L.A. Son

by Roy Choi

  Use liberally on whatever you got cooking for dinner—chicken, shrimp, everything—and pack the rest in Tupperware. It’ll store in the fridge for 2 weeks.

  GET TOPLESS WOMEN IN

  HAIRNETS TO PACK THE

  SAUCE INTO SMALL PLASTIC

  POUCHES IN A HOUSE WITH

  BLACKED-OUT WINDOWS

  LIKE IN NEW JACK CITY.

  CHAPTER 5

  GROVE STREET

  The first week of high school. A lot of new faces: unfamiliar kids from the other junior high schools not only in Villa Park but from Anaheim and Orange, too, were all funneled into Villa Park High. Everything was real quiet. That junior high school stuff, I thought, had been just a phase—drugs, heavy metal, typical preteen anger at the world, experimenting with Frank, class clowning. Kids’ play. Now this was tenth grade, and I was going to block out all that angst I was having about my parents. I was going to buckle down, be a good kid, and study hard. I joined the Latin and Chess Clubs, even made a new friend in honors English, another Korean kid named Paul Juhn, aka Yogi after some dude pointed out that he looked like the bear. He and I were two Asian kids in a sea of white faces, so there was a natural Hey, wassup to our first meeting, as if our spirits had already been introduced and no further explanation was required. What sealed the deal was our shared love for kimchi and hip-hop, and a bit of healthy rivalry that only good friends can have. So, with new clubs and new friends, I resolved to keep my head down and my mouth shut.

  That shit lasted for about as long as your New Year’s resolution to lose the fat. Barely a day.

  It was lunchtime. I was waiting in line, like normal, for my chimichanga and Jell-O, when I felt something dark behind me, barreling through the line like a freight train. Letterman jackets. Jocks. Football seniors. Pushing every Marty McFly out of the way as they made their way to the front.

  I was just about to order when I felt the hand on the shoulder.

  “Move out of the way, Chink.”

  Laughter. Hyena laughter. Ugly laughter.

  I stood my ground, feet digging into the concrete, fighting the undertow of their aggression.

  “Oh, this fucking Chinky gook thinks he’s tough.”

  “Kick his ass.”

  I fucking started feeling like going Kobra Kai Karate Kid shit on this muthafucka. But I just stood my ground.

  They kept pushing. I kept resisting.

  Then they pushed too fucking hard.

  My face went up against the grate covering the order window, and I stumbled, catching myself before I fell. That was it. I turned around, grabbed the dude from behind his head and threw him into my knee, Thai style. Broke his nose, shoved him into the grate, and rubbed his face up and down till it started bleeding from the cuts. The other dude stepped back and threw a punch. I ducked and kicked him in the nuts.

  I got my chimichanga, trembling from adrenaline. As I started to bounce from the scene, I happened to glance over to my right, toward a group of guys hanging out under a tree on a small hill right above the snack stand. The Grove Street Mob. They were all barely sixteen but looked a decade older. Right as I looked over, Martin Ortega, the Pope of Grove Street, nodded at me.

  I walked over. He spoke first. “Wassup.”

  From that day forward, I ate lunch with the Pope and his mob.

  THE GROVE STREET MOB wasn’t a gang as much as it was a Legion of Leaders that, for miraculous reasons, all ended up together. An All-Star team, if you will. Each guy could stand on his own as easily as he could back you up.

  You just met our leader of leaders, Martin. He wasn’t just our leader, though; he was the leader of the whole neighborhood, the idol of every young kid on the block, an All-Star wrestler, beer-drinking, gang-related, girl-fucking, Latino superstar. He could do everything: he wasn’t more than five-foot-six, but he was built like the Tasmanian Devil, so strong that he could chop down a tree, lift cars, even break bricks. He turned good girls bad and bad girls good. He sheltered drifting souls and kissed babies. His mom, Susie, was an old-time chola from the hood, so no matter what mistakes Martin made or whatever trouble we got in, she was there to house and feed us till we got back on our feet.

  Frank Gehr lived right next door to Martin on Grove Street. Frank was a debonair dude, an Italian-looking Guido and fit like a champ. He was always cool to me but started shit with others in and out of the Mob all the time.

