Lil' Cholo Wannabe

a short story

via

You’ve never seen perfect execution of a skill until you’ve seen a cholo iron his Dickies pants in the 90s. 

I was 7-years-old when I first witnessed the execution of aesthetic perfection and visual harmony by my Uncle Jimmy, the Picasso of ironing Dickies – and it changed my life.

When demonstrating his flawless skill, the first thing Jimmy did was pop an oldies mixtape in the cassette player. As the sounds of Delfonics and Ralfi Pagan filled the room, Uncle Jimmy popped an unlit cigarette in his mouth and opened the ironing board. 

He was only 16, but he looked like a wise old man to me, so I watched him to acquire that wisdom, too. And if you saw the way he ironed pants, you would, too.

Jimmy would fold one pant leg so that the crease showed prominently in the front. He’d then pop open off the lid of a can of Niagara starch spray - squeeze the cap so it pops off - and then douse the pant leg in multisyllable chemicals. The smell of the starch burned my throat, but I knew it was necessary.

Then came the iron. This was my favorite part. 

Jimmy put that iron on the pants and you heard the hot water inside, whoosssshing and shoosssshing inside. He’d glide it down the crease, press a button, and the steam rose up like a ghost and disappeared instantly, just like the wrinkles. 

This process was repeated on all areas of the pants, but extra attention was paid to the crease, which had to be so sharp, it might cut you if you weren’t careful.

Once in a while, there’d be a stubborn wrinkle, usually somewhere around the pocket. Uncle Jimmy, normally in a semi-meditative state as he ironed, would suck his teeth and narrow his eyes as he rammed the iron into the problem area and beat the hell out of whatever wrinkle was there. 

He’d always win and the result was a perfect pair of pants - prominent crease and no imperfections anywhere.

Once the iron was unplugged and the ironing board folded back up, you knew a meaningful task had been completed. 

The pants were now ready to be paired with a crisp white t-shirt, which had undergone the same diligent ironing process. To anybody outside LA, the white shirt and Dickies pants was an innocuous combination. 

But to many people in LA, it was a dangerous outfit that said you were connected to the gang violence of the 90s.

At 7-years-old, I was one of the people in LA who didn’t know that. I just knew that I wanted to be cool like Uncle Jimmy. Ever since I moved into my grandmother’s house a year before due to my parents trying to figure some stuff out that I didn’t understand, Jimmy was like my older brother who taught me cool things. He taught me art, like how to draw 3D block letters; he taught me about world cultures through Faces of Death videos; and he taught me practical things, like how to stop a person’s breathing.

“You punch them fools in the neck like this,” he said, showing me his clenched fist with the knuckle of his middle finger jutting forward.

As I tried to imitate with my hand, he flicked my Adam's apple. The pain shocked me and I lost my breath for several seconds. 

“Shit hurts, right?” he said. “Now imagine how someone would feel if they got hit like I showed you. You’d fuck them fools up.”

Uncle Jimmy knew all the cool things you had to know to be cool. I wanted to be like him. So one day I decided to go to school dressed like him. 

By the time I got ready for school each morning, my grandparents were already at work and Jimmy was supposed to be at school already (though I know he usually didn’t really go, which I wanted to do, too, but was afraid). So I had the house to myself every morning. And this particular morning, I went into Jimmy’s room and picked out some clothes.

I took a pair of his carefully ironed shorts, which came down past my ankles, and a white t-shirt, which went to my mid-thigh. Both were much too big for me, but I thought the oversized bagginess looked pretty good. I admired myself in the mirror, posing with my arms crossed and my chin up. 

“That’s what’s up,” I said, not realizing the L.A. Lights shoes with flashing lights and velcro straps weren’t the right shoes to wear with this particular outfit. 

But that didn’t matter. I felt cool and 10 years older. I flung my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack over my shoulder and walked to school like a badass. 

A few blocks into my walk, a cop car rolls up, slowly coasting alongside me. Here is where I need to tell you that I was a big, husky kid. I was only 7, but I was 5 feet tall and 150 pounds, so I looked like your average middle-aged Mexican from afar. 

