Latin Kings

It was six thirty in the evening, December 31, 1987, and I was explaining to a girl that (it is not you -Lord no! It's me.) I could not hop on a CTA bus and go downtown with her to celebrate the New Year. It wasn't my parents. In fact, I was doing well in school and curbing my alcohol and drug use; they were practically pushing me out of the house that evening. My friends and I were in an in-between period then, due to my wanting to limit my intoxicant intake (pity, because if I were the bragging type, this tryst? affair? relationship? would be one to embellish over a few cans of Busch Light). She wanted to know, again, if it was her. No, I reiterated; it was not her. It was the Latin Kings.
Dunkin' Donuts solidified my belief in a prayer-granting God. Not directly, of course. It wasn't the French crullers, the long johns or the custard-filled 351clairs, but a counter girl named Helen. I was a junior at Quigley South and making the donuts on the afternoon shift. She was an eighteen-year-old sophomore at Marie Curie Public High School: blonde and gorgeous, a Polish porcelain doll. Our romance had all the makings of a John Cougar song.
OK. We were more like something by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, as she took great pleasure in showing me, a na357ve, awkward, long-haired Catholic school boy, the world interpreted through Black Sabbath lyrics and fumbled make-out sessions on flour bags in the stock room.
I received my Divine Break in late autumn when Helen made me third party to the tearful breakup with her boyfriend who, from her story, never spoke to her -in public or otherwise- unless he wanted to have sex with her. Shortly after the breakup was official, I became The Guy Friend. I accompanied her to the mall, met her friends, and on an unseasonably warm day in early December, became her boyfriend.
When I called her house, she made me ask for her using the Polish pronunciation of her name, Helcia, which in my South Side phonetics came out Hell-cha, as in Hey dere, is, ah, Hell-cha home? to which her sister, who was three years older, would laugh and drop the phone shouting something to Helen about who are these idiots always calling the house for her.
She had a good friend who for the sake of memory will be named Gary. He was The Guy Friend who never advanced: in limbo and patient as hell, tooling up and down Archer Road and around Resurrection Cemetery in his car that resembled a WWII gunship while Helen and I made out in the back seat.

I had it made.

The summer before the Immaculate Hookup, two brothers by the name of Tim and Joe Moroses moved into the neighborhood, bringing with them all the amenities of their previous Brighton Park stomping ground (i.e. the Latin Kings street gang). The most ironic thing about this whole experiment in cultural immersion was that Tim and Joe spoke Polish at home, making them Latin only by proxy.
Many of my friends were trading up from high-priced BMX bikes to high-priced muscle cars. Al Spinelli just earned his license and received a white Mustang convertible from his father to celebrate. The people in the group I occasionally hung out with had no cars to drive, so we had no reason to expend the energy to get our licenses.
On the only night during Thanksgiving break I did not spend cruising with Helen and Gary, the group and I were walking the usual neighborhood beat, and we ended up at Gas City on Archer Avenue. Al Spinelli pulled up shortly after we'd arrived, cruising the usual beat up and down Archer, covering the same territory we did, except faster and for a lot more money.
Tim Moroses was in the passenger seat of Al's brand new Mustang, giving that whole scene a 40OZ Mickey's at Charlie Trotter's kind of feel. At a party the previous weekend, Tim or Joe started some static with people from the OA's, Organized Albanians, from Summit - the town just west of us. According to the Brothers Moroses, these OA's popped off a couple of shots in their direction the night of the party. On this night, we noticed a three-car parade passing by every five minutes or so. We surmised they were going around the block.
"Who the fuck is that?" asked Al Spinelli. Nobody recognized the cars.
"Tim, next time they come around, throw up the Crown ." Al continued, laughing, because he was impressed with his own command of the Polish/Latin King lingo.
Tim was not as amused. "Fuck that, bro! If those are OA's, we'll all get ventilated."
The car hadn't been around for a while, so we figured that it would be safe to walk to Mike Lipnewski's house, about two blocks away. We also figured that if they were Organized Albanians, they'd be after Al Spinelli and Tim Moroses rather than us; after all, Tim was the one with the gang affiliations, not us, and if the dudes in the cars didn't do their homework, well that wouldn't make them very organized would it?
We said Later! to Al Spinelli and Tim Moroses and started off down Mason street, the night easing back into its crisp autumn monotony. We reached an alley about a block into our journey and were met with the thundering of footsteps approaching from around corner in the alley. And then nine of them surrounded us. A thirteen-year-old, wet, confused, rat of a kid stepped forward, bouncing and mad-doggin' us. He spoke one word: "Represent?"
