Alejandro Gabriel Leopardi

Along the Way

When I first heard about the program, I rejected the idea of it. I was going into my senior year, so adding extracurriculars didn’t appeal to me as much as it would in the years leading up to it. Though senior year means something different to a lot of people, there’s one sentiment shared by many: Relaxation. Even those who squandered the previous few years would agree with the concept because after high school, life gets real. 

So, no, tutoring some freshmen and sophomores didn’t have the allure Sofia, my well-meaning friend of many years, hoped it would. 

“Come on, Julian. Do this for our people.” She’d lost me. “Seriously? It’s in the name. Raising Hispanic Academic Awareness. You didn’t bother reading the flyer, did you?”

I hadn’t. Sofia has the habit of pushing us to be better, to do better, even when most of us pushed back. She used her understanding of the realities around us to inform us, to instill knowledge into our ever-fleeting brains. Sofia believes in people. She believes in the power people hold and the power they can offer one another. 

After much deliberation, and much to my own surprise, I accepted the invitation. The spark I saw in her when she briefed me on the program, it was something I wanted. Not to capture it as one would with prized game. Instead, to encapsulate it, to let it encapsulate me. The pull to do something good, to at least be part of something good, was just too strong to resist. 

Way before my first tutoring session, I needed to make my weekly appearance at The Dubliner Hotel as one its prestigious houseman, a glorified title to mean housekeeper and room-setup-person. I disliked that job for many reasons, and the only real perk was my mom being the Banquets Supervisor, the division in which I worked. Even that had its limits. 

To my mom, The Dubliner demonstrated great strides made as an immigrant to the U.S. To me, it was a gig that paid an okay wage and provided free food from time to time. I needed it to make some extra money, especially with college just around the corner. I never once saw it as a long-term plan. 

Christian, one of the hotel banquets employees and technically my direct supervisor, made the experience more awful. They gave this guy an important-sounding title at twenty-three, which went straight to his head. His reductive comments at our every encounter became an almost weekly incentive to someday make my quiet exit out of that place. He made it a habit of searching me out to berate me about this or that. The most unsettling part of the exchange was that much of it, if not all, came unwarranted. At times, it’s like he sought me out, felt the undying need to spew commentary in my direction. 

Every shift, I thought I’d roll through without issue. But each time, there he came, swagger in his approach, venom in his thoughts. Carrying eight-foot round tables is difficult enough without someone’s negative words being slung at you while you’re doing it. Luckily, I was partnered with my high school friend, Greg, who helped absorb some of the blows. 

We’d stopped one day, just for a sec, to catch our breaths and recoup some energy. 

“My poor back,” Greg uttered in between rubbing his back and cracking it. 

“It’s not break time, boys, so stop your chatting,” Christian called out. 

 “Chill, Christian,” Greg retorted. “Just taking a short breather before we get back to slavery…I mean, work.” Greg never took being Black too seriously, and his jokes proved it. 

“Funny. Hilarious.” Christian didn’t find him comedic. “Now bring up more than one table at a time because service starts in two hours.”

Greg hated being belittled by anyone, so he stood straight and tall, his six-foot frame stared down at Christian. Sensing what was happening, I tapped him on the arm and gave him the ‘it’s time to leave’ signal. Reluctantly, he obliged, relieved to get away from Christian for the moment. 

 “Not you, Mr. Solano,” Christian called out. “Let the big guy handle the tables. I’m going to need you to start setting up the chairs and dressing the tables. Think you can handle that? 

“You don’t have to be condescending.”

“Wow. Who’s using big boy words?” A chuckle at his own joke. “Look, you’re a houseman who sets up parties and conferences. I supervise this entire department. If your mom wasn’t the banquets supervisor, I’d have fired you a long time ago.” He paused to let that sink in before continuing. “Your mom’s been telling everyone here that you’re going to college, going to make something of yourself. I’ve seen little punks like you come in and out of this place, all talk about this being a job, not a career. Then they end up nowhere. That’s going to be you, so get comfortable because this is going to be your forever ‘job,’” and walked away.