I saw the cop inside, straining his neck to get a good look at me. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I stopped, waved, and smiled. The cop looked confused, but he sped away. I continued on my way to school

What I really wanted was for Amber to see how cool I looked. Amber was the girl with long black pigtails and I wanted to marry her. We hadn’t spoken very much - she sat three rows in front of me in Ms. Elliot’s class, and I was always too afraid to approach her during recess, but I was sure that when she saw me in my crisp white t-shirt and creased Dickies, she would think I was just as cool as my uncle Jimmy, who I thought was the coolest guy in the world.

But when I walked through the front gate heading toward the main entrance, one of the fifth graders stepped in front of me. I didn’t know his name, but I’d seen him around. He was tall and broad-shouldered with muscles straining underneath his t-shirt, which was just as white and crisp as mine. He also wore Dickies that didn’t have as strong a crease as mine, but had an attempt. Obviously, he couldn’t iron like Uncle Jimmy. The kid looked me up and down, jammed his finger into my chest, and turned up his nose in a sort of snarl.

“Who you with, punk?” he said. 

“Uh, n-n-nobody,” I said. I always had a bit of a stutter, but it got worse when I was nervous. 

“You ain’t with nobody? So why the fuck you dressed like you are?” he said, and shoved me hard, almost knocking me down. I felt he was much stronger than I was and when he stepped toward me, I knew I was about to get pummeled. I did the middle finger knuckle thing that Uncle Jimmy taught me, but I knew if I tried, I would fail.

“Stop that right now!” 

It was Mrs. Elliot. She was coming to my rescue and I loved her so much for it. 

“Peter - go on to class. You can’t be tardy again!” she told the boy. 

It was like Mrs. Elliot magically transformed a hulking menace into the 11-year-old (well, maybe 12 or 13 - he was probably held back a bit) he was meant to be, because he slunk his shoulders and bent his neck like a sad puppy, muttering an apology and even said, “ma’am.” 

Mrs. Elliot was a big woman with a big voice, and she could do that. 

“And you,” she told me. “I didn’t know you were a cholo.”

I said I wasn’t and muttered an apology and even a “ma’am.”

Sitting in class, three rows behind Amber, I didn’t feel so cool anymore. Did they really think I was trying to be a cholo?

I had a vague understanding of what a cholo was - I knew Uncle Jimmy was one and that my grandparents didn’t like it. I also knew it was something I wasn’t old enough for, which made me feel like I was dressed in a uniform I had no business wearing. Looking around the classroom, I envied the kids wearing overalls or Bart Simpson t-shirts. I couldn’t wait to get home to change. For once, I hoped Amber didn’t look back at me. 

But during recess, I realized I got myself in big trouble.

I was playing tetherball with one of my classmates when along came Peter and three other kids about his size, all dressed in the same crisp white t-shirts and Dickies (though none with as strong a crease as mine). Peter told my classmate to go somewhere else and grabbed the tetherball. 

“You think you gangster?” he told me, and smacked the tetherball so hard and high, all I could do was watch it spin around the pole, the wire strangling the metal. When it slowed down, I jumped to stop it from completely wrapping the pole, but instead I got my wrist entangled in the rope. 

“Ouch!” I said, exactly like that. Dumb.

Peter and his crew burst out in laughter. 

“You a bitch, for real!” Peter said. 

With my wrist stuck in the tetherball rope, Peter whispered in my ear: “After school, we gonna whoop your bitch ass.”

He and his crew walked away. As I watched them leave, I saw Amber looking at me. She was with her friends on a bench. She didn’t look like she loved me. She looked like she thought I was a weird dork who was about to get his bitch ass whooped. 

Mrs. Elliot blew her whistle, the signal for everyone to start lining up to get back to class. I was still stuck, and saw everyone leaving me tied to the tetherball pole. 

It was a beautiful day in LA. Big, bright blue sky, warm sun, a clear view of the mountains looming in the horizon. And I was tied to the tetherball pole. But I was glad. As I watched all my classmates go back to class in single file lines, I prayed that nobody would see me and that I could hide here until all this was over. Then I’d go home and change and everything would go back to normal. I wouldn’t be confused for a gangster, older kids wouldn’t threaten me, and I could be just like everyone else wearing a Simpsons t-shirt. 

