Yesterday: I wanted to sleep in, I wanted to sleep in so bloody badly, but I knew it wasn’t gonna happen. I just can’t sleep in after 7 anymore. Which probably was a good thing, ’cause I had plenty of shit to take care of. My coffee cup in one hand, punching in account numbers and passwords with my other. Which bills to pay off first, what the hell is that charge from, jesus, where does all my money go?.

Before I knew it, it was time to take Crystal to work. Funny, at 14 years old – more than three years before she can even actually vote – and already my sister is the activist of the family. She’s been working about three days a week for the Women’s Voter Registration Project, going out to pedestrian heavy areas and trying to get people to register as Democrats.

So I drop her off and head over to Korova to read the paper and do some last minute prepping for an interview I was doing over at SDSU. The interview went well (I’ll be posting it on San Diego Blog next week) but it went longer than I had expected and by the time I got out of SDSU’s labyrinth of parking lots, construction work, traffic, and god damned “no U-turn” signs I was just in time to get raped by afternoon traffic at the I-5/I-805 merge.

I hadn’t eaten all day and those five shots of espresso started to get to me. My stomach was cramping, my hands were shaking, I felt like I was going to explode.

I didn’t wanna go to work.

And it musta come off ’cause everyone kinda laid off of me when I got there. I attacked a tuna sandwich, clocked in, and got ready for whatever the night would bring me.

It didn’t bring me much which, despite the loss in tips, was a good thing. Just as I was starting to relax, to calm down (there have been personal issues aside), I hear the back door pop open and “que onda weyito?”

It was Jose and he had a six pack of Negra Modelos in his hand. Both Jose and I are hombres sin mujeres right now. His wife and baby boy are up in Los Angeles visiting family and Laura is down in Mexico. The first beer went down fast and smooth and I realized that his company was exactly what I needed. Though we work together at least 4 days a week, it had been a while since we hemos pasado tiempo como carnales.

When Jose and I first started working together, Miracles was a much busier place and we both worked the night shift. Jose knew about five words of English back then and his duties were only to clean, do dishes, take out the trash. Now the guy practically runs the place.

We cracked open dos mas chelas and remenisced about our first year working together – where’d all those old regulars go? Recuerdas de ella guey – con las pinches grandotas? No mames – no recuerdas su mama … la pinche locura nunca nos dejaba en paz guey. Tu sabes que las dos quisieran mis nalgas pendejo. And so on. We were already on our third bottle. Jose put El Haragan on the stereo and all the customers started giving us dirty looks and filing out. Just what we wanted, we cracked open our last beer.

Jose taught me Spanish. He introduced me to many of my friends. He introduced me to Laura. I’ve been to his pueblito, Acambaro on two different occasions and stayed with his family for over a month the first time.

I’ll never forget – it was about a year and a half ago – when Jose and I were supposed to be working together at 6 in the morning. Then at 6:30 he comes in and he’s bleeding and there’s bits of glass poking out of his forearms. I’ve never seen a face so expressionless before.

He was out the night before with another friend of ours, Jared at a local bar, the Leucadian. Neither one of them should have been driving – but after having a burrito at Juanitas to sober up, Jared said he was ok to drive. It was already 3 in the morning. Jared was driving Jose’s new white Honda Accord, which he had been saving up all his tip money for. At a notoriously unsafe dip on Vulcan Avenue the car bottomed out and then flipped over landing upside down on the sidewalk. Jared died immediately. Jose was unscathed except for some minor cuts by the glass. No bruises, no broken bones. He was asleep and when he woke up the car was in midair and when he realized what had happened, Jared was already dead.

Jose’s one year old son is named Jared. He’s a healthy kid, a cholito pelon, who already walks faster than his dad. We all went down to the beach together last week and Jared was causing all sorts of trouble, tugging at the skirts of pretty girls just like (I’m sure) his dad taught him.

Jose and I were joking around again. You have to learn to move beyond the sad memories and create new happy ones. But then a song came on that I had never heard before and Jose got all serious and told me to listen to the lyrics of the song.

Unlike myself, Jose rarely talks about music and rarely talks about his feelings. So when he said that he’s cried before listening to this song, it hit me pretty hard. Jose is now well established up here and I take for granted how tough he had it when he first came to the country. Not knowing anybody, picking fruit and lettuce from one farm to the next up near Salinas. Porque, cuando llegue a este pais guey, no sabia, no sabia como funciona todo. Sabes? Ahorra pienso, que babaso era.

Jose and I don’t agree on everything. Are personalities are different. He hates politics, would never read a newspaper, and spends all his extra money fixing up his cars. A veces manda su esposa como un machista. Pero trabaja duro por sus suenos y ha logrado bastante.

I for one am proud to call myself his friend.

Press here to listen to Y Es Por Eso Que Me Voy by El Haragan. I tried to translate the lyrics, but it ends up just sounding cheesy.