The smug look on Christian’s face pissed me off, made me want to do something bad to him. I wanted to lash out, thrash the entire room, and walk out. I picked up the first thing I saw and prepared to throw it. Then I thought about my mom and what that job meant to her…not to mention there were cameras all over that place. So, I let it go. The anger had to remain inside me for the time, festering as it often does. 

Later, the banquets manager, Jamie, asked me if I wanted to work as a server during the party. It was a rare request, and more hours meant more money, so I accepted. I wanted to rub it in Christian’s face but didn’t. 

That night, I donned the tuxedo-ish server outfit I often saw my mom leave home in…or arrive in the wee late hours of the night in. A mixture of nervousness and excitement swirled inside me as I prepped for a new journey at the hotel. It was a little thing, sure, but to go from houseman to server was huge for someone my age. It meant someone had trust in me. 

I walked into the elegant hall, head high, chest out, hand steady as I carried a packed tray of dishes. Before then, I’d never stepped foot in in any of the events. My role was behind the scenes, someone no one was supposed to see. Naturally, my eyes wandered all around, taking in each bit of detail, everything I could on that first, and maybe last, foray into that side of the job. The more I saw, the wearier my arm became, the shakier my hands. The confidence with which I’d entered quickly dissipated, making way for self-doubt. I’m not meant to be here. I should have said no, gone home, studied, then gone to bed. 

The steady figures, all stationed like film caricatures, danced and swayed while the room orbited quickly. The tray began chattering so loudly some of the clients took notice. My hold on the tray buckled, but before it toppled over, Greg slipped a stand underneath and helped usher it down. I nodded with gratitude. 

I proceeded to place the plates in front of each guest from the right side, just as my mom taught me. All moved smoothly despite the rough start, until I reached one particular guest, an older gentleman in his 60s named Milton.  

“Aren’t you supposed to be good at this, the whole serving thing?” His eyes locked with mine. 

“It’s my first day, sir.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said with devious smile I didn’t particularly like. “Say, how many of you do they have working here?”

 “I don’t know, maybe eight.” 

“I think you know what I mean, boy,” he replied.

Humiliation, not rage, filled up inside me. 

“Oh, Milton, please stop,” his wife pleaded with him. “Let the young men do their jobs.”

“One they likely took from hard working AMERICANS.”

“Milton!”

While I stood speechless, embarrassed at myself for even being there to be subjected to someone’s outbursts, Greg reacted much differently. He slammed the plate down next to a guest so hard pieces of lettuce flew everywhere. 

“You see that? Incompetence!”

The full force of the situation finally hit me. I was angry. I was appalled. I was hurt. And I’d had enough. “We don’t appreciate what you’re insinuating, sir.” I wanted to use SAT prep words, I wanted to stand straighter, taller, do anything to prove we weren’t “those types of kids.” 

“That’s a big word for someone like you,” he responded, same as Christian had earlier. 

All the rage must have somehow transferred to Greg, multiplied, and exploded. “Get up, old man.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said get up,” Greg repeated sternly, his large frame towering over Milton, his chest expanding and contracting in increasing intensity. Greg the protector. As much as I loathed the toxic words, I couldn’t let Greg do it, so I held him back.  

In a flash, Christian stood beside us. “Is everything okay here?”

Milton’s wife tried to quelch her husband’s intensity by beating him to the punch, “Everything’s fine.”

“Everything is not fine,” Milton, under the threat of a six-foot, broad-shouldered teenager, was angry and scared. “Your worker here, Juan is incompetent and needs to be sent home. Same for his buddy here, Jerome.”

I tried to defend myself, defend Greg. Nothing doing. Neither Christian nor Milton were having any of it, especially not Christian, whose face lit up light Rockefeller Center at the end of November. “Back to the office, both of you.” 

