Early Adventures (Age 13)

As most know, the vast city of Los Angeles has a residence who are very rich to residence who are very poor. An obscene degree. Rich neighborhoods such as Brentwood are surrounded by poor neighborhoods such as East L.A. Same with sections in Hollywood. Most foreign (Europeans and Asians) visitors who have acquainted themselves with me have shown disapproval about the difference between lower class and higher class in this city.

I went to a public middle school in Santa Monica, another place with a variety of people. There, I gained friendship from a group of Russians and a few others. My Russian girl friend, Svetlana's (whom we call Vetty) mother apparently had married her way to the states. Due to unknown circumstances however, the family, which included Vetty, her sister who is Nina, and the mother moved to east L.A. on their own and shared a shafty one-room apartment. The neighborhood where they resided was dirty, poor and dangerous filled with gangsters, shady businesses and immigrants.

Moving on...

Being a wannabe teenage rebel who enjoyed escaping the rigidity of home-life, I spent many of nights sleeping on the couch of Vetty's small living room. Vetty's boyfriend, Christopher was a half-Mexican felon 4 years her senior who lived 3 houses away. He was living with his aunt and her husband, both white.
And there we spent, in the alley behind the row of apartments spontaneously for a year or so with Chris, his friend Xavier (a eccentric guy with a mohawk and 20+ piercings and tattooes; age 16) and the uncle whom we called James, slipping beer, vodka and frolicking. All in our black attire with slits on our wrists and the leisure to wonder what happiness was.

I can remember everything during that period of time pretty well.

Los Angeles weather is heavenly, but the summer still stimulated sweat and heat. It was summer and Vet and I sat in our shorts and spagetti tanks waiting for our alcohol. Though we played with the big kids, we never had the nerve to drink until our brains were delirious. "Neyney, if I were ever to try weed and get addicted, I want you to get me help no matter how much I try to stop you," Vetty had said to me that summer. Vetty wasn't perfect, she had a lot of flaws, but I watched through her breakups, her get back together with the kid (and I call him a kid regardless of his age because he never took responsibility for the things he did and I couldn't give a fuck about what has happened to him) who cheated and cheats on her in front of her, with her friends and told her so.

And it was the summer when James' small apartment was filled with a group of obnoxious people feeding each other alcohol, snorting and injecting and smoking and the sex orgies. I want to know what the world is about. I want to know reality and I want to be part of what is was about. I wanted my walls of ignorance to be thrown down. And perhaps that was the reason why I put myself through those days.

Vetty had gone outside with Chris, so I took a seat next to James, the only familiar person left who sat on the couch. His legs sprawed out as he threw back his head and let out a stream of smoke from his mouth. He saw me and offered a drink which I took. And another. And another. I wanted it to take the anxiety away. My face was burning away and heard James laugh as he poured another shot of vodka into my cup. Straight vodka. I sidled closer to James as he threw his arm across the couch and across my shoulder. It seemed the right thing to do at the time.

I remember whispering about some things I can't recall now to James. The rest of the time remains a blur. I remember James kissing me. I remember thinking about how the room kind of moved on its own and how I tried to rap along to Eminem's "Sing for the Moment". I remember some lucidity and how I was in another room now. How it was quieter and I remember James' breathing. And I remember being very weak and very tired. I remember how I knew what was happening to me and how I tried to fight it off and I guess it was all a blur because I woke up feeling sore and wondered as my body laid, still half-bare and bloody.

Didn't know if I should hate or thank him for what happened because... it was true. I was curious, I knew that in my heart I was curious. And why would I be there if I wasn't searching for something? Don't know whether to hate him or thank him for taking away a burden? Yet, I didn't know anything and the difference in the morning was sparce compared to the morning before I didn't understand the difference.

But I left that world to live in a different part of the world for the rest of the two months of my dearest summer. And never said good-bye to Vetty.