Luis J. Rodriguez - It Calls You Back: An Odyssey through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing

FICTION

The Republic of East Los Angeles: Stories

Music of the Mill: A Novel

POETRY

Poems Across the Pavement

The Concrete River

Trochemoche

Seven

Two Women/Dos Mujeres

Making Medicine

Perhaps

My Nature Is Hunger: New and Selected Poems

NONFICTION

Always Running: La Vida Loca;
Gang Days in L.A.

Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times

CHILDRENS LITERATURE

America Is Her Name/La Llamen America

It Doesnt Have to Be This Way: A Barrio Story

S, Se Puede! Yes, We Can! (by Diana Cohn, Francisco Delgado, and Luis J. Rodrguez)

ANTHOLOGIES

Honor Comes Hard: Writings from the California Prison Systems Honor Yard (edited by Luis J. Rodrguez and Lucinda Thomas)

Power Lines: A Decade of Poetry from Chicagos Guild Complex (edited by Julie Parson-Nesbitt, Luis J. Rodrguez, and Michael Warr)

With the Wind at My Back and Ink in My Blood: A Collection of Poems by Chicagos Homeless (edited by Luis J. Rodrguez)

CD

My Names Not Rodrguez (Poetry by Luis J. Rodrguez, music by Ernie Perez and the band Seven Rabbit)

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Copyright 2011 by Luis J. Rodrguez

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Interior design by Joy OMeara

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Touchstone edition as follows:

Rodrguez, Luis J.

It calls you back : an odyssey through love, addiction, revolutions, and healing / Luis J. Rodrguez.

p. cm.

A Touchstone book.

1. Rodrguez, Luis J., 1954 2. Authors, American20th centuryBiography. 3. Hispanic AmericansBiography. I. Title.

PS3568.034879Z46 2011

818.5409dc22

[B]

ISBN 978-1-4165-8416-2

978-1-4165-8417-9 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4391-0059-2 (ebook)

Dedicated to friends, mentors, and colleagues whove recently passed

Tony Crow Hernandez
Alexander Sandy Taylor
Sue Ying
Jeffrey Guido De Rienzo
Francisco Chavez
Joe Ranft
Elegba Legs Earl
Jason Shinder
Ricardo Sanchez
Alfred Arteaga
Raul Tapon Salinas
Juan Bosco Luna
Delia Gamez
Millie Ankrum
Jonathan Aurthur
Michael Zinzun
Darren Bo Taylor
Roberto Maestas

And to my mother

Mara Estela Rodrguez

S ome of this writing has appeared, at times in other forms, in the following publications: Sonora Review, The Progressive, Bello, San Bernardino Sun, Eastside Sun, L.A. Weekly, The Nation, Los Angeles Times, U.S. News & World Report, Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, Grand Street, Poets and Writers, Peoples Tribune/Tribuno del Pueblo, as well as various textbooks and anthologies.

A few passages were derived from my poetry collections and fiction books. Although rewritten, there are overlaps of incidents here with material in the nonfiction books Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times and Always Running: La Vida Loca; Gang Days in L.A.

None of the people or incidents in this book was made up. However, to protect the identities of key persons some names were changed, a number of faces and places were reimagined, and a few characters are composites of more than one person. Although efforts were made to be as accurate as possible, most of this material depended on the emotional value of the incidents, scenes, and recollections. This book was not meant as an exhaustive study of anyone or anything. It was not meant to disparage or malign anyone.

Special thanks to my wife, Trini, my daughter Andrea, my sons Ramiro, Rubn, and Luis, as well as Camila Thompson, for helping with edits, focus, and chronology of events, but mostly for patience and support. To the rest of the Rodrguez family who has triumphed against great oddsIve had to open up to some painful truths in this book, but it all comes from a place of love and respect. Also apologies to all the homies, community members, family, and friends I had to avoid or cut short during this period, although I justify not writing for ceremonies, distress calls, suicide emergencies, interventions, or to just enjoy a quiet nonworking, peace-filled respite. And thanks to my agent, Susan Bergholz, and my editor, Sulay Hernandez, for believing in this work.

Y oull be back.

These were the last words I heard as I walked away from the clanging locks and gates, the incessant yells and howls, of the downtown Los Angeles County Jail. A sheriffs deputy taunted me with these words after I bailed out from being held on resisting arrest and assaulting police officers charges. If convicted, Id do a minimum of six years in the state penitentiary.

The year was 1973.

The charges stemmed from the police beating of a handcuffed young Mexican woman lying on her stomach on the parking lot of an after-hours club in Norwalk. Several deputies were striking and kicking her as she screamed for help. The few drunkards around sauntered away. I was highon heroin, alcohol, pills; I used to like combining those damn things. I turned to walk away as well, but something in me wouldnt let me.

At eighteen years of age I felt tired, lost, after having been forced to move away from my neighborhood and a garage where I had lived in a small room with a piss bucket and bunk, and where I got high with street girls I called squeezes.

I did something no true gangster would doI tried to stop the beating. In the process the deputies jumped me. I wanted to fight back but I got laid out fast, flat onto the ground, Maced and handcuffed. Before being taken to the Norwalk sheriffs substation, while immobilized I was driven around a few blocks as two deputies punched me. I yelled, Pinche chota, fuck you youll never break me, man.

Or I thought I did. Maybe most of this was in my head. Either way, my words failed to break through.

At the time I was part of Las Lomas, a barrio gang in the San Gabriel Valley, in one of the poorest neighborhoods in L.A. County. In Las Lomas I had been a part of various cliques since age eleven. Although most of the time I spent with them involved hanging out, bored stiff, with nothing to do, I made myself available for drive-bys, armed robberies, hijackings.

I also did various mind-and-mood-altering drugs. As a preteen I first huffed on aerosol paint and clear-plastic spray, and then latched on to marijuana, downers, uppers, PCP, LSD, mescaline, and heroin, often chased with alcohol. I was an equal-opportunity drug user until heroin forced me to become more discriminating.