me. I turned and there she was. We were eye to eye, which is unusual since almost everyone is taller than me. She had big brown eyes and was smiling with big white teeth. Dark brown hair, very brown not even a touch of black, and I could see one very large hoop earring poking out from her very brown hair.

Before I could say anything, I heard my name hollered from the patio area. It was José,

"Find me later," she said. And she turned on her heels and walked towards the living room area. That's when I saw that she was wearing blue jeans and had tucked them into her brown boots. Her heels were at least three inches tall, so she could not be much more than 4'10" without them.

I was frozen watching her walk away. José grabbed my shoulder and pulled me towards him. "You do fast work," he said. He snatched the beer out of my hand and said, "Let's get you a real drink." Then he dragged me onto the patio.

He poured far too much tequila into a clear plastic cup, tossed in some ice and a lime slice. "This is what us Spics drink," he explained.

While I've developed a taste for tequila since then, I found it pretty nasty that evening.

A few minutes later, she was standing next to me. She told me her name, but I no longer remember it. I told her mine and she smiled. "A very white boy name."

All this 'white boy' stuff was actually annoying and I said so.

She cocked her head. "Well, now we have something to talk about," she said. She pulled me through the patio and out the gate into the alley.

She pointed to my drink and flicked her fingers, so I handed it to her. She took a sip and winced, but then nodded. "This is good," she said. "Not the tequila, it's shit, but that you're not drinking a white boy drink like vodka." She handed it back to me.

As she was sipping the drink, I finally got a good look at her. As I mentioned, she was tiny. Not model thin, but not at all chunky.

Her eyes were brown, of course. Her lips were shiny pink, clearly lip gloss. Beside a light blue eye shadow, she wore almost no other make-up I could see, or had applied it seamlessly.

She was wearing a thin blue denim shirt with white mother-of-pearl snaps, and a brown braided belt with a circular belt buckle that had turquoise and red stones also in a circle. Over that, she wore a white jean jacket, surprisingly bright, with large silver buttons. These jackets would be common in our school the next year.

She let me assess her. Perhaps doing the same to me. I was small, but I was definitely in shape then, so the only thing that made me self-conscious was my height. And I was at least three inches taller than her.

We talked and shared a drink in the alley for about an hour.

A man come out into the alley and said her name. "______, you have to go now." I wondered where that could be. In fact, I wondered how old she was, since she didn't mention school during our conversation. There might actually be a child, but that felt racist in my thoughts.

She said to the man, "I'll meet you in the car in five." He nodded and left. He was not her boyfriend, which was good. Or husband, which was better.

"Can I call you?" I asked.

She shook her head and gave me a very serious look. She motioned behind and around her. "This is not what you want. This is not for you."

I really didn't know what to say. So I said nothing.

She took another sip of our shared drink, gave it back to me and stared at me for a few seconds, thinking. Then she said even more specifically, "I am not for you."

Before I could respond, she turned on her heels and ran through the gate and into the apartment.

I was watching her boots and her tucked in jeans walk away. That's the snapshot I hold in my mind from that evening.

She never looked back.

José found me in the alley less than a minute later. He clicked his plastic cup against mine. "A tiny white boy in an Eastside Spic alley. I guess you aren't a pussy after all."

"I guess a pussy would know," I joked reactively, lost in thought.

Before I knew it, I was pulling my car into my parents' driveway. The cup of tequila, mostly just a lime slice now, was in my right hand.

I sat in the car for a while fast forwarding my life with her, both living in her world and in mine. She was right, neither storyline worked.

Monday during wrestling practice, I wanted to ask Josher name, but I didn't.

And then the years went by. And now it's today. Thirty years, a full generation, later.

It's important for you to know that this isn't a regrets story. I'm not looking back wishing I had fought harder to make it work. I'm not looking back wishing that was the fork I pursued into my future. I'm not looking back wishing I had driven back to that apartment and found her again.

It was fun to imagine it during the length of a shared drink, but she was right. She was not for me. I was not for her.

At seventeen, it was nice to share a drink and have a conversation with a girl mature beyond her years in an alley. One from a different world yet only a couple miles away. And also...

Her blue jeans were tucked into her brown boots.


The End.