After my shift, Rafa would scoop me up, and then we’d go vandalize people’s homes. Every night, it seemed like we were rolling through the city of Miami, Petey Pablo blasting, a couple of spiked cherry Slurpees in our hands. We’d take turns leaning out the passenger window, swinging baseball bats at mailboxes, knocking them clean off. Or we’d dash onto strangers’ lawns—in places with names like the Gables or Cocoplum—knocking over fountains and peeling out. We were addicted to breaking things. In a time when it seemed like anything could break, we were intent on making sure.
We liked toppling fountains the best; they were the stupidest ornaments. But this kind of vandalism had its risks. It took quite some strength to get under so much stone and water and lift. If you weren’t careful, you could trip on all the wires and lights, or worse, parts of the fountain could cascade on you, and then you’d have to get the rubble off before escaping. This happened to Rafa once—a big, old five-tier toppled right on him. I had to get out of the car and help the motherfucker, and lucky for us, the owners didn’t hear the commotion. They didn’t reach for their gun and meet us on the lawn, stand-your-ground style, or maybe I wouldn’t be here telling this story.
This was Miami, in or around the months following the September 11th attacks. All of the city was covered in those two-dollar Home Depot American flags, and I don’t why—but something about seeing those colors draped over the city made me and Rafa want to rip out every last one of them. Maybe that’s how all this vandalizing started, with me and Rafa driving around collecting flags, collecting so many that, in a week, we filled four garbage bags worth. And when we didn’t have space for so much patriotism, we drove to the Everglades, set them atop cardboard and burned them all and watched as the wind carried them, still burning, into the dry grass across Tamiami Trail.
#
We were students at Florida International University—first years. I was circling the drain around the business school; Rafa wasn’t even attending some classes.We’d sat next to each other during orientation, and, poor guy, some righteous-acting advisor took to the stage to patronize us all: Wake up, kids! You’re in college now. You’ve got to have a plan to succeed. Dude was up there, shouting out these clichés, trying to rouse the masses, when, out of the blue, he pointed to Rafa and asked, “How about you?” Rafa, who was maybe the only darker guy in the crowd, was not having it. The man asked, “What’s your major?” He even jumped off the stage to thrust the mic in Rafa’s face. And what did my childhood friend say, still yawning and rubbing his eyes from the boredom? “Guy, I don’t know.” Well, that must have been the answer that the un-motivational speaker had been hoping for because the dude fixed his bowtie and said, You don’t know? Your major? What a way to start college.
He hit the mark, though. Neither of us were off to a good start. I was still
clocking in 30+ hours at Walgreens—at the threshold of full-time work— trying to do my part to help my mom. I had no time to study. Plus, it was so hard to take college seriously. In one lab, we spent the first two weeks measuring the distance between the anus and the mouth of various mollusks. It seemed like one giant joke. In lectures, I could hardly stay focused, and I was certain that I would flunk out by the end of the year. And Rafa, he was doing just as bad. In some Latin American history course, he was learning about castes and colonialism and how sexual violence gave rise to economies of legitimacy, and rather than feeling empowered with that knowledge, he was coming unstitched.
In his creative writing course—when asked to describe something tangible in the room—he’d chosen his own hand, its color, a café con leche, and just thinking of the sugar drove his imagination to the Cuban countryside, the plantations, the hands of his ancestors ragged from the machete handle and the culling of sugar cane. Rafa had said that merely reading the poem aloud made his eyes watery, and he laughed about it, about being a dude on the brink of tears. But then his demeanor changed when he described the professor’s feedback: Nice. Imaginative. But the assignment was to focus on something tangible in the room. “Was I not sitting right there,” Rafa asked, “in front of him?”
“He probably meant something physical, you know.”
“What? So you agree with him?”
“Ay, Rafa,” I told him. “You can’t take things so personally.”
“Oh yeah,” he said, and he told me what happened next. Some dude shared a poem dedicated to a female student in the class. My first thought: that’s kind of cool. I’d never thought of using poetry for anything like that, and I joked
that maybe I should start writing poetry too. But Rafa was angry, and I didn’t know why. Maybe I was distracted or bored, but he was getting all worked up over lines from this dude’s poem: “firm as mangoes” and “bruised and sunburst” and “begging for a bite.” I didn’t mind the imagery, to be honest, and I told Rafa as much, and at this, while walking through campus, right in front of everyone, he said, “Fuck you.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you don’t even know how ignorant you are,” he said, with such authority.
“I like mangoes.”
“The woman walked out of class. He was writing about her body, idiot.”
Harsh! Something was changing in him. We’d be watching television or something—like we’d done a gazillion times—and J.Lo would come on in some performance, and I’d say, “Look at that ass,” and Rafa would smack me really hard: “Dude, do you gotta be like that?” I guess he thought I was objectifying her. I’d only said it ’cause we’d always said shit like that when we saw J.Lo.
