A Fake Life

pstrongThe Story of David, a youth in and out of the criminal justice system since he was 12 years old. /strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/555/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Isabel Estrada/Youth in the Media Intern/p pbMoney, Family, Respect/b /p p"Has anybody in here actually been to Juvenile Hall?" asked the facilitator of a workshop concerning the juvenile justice system, at the Upset the Setup Youth Conference on Saturday, August 29, 2001. The Latino with long curly hair and glasses—his 6-foot, 1-inch, 160-pound body spilling out of the small school desk—raised his hand. /p pTo me he didn't look like the "type" who would have been through Juvenile Hall. He seemed too quiet and well behaved and spoke with a sweet and innocent voice. I think he noticed that I was staring at him and felt slightly perturbed. I was just thinking that I needed to talk with him. When the class was over, I followed him around for awhile and when I finally got up my nerve to speak, I asked him for an interview. He didn't seem particularly enthusiastic but at least he was willing./p pI was expecting the story of a reformed youth. It's odd how things are never as simple as they first appear. I was speaking with a boy who was as intelligent and, in his own way, as caring as I. However, because of the completely distinct conditions in which we grew up, we have very different views on life. I feel as though I have a vague, universal, but undeveloped caring for all people. David cares as well, but he cares exclusively for his "own"—his family and friends, the ones who are, in turn, prepared to support him if he needs it. /p pWhile I think that only necessity justifies stealing. David used to see it this way: "If someone's gonna rob out of my pockets then I'm gonna return the favor, pretty much." Now that he has a job and a slightly less chaotic life he says, "If it's there and I have the opportunity then yeah. But I don't go out and go to a store and rob it. It's not valuable just for your own conscience to go out and take from another person, but if you're ignorant enough to trust people at a party then you're just asking to get robbed. If you're hard-headed enough then you're just asking to get robbed." /p p"Money ain't nothing, I can give it away and shit. But I still want it, you know, desire it. If you ain't got money you ain't got nothing." While David was trying to act as though money doesn't matter to him in this statement, in the end he ended up completely contradicting himself. I think that he in fact puts great emphasis on the role of money in his life. Not only for basic survival but also for how he feels about himself. /ppMy immediate reaction to this statement has made me aware of what I will now call "privileged idealism". I would never make a statement similar to David's in which so much importance was placed on money. I don't like the thought of giving great value to material possessions. /p pBut here's the catch. As David pointed out, I've never been forced to steal, go hungry or sleep in a shelter. This means that I am not in a position to dispute David's statement because I've never been truly without money; I've never been made to feel that "I ain't got nothin'". And in this society, not having money can change these words easily to "I ain't nothing". Society says: because you don't have money you are nothing and therefore you deserve nothing. The fact that he has felt at one point that he didn't have anything in the whole world, and the fact that I really haven't been made to feel this way is just another factor in how we have come to be such different people./p pWhen David was 10 years old his mother died in a train accident. Hebr / remembers circling the neighborhood to tell all the Jehovah Witnesses. "I love her to death," he says. David tells me about his life nonchalantly, in an assertive tone, his voice only dropping to just above a whisper when he speaks of his mother. /p pBefore she died, David had a premonition. "I just seen like a figment of my imagination. Before I knew, I ran home. I cut class and I just needed to get home. I just think its gonna happen and it happens. Oh fuck, my first feeling was excitement, [but] not like I was happy. A sense of fear but pleasure at the same time, it doesn't happen everyday, that's like big news. Something you could tell your friends for days." He pauses. "If I get down too deep your gonna have me in my bed crying," David tells me with an ironic laugh. It was around the time of his mother's death that he started getting into real confrontations. If anyone dared to insult his mother there would be a fight. That was understood. /p pDavid's father was jailed for bank robbery and hasn't seen his son in 8 years. David tells me that, "To be a bank robber you have to be brilliant,br / you have to be smart". In a matter of minutes you can either accrue 20 thousand dollars or 20 years in jail. His philosophy is, if you are prepared to pay the consequences of failure then it's a good risk to take, otherwise you're just being stupid. David says that the reason most robbers start getting caught is due to their greed for the "thrill". The thrill may be that of having people screaming on the ground, or of being chased, but in any case it eventually begins to cloud their senses, thus leading to their final downfall. /p pWhen his mom died, David moved to Modesto to live with his aunt whose sons were members of the gang Norteños. By the time he was twelve he was cutting school to hang out and drink beer with his friends. When David and his cousins jumped another boy and David’s aunt found out about it, she blamed David for negatively influencing her sons and sent him to his other aunt. As the latter was having financial problems and already had three boys of her own, she decided to send David to a shelter back in San Jose. There he was reunited with old friends from the Southside. /p pBoth David and I experienced somewhat chaotic childhood. I too, had an absent father. I had to learn how to be very