Friday night meeting with Carlos.

Rainy days make for real encounters. Friday night, pouring in Southern California, and I sped off to meet with Carlos on La Brea and Venice. I pick up Carlos outside his new apartment complex. He introduces himself respectfully, yet almost as if a friendship was already there. We had been in contact via text messages and I had heard from Amalia, the director of our site, that he was a great guy to talk to. There was a very brief moment of hesitation, but the conversation quickly took off.

Carlos spoke with a side-way manner and a unique movement of his mouth that speaks to what he has lived through. When he first began telling his story, his story began with him telling about how he just woke up in the United States as a kid. He said that the only thing he remembers is one day being in Mexico, and the next day, he woke up in the heart of Los Angeles. As I drove amidst the rain, his story had a sort of surreal tone to it. Surreal in the sense that time, place, and circumstance made it feel like Carlos’ story was something out of a movie, sitting right next to me. I tried not to be the overly shocked outsider that is extremely enthusiastic, and overly moved by his story. I remained connected, yet neutral because I didn’t want to affect the way he told his story. We drove to the La Paloma Market near the USC Parking center, where we continued to talk over dinner.

We went to the Chichen-Itza Restaurant that serves Mexican food from the Yucatan peninsula. Carlos was well educated, and said he had already eaten, but that just meant he was too shy to allow a stranger to buy him food. I ordered a couple of small dishes that I thought he and I would both enjoy. I asked him how his poetry piece had gone earlier that day, since he had let me know that he was part of a spoken word event earlier that day. He said it went well, and went on to sample some of his work off the time of his head. He said his talent in poetry helped him charm the girls. The conversation over dinner was all laughs, since he had me laughing at the numerous stories he told. The way he tells his stories, in combination with the actual story made it all humor. It was interesting to hear the different connections and edges to a story that often goes untold. For example, I never understood how love works for youth who are in and out of jail. Carlos answered with, “it just doesn’t.”He said he and his friends once exchanged pen pals to write to while in prison, and when he got out of prison, his then girlfriend smacked him for having been writing to her cousin. I felt at ease with Carlos, and I wanted him to know that. I laughed, and said “wooow, that’s crazy!” Every story followed with, “that’s nothing, this other time…”

The night overall was not this solemn time of sad life stories. Laughs made that night real. There were so many tragic and difficult things said, but what I would like to highlight is his humor in staying positive to get through every obstacle life has in store for him. Towards the end of our dinner, we noticed that there was a group of students meeting a room in the market place. A USC student came up to us, and asked if we would like to join the group as they heard poetry and spoken word from students and community members. It was quite the coincidence that we were there, but Carlos had already made plans with his girlfriend, and said he was a man of his word. “Next time,” we said, and I drove him to his Friday night date with his girl friend.