  Black Mike. Black Mike is no longer with us in this physical world, but the time he did spend here was eternal. You know the kind of dude who looks the same age forever? That dude that looks like he came out of the womb with a goatee? Mike was that dude. He must have been twenty-two when we were sixteen. He was about six-foot-one, dark as fuck, eyes as deep as the universe, wore creased Levi’s, white T, Chucks, army belt, and some dark shades we call Locs. Proper. He had a Jheri curl, but it wasn’t the kind of curl you could pop a joke at. This was a straight Los Angeles double OG curl that bounced like a cheetah. Black Mike was an Obi-Wan Kenobi oligarch of the streets who always had a crisp pack of Newports packed like no other and an ice-cold forty as if he lived in a refrigerator.

  Shep. He goes by Big E now but will always be Shep to me. I consider Shep my very best friend for life and beyond. Before the age of fifteen, he was already built like Darryl Dawkins; by sixteen, he was knocking grown men out. I saw Shep hit a guy so hard at a party that it looked like a library shelf of books had collapsed within the dude’s body as he fell to pieces. Shep’s home was like a halfway house for us drifters. He started dealing weed at sixteen, so we’d smoke a lot together, play NBA Live, eat Naugles and Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, maybe even some Chinese kung pao chicken, and share our dreams in between.

  Mike Semaza was a born fighter, the best, in fact, that Orange County had ever seen. At seventeen, he became our resident pro boxer: 126 pounds of pure magic. Quick as lightning, ducking in and out and delivering sharp blows to the kidney. He also had a black belt and could beat dudes up, all the while still partying it up with an ice-cold brew in hand. We called him Baby Boom Boom after his doppelganger, Ray Mancini.

  Garrett Dean and I were really close. He was built like Fred Flintstone, always barefoot, with feet and hands like cinder blocks. His mom was a truck driver; she was on the road a lot, but always left us food in the fridge and movies on the couch. Garrett would always have me over at the crib to raid the fridge.

  Ryan Brown was a small, lanky dude with a big Afro and wide nose. He could bust any dude down hard with Yo Momma jokes; we called it “bagging,” and he excelled. He was from Pasadena—specifically, the Denver Lane Bloods click—and moved down to Anaheim with his mom to get away from that world. But he found himself back on the grind, shooting fierce verbal arrows with the best of them. Ryan was one of my best friends.

  Danny Bobbitt was one of the most amazing creatures I had ever met. Freckled face with a long, wiry frame, but tough as fucking nuts. He was like Gumby mashed with Nightcrawler: he could twist any which way; then, bam, he’d go from right next to me to the pole to the roof over to a telephone wire and right back down. All in less than a second. Lightning.

  Tommy, Martin’s uncle, was all of twenty-something but was like a god to us sixteen-year-olds. He gave us sound advice and, when necessary, a kick in the ass to keep us in check. And even more guys: Carlos Bustamante, our DJ with big long curls as wet as the morning dew. Steve Janzen, the son of a fireman. Curtis and Ken Robinson, brothers and world-class wrestlers who would go on to Atlanta after high school. Pag, our resident scholar and wordsmith. We had Lillian and a few other girls who were down with us, too. And man, there are so many more I left out, and it is not intentional.

  And then there was me.

  And that, folks, was the Grove Street Mob. We could walk anywhere, anytime; we commanded respect but never had to flaunt it. And we roamed the town: there was always someone in need of a black eye and everyone in need of a beer run. Step up in a fight, drop three hits of acid, ’shrooms, dine and dash, go eat, rob
a store, babysit your kid? Sure. Let’s go.

  Crease the jeans with a whole can of starch. Roll joints with two Zig-Zags. Pack the cigarettes for five minutes, till the tobacco goes down by 30 percent. Comb in some Tres Flores. Sprinkle baby powder on the shoes, which will leave powder puffs when you take off running from the cops. Pack the sawed-off shotguns, 9 mm Berettas, 357 revolvers, rifles, UZIs, butterfly knives, numchucks, chains, bats, brass knuckles, police sticks, big hunting knives, little 22 pistols. Pile in the car, turn on the oldies, and head up to Hollywood, maybe, and deal with some messes along the way.

