A different animal

I always say that I don’t get out enough and it’s true. Last night proved it to me. I’ve never been anywhere where my race didn’t matter. Well, among those of my own race, it’s not a major issue. I feel as though I’m part of the group. But everywhere else I’ve been where the majority of people are of another race, I’ve stood out and felt the divide, regardless of any politically correct intentions. Monrovia is a different town. If you blink while driving down the 210 freeway you will literally miss it, but its there, a little strip of a city spanning up a portion of the San Gabriel Mountain’s in one direction, and well before you reach the 10 freeway in the other. It’s nestled tightly in between Pasadena and Duarte, and the culture there is like no place I’ve ever been.

A friend of mines is from Monrovia, and last night after dinner she took me to a bar she used to frequent as a teenager. Although a bit on the shabby side (think Santa Fe deco with armadillos), it wasn’t any sort of hole in the wall due to its sheer size. From the outside it simply looked like a four square building. But I guess the trees kept it secret. Once we were inside, there was not only a large bar like the one on the show Cheers, there was an amply sized dance floor on the left where an incredibly short Asian man was disco dancing his ass off, and another room on the right that took us to a hallway where we climbed a small staircase that led us to the hotel portion of this “bar” that clearly had a large upstairs will rooms for rent. Adjacent to the hotel portion was another room with an entirely separate bar and a karaoke crowd singing badly off-key. It truly was painful to listen to so we went outside to the smoking patio that had a few concrete picnic tables, two gazebos in each corner, and about 5 really old, really big avocado trees. Yes, the place was humongous. My friend told me that back in the day it was the hangout for a mostly black crowd, but after a few too many fights it ceased being the black hangout and became the mostly white hangout. As soon as we walked in she saw a girl she knew; a homely black girl singing karaoke while her white husband cheered obnoxiously from a table situated directly in front of the stage. Only, wait, on second glance my friend realized that the man cheering wasn’t “Alicia’s” older white husband, at all. He was her older white boyfriend. Her husband must be at home. After her song she stepped off the wooden stage and planted her butt right in her older white boyfriends’ lap and took a swig of his beer. Then a 20 something white girl with glasses and a husky voice stepped on stage to sing a Maroon 5 number. That’s when we headed outside to the smoking patio to escape the pain and ran into a few of her high school classmates, all guys, all but one of them was white. The one that wasn’t white, Jessie, I guessed was El Salvadorian based on his phenotypic features (hair, mouth, skin tone), he looked just like the five unrelated El Salvadorian’s that I know personally J and at the end of the night I got confirmation that my assessment was right. Every single one of them hugged us tightly and looked at me like I was potential prey, like they were all wondering “who’s the new piece of meat?!” It’s the look I get when I’m around men of my own race who find me attractive. I have never seen that look in the eyes of men of another race en mass and directed at me like I did last night, and it was quite unfamiliar. Then, to add to this new and unusual experience, none of them behaved or sounded like any white or Latin I’d ever encountered in real life or on T.V., lol. Listening to Jessie speak, I was absolutely mesmerized and I think it made me look very much like a weirdo. Hahaha. He reminded me so much of two black guys that I know. Even down to his mannerisms. Everything about him was interesting. My friend told me that he used to be the finest guy in town and every girl wanted to either friend him or bed him. And he’d bedded plenty without discrimination. He said he was passing out dick like candy, and waved his groin from side to side to illustrate it for us. All three of us laughed. But those days of being the most popular guy in town were far behind him. These days he sits on his grandmothers’ porch with his son and makes note of all the faces passing by that he doesn’t know. He’d just returned to Monrovia recently from a world wind tour of the “Big Pond”, selling drugs, being drunk by 10am, marrying a model, and ultimately realizing that he didn’t fit in, that he felt more comfortable in the tight-knit community where he grew up as a big fish. He’s changed his lifestyle and is happy to be home now, a better and more ambitious father to his 12 year old son. I can see traces of his former attractiveness, what’s left that the alcohol didn’t erase, so these stories are believable.

