I Remember

Chalio Cobos

I feel the absolute need to dedicate a mini chapter to my best male friend, Chalio Cobos.
How do I start...
Ok, when I was about 13 years old I noticed Chalio. I always knew this was Alonso's number 1 enemy. Their parents both had money, they were up to date with the latest. Chalio was tall and Alonso was short etc. Alonso had a board game every one loved to play, the good old RISK game. Chalio had the same game so when the guys didn't gathered at Chalio's house they would gathered at Alonso's house. It was crazy because out of their group they were the only spoiled ones. So the gang would follow to wherever. Since they didn't get along it was a known rule Alonso wouldn't step a foot in Chalio's house and vice versa. I think it only happened once.
This drove the gang crazy but they would managed. Sometimes either one of them would bring the game to the corner and somehow all of them would play it, It was understood. They didn't speak but they weren't absolute brats either.
I met Chalio during this times. Leonel was the neighborhood barber so Chalio started coming over to our house to get his haircuts. I never spoke to him, and don't recall what made me speak. Yira used to be fresh with him and I think that's how we got to talk. This man was the smartest person I knew. He was in science school and was just gifted. His mother hated that he hung around with the hood gang. It wasn't a bad gang they were always in that corner though. Most of them were in school, getting their education and such. But they would hang in that famous hot corner. They would have loud music playing and everyone had a beer in their hand. His mother is an educated lady who was a teacher, who became a principal of a school then went on to built her own school. She was going places and Chalio couldn't afford to stay in the hood. She moved her family out of there. He had three oldest siblings on his mother's side and three on his daddy side I believe, he was the baby of them all.
I started going to his house with Yira we would sit outside and Yira would make out with him, he wasn't a good looking guy Yira would call him ugly but make out with him in the same sentence. Just being grown, he didn't care, I would just watch. Then Yira moved to other things and Chalio and I found friendship. I learned so much from this guy, he was articulated, he was bright, he was intellectual. He poked my brain and thought me how to think on my feet. I became just like him, I was a fast learner and began to outsmart him, he taught me to stay paying attention, to analyze things, to listen carefully, to always be aware of people. I had to, it was a good survival skill. I became him intellectually which it was dangerous, because we couldn't fool each other I caught every ball he threw. He was strategic, I became him, I loved it, I was smarter than most kids my age, I learned quick, he was my mentor and didn't even know it. He was 17 when I was 13 when I became friends with him. We would talk for hours about everything and nothing. I was very mature and a virgin. He was intelligent and a good person, I wasn't fresh like Yira or forward so I stayed in my placed, besides I wasn't attracted to him, he was about 6'4, dark skinned and ugly in my eyes. I dug his smarts though that was his sexiest attribute. It should've been what attracted me to him, but I was young and shallow. After a while I had little feelings for him, we.spent a lot of time together, he had money and I was dirt poor. He had food and in was always hungry. No one approved of our friendship though, everything was looked wrongly and with malice. My grandmother was always guarding our tails, Lord knows she didn't needed me to get pregnant, I wasn't thinking of no baby I was surviving.
The hot corner started to spread a rumor about me being his girlfriend so they would pick on us and him and every time they will roast him, my name would come up. It used to get on my nerves, my grandma got a whiff of it and I was scolded for something I wasn't even doing I hated them. There was a time when he was coming to the USA with his dad to watch the Lakers play a championship game. He told me he was going I was like oh yeah bring me some back. His dad was the director of the sports association in Panama. He got free tickets to go just about anywhere to watch any sports he wanted. He was the little league of baseball's director as well. He was a very important man.
Well Chalio said he would, I forgot about it but when he came back he brought me back some Reebok tennis shoes a Lakers championship shirt and a swatch brand name watch. I couldn't believe it. I wanted it so bad but my grandmother made it so ugly, she said he was going to ask me for sex etc. I kept it anyways, it was time to go to my grandpa's house so I took it all with me. Can you imagine?? My very first brand name anything. Reebok shoes were just in style. I was in heaven. They didn't pay for it his daddy had connections. I kept it, but my rude grandmother talked to him and told him to leave me alone and told him that it didn't look good at all blah blah blah. I was furious, I wore them shoes til the sole came off, my watch too. From that moment on we were besties, he liked me I knew all along he was a proud man so he denied it more because he knew I didn't feel the same. So we would hide and hang out. He would come to my school after it was over and walk me back to the bus stop and we would eat at the dairy queen restaurant, or I would sneak and go to his house before school started and he would cook me lunch he didn't even know we didn't have any food I never told him. He would give me money for school, he would meet me at his dad's house in the city capital. Then I would get on the bus with him and come back home and get off in different stops, we managed to keep it going. I started to like him, but my grandma and the guys bothering us was too much. I didn't wanted them to be right. But we spent so much time together, we should've dated. I was too young though. I needed him, he was my best friend, he liked me more than a friend would.
I knew it he knew it, he tried to get away, we were so close but so far away at the same time.
His mom was bourgeois and she hated the hood people, I came from the most talked about house, she would've died if she knew how much time I spent with her son, the money that he gave me, and how much he liked me. Pride and prejudice type of scenario, I was everywhere emotionally, I was hustling, surviving, trying to be normal and exisiting all at the same time. I wanted to love him, but it wasn't allowed, I wanted people to see what I saw, how much he respected me and all he meant and was for me, but that meant admitting something we weren't and dealing with my grandma's guarding my tail. It was a mess. This was my first non- relationship-relationship. I was young in age but mature in sense. They broke us up, and I let them, he let them, they took away what was pure and made it ugly. He didn't prove them different and I was furious with him for not protecting my purity in front of them. I guess he had to survive too, he just left it at that, never took up for me, taking up for me meant showing them he loved me and it was way too much for the gang to make jokes about. He let it ride and I hated him for that.
We kissed at his house a couple of times. He was tall and his mouth was big and I hated it so avoid it like the plague, but at times I felt bad for him and knew and felt he deserved at least a kiss. So I did. He could've been the one but it never got that far. Too much negativity, had we been away from them all, it would've been better. Chalio took care of me. God didnt forget me, he always sent me help.
While I was mad at Chalio, I dated Eric VillaVerde, my family ran him away, then I started seeing Alonso. Chalio's enemy, it wasn't meant for him to hurt, it was my crush and I couldn't pass that opportunity. Chalio was extremely hurt by it, I was selfish and didn't care, I was furious with him so it was whatever... soon this became the new joke of the corner, I guess Alonso felt he was winning the girl that Chalio couldn't get, he prohibited me from speaking to Chalio because Chalio was bitter and would stop me and speak to me just to make Alonso mad, it got crazy at times. Chalio would snatch me and demanded me to acknowledge him. I couldn't risk losing Alonso so I was ugly to him and tried with all my might to break him. I did, he moved away after he graduated and went to live with his dad. It was too much to deal with. He ran away from the humiliation. I wish it had went differently, I would've chosen him, I should've chosen him. He was good to me. That was my loss but with all the negativity surrounding us we didn't stand a chance. Everything happens for a reason, they say. I'm still trying to figure that one out.