"We Were Kings" from Notes From The Deep End by Christopher Gutierrez


I never knew how to fight.
But that was all he knew.
He didn't fit in and he listened to the same bands I did. I knew it from the T-shirts he wore. Our peers scorned us both for our inability to 'go with the flow,' so we bonded. Our love for self-loathing was only surpassed by our loathing for the ones who walked the halls looking down their noses.
We sneered and made childish generalizations about their status amongst the high school pack of sheep.
Together we were solid. A unit. No one thought like we did. We were dethroned kings; waiting for the day we were to regain our title. Because, see then, then the chicks would see that we were more than the flash of leather jackets and Sid Vicious sneers. We would be revered for our individuality and our sense of originality. But until that day, we had to keep our eyes to the ground while we awaited our rightful place.

He would spend many evenings at my house eating microwavable burritos and shooting at whatever wildlife mistakenly stumbled into my backyard. Calling girls, watching soft-core porn and listening to Misfits bootleg records. We came together at the perfect time. The planets aligned and we met and we skated the same ramps and we listened to the same music and we went to the same shows and we understood that we were kings. We bonded even more over the similarities of our broken homes. He had an absent father and a mother that didn't understand. I had an absent father and a mother that didn't understand as well ... but the problem was, my mother tried to understand.

This he resented.

When I was inclined to point fingers to those I accused of stealing my rightful place, my mother did her best to diffuse that anger. But no one was there for him, so that anger went into the mirror ... and when you're a teenager and you hate yourself, it's only a matter of time before that anger is directed outward. I watched as it built.
First it was the preps that ruled over our lunchroom.
"Those fucking sheep." He would say under his breath, as they would walk by.
"Why do THEY get the hot chicks?"
I would frown and nod my head in agreement.
Then it was the suburban gang bangers that ruled the halls.
"Fucking fakes. Like any of these kids could even point out where Compton is."
I would frown and, again, nod my head.
Then it was the blacks.
"Fucking blacks, why are they so fucking loud?"
That was when it struck me that this might be headed in the wrong direction, but again, I nodded because I didn't like what I saw in the mirror as well.
"Fucking Mexicans, they come over here and steal all of our jobs."
"Whoa dude, I'm Mexican." I responded.
"Yeah man, but you know what I mean. You're cool because you're not like a 'real' Mexican."
This wouldn't be the first time I heard this phrase, nor would it be the last.
As time went on, rhetoric like this became commonplace. It began as petty as punk vs. what we viewed were conformists, but soon racism, homophobia and bigotry were the excuse and reason for whatever it was that was missing in our lives.

And I bought in...

To an extent.
Because I didn't fit in. No matter how much I tried, no one ever liked me for me. I was always too skinny, too dumb, too small, too 'gay.' There wasn't a direction for my anger. There was so much that when I dared to look it in the face, I ended up taking a razor blade to my skin, or breaking out the windows of cars, to telling my mother to 'shut her face.' because that animosity had to go somewhere ... and when you're young, the sights you've been given aren't calibrated for shit.
So I aimed,
And shot,
And hit all the wrong targets.
Soon I began to see the holes in his reasoning. The figures and statistics he would throw at us during our skate sessions in the street now ruined our fun and were beginning to wear on us.
He blamed blacks for welfare and drugs.
He blamed gays for their lack of morals and for AIDS.
He blamed Mexicans for the lack of jobs.
And he blamed the Jews for controlling the media and the death of Jesus.

He blamed and he blamed. He pointed his finger, accused, tried and convicted everyone that wasn't like him. Everyone that didn't live his life. I may have been young, but even then I saw that he had turned into what we hated. What we stood against. What we espoused to never become.
I didn't want it anymore because hate is heavy, and I was too smart to actively seek out such an unnecessary and overbearing burden.
So I took one of the most important steps in my life. Standing in front of my bathroom mirror with clenched fists and a tear-streaked face, I asked the question "WHY?" over and over.
It hurt, and it was scary.
It was like picking at a scab, but I knew it was for the best.
That evening, in that bathroom, I learned that I can't control the lives of others, no matter how much I hate. The only control I have is over myself and I wasn't even doing that well. How could I possibly point fingers and accuse and hate people and cultures and communities I didn't know when I didn't even understand the kid who looked back at me in the mirror?

I had no right. I at least learned that much that evening, that I had no right.

Luckily, what else I learned was that I had an obligation to myself to be as brutally honest as possible because I knew that if I couldn't be honest with myself, that I would never have the ability to do so with anyone else. And how was I supposed to learn how to love and BE loved if I couldn't stand naked and alone in an empty room? I was sabotaging my own life by attaching the insecurities of others to my back.
That night I promised myself that I wouldn't live a life that only moved forward to push others down.

I never had many role models in my life.
No teacher that went the extra mile. No coach that got me through hard times. No tutor who helped me make the grade. No priest who taught me how to love. No godparent that gave me the secrets on how to allow myself to be loved.
But that's fine.
I've had enough people in my life to show me how NOT to live.

And that's all the guidance I need to learn how to be a king once again.