The four of us looked, one to the other, then back at him. "What?"
"Represent?"
After a tense silence, Patrick O'Callahan cracked the code: "Oh!" he shouted. "Nothing! We don't belong to205 Uh, represent any gangs."
"Nothing, huh? So, you guys aren't Kings?" The rat asked, and revealed the fat end of a pool cue that he'd been hiding behind his back.
"No." I answered, watching him step past me, raise the pool cue, and come down across the back of Chris Simmons, the second largest person in our group. I saw Chris Simmons duck; I heard the pool cue crack against him and his reply: "Ow!" He then instinctively stomped towards the quickly retreating rat.
I didn't see anything else because I had broken into a full sprint towards Ward Hall, our grammar school gym, which was about a block and a half in the opposite direction. I thought that I was the only one who made it until Chris Simmons passed me, panting something about the lights being on in the gym and Patrick O'Callahan getting beaten with a baseball bat.
Two phone calls were made that night: The first from Chris Simmons and I from the gym to 911, and the other to Patrick O'Callahan's parents to come and bring their son to the hospital because he feared his arm had been broken.
That night in November began a wave of vicious assaults upon the teens of the neighborhood. Dave Petrovich was with a group of people when a car screeched up, five Organized Albanians got out and took to them with Louisville Sluggers. One of them even broke a chessboard-sized piece of ice over Bill Healy's head. There were dozens of other stories to follow.
One night shortly after we started dating, while on the phone with Helen, I looked out onto 55th street through the picture window and saw a beat up Bonneville idling just down the street, the tail pipe pushing clouds of intimidation into the air. There must have been eight people crammed into that thing. It backed up in front of my house, the passenger window rolled down, and a mustached kid who, if he had gotten out of the car I am sure would be bouncing and mad-doggin', looked at me (peeking from behind the curtain in my picture window) and laughed like he knew that with his very presence, his very actions that evening he would be shaping the next three months of my life, because right then I made the decision that I would not leave my house, unless there was a friendly ride waiting to transport me safely to my destination.
I was snapped back to the conversation: Hello? Jimmy? Hello? To which I could only reply, Hell-cha! You are never going to believe what just happened.
Helen treated my stories of gangs infiltrating every corner of our neighborhood the same way she did the stories of Resurrection Mary's ghost roaming Archer Road at night: it was her entertainment. She was scared until she was bored, then there were friends to see, clubs to visit, people to dance with.
One night in mid-December, Helen and I went on a double date with another couple from Dunkin' Donuts, John Kowalski and Maria Borcelli. John played football for St. Rita and Maria went to Kennedy Public High School. On our date we ended up at Crazy Rock in Romeoville, now a "Gentleman's Club" but then a dance club for people 21 years and younger. It was a writhing mass of ethnicity, all seeming to posture towards the look of one gang or another: maybe a red handkerchief tied Aunt Jemima style around the head or the white fedora, black chino pants, and wife-beater tee-shirt preferred by the cholos.
John and I told the girls that we just didn't dance, so they should not even attempt to talk us into it. Maria and Helen went out to the dance floor and within minutes were engulfed by gyrating, young brown men in bandanas and fedoras.
John sipped his coke and surveyed the club, then figured that we would have to fight the entire male clientele before the night was through. I went and danced with Helen to show people that she was spoken for. It didn't stop any of them, and she began a rant about guys dancing a bit too close when it is obvious her boyfriend is dancing right next to her and what is he going to do well he'll show you what he's going to do Jimmy this dickhead just grabbed my ass.
It was Helen's entertainment. I was there to keep her from being bored, and now I had three boys way too young to for facial hair stepping up to me and challenging me with their lazy talk: Yo, holmes! So I grabbed your girlfriend's ass. What are you going to do about it, huh?
They stumped me. I don't know if it was because I felt set up by the girl with whom things, up until this moment, had been going so Blessedly well or if it was because one or more of these wannabes might be packing a blade, but I was not compelled to fight. I backed into John, who had come out onto the dance floor in my defense. He played it really cool and told them he was carrying a pistol; then told the girls and me that it would be a good idea if we headed back to the neighborhood before these fuckers were able to pull their friends together.
On the way home, Helen informed me that I didn't really know how to kiss, and that the proper way was to keep your lips parted while darting your tongue into the other person's mouth then back into your own. We practiced all the way until we reached the front of my house.