  But it wasn’t all small crimes and fisticuffs. We babysat kids, we pulled weeds, we fixed cars. Had keggers and summer bonfires roasting Philippine meats or steaks in Newport Beach. Downed plate after plate of tacos from whatever taquero was nearby—al pastor, carne asada, carnitas, sauced with salsas verde and roja, all eaten with a side of pickled carrots and washed down with a crisp horchata. Sometimes we broke into joints like the Tastee Freez, but not to jack anything other than food: we’d pry the back door open in the middle of the night, bust into that fucker, turn on all the lights, fire up the hoods, ovens, fryers, and just start cooking. Taquitos, chimichangas, burgers, and gyros.

  RYAN BROWN DIED BY CRASHING A CAR AT A hundred miles per hour into a lube and oil shop just past the Batavia riverbeds in Anaheim, California. I knew he was gonna die that night. And it will always kill me a little each day that I didn’t grab him in time to stop him.

  I first met Ryan Brown in an alley. He was, as he always was, bagging on some dude with his Yo Momma jokes, and he had my sides hurting with laughter. For almost two years after that, we spent every minute together. I went to his house first every morning and saw him last every night. We had the same physical insecurities—we were both lanky, skinny kids—but more than that, a similar weight hung heavy on our souls.

  Ryan had ambition, and if he had been born in another body or in another time, he would have been unstoppable. He would’ve been able to pantomime the right answers at job interviews, eat with the right forks in the right order, shake the right hands, say the right things the right way at the right time. But no. He was a young, geeky black kid, and all that racism, the burden of low expectations, and other shit wears on a brother. He capped anyone and everyone with his jokes, but inside it wasn’t so funny.

  I saw his outfit of verbal armor because I was wearing my own chain mail. Outside, I was the tough but quiet kid, down for whatevas. Inside, though, I was just down. Lost and confused. Grove Street was great, but even they couldn’t fill the void: I still couldn’t adjust to the culture shock of Villa Park, and my parents were drinking more than ever. I never met their high expectations, and, with the drugs, my long hair, and my sneaking around, I justified their shame. When their friends visited with their Harvard-bound sons and daughters, my parents sent their Quasimodo of a son to his room. Out of sight, out of mind.

  In my bell tower, I felt like I was in the wrong body, the wrong time, the wrong era, suffocating in a prison of structure. I had to get out. I had to disappear.

  I thought about ending it all—knife, wrist; gun, trigger—but, no, that good Asian son heritage pulled me back. I couldn’t do it. So, instead, I took off for nights at a time, to a place where nobody knew my name, where I could escape the expectations, the disappointments, the failures, even the successes. It was a place I knew as a kid: Hollywood. Hollywood then was a free-for-all, a false paradise for transients, drifters, and lost souls. Glam rock and coke, blow jobs on the street. In other words, the complete opposite of Villa Park.

  So I’d walk Hollywood Boulevard, panhandle, smoke, and disappear into the concrete. Up and down Hollywood, between Gower and Highland, grabbing pizza slice crusts out of the trash or asking for change to get a shawarma. I slept curled up, head down in my knees, up against a wall, then roamed again looking for cigarette butts, drinking water out of the bathrooms. I didn’t talk to anyone. I got to know no one. Just fucking walked and walked and walked. I had to know, to really know, that a whole world existed beyond Villa Park.

  When the bugs were out of my system, I’d go back home. Reset.

  Ryan was the only one who could really understand why I had to get out of Villa Park, the only one who cared about me on a level beyond anyone else. And so he was the only one I told about my Hollywood vacations.

  In the last few precious minutes of our time together, we were kicking it at the apartment, like always. Drinking beers, like always. Smoking kush, like always. But over the last few weeks there had been something weird about Ryan. We were mad at each other for something, so we weren’t meshing like best friends should. But sometimes guys just trudge through that shit until it naturally gets better, or you fight it out. It was slowly getting better between us.

  Eleven P.M. I had my eyes fixed on Ryan. He was sitting on the floor, beer in hand, zoning. He was depressed, sunk in an invisible net.

  “Yo, we going to the party or what, Ryan?” I asked. A girl I liked was at this party, and each second ticking away was a second that I could possibly be next to her and maybe get the courage to ask her out.

