When I moved in with my grandmother, the first thing she did was declare martial law over my existence. No drugs, no women, no booze, no nothing. She wanted me clean, pure, saintly—like some half-assed monk who couldn’t even grow a beard. She was on me twenty-four hours a day, like a parole officer with curlers in her hair.
The funny part? I didn’t even fight it. I’d hit bottom so hard I was still coughing up gravel. I wasn’t chasing pussy or pills. I was too busy trying to figure out what the hell life even was without them. My grandfather took me on long walks collecting cans—recycling beer bottles like we were saving the planet one sticky Heineken at a time. And my grandmother? She stuffed me like a prize hog. Food on the table, fat on my bones. I was ballooning back from the Holocaust of my own making.
For the first time, I wasn’t pacing the future or crying about the past. I just was. My old man had abandoned me like last week’s garbage, never even looked back. And somehow, in that weird, suffocating little cocoon of two overbearing grandparents, I wasn’t depressed. Hell, I was… okay.
But then somebody suggested the military. Which, of course, sounded like the perfect idea: let’s give the kid who can’t hold down a girlfriend or a dime bag a rifle and a war.
The Marines wanted me to bleed in some jungle. The Army wanted me to dig foxholes and die in one. They both smiled like vultures circling roadkill. I wasn’t buying it. Then came the Navy—blue uniforms, ships, oceans. Something about it just clicked. Maybe it was the Top Gun VHS always playing in the background. Maybe it was the idea that drowning beat getting my guts blown out. Whatever it was, I thought, yeah, sailor suits—I can swing that.
Only catch? No diploma. So it was night school at Haines Park for me.
That’s where I met Maria. And holy Christ, Maria. Cute little Latina thing in a police cadet uniform. Belt hanging off her hip, ass defying gravity, lips like candy-coated sin. I told her flat out, “You’re way too pretty to be a cop.” She laughed. And that was all it took.
She was a cop’s kid, destined for the badge, but she had better hobbies. After class one night, she leaned on my door, asked if I wanted to hang out. Next thing I knew, her uniform was crumpled in the grass at some park, and me—sixteen, seventeen, hell I don’t even know—was fumbling with God’s greatest invention like it came with a user’s manual.
We were idiots, but we thought we were Romeo and Juliet. Sneaking around like burglars, her dad at work, me dodging pit bulls and gang signs in East L.A. just to get laid. One time her dad came home early. I launched myself out the window half-naked, clothes in my hand, stumbling into the alley like a cartoon. Thought I was safe until I looked up—there he was, peeking over the fence, giving me the kind of look that makes your balls crawl into your stomach. He knew. Oh, he fucking knew.
But it didn’t stop us. It was all parks, vans, backseats, awkward beach trips with too many people around. The kind of kid sex where you’re more excited than skilled, fumbling like blind mechanics under a car hood. Still, it felt like something. Real enough for me to borrow forty bucks from my grandfather and buy her a heart-shaped necklace at Sears. Valentine’s Day. Real teenage romance shit. She lit up like I’d bought her the Hope Diamond. Grandma found out and went full exorcist, spitting venom about me wasting money on “that whore.”
But I didn’t care. I had Maria, and Maria had me.
Then the military orders came in. Boot camp in San Diego. My golden ticket out.
That’s when Maria dropped the bomb. Dead serious, she looked me in the eye and said she wanted me to be the first.
“The first what?” I asked. “We’ve already done everything but circus tricks.”
“The first to give me a baby,” she said.
A baby. At seventeen. Jesus Christ. I wanted a uniform, not a fucking diaper bag. She figured a kid would guarantee I came back for her. Guarantee nothing. All it guaranteed was that I started keeping my dick in my pants. That was our beginning of the end.
We had our last goodbye in a park. She tried to manipulate me into leaving my Walkman with her—her little leash to drag me back. I felt it even then: I was the white knight she wanted to ride out of her cage, and I wasn’t up for the job.
Fast forward. Years later. I’ve got a bad conduct discharge under my belt and Jackie the dental assistant rifling through my wallet like it’s the Dead Sea Scrolls. She finds Maria’s number scribbled in there. Calls her just to fuck with me. Then tosses the wallet at my head and sneers, “Forget her. She’s got five kids now. Still living with her dad. Never married.”
After Jackie left for work, I called Maria myself.
She hadn’t finished school. Never became a cop. Got knocked up right after me, then knocked up again and again, like pregnancy was her career path. She was still in her dad’s house, juggling welfare, child support, whatever scraps fell her way. She told me she’d love to see me again.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. That’s the punchline, isn’t it? You crawl out of your wreckage, you think you’re some tragic hero for surviving, and then you look around and realize everyone else you ever touched is still drowning in theirs.
And maybe—just maybe—you’re the reason they never learned how to swim.
