Illegals in Times of Crisis
The Conversation We Never Had
I never really came out to tio Chicho. I always felt like it was an open family secret that I was pretty gay. Lo que se ve no se pregunta. The plan always was, in my mind at least, that as soon as I got my papers, I'd simply go back to Ensenada and have a...
Just A Boy In A Tragic Queerdom
If my blurry memory doesn’t fail me, I believe the first time I heard No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” I was with my cousins at a family party, huddled around a radio. It was the late 90s and I’d only been in the U.S. for a couple of years, so my gay teenage brain was...
Julio, 37, Chronic Future Tripper
I think I’ve gotten my 2021 weekend routines down. Wake up. Stare at my phone. Reply to the various IG group chats I’ve either started or have been added to without consent, but stay for the hilarious meme exchanges. Grab a cliff bar from under my bed --I order a box...
The Mexican Andy Warhol
“You like Andy Warhol?”, Mr. Degreif, my 12th grade art teacher, asked me once pointing at my I Shot Andy Warhol promotional movie shirt. I had no idea who Andy Warhol was. My uncle Chicho had given me the shirt, which he found at the Hollywood Out Of The Closet store...
No Thank You, Soccer
It was my mother’s idea that I joined a soccer team. The small soccer field across the street from stonewalled church in the Mexican town of Ensenada was my biggest nightmare. Every other weekend, we’d show up with our stained white t-shirts and black shorts, a...
Teenage Immigrant Angst
Miss Gayner was the kind of young art teacher who would stop at your desk and lean over to make suggestions in how to improve an art technique, even if her students were a bunch of unimpressed 7th graders staring at the clock eager for the lunch bell to ring. Though I...
Ugg Boots & White Literature
by Yosimar Reyes I’m sitting in my Early British Lit Class and clearly I am bored out of my mind. We are discussing one these stories in the Cranberry Tales or some shit. (I hate white literature!) Anyway, I am so bored I log on to see what kinda trade SF State campus...
An Unfinished Text
I’ve started the same text like a dozen times in an effort to find some closure. Every single time, when I think I’ve written the most perfect text that won’t make me sound goofy, I stop myself and delete the entire thing. Mostly because this happens after a night of...
The Light Switch
The poppers do its job as I walk into the maze of dark halls and white towels. A stranger gives me the look and invites me over to his room. Once inside his room, I fail to follow protocol and ask his name. “¿Qué?”, he replies. “¿Cómo te llamas?”, I ask. He looks at...