BETWEEN LOVE & OTRAS CHINGADERAS

For losers like me P.E.—just as the rest of my prior academic education—was all about
pretending: Yes, I pretended to be interested in the soccer or basketball games; I pretended to
do the warm-ups, except when I had to run the mile; I pretended that I was not ogling the
girls, specially during the warm-ups; I pretended to write papers that my friends wrote for me,
and I pretended not to copy from the rest of my classmates. It was hard to pretend! Luckily,
pretending was over at 2:45 p.m., over for the rest of the week. Friday did not seem as
depressing. After all, it was my only day off before my 20-hour long weekend and my 20-hour
long week at the Taqueria.
I walked all the way to our usual spot, near the dumpster. The rest of the homeboys were
already waiting for me. As we conversed about the possible girls, booze, drugs and the
adventures that awaited us that night, the rest of the losers and I walked home to our
designated part of town. Through our voyage home we helped each other forget all the
bullshit that a fearful, half literate, brown-skin, high school senior has to go through. It was
therapy-time. Honestly, in retrospect, it was more like repression-time. After the 2-mile walk,
the laughs and all the plans, we arrived to our designated part of town. I walked into the toosmall,
one bedroom apartment that I called home, left my shit in my room, the living room,
and headed out to ripe the fruits of my week-long labor at my homeboy’s house. His mom was
taking care of La Senoras’ teenage kids for the weekend, and he had his too-small apartment
all to himself, lucky bastard! You better enjoy, Monday is just around the corner, I said to
myself before I grabbed my jacket and some cash. Off we were, no more hell until 50-
something hours from now!