But that’s not what happened.

“Is our newest little cholo stuck?” Mrs. Elliot said. 

She grabbed the tetherball and flung it in the other direction, allowing the rope to disentangle from my wrist. I didn’t want to leave that spot, and I wondered why Mrs. Elliot didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. Didn’t she know I had to be invisible for at least the next four hours?

“Now go on to class,” she told me. 

I muttered an apology and a “ma’am” and did as told. 

For those next four hours, I sat at my desk and imagined all the ways in which I would get beat up because some people thought I was a cholo, even though I wasn’t completely sure what a cholo was. What I knew now, though, was that being one meant you had people coming at you, and now I knew why Uncle Jimmy had been teaching me things like how to punch a person in the neck. 

Even the Faces of Death videos made sense now. The world was a cruel and ugly place, so you had to be ready. Seeing people crack open the skulls of live monkeys gave me nightmares for weeks, and the images dwelled in my head, popping up at weird times - those poor monkeys trapped and screaming as people tortured them while grinning - this is how people could get, and knowing this was necessary.

I knew that now. Things made more sense now. But I also knew that I was about to get jumped by a bunch of older kids and there was nothing I could do about it. 

When the final bell rang, signaling the end of the school day, I got up from my desk and walked out of the classroom, in total acceptance of my fate.

I watched Amber walk out of the classroom. I only saw her long black pigtails. She didn’t look back at me. She was right. 

When I got to the main entrance, there was the usual after-school frenzy of cars and people - the semi-organized calamity of parents picking up their kids, school buses jockeying for room, and kids trying to figure out where to go.

Seeing the chaos, I thought I might be able to sneak out unscathed, and I started running. But then somebody yanked my t-shirt collar - making it not so crisp anymore - and I fell backwards and fell on my butt.

Standing over me was Peter and his three friends looking down on me, snickering, with the look of kids who are about to pour salt on a slug and I was the slug and the salt was their feet. I covered my face, expecting to get stomped.

“Hey, motherfucker!”

It was my Uncle Jimmy’s voice.

I opened my eyes and saw Jimmy standing in front of a blue Impala, carrying a baseball bat in one hand, and a big metal chain in the other. Next to him was another guy about the same age, holding the same things. They both wore dark sunglasses, Raiders caps, and perfectly ironed crisp white t-shirts and Dickies pants.

Uncle Jimmy walked up to Peter and tapped his chest with the big end of the baseball bat.

“That’s my nephew you’re messing with, homes,” Uncle Jimmy said. “You fuck with him, you fuck with me.”

The other guy with my uncle flicked the chain on the sidewalk like a whip.

“That’s right!” he said. 

Peter backed up. He was terrified. He stammered an apology and a “sir” as he helped me get back on my feet. And then he and his crew walked away, shoulders slunk and necks bent. 

I was beaming. I felt big and powerful and cool. Everyone at the school must have seen me hanging out with these badass dudes with baseball bats and chains and cars and Raiders caps! I looked around for Amber, but didn’t see her. I hoped someone would tell her about this.

I looked up at my Uncle Jimmy with a big smile.

“How did you know?” I said, holding out my fist for a bump.

But he didn’t bump.

“Get your dumbass in the car!” he said. 

I couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses, but I knew they were angry. I got in the car.

Looking out the window, I saw Mrs. Elliot standing at the main entrance of the school with her arms crossed, looking at the car. Uncle Jimmy nodded to her as he got in the driver’s seat and she nodded back. 

I wasn’t always the brightest kid, but I figured out that much - I was saved by my teacher, which might be less cool than getting jumped in front of the whole school.

“Next time you wanna go around looking like a little badass, I’m gonna let you figure out how to be a little badass,” he said. “Now who told you you can wear my clothes? You better not be wearing my drawers, too, fool!”

Uncle Jimmy dropped me off and I immediately went to my room to change my clothes.  

I grabbed a knock off t-shirt with a picture of Bart Simpson fighting Raphael of the Ninja Turtles. 

But before putting it on, I ironed it perfectly.