Guest essay by Alvaro Huerta, Ph.D.
Growing up on the mean streets of East Los Angeles, when it came to girls, I was shy.
It’s not that I feared that they would beat me up, like the bullies that I evaded on the playground. I simply feared rejection.
For some mysterious reason that I still don’t understand, I felt that if I got rejected, all my friends and complete strangers would find out and make fun of me for eternity. I didn’t want to be that kid. Life was difficult enough, trying to survive in the projects. It didn’t help that I’ve been thin all my life. As a teenager, for instance, when most of my friends joined the local gang, Big Hazard, my gang application was rejected since I couldn’t defend the neighborhood.
Once I arrived at UCLA, as a freshman, my entire world changed. Being one of the few Chicanos on campus, I became a student activist, breaking out of my shyness. From advocating for immigrant rights to demanding more racial minorities in higher education, I became passionate and bold about changing the world. By my sophomore year, I was co-chair of the Chicano Education Project (ChEP), where UCLA students visited poor public schools to mentor and advise high school students about college.
I will never forget that one ChEP meeting, when a beautiful Chicana, Antonia, joined for the first time. As a first-year student from the Westside, she had it all: good looks, smarts and commitment to social change. Later, I found out that our parents had strikingly similar backgrounds. Both of our mothers, for instance, worked as domestic workers for decades and our fathers first arrived in the U.S. from Mexico as agricultural guest workers under the Bracero Program.
While I must admit that I initially thought that Antonia was out of my league, with my new sense of confidence thanks to my student activism, I was no longer that math nerd in high school who perpetually found himself in the dreaded “friend zone” with girls.
I needed to be strategic in my approach, however, since I could sense that I had competition on campus.
Utilizing my new political skills, I developed a master plan. Before asking out Antonia for a date, I approached my competitors—or predators, as I fondly recall them—and told them of my intentions. For those who didn’t respect my request—actually, it was more like a demand—I had no other option but to undermine and belittle them with Antonia.By the time I was finished with them, apart from being clueless, they never had a chance.
Once I did away with the competition, my next goal was avoid the “friend zone” with Antonia. Not wanting to pressure her, I finally got the nerve to ask her out without any commitment.
“It’s not like I want to be your boyfriend or anything like that, but do you want to do something off-campus, since my financial aid just arrived?” I recall asking her.
“Sure,” she said, without fully being aware my master plan or intentions.
Looks like my new political skills were working. Well, it was more like stalking, since I “coincidently” registered for the same classes with her and “accidently” visited her dorm on more than one occasion.
“What are you doing at the dorms?” she originally asked.
“I’m recruiting for ChEP members to visit San Fernando High School,” I uttered, without missing a beat.
It helps when you stay up all night thinking about the different responses to potential questions, just like preparing for a college debate.
Over time, the more time we spent together, the less pressure I felt in asking her to be my girlfriend.
“It’s not like I want to marry you or anything, but do you want to be my girlfriend?” I asked.
We then kissed in my blue VW Beatle where I said, “I think I’m in Disneyland.”
I’m just glad that nobody from my old neighborhood overheard me, since I would lose my street cred.
After leaving UCLA, we continued our relationship for several years. Eventually, I asked the big question that I originally contemplated since that memorable first encounter.
“Would you marry me?” I asked, with confidence.
“Yes,” she said.
Many moons later, as our son Joaquin will soon be applying for college, I wonder if he will have the same luck in finding his future wife on campus?
My advice to him and others: When you’re passionate about something—something good, of course—go for it with self-confidence and fearlessness!