We got a telling off. Our first opportunity to show we were more than just workers, and we messed it all up. Greg and I were warned and written up, placed on a short list of non-exemplary employees who were on their way out the proverbial door. I was angry with not just Christian and Milton, but myself for reacting the way I did. Had I kept my cool, that Milton character would have felt worse because he wouldn’t have had the satisfaction of riling me up. After so many minutes of standing in the second-floor hallway of the hotel ruminating over my actions, head down, eyes glued to the floral-patterned carpet, not one word or sound emanating from either one of us, Greg snapped. “Let’s grab a beer,” he told me. 

Years ago, when I was too young to even know what I was saying or thinking, I’d made a pact with myself that I’d never drink, but not because of trauma in the household, but because of my innate fear of letting my inhibitions go so they couldn’t hold me back and I’d have nothing and no one to blame but myself. There was also the fact that I worked hard to give myself an advantage in life that I’d not been given naturally. We weren’t poor, but we sure weren’t rich. My mother dropped out of school around seventh grade, as did my aunt. It’s quite possible my grandmother never attended school at all. They all worked numerous jobs, often simultaneously, all to make ends meet. I was determined to change all of that, to be better in the country they sought salvation in. 

Then Christian and Milton happened, and for once, I wanted to be a reckless kid. So, I obliged Greg’s request. Later that night, I drank a beer. Then two. The more I drank, the less concerned I became, the merrier I felt. I had my first hangover the next morning. I’d broken my own pact the night before my first tutoring session. 

I thought about this as Sofia and I made our way into the high school toward the gymnasium where they held the weekly RHAA tutoring sessions. Even from the entrance, I heard the ruckus of teens of all ages, people shouting over others. The chaos made me aware of the slight fear that lay beneath the surface, that of having to share what little knowledge I possessed with someone more vulnerable than I. Luckily, that anxiety didn’t have time to settle in because Sofia diverted from the path to make a pitstop at the vending machine where Sofia bought and handed me a Gatorade. 

“You need to pull yourself together,” she scolded me. “Having fun is fine with me, but once we walk through those doors, you need to be a person these kids can look up to.” I looked at the Gatorade bottle to avoid eye contact. Then she walked past me and into the gym where she waited for me to catch up, never once looking back. 

The supervisors – all adults, all teachers, I assumed – paired tutors with students. They asked me a bunch of questions about what areas I felt comfortable tutoring in, the only area really being English because I was definitely not in a position to help someone with math. 

Later, as I read, annotated, and jotted down my notes, Carlos, a tense but bright fourteen-year-old, sat staring intently across from me. The ogling made it tough to get through Carlos’ draft because I was used to the roles being reversed. 

“What’s up, Carlos?” I asked. 

He nervously responded, “There's a lot of red writing on my paper. Is it that bad?”

“A lot of ‘red’ writing isn't necessarily a bad thing. Second, I'm mostly just marking up some grammatical stuff.”

“Really? Like what?”

I could tell Carlos attended the sessions in earnest and not just to appease his parents or teachers, so I signaled for him to sit next to me. Carlos did just that, and as he did, I caught a glimpse of Sofia who’d been watching us. Her look…it was clear it made her happy to see me helping someone else. I spent the entire tutoring session with Carlos going over not only the grammar stuff, but also other elements of writing. To my surprise, I enjoyed it. I didn’t think I would, given my inept social skills. 

By the end of the tutoring session, I felt fulfilled. I thought that was enough, but as Sofia and I headed toward the exit, along with everyone else, Carlos came running up behind us. 

“Julian, wait!” We stopped and let him catch up. “Thanks for your help today.”

“No problem.” I responded.  

 “This is the first time that stuff made sense to me. Are you coming back next week?”

I look over at a smiling Sofia, brimming with joy, then back at Carlos. “Of course, bruh. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Bet. I'll see you then,” he said before taking off. 