responsible at a young age as I was the only person who could help my mother succeed in making our lives function. I also lived through a horribly alienating experience at a private middle school. I believe that in many ways these types of experiences while growing up serve to make a person more flexible when faced with life's abundant uncertainties. /p pHowever, the big difference between David’s and my life arose where our mothers are concerned. My mother is the only person who provides me with unconditional support. If I had lost mine, especially at such a young age, I can't say that I wouldn't be the interviewee speaking about an adolescence spent fluctuating between the streets and Juvenile Hall./p pDavid's first extended experience with Juvenile Hall arose because of a crime he didn't commit. It all started one charged night. David and his friends were hanging out when one of them noticed his girlfriend making out with another man. Except for David, perhaps because he was only fourteen, the whole group jumped the man, beating him severely. David took part after the man was beaten by stripping him of all his clothing and leaving him naked in a public park. /p pAs far as David is concerned, he deserved what he got because he was a friend of the girl's boyfriend. One thing lead to another and David ended up being charged with assault even though he hadn't truly participated in beating the man. He decided to take some of the blame because he knew that if he split up the time of the sentence with his friends it would be a less serious charge for all of them. /p pDavid, now 18, has been to Juvenile Hall 13 times since he was 14. He has a tattoo of SideShow Bob from The Simpsons on his upper left arm, and a Pisces sign on his right arm, the words “San Jose” on his left forearm and his mother's name scrawled across his chest. When I expressed surprise that he was a Pisces—the sign of the dreamer—he assured me that he truly was dreamy and sensitive./p pJuvenile Hall's B5—B for boys, 5 for the hall unit—is made up of 26 rooms with 13 on each side of a long, impersonal hall. The front desk, a watchful presence, is centered at the furthest wall, next to another meeting room with stacks of chairs and, "If it's cool it has a ping pong table," says David. "When I first entered into Juvenile Hall I was cold, nervous, scared. I felt contained. I wasn't scared, I ain't scared of nothing [but] it was really big. I felt like I was right at home. I was just alone. No one talked to me, it was just distant. I was happy. I felt like wow, don't mess with me, I'm hard, I been to Juvenile Hall. To people who haven't been there you're dangerous, you're a menace to society. [That night] I didn't go to sleep." /p pFor the most part, David didn't get along with the other kids and constantly got into fights. "It's a trust issue. I don't trust nobody. I don't trust another man, I don't even trust females, but I trust females more than dudes. I'd rather be hurt inside than hurt outside cause I don't want no one to think I'm weak, because I'm not weak. 'Cause if they think I'm weak then I'm gonna have to prove I'm not weak." /p pHe says that the smart kids who want to "take care of business" get along with the counselors. In return for their more respectful behavior they can get away with more things and sometimes even have their sentences lessened. It's the "lops" (lopsided kids) who get along well with the other inmates because they are constantly trying to show off. These are the ones who get into the most trouble and often have their time extended. "They're punks, they ain't nothing." David says that they also tend to snitch on other kids. Though the counselors don't generally respect them, they listen to them anyway. /p pIn Juvenile Hall David wasn't allowed to have a roommate because of hisbr / explosive temper. "There's this fool, he was my roommate in Juvenile Hall. I was sittin’ in my bed and he was saying shit. He got on my nerves a little too much, and you know we're hotheaded. He grabbed me, then I grabbed him by the hair, I pulled him down and his head hit the side of the wall and I hit him like 15 times. Naw I was over-exaggerating, it was like four times. He's sitting there talking shit. I had to do what I gotta do. I laid in my bed and stayed awake all night 'cause I ain't about to let no other man rise up on me, put hands on me while I'm asleep. " /p pLockdown: B1 and B2; these are the high security halls, often housing convicted murderers and rapists. Attacking a counselor is another reason you might be sent there. David, on the other hand, didn't have to commit any serious crime in order to be assigned to B2, where he was housed simply because the other halls were filled. "I was on C level. You're in your room all the time, 23 .5 hours in your room." Again, if a boy maintains a good relationship with the counselors it is possible to bend the rules. Sometimes David was allowed to go to the weight room, meaning he would spend three hours outside of the cell and 21 inside, a slight improvement over the previous figures. /p p "I been to the hospital [in Juvenile Hall], too," David announces to me after a moment of silence. When he was still 14 years old he cussed out one of his Hall counselors. "Counselors ain't nothing better than us, they just got jobs. They're making their money, if you ain't got money you ain't got nothing." /p p/pPThat same night he found himself transferred into a room with what is called a D-Risk. These are boys who, according to David are supposed to be given rooms alone because they display homosexual tendencies. David says that they were playing cards on the top bunk, when there was a sudden pounding on the door. As David turned around to see a counselor standing at the door, the 18-year-old D-Risk slammed his fist into David's head, making him fall off the bunk bed and crash into the floor. /p pThe counselor just stood and watched as the older boy "beat the shit" out of David. Finally the counselor, who was a friend of the one who had been cussed out, opened the