Born Savage (eBook)

Chapter 1

As a child growing up in a fairly progressive and small city of Denver, it was never an issue of being Chicano in a working-class neighborhood because of the diverse nature of the city itself. Really, my family was indigenous; Mexica. The people of the long stretching remnants of the Aztec Empire that were broken up and scattered like ashes and burning embers carried off by the wind. Falling and settling wherever we landed, still burning hot with roots not really known, but never forgotten. I think that was really my first trauma, an unconscious sorrow that I had no idea I even had until I got older. The trauma and pain of having a lost and buried identity, not really knowing where I belonged or where I came from until I heard my first beating of the tight deerskin of a Pow-Wow drum.

The city and communities still had a sense of who they were, and where they came from…The working class. It was a small metropolitan city and the skyline in the late 1980’s was just a few tall buildings in the distance that always silhouetted in our picture window early in the morning while I got ready for school.

My family lived about 10 minutes from the actual downtown, which back then was far from impressive and only seemed to provide shade for the winos and junkies that frequented the strip of bars and motels along Colfax, Alameda, and 38th Avenues.

Gangs were everywhere fathers weren’t. It was amid the war on drugs, the Free lunch programs, paper food stamps, and “just say No” Campaign. I remember being in one of the first D.A.R.E. programs at school, which looking back as an adult was just cultivating a youth informant program.

They would send a burly veteran of the Denver police department, usually the drug unit, in to coerce elementary students into snitching on their parents. So, in exchange for pencils, shirts, and COOL STICKERS, they tried to get as much info as any gullible little kid could volunteer…Sometimes it worked; But me?? Shit, my mom told me she would’ve beat the bejesus out of me, then DARED me to call the cops.

Even when I got a shirt from them, a bright red “D.A.R.E” splashed across an all-black shirt, she would not let me wear it out in the neighborhood, and she threw it right in the trash. “What we do in this house, is NOBODY’S BUSINESS…!” she’d say while stuffing that black shirt as far in the bin as she could, making sure that it was deep in that trash can.

I was always taken care of; clothes and food and things I never went without. But I also think that I was jaded to the domestic violence, the drugs & alcohol that was not ever very far, along with all the parties. To me, it was a normal thing.

My father was an alcoholic. It wasn’t that he drank every day, but when he did drink, he would often spend his entire check at the bar with my uncles as soon as they got paid. Many times, he had to be carried home and put to bed with his work boots still on. Even though my mother had a really good job with the IRS, and regardless of how many hours she put in, we still seemed to struggle at times to be in a comfortable home.

I remember sometimes waking up early Saturday mornings to watch cartoons, but instead of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, ThunderCats, and Transformers, I woke up to the tension of my parents arguing. This would often lead to my mom, who despite being very petite in size, having a very big problem with my dad spending all their money the night before.

At the time, my dad was making around seven hundred to a thousand dollars a week laying brick and block, which back then was pretty decent money. As the arguing escalated, the insults deepened, and eventually my mom battered and bruised my dad’s ego, so he felt he had to do the same to her physically.

He was never a match to battle wits with my mother, especially with the Budweiser and John Wayne still in his head. John Wayne is what our uncles had called Jim Beam, because when they had found out he died, they drank to him shot after shot of the strongest, most cowboy rotgut the bartender would serve them. Ever since that day in the little bar, that’s what we all called it to bond and get drunk with, “To John Wayne!” It was down the hatch and the closer we got to having a family tie.

My dad towered over my mom and outweighed her by a good buck and a half. And even though she put up a hell of a fight and was tough as a Texan, she always got the short end of the stick on that one. It was hardly ever a fair fight, but she was a gladiator that showed no fear, entering the arena even knowing it was an inevitable defeat.

My older brother tried to keep me away from all the tussling and fighting, but even hearing it through the door while he blasted his music with us barricaded in his room was always hard for a 6-year-old kid to hear. It was especially hurtful to hear my mom’s cries and pleas for help and watching as my brother and I were helpless to go to her… to help her.

I remember my brother sitting on the edge of his bed staring at the door while tears rolled down his cheeks and no sound came out of his blank face. I think those were some of the only times I had ever seen my brother cry, and even as a grown man, I can count on one hand how many times I saw the vulnerable side of him.

A lot of times, incidents like that when the crying and calls for help got loud enough, we’d get knocks on the door from the Denver Police, so often in fact that eventually they knew my parents by name.

It was like having somewhat polite neighbors come ask if you could, “please turn your music down, we have a sleeping baby.” Only these neighbors had guns on their hips and badges that said “protect & serve” which since those times, always seemed like an inside joke they thought of to fill space on the badge.

Almost all those visits ended with “If we have to come back here tonight, we’re gonna have to take someone to jail.” This just left our household with either make-ups, or just more quiet fist fights… Sometimes the officers that made the calls were the same ones that would give my dad police escorts home when he was too drunk to drive but still did.

Rather than fill out paperwork for some drunk blue-collar guy after a hard week of work, they usually just followed behind him making sure he made it to the house without plowing into any late-night joggers or kids breaking curfew.

Of course, as soon as they got him home, they made sure my mom got the keys, and had him promise not to drive for the rest of the night. These were the types of interactions that shaped the way I looked at what police did, and what they were there for…NOTHING.

As we got older the fights were just a normal part of life. So eventually my mom became resilient in her situation each of the 15 years that they stayed together. Every time she was broken, she healed stronger and tougher, so much so that my dad would hesitate and think twice about wanting to get physical with a 4’10” badger of a woman.

Soon though, things got to where my dad wasn’t coming home at all, to save himself the trouble of having to enter the arena just because he wanted to drink all night.

He’d be gone at the weekends, and we’d rarely see him during the week. When he was there, our parents were like ghosts to each other. They could be in the same room, and it was like they didn’t even know the other was there, much less what us kids were up to.

Mom put herself in her work, leaving at 6 in the morning and not getting home until 5, sometimes 7 o’clock at night. My brother was put in charge of me during these times and sometimes he was home, sometimes he wasn’t. I was a latchkey kid by 3rd grade and even though I walked to school with friends, I would leave an empty house at 7:30 in the morning and come back to an empty house at 3 in the afternoon.

My brother would be out hoeing’ around or at the Villa Italia mall with his friends. But this did give me a lot of time with my friends and a lot of time to get into trouble. Which I did, and it was also around this time that my brother started gang bangin’.

My mom and dad started growing farther and farther apart and the locked door to their room became more frequent, as the realization of problems really sunk in. My brother and I were way too old to be lied to. We knew exactly why our parents spent so much time in the room on the weekends, after payday, which was usually the only time they got along.

They would come home with resentment and contempt for each other, go to the room, and come out lovey-dovey ready to be a family behind glassy-eyed smiles. I guess my dad had figured if he couldn’t go out and drink, he’d rather spend his check on something else, and at least he could keep my mom somewhat happy in the process.

Eventually though, there wasn’t enough self-medication in the world that could fix a broken relationship. My dad started to fall back to his old ways and the fighting started up again, this time even worse than before, and almost daily.

The more my dad was gone, the more my brother had free reign to go ahead and do whatever he wanted to do. Including terrorizing me. He put me through a little brother boot camp. I guess preparing me to follow in his footsteps one day of gang bangin’ and fist fights. Or maybe it was because I reminded him of my dad; the person who caused our mom and family so much pain. I really don’t know. He’d give me “chesties”, “Charlie horses”, pinch me, bruise me, choke me—ya know…normal kid stuff.