New Year's Eve arrived, and by that time my fears could be classified as some type of obsessive disorder or phobia; only, they seemed to be adversely disproportionate to the situation. I really was not afraid of getting my ass kicked: losing fights was my thing in middle school. I did not fear for my life, as all those stories happened in other neighborhoods where many buildings had no occupants and gym shoes on telephone wires served as landmarks. Everyone who had a story to tell in our neighborhood had only been shot at; of all the stories, not one hit, so I chalked it up as bad aim, but mostly bullshit.
No. My fear ended up being my fear. I was nervous going to and from school. There always seemed some potential violence looming amongst the non-white public school kids at the CTA bus stops or in the Burger King at Archer and Cicero, but no real indication, nothing but what I felt. I knew that it was out of control, and that it was going to mess things up with more than just my love life if I couldn't get a handle on it.
Helen was frustrated but patient. I had spent fifty dollars at Carson Pirie Scot to buy her a unicorn pendant and chain and had given it to her at work three days before Christmas. I gave this gift to her regardless of the fact that she spent the two nights before that hanging out with a new group of friends from school, with cars, many of them boys that she described as "Yummy." I gave it to her because I wasn't the kind of guy that would take her out, give her beer, and park by the lake on 95th street, even if it was, as she insisted (without provocation from me), just to look at the moon and listen to Iron Maiden's newest tape.
This was the first time we had talked since, and she was insinuating that she wanted me to come over so she could express her gratitude for the gift.
"Where's Gary? Isn't he coming out for New Year's?" I offered.
Helen squeaked with news that she apparently just remembered. "No! Things are really weird between us now. The night after Christmas, he told me that he is in love with me, and that he was for a long time. I told him I didn't like him like that, and besides, I am with you. And, he got all quiet, and he kind of started scaring me because he wasn't saying anything, and we were out on Archer Road, and you know, I started to think he could have raped me or killed me or something, easy! He dropped me off later, and he was crying. I haven't called him since."
"Oh, my God! I knew he liked you!" I shouted into the mouthpiece. I was bummed, though. It wasn't like I didn't want to be alone with Helen, but I considered asking her for his number to see if I could talk him into coming out.
"Just hop the bus down Archer. It's one bus," She said.
"Naw. My parents won't let me leave the house." I replied.
"Hey, Jimmy! You are going somewhere for New Year's, right?" My mother called from the other room, loud enough to be heard over the phone.
"See? I heard that! Now come on over. We could both take the bus downtown (This prospect made me sweat; Lord only knew what new thugs were waiting to terrorize me there), or we could stay here in my room and celebrate the New Year," She added, seeing if I'd bite.
It was any seventeen-year-old boy's dream call, and it was the most pathetic moment of my life. I turned down Helen's invite, and even though she said she understood, I knew that my Holy Opportunity was quickly becoming just another common parting of ways: no lightening bolt epiphanies; no stories etched into parchment; no songs about it at Sunday mass.
There were more nights unaccounted for, fewer phone calls placed to my house, and then Helen quit the donut shop. On her last day, she took me into the back room and gave me one of her kisses, assuring me that she was still my girl and that we should not lose touch. We spent another day together, walking around the neighborhood, flirting and visiting playgrounds, but she was saying goodbye. She talked about dropping out of school and getting a job at a bank that would hire her without a high school diploma and about moving into an apartment with her best friend, Lucy.
Spring was approaching, and the claustrophobia of the winter months wore off, giving the neighborhood new possibilities. There seemed to be more places to go, fewer cars crawling past on 55th Street, and even fewer stories of jumpings or beatings. My feelings for Helen were resurrected with the ability to breathe deeply and walk home from the bus stop with my eyes in front of me instead of scanning the passing cars for danger. She hadn't moved out yet, so I called her house every day, but was met with her sister's cold tolerance: Yes, Jimmy. I will tell her you called; until one day, in a voice of genuine pity, she relinquished: Honey, stop calling here. OK?
I blamed the Moroses brothers well into the summer for Helen breaking it off, but then my group began navigating every aspect of the neighborhood again, hanging out on Archer Avenue and attending yard parties thrown by people whose parents were away. Helen was working at Standard Federal Bank, which housed my savings account, and I would occasionally see her when she was working (Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from 1:00PM to 6:00PM, and Fridays from 11:00AM until 3:00PM). She had begun dating one of the boys from her school group, the one with the car, but she said that she wanted to get together with me one night and hang out. I realized that I could then, whenever I wanted, just leave my house and walk to Helen's. Archer was a big road, and even if I ran into trouble, the pleasant summer air seemed to carry a zen-like atmosphere of well being rather than the violence and oppression of previous months. Things felt surmountable. I contemplated our meeting while Helen smiled, winked, and canceled the fee for my overdrawn account.