Sofia continued smiling and staring at me. I didn’t want to entertain her, so I walked off toward the exit myself. “I knew it,” she said. My attempt to ignore her hadn’t worked. “I knew you’d be so into this. Your ‘no way this is for me’ attitude was just a big lie, masking how much you love to help.”

“I don’t know about ‘love,’ but it wasn’t bad,” I told her. 

“Cut the tough guy b.s., Julian,” Sofia said sternly. “I’ve known you too long for that. I just want to see you do something positive with your life.”

I put my arm around her and managed a smile. Between two long-time friends, that was enough for her to know I appreciated her having invited me. With our tenure in high school up at the end of that school year, Sofia knew we had to do more, look for more in our lives, especially since we’d all go our separate ways eventually. Determined to prove my worth – not only to Sofia, but to myself, to my mom, and to other kids like Carlos – I decided I would attend the sessions every week.

Unfortunately, another issue at the hotel arose. Not just Christian, that time, though it involved him and his poisonous, perilous obsession with me. He’d informed Jamie about my altercation with guests the week prior. Rather than take it out on me, they used spite to punish my mother instead. They stripped her potential for overtime and even took away a couple of nights on the schedule for two weeks. Since she was hourly, that punishment hurt all of us deeply, financially. 

I saw the damage on the schedule before my mom confronted me about it in the back room. Because they were getting ready for an event, my mom knew other employees would be coming in and out, so she kept it short. 

“Julian, hijo, Whatever you do comes back to me. I know they’re difficult to work with, but just ignore them.” I could only nod. “We’ll talk more later.”

I wanted to tell her that they couldn’t do that just because they wanted to. She wouldn’t have understood or used some other excuse for not listening to me. HR, as she explained to me on numerous occasions, didn’t exist for people like her. In the past, I’d blown her off. I was quickly discovering how right she was. 

Because I couldn’t let it go as I should have, after Greg snagged some beers, we took the elevator down to the employee garage and hid away in a corner to drink our shift away. Before then, we were school and work friends, but not the kind of friends who shared personal stuff. That day with those drinks, however, changed that dynamic. 

Stories spewed from my mouth. Much of it didn’t make sense, I’m sure, my mind expulsing what it could in what limited time I knew we had. After I’d completed my purge, Greg remained silent, handed me another beer. He needed time to process everything I’d told him. What he said to me wasn’t what I’d expected. 

“You need to release your anger,” he told me. 

Then, he put his beer on the ground and proceeded to look for something. I stood there drinking my beer wondering whether I’d made the right decision in confiding in Greg. I don’t know what I hoped to accomplish. Then, Greg returned with a couple of four-foot pipes.

“What are those for?” I asked. 

“I found them near the garbage bins.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He nodded for me to follow him and led me to the freight elevator on the other side of a concrete wall that separated it from the regular-use elevator. Greg signaled up to the ceiling where a security camera stared back at us. When I looked back at him, he had a wild look in his eyes, and I knew then exactly what he intended for us to do. 

“Are you insane?”

“The camera doesn’t work,” he said. “One of the maintenance guys told me he comes down here all the time to smoke a joint. Never been questioned about it. They probably haven’t upgraded it yet.” It didn’t feel right. “Think about this stupid job, all the shit going on at school,” he said, before he said, “Pretend the camera is Christian.”

Without thinking, I swung the pipe at the camera. A cracking noise informed me I’d done it right, hit it with enough force. Greg smiled, then took a swing of his own. The two of us stood railing on that black bubble in the sky until it didn’t resemble anything. Everything pent up inside me had been released onto that inanimate object and I felt good. 

That night, we celebrated my breakthrough with more stolen beers courtesy of the hotel. 