door, saying he hadn't known if they were really fighting or just playing around. David believes that if the door hadn't been opened at that moment, he might have been beaten to death./p pDavid spent much of his adolescence locked up, his incarcerations ranged from 2 weeks for getting drunk at group home, to ten months for beating someone up. His time there was mostly passed sleeping, reading, writing letters to his friends and making phone calls. /p pA great deal of what David did was simply out of a desire for money or entertainment. One night David and a few of his friends were just "chillin’" drunk. "Man, I feel like having some money," blurted out a friend./p p"Fuck, let's do this shit," was David's response. They all decided to rob a few cars in the neighborhood. In their first heist David got only 20 dollars and 15 CDs. /p pEverything seemed to be running smoothly until they heard, "Get on the ground," yelled by a cop running out of an apartment pointing a gun at the boys. One friend was so drunk that when he attempted to run, his feet just wouldn't move. The cop grabbed this boy's head and slammed it into the ground while pointing the gun at a different boy. This kid had just frozen in place, wide eyed, because of the mixture of alcohol with pure fright. /p pAs the policeman continued to yell at the boy to get down, David took his chance and began running as fast as he could. "As I was running the only thing going through my mind is: which way am I going to go next." Apparently he made the right choice because he got away. As far as David is concerned, he's never really been caught in his life. Ten of the times he just stayed on the scene because he didn't feel like running and the other three he turned himself in. He believes that no matter what, he will not get caught unless he chooses to. /p pWhen I chuckled at his arrogance, David started getting mad at me for laughing when he hadn't made a joke. When I apologized, he became very serious and responded: " Don't apologize, where I come from if you apologize all the time it just makes you look weak." I returned that I didn't care about seeming weak, I simply didn't want to offend him. Again he repeated that he didn't like me laughing if he hadn't made a joke. At that point I became slightly annoyed. I'm sure he was well aware that I already felt very naive in the face of all his experiences. But when he saw that I wasn't going to stand for him trying to push his own code of behavior onto me, he was the one who said "sorry" and explained that I must have had an influence on him. David likes to say that the only difference between us is that he was taught how to manipulate people at an early age. I think in a way that he may be right. /p p"Family's the most important thing to me. I could be the worst fuck up in the world and she [his cousin] would still back me up," says David. When one of his seven sisters was raped he decided to exact retribution himself. David carried a knife around with him wherever he went. When he saw the rapist in an alleyway, he couldn't control himself. He took out his knife and stabbed him, ripping out his lower stomach. He remembers that his whole head was trembling as he brought the knife into the man's flesh. All he could feel was the hate that was consuming his entire body. /p pWhen the man fell, David ran. He doesn't know how he got out of the alley but he does remember thebr / strange feeling he had as he made his way to a friend's house. He saw the people walking and cars rolling by as though nothing had happened. "Does anybody know?" the silence of the day, and the mid-afternoon light made him wonder. David was 15 years old. /p pAs far as David is concerned, the point of life is "to live and die". Hebr / says you can either make money, fight and do whatever you want or you can lead a fake life. The fake life is having a job, protecting your family, having a nice little house and car and "going out once a month". He also says that your life is over after thirty. Still, David continually brings up his dream of meeting a nice "female" and having kids. He tells me that when that occurs he'll just dedicate himself to caring for them and stop getting into trouble./p pCurrently David teaches and mentors physically and mentally disabled kids at a local high school. His duties range from helping to calm down nervous, distracted or violent teenagers to changing their diapers. Some of the kids are high functioning while others have two-year-old IQ's. "I love my kids. I have a one-on-one with one of my students named Richard. In a way he's like me because he just needs some guidance and to be taught. He just needs a way out. I need a way out to make my life better." /p pWhat I am internalizing after this interview is a strong sense that I cannot judge someone else's life or actions based on mine. In the end the choices you make must correspond with what life sets in front of you and your choices are going to vary as a direct result of what life has prepared you for. A main reason why I have not done many of the things that David has is not because of morals or beliefs but because I did not grow up with people constantly challenging me. I did not grow up lacking formal education or job opportunities. My life has never been threatened. Essentially, it is impossible to judge another person fairly because you've only lived your life and not theirs. /p p"I wanna do something with my life but for now it's just all about my homies downtown, in a way I might be stupid but I still got love for the block [an area of downtown San Jose]." I could hear pride in David's voice when he told me that he was now renting his own apartment. When I asked why he chose to live in a dangerous neighborhood where the threat of running into problems with the law is always imminent, he said that it made sense to live in a dangerous neighborhood because that is where he had grown up. However, not everything is just the same, "I trust people now, a certain few, I trust my boys."br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p