When I attended graduate school in the early 1990s at UCLA I came across a public writer superstar named Mike Davis who had published the book City of Quartz. He the book were every where, in the LA Times, in the class rooms talking about the urban setting in a theoretical framework. My other professor Ed Soja threw him in there with the other books we were reading in our history of the city course and theory. I was one of the few Mexican Americans in that theoretical field because most minorities went into the Social and Built Environment which was more like social work. I could read that the average students went into that field and the thinkers went to the theory component. I chose the theory section because I liked history but had no ideal why I was in Urban Planning in the first place. And those professors from a German to an Australian to a White guy were not so nice, a person named Friedman was one of the persons who epitomized why Germans are hated. He thought he was smart and really was not and to prove my point when I mentioned that Hugo Chavez after his revolt in Venezuela might be somebody to keep an eye on, he dismissed my opinion only to see that Hugo Chavez got elected some years later. I just laughed but that was the type of hostile environment I was in.
Then I became part of a study group and met Mike Davis and I was star struck. This was the beginning of my downfall. He was great though, he was friendly, reached out, even gave me a copy of his book which I read religiously though I found it to not be reader friendly though subjectively good. And I read it because I liked the Los Angeles focus which we never seemed to had. Many of the urban theory professors believed they were in New York and London and could never accept they lived in Northern Mexico. I had an oral sense of history because of my grandparents and other relatives especially my beloved Nina Kika who was born in Inglewood and would tell me stories of the thirties how they and the Daniel Freeman family were some of the originals and that Freeman was half Mexican. That family donated land for the hospital along Prairie near Florence and my Nina's father worked for the Freeman family. I wanted to contextualize that history and found Mike Davis as someone I could share that history with as least he seemed to pay attention.
So I began to worship him as a movie star kind of author because of my background. I had grown up in Inglewood and then at age 15 moved to Lennox and in Lennox we never met anybody of merit beyond manual dirty labor. Nobody had even completed college, played a major sport even in high school much less even been viewed with respect. Lennox did not have that and even our Black heavy set mailman was afraid of 106th Street.
So I commited the worse mistake a human can do which is to worship another human being and I did because he was friendly to me, valued me and made me feel I was important. The other professors were bothered by my presence, I could feel it. And he saw me as a person with smarts and because I had read his book he was impressed I could reference his points when I would tell him, oh yeah I read that in your book. He invited me to do a city trip with a writer from Mexico City named Carlos Monsivais and we did but strange guy, was not impressed by him. We went to Lennox, he drank a glass of water at my mom's house and went to the Black, Salvadorian and downtown areas of Los Angeles only to end up at the Biltmore and be abandoned by him because he was tired. He sat in the car most of the time.
Then the worship on my part got out of hand because I did not know how to distinguish between giving people their private space with his family then I committed an error by not being able to take him to some church that was dealing with the aftermath of the Reginald Denning beatings. I did bale on him because I was chasing a woman but I should have let him know. Then our friendship stopped partly because I moved away because I was intruding too much and I never had any money. I never did because I didn't have a job because I could not get one. I did not receive any scholarships, work was none existent but I was trying to hang out with a superstar writer so I knew I wore out my welcome. How could I have not? But I did not have have the family background, my mother was widowed, she barely could survive to help my younger brothers, my father's pension of social security had been diminished because my two of us had become emancipated and somehow we didn't need the social security but we needed it the most. At least for spending money and gasoline. And it was embarassing going to eat somewhere but not being able to contribute so I realized I should not go anymore and I didn't.
So I disappeared and we didn't see each for a few years then a few years later through somebody Mike Davis would send me greetings through common people we knew so I felt that was very kind of him. Those were kind gestures and by this time I finally had some job, more income, invited him as a guest lecture only to hear from students at East LA College "we didn't understand him" but his chupacabra reference in the Ecology of Fear was cultural along with his reference to why the Spaniards came to California easily. They followed the Native trails north on the horse. I was appreciative of what he had done for me and wanted to compensate him as I could and I felt I did. I did for others like the cartoonist the Cucaracha but that was a big mistake. But Davis was different, then I started writing and forwarded my stuff to him which he used as a resource in his book Magical Realism: How Latinos Reinvent the US Big City but could not get over the fact he called me a second generation immigrant. How the hell could I be a second generation immigrant or the fact that there was no recognition of differences between so called brown groups. But we were friends again without the author worship, maybe I had grown up.
Afterwards he would invite me to his Pasadena home and would share stories of his new projects and my pictures of Peru, hell I was even invited to his marriage to some Mexico City woman. Don't really like those people? And after he moved to New York we kept in contact and upon his return to Southern California. He went out of his ways to keep contact with me until one day when I called him I heard in the background say, "what the hell does he want". I hung up the phone and never called again, threw away his number and never spoke again. I had stopped the wrongful worship and realized I don't belong. Even his long time friend Ron said, he's that way, I've known him for 40 years.
It was sad to see a friendship end and I could have used his support because when my first book was published titled "The Chicano Treatise" I asked about the publisher University Press he stated that was a good press. I could have used his guidance but like many things in life things don't always work out and they didn't with him as a friend. Maybe his new life, wife and UC position elevated him but who knows we never got to talk. But what I learned from him, I don't worship nobody.