#

Having processed the impact RHAA had on me and vice versa, I started to see a different future, a brighter one. Whenever Christian made those snark remarks about never amounting to anything, I believed it, not because he said it, but because I had those thoughts for years. I was the son of an immigrant who had to work and scrape her way to a managerial-type role while others attained similar positions so much easier. I didn’t have the money nor the connections nor the level of intelligence – I thought – that would get me much further no matter how hard I tried. College or no college, I always saw myself end up in the same position as my mom. I allowed the negativity, the toxicity of others to penetrate my outer shell, never realizing I could push back, that I was allowed to push back. Sofia and RHAA changed all that…

Until Jamie stopped me on my way into work. “Mr. Burrows,” the main manager of the hospitality division at the hotel, “wants to see you in his office,” Jamie informed me.  

 On my way into the office, I passed Greg on his way out, and he most certainly did not look happy. 

“Take a seat, Julian,” Mr. Burrows commanded me. Jamie walked past me to take her position next to him. “You know why we brought you in here, correct?” It was more a statement than a question. I nodded. Mr. Burrows relaxed. “We both like and respect your mother. We like you, too, Julian, thought you were a hard-working young man who could be a real asset to our hotel. But what you and Greg did…my hands are tied.”

“That’s fine,” I stupidly said.

“That’s fine?!” Clearly, I struck a nerve. Jamie calmed him. “Julian, you and Greg…well, you committed a crime. You destroyed private property. We could’ve called the cops…”

“But we didn’t,” continued Jamie. “Do you know why?”

“My mom,” I responded.

“That’s correct. Because your mom works hard…has worked hard for this hotel for years. She’s won everyone’s respect. Because of her, we didn’t call the police, but we have no choice but to terminate your position here.”

Mr. Burrows chimed in. “We sincerely hope you’ve learned an important lesson here, Julian.” 

I learned never to listen to my friends when they tell me to vandalize something. I also learned that I, like Christian and Jamie, could be arrogant and pretentious when I wanted to be. 

I needed a drink. I needed one badly, so I confiscated some beers and wine from the Food and Beverage storage before I left the hotel for good that day. Some of it was to get over being fired, and some of it was for the inevitable confrontation with my mom. It wasn’t until much later that my mom finally arrived. Though I expected a firestorm, for my mother to blast through the front door and run me right down, that’s not what happened. Still in her hotel attire, she walked to me, calm as you like. 

Before she spoke, I did. I just didn’t say what she wanted to hear. “It’s just a stupid job, ma’. I was going to quit anyway.” 

The calm washed away, replaced by a changed demeanor I’d come to fear. “I wanted to console you because I know losing a job isn’t easy,” her words solemn, a contradiction to her appearance. “It’s a horrible feeling, except you don’t have to worry about where your next paycheck is coming from or how you’ll pay bills and feed your children. You have me, you have abuela for everything,” she told me. 

I felt unconsolably sorry for what I’d done and what I’d said, and though I couldn’t take any of it back, I knew she could see I hadn’t meant any of it. 

“Every job is a learning opportunity because each one teaches you something different, something you didn’t know even about yourself. I don’t do any of this grounder stuff…”

“It’s called grounding, ma’.”

“Okay, whatever. The point is, school and home for the next couple of days, and while you’re home, I want you to think about what that job taught you.”

Except I didn’t. Instead, I drank the next couple nights away. That Saturday, I filled the bathroom sink with water, dumped some ice cubes, then my own face. A few squirts of cologne and a whole wad of gum, and off I went to RHAA. They stopped me at the entrance, turned me right around and back toward the parking lot. They could smell me, they said. 

Rather than go home, I waited in the lot for Sofia. As soon as she entered my peripheral, I jumped up from my crouched position against one of the walls and went over to her. Her stride never slowed. 

“My bad, Sofia, I couldn’t go because…”

“Save it, Julian. That stench follows you like a dust storm,” never once looking back. 

“It’s been a rough week. I drank a little. So what?” 

