Where to Go From Here

There's a manager at work whom I quite like.  There are actually more than one manager who is pretty damn cool there, but there's a particular one who trusts me and calls me for advice.  Of course that flatters me.  It's like I am somehow important.  Those kind of lies make my job a smidge less tedious.

The other day he came by my desk to drop off some paperwork and he got to chatting.  Often, I'm not really paying attention.  I like him, but he has a wife, kids, middle-aged man problems, nothing really exciting for me to truly listen.  This time he said something about how he thought he was going to spend his whole life in Texas, and now he's not so sure.  I'm thinking who would want to spend his whole life in Texas, but that is generally just my response around here.  Thus, it was a curious thing for him to say.  It didn't take much prodding to get him to tell me why.  Now I don't like him so much.

Manager: I don't like where Texas is heading.
Grumples: Hmmm?  Where's it going?
Manager: I wouldn't say this to just anyone, but I feel I can be honest with you.
Grumples: ... (blink, blink)
Manager: Texas is turning in to Mexico.

This led to me being a bit baffled and gently entering in to a debate on what the fuck was he talking about.  We didn't get too far.  He had this wistful look in his eye, like he missed being 9 years old and playing cowboys and Indians with his school chums in the vast dusty fields of Texas.  Now it is swarming with all those damn Mexicans!  Lousy with Mexicans.  It's not like he said anything like that, but it was there.  Mexico eating Texas up and shitting it out as a mostly Mexico substance.  The horrors!

It is something I can't understand.  There are so much politics surrounding whether Mexicans should or should not be here, legally or illegally.  Much like everything else I believe, if you shove all the bullshit out of the way, you're left with people.  Just people.  Humans.  Needing food, shelter, companionship.  The primal part of the brain insisting on living, and doing anything to keep the heart beating.  Crossing invisible borders means nothing to that dark drive.  I innately respect that. I've had to do a lot of that myself in life.

It sounds so naive, I know.  Of course there are practical problems, but it never seems to be about the logistics and more about not wanting them here.  Do Canadians get this much shit in the northern states?  I don't recall Alaskans complaining about all those damn Canucks coming over to pop out babies and live tax-free.  I was young then, perhaps it happened all the time. 

Wikus and I lived in San Diego for a very short period of time.  There was so much there for us to hate.  It was a miserable seven months.  Yes, seven months.  That is all we could stand, and we're both individuals who put up with a lot of crap before quitting. 

Day after day I traveled the train north to work.  I joined throngs of Hispanics making the same commute, getting on in Tijuana and stepping off at various stops in San Diego.  They talked the same boring talk that manager of mine talks.  Boring jobs, stress, children, neighbors, work, lovers.  They were quiet and polite.  They generally kept their eyes down and ducked their heads when they laughed.  Spending the past five years in Boston traveling the T, I wasn't prepared for such solemnity.  They mainly deboarded at stops where there were hotels and large office buildings.  They were the maids and janitors, public works like sewage and pipes, lawn and pest services.  The grunts.  The worker bees.  Dirty hands and dirty knees.  They came up from Mexico to clean our toilets and dump out our trash.  To work in all weather conditions with little pay and no benefits.  No one around me at work and in malls complained about them being employed in those jobs--about them taking jobs that hard-working Americans should have.  It was okay for them to work for us, just not live among us.  Their attitude on the train was the same at their jobs.  Quiet obsequiousness.  It was sickening, disheartening.  All the while aging rich white people ran around the city in their plush track suit with a multitude of gold necklaces hanging off of tanned wrinkled necks.  Saying hateful racist things snappily to one another in cafes and office hallways.  Like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

And here I am in Texas sitting with someone I like who's telling me he doesn't like where Texas is heading.  Neither do I buddy.  It's even more depressing that he obviously thought I would agree with what he was saying.  He knew he couldn't say what he thought to just anyone, but he trusted me with it.  Why?

Today I am wearing a shirt Frijole sent me, "No human being is illegal."  It is written three times.  First in Spanish, then in Farsi and lastly in English.  I like the smiles it can illicit.