Throughout the evening, a white guy named Billy kept stopping by us. He was making his rounds as if he was the host of the bar and wanted to make sure everyone was having a good time. He bought us drinks and cracked jokes; he’s a very warm spirited person and he holds his beer with his amputated arm. It’s amazing the dexterity he has with it. 25% of a full arm and he’s waving it around with confidence, using what looks like two fingers on the end of it to grip his beer to his chest, and speaking with it. You know how some people speak with their hands and make grand gestures with their arms? That’s Billy. He sounds like Ty Pennington, the host of the show Extreme Home Makeover, but stands roughly 5 feet 8 inches high and has a beer gut that makes him look 3 months pregnant. His story is that he got his heart broken by his longtime sweetheart, ShaKeisha, moved to Havasu and developed an ugly drug habit. Then one day he kicked the habit, came home to Monrovia, got his HVAC license, bought a house and started a heating and air conditioning business. Every guy in there last night, ranging in age from roughly 22 to 38, either owned a home, a business, or both. But just by looking at them, you could never tell. All night, people were coming up to us and hugging us both, briefly catching up with my girlfriend, sharing pictures of kids on their cellphones.

Then there was the very attractive Latino bartender who is legendarily (is that a word?) faithful to his girlfriend. At first he seems a bit shy, only briefly making eye contact and moving very fast to mix drinks and serve them up. My friend says that she used to think he was gay because no matter how pretty the girl's were that hit on him, he ignored them all and always went on about his business of bar tending. Then Billy told us how his rumored aloofness had attracted some very attractive ladies to the bar one night, who's intent was strictly to bed him and nothing else. They propositioned him with this request, assuring him that no strings need be attached, and he very famously smiled and turned them down. No numbers were exchanged in secret, nothing, which made him even more attractive and a challenge to others. What also intrigued me about him was that he could hear everything! No matter that the karaoke singers were screaming into the mic, the music itself was loud, and the patrons standing around the bar were all yelling at one another, he still heard me mention to my friend that I wanted a cherry in my drink. He wasn't even near me or looking at me when I said it to her. And it's not typical to put a cherry in a cup of water.

Back outside on the patio, I was fishing around in my drink for the Maraschino cherry that had sunk to the bottom of the cup, because I wanted to eat it and toss the drink. When asked what I was doing I said “I’m trying to get my cherry out,” and immediately knew how that sounded. Immediately, a big burly, 6 foot-forever white guy with a full, dark beard chimed in “Oh, I can get that cherry out for you, baby…easily.” I “haha’d” nervously and turned my attention back to my friend and Jessie and Billy. Just 20 minutes later he came back to our circle to hit on my friend, saying he’d heard she was a church girl. “I’m a church boy!” he told her, proving that they had something in common. But once she started questioning him on hymn's and such, he began to ease away, plan foiled, mission abort. It was really a sight to see.

Monrovia is a town where race doesn’t particularly matter. Well I’m sure it matters to some extent, as it does just about everywhere else in the world, but it’s seemingly not as important an issue there. Regular, everyday blacks date, marry, and have affairs with regular everyday whites, and it’s the norm. And it happens a LOT. The community is completely meshed. There is no obvious separation as there is just a half hour drive away to Hollywood, where living is the polar opposite, old traditions are slow to die, and communities are clearly separate. And it’s not even a 10 minute drive away from where I live in Pasadena and have never experienced or witnessed anything remotely close to this racial harmony, further illustrating my point that I need to get out more. I just have to get better at observing people without looking like a weird deer caught in headlights, lol. But don't get me wrong, I've seen interracial couples but they usually fit a stereotype, are few and far between, and the surrounding community doesn't fully embrace them. In Monrovia, nobody stares at mixed couples if they notice them at all, and dark skin is universally attractive. I felt like an Anthropologist last night and I liked it.