Sofia stopped and spun around to look me in the eyes. “Everyone has problems, Julian. Everyone has a rough day, rough week, fucked up year…” She stopped, tried calming herself. “I’m not diluting your issues or what you’re going through. I can tell you’re hurting. But think about anyone else aside from yourself. Life is more than just living. We aren’t here only for ourselves. You’ve got to realize that.” The lecture ended there. 

#

Everything happened so fast that year. Everything came tumbling down just as quickly, too. Sofia was right when she said I shouldn’t just think about myself, except that’s all I could do then, and it only helped to further frustrate me. Rather than dig myself out, I buried myself further, then tossed the shovel to prevent escape. 

There are a lot of things I should have done after my conversation with Sofia, positive things, aspirational things. Weighed down and washed out, I moved forward with the only coping mechanism I knew functioned for me. Instead of roping Greg into my illegal endeavors, I tried my luck at a liquor store known to sell to underage kids. I bought whatever I could afford. Then, against all logic and moral reasoning, I downed half of a bottle and began driving without a clear destination. The more inebriated I got, the less direction I had, but I knew I didn’t want to hurt anyone or myself, and I certainly didn’t want to end up in jail, so I drove to a nearbt national park. I parked in a secluded lot far from the entrance to the hiking zone, snatched up my glass allies and “hiked.” 

When I got to the falls, the crashing of the river against the rocks, I was transfixed on something outside myself for the first time in a long time. I contemplated the parts of my life that frightened me most. What I had previously considered hindrances, upon reflection, I realized were necessary cogs that helped me grow. I was sick of being angry, sick of blaming myself, and when I wasn’t doing that, blaming others for my problems. Most of all, I was tired of drinking my anger away because all it did was foster that anger. 

Observing the world through a new lens offered me a way out and a way up, something those bottles could never do. I opened both bottles and let the earth soak up the evil. Before that night, I hadn’t cried, really cried, in years. Every ounce of the suffering purged out of me, and once it was over, I knew what I had to do. 

I dropped the victim act, focusing instead on making amends and getting back to the important bits of my life, the bits that mattered most. No longer was I going to let the selfish, unnecessary parts of humanity affect any part of me. Before anything else, I wrote a letter to Mr. Burrows and Jamie apologizing for my behavior and for not showing any regret or remorse for my actions. At the time, I’d reacted when I should have been listening and learning. 

Next in line was my mom. That was tough. But I didn’t have to say much because she saw everything I meant to say written right across my face like a hologram of sorrow. I also told her about all I’d been holding back. I no longer felt embarrassed by my apprehensions, by my internal blemishes. More importantly, I understood that she understood more than I gave her credit for. 

Sofia was next in line. Parents easily forget but friends aren’t as forgiving. And I did it at the one place I’d initially rejected that ultimately had rejected me. I surprised her outside the entrance to RHAA, her irritation with me clear. I had to make my impact on her quickly, so I let her have it, all of it. She resisted at first, but I kept on, letting her know how much I appreciated her friendship, for always looking out for me, including getting me involved in RHAA. I wanted her to know that I hadn’t taken it for granted, that I truly cared for the kids we tutored, and that I wanted to continue to do it, whether at RHAA, or somewhere else. I even included my recent drinking habit. 

When I finished leaving myself completely open, Sofia threw her arms around me. Then, without warning, she pulled away, tears welling in her eyes, and said something I hadn’t expected. “Thank you.” 

“For letting me in,” she began. “For letting me see the real you. For allowing yourself to be vulnerable. It hurt me to see you spiral like that but didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry…”

“Absolutely not,” I interjected. “Don’t do that. This was all on me. I always thought, if things weren’t going right for me, someone would jump in and save me.”

It’s not like everything was perfect after my confessions. I still made mistakes, still fell into trouble from time to time, but I knew I had some of the tools to dig me out and to keep me up. Tutoring helped the spirit of giving continue to grow, so for that, for my mom and Greg and Sofia, I’ll be eternally grateful. The work, though, continues.