  Ryan waved me away. Said he was just going to kick it there. But there was something about the way he shrugged me off, something about the way he sat on the floor with his back against the wall like he had a stamp and was ready to be shipped, something about it all that was strange. The whole room stopped, and I should have stopped. I should have stopped and grabbed the fucker by the coat like I always did, and dragged him with me. Or I should have stopped and said I was sorry for all the bullshit or for whatever we were fighting about and sat down and kicked it with him. I should have fucking been in tune and not been so selfish. But I wasn’t.

  Instead, we said “later” to each other as I walked out of the apartment. I took one last look at him and shut the door behind me. Turned my attentions to the party and the girl I had no chance with. And just forgot.

  I WAS DRIVING BACK from the party. The road was blocked with cop cars and yellow tape. Something hit me in the stomach, and I jumped out of the car and ran. Two blocks through the jam to the scene. Slowly, I saw guys in stretchers laid out, their car smoking and crushed from front to center. And even though Ryan had never driven a car in the whole time I’d known him, I knew it was him.

  It was supposed to be a joke. Ryan had convinced the others to let him drive that night. They were going out for some food, maybe some Taco Bell or McDonald’s. Everything must have gone well, because they were on their way back, with food in the car. But then maybe the tire popped and Ryan lost control, or maybe he just stepped on it; either way, the skid marks show he accelerated, turned, and went straight into a brick wall. The others somehow survived. He didn’t.

  I love you, Ryan, and the lazy mornings listening to the Temptations, getting your braids done, and eating your mom’s cooking while we talked about our dreams, together. These are memories hung up like posters in my soul, and I will always kiss them as I venture out, bringing to life all the things we talked about. Making people happy.

  RYAN BROWN

  R.I.P.

  Then I’d go home, crash, wake up, be a good Korean kid and eat kimchi mung bean porridge with the family, go to school, do homework, watch my sister, hit up Downtown L.A. with my mom to pick up jewelry. Then, when the time was right, sneak out into the alleyways and start it up all over again, like a cat with nine lives and counting.

  THE MOMENT I BOUGHT that ’87 Chevy Blazer, white with gold trim, I knew it was too high.

  Back then, everyone had Nissans and Impalas, but not too many were up on the Blazer game yet. And that’s why I knew I had to have it.

  My boy Matt Kudra had just moved from Compton and brought a swagger to Grove Street that I was instantly attracted to. He was built like an ice block, always with two sawed-off shotguns under the seat and khakis so fresh you’d think he owned a dry cleaner’s. He had this canary-yellow VW Squareback dropped to the floor with fifteen-inch Enkeis deep-
dish rims. This thing sat so low, you could call it a Landscraper, and it was the illest ride on the scene. I loved riding shotgun with the shotguns under my seat, bouncing throughout the streets. That kind of shit is straight Cali, eyes wide open, scanning everything in sight.

  And so I worked hard to get that Blazer. My parents were making mad dough through their jewelry business and would have dropped the allowance on me had I asked, but no. That ain’t me. I was stubborn and still not used to riches, so I was on my grind. After school at a toy store, restocking shelves. Washing dishes at Leatherby’s ice cream parlor. Busing tables and cleaning the salad bar at a steakhouse called Cask ’n Cleaver.

  I eventually made enough to get the Blazer. Then I had to trick it out. At that time in my life, it was the only thing I truly was diligent about. The car became an extension of me. The Millennium Falcon to my Han Solo.

  I bought the VW’s rims off Matt for $500, including the 50-series low profile tires. I went to the mechanic and dropped my shit, cutting out all the leaf springs till the rubber met the paint. Blacked out all the windows. Then it was time to focus on the system: fifteen-inch Cerwin Vega woofers, a 300-watt Rockford Fosgate amplifier, and midrange speakers in the doors. If you were riding shotgun with me, you could put coins in the cup holders, and they’d jump like crickets. Outside, you knew I was coming from half a mile away, maybe more, and you’d know I was outside your door when the windows in your house started to shake.

  I threw some fuzzy dice on the rearview. I was ready to roll.

  “WHAT’S UP, AYE? I told my homies about your ride, and they wanna see it,” my boy Robert Torres said as I picked him up. I had my fresh creased Levi’s on, with a creased white T, gold chain, and hair greased up with a long tail in the back. Pretty fucking fly.