A Difference of Opinion, Or: Everyone's a Little Bit Racist

I think it's safe to say I was in uber-lust with him. I was 16, and this was my first job. I felt like a superhero with a secret identity. None of these people working with me knew how I acted at school; I could pretend to be anyone I wanted to me.

The problem was, these people didn't care. I was white, and therefore invisible. I guess that's what happens when you become a busser at a casino Seafood Buffet. Having just barely passed Spanish in school, I was lost when everyone was talking. Being human, I always thought they hated me and were talking trash about me. There were just a handful of people that would even speak to me. Then there was Alex.

Alex was from San Salvador, and he was a classic hot latin boy. He had sensual lips, and the nicest brown eyes I've ever seen. He swaggered when he walked, he knew he was hot shit. He was a bad boy in the very classic sense. He was the 19 year old stocker, and I used any excuse to talk to him. I thought I was in love. I had all my teenage emotions, and sparks flew inside my head whenever he was around, and fireworks whenever he touched me.

I think it's safe to say I was so in love I would have done anything he asked me to do, but that's another post. Look for a post titled: The dumbest thing Paige has ever done and will ever do. For now let's just say he dared me to do something that he thought I was to goody-goody to do, and I proved him wrong.

He had no interest in me whatsoever. We became friends, but it took all my energy to get him to even talk to me. We had interesting conversations, but we had our differences. I remember telling him constatly that he needed to quit smoking, because I was worried about him and his health.

In hindsight I think I was quite obvious about the fact that I wanted him. If he needed to run an errand I would skip our break and go with him. I ran out from the back to watch him re-stock the plates on the buffet a million times. He would put me in headlocks, and I would shutter just from his touch. I was a mess over him. He never made a move until one night when I got angry and snapped at him.

He was always saying how I wouldn't understand; it was his joke between us. After it became clear to me that he didn't want anything romantic, the joke worn to thin. Someone would say something to him in Spanish, and I would ask him what they said, and he would say "You wouldn't understand, don't worry about it." Once it was about a customer who had been racist towards another busser.

The next day I was so angry I walked right past him. When he asked me what was wrong, I said "It doesn't matter anyway, because I don't understand anything, do I?" I was on the verge of tears, and just made a beeline for a bathroom and spent the rest of the break in there.

On our second break, at the end of the night, I sat down at an empty table(as I usually did) with my food. I felt him behind me before he even got close to the table. He asked me what was wrong, and I told him I had a problem with him thinking I would never understand anything.

He told me about the racist comments his parents had to endure emmigrating from San Salvador, and how "whites" (his term, not mine) how always kept them down to jobs like dishwashers. He said as much as he liked me as a person, I would never understand because I was "one of them."

It was then that I realized that he didn't even know me. He had no idea that I was Jewish, and I've had people tell me at age 7 that I was going to be killed and go to hell because I wasn't Christian, and been made fun of so much that I had developed the hard shell that stays with me today. Would explaining any of this to Alex even help? I knew how he was, I don't think that he would even listen.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you that I felt? That I had to deal with a lot of those issues? That growing up Jewish made me face many of the problems you are talking about?" I asked him, looking into his soulful and mysterious eyes. He took a deep breath and looked right into my eyes and said "You can't imagine how bad it is. You can blend in, you don't have it on your skin, for everyone to see. The white people try to keep us minorities down."

With a deep breath, and a broken heart, I said; "I guess everyone's a little bit racist. Even you."