It didn’t take long to feel like we were on the outs with one another. The school year had barely gotten rolling, and he’d started hanging out with new people: the kind of people who’d stand outside fraternities in the heat with signs like “Real Men Take No For an Answer” and “My Dress Does Not Mean Yes.” I made fun of him for that, and he didn’t appreciate the jokes. More so, from what I could tell, he’d stopped going to class entirely. Every night, I’d be like, Yo, Rafa. We got to make some time to hit the books, you know. It’s been a while. I missed him if I’m being totally honest. I’d grown up with the
guy my whole life. But he had no interest in studying, and the things he said scared me. One time he came right out and responded: “What for? What can college even really offer me?” Then after a long pause, he said, “You know what I miss? Driving around and fucking things up.”
So that’s what we did. Every night.
By the time the Twin Towers fell on September 11th, neither me nor Rafa were particularly shook. If I’m being totally honest, it was such a huge fucking relief—that the world could end.
My parents were at work already. Rafa was over, and we were having left- over Taco Bell for breakfast, watching the buildings fall to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I kick it?” Even if my manager hadn’t called to say the store was closed, I wouldn’t have shown up. I wouldn’t have shown up to class either. After break- fast, Rafa and I drove to the beach. We walked the shore and smoked, and he asked, “Can we do what we want now? Do we have permission?” It seemed that way. It seemed like the tragedy had cleaved a hole in Miami large enough for us to hide in. It was the first time that I looked at Miami, its skyline, and thought, “Would it be so bad if the planes had all crashed here?”
#
Down the street, there was this Muslim kid named Sohail—a tall high school senior who loved sneakers and Star Trek t-shirts. He was, by all accounts, a giant dork. Neither me nor Rafa had ever given him much attention, even if we were neighbors, but after the attacks we started hanging out. He was good for scoring an ounce on short notice. So, one thing led to another, and before long he was part of the crew. We’d even take him to vandalize things and, boy, was he a menace to society.
One time, while sitting in a drive-thru at McDonald’s and waiting for our food, he jumped the fence into the playground and, under the cover of night, ripped a Ronald McDonald statue out from the ground. How he didn’t get caught—how any of us didn’t—I have no clue. Because next thing I knew, food in hand, we pulled up by the playground, and there was Sohail, popping the trunk and loading Ronald into the back of Rafa’s Ford Bronco. It was such an excellent night, cruising around town, jamming with McDonald himself in the back. But when the party was over, we had to say goodbye. We drove up to the top of the Rickenbacker Causeway—a tall bridge that arches over Key Biscayne—and we threw it off and into the current, watched it bob and drift out into the dark.
That’s how things were when Sohail would join us. He didn’t just want to destroy mail boxes; he wanted to set them on fire. And he didn’t care much for the small decorative fountains that people kept out in their yards; he was more interested in the large and extravagant public ones. In fact, it was Sohail who in
November toppled the Coconut Grove Mall fountain at the peak of dinner time and narrowly escaped as the community’s heightened security descended on him. Just to be an asshole, he did it shirtless, wearing a black turban and yelling, “yayayayayaya!” The guy even made the news: Muslim Terrorist Targets Fountain in Coconut Grove. It was legendary, and we all had a good laugh. So, understandably, we were saddened when Sohail stopped hanging out with us. Dude wouldn’t even pick up his phone. Turned out his parents had found his stash. By the time the holidays were upon us, he was so grounded he couldn’t even look out his window when we’d tap.
By then, most of Miami had unboxed their Christmas decorations. All of the city shimmered at night. It was merriment galore: so many lights, so many inflatables and nativities and you name it. It was enough to make us forget
about flunking out, and dead-end jobs, and friends that had been raped. We suspected that’s what the decorations were for—to hide all the ugly of the world and help us stay distracted. How badly the country wanted to move on. The sentiment was everywhere.
The media insisted that we not let the terrorists kill Christmas too. Politicians proclaimed: Be brave. Go shopping. Your country needs you. Even with the White House closed to the public, Laura Bush hauled in Christmas trees and continued the tradition, with a theme “Home For the Holidays.” There were stories of generous men, one who even traveled from Missouri to New York City with a wad of Benjamins, giving one to anybody who looked needy. And these stories worked. We forgot about the fear, the vulnerability. We were too merry to pay attention as security measures increased, or to see George W. escalating tensions with Iraq. None of that mattered to us. The only thing we mourned was that Sohail was grounded, and we were without weed, and we didn’t know what to do.
We were bored. Everywhere we looked, there were decorations too joyous and beautiful to smash, until one day there was only Christmas nonsense on the radio, and we were jamming to “Last Christmas” for like the fifth time and I said, “Rafa. Bro, pull over.” So he did, and I walked right through someone’s winter wonderland of a yard, right up to a plastic Santa, the same rosy-nosed kind my parents had when I was a kid, and I punched it in the face—my knuckles crushing through into the hollow illuminated space. It was glorious. My fist was bleeding, and Rafa was laughing and hollering. And looking around at the strings of lights, the inflatable snowmen, and the rows of candy canes, I knew what we’d do next. We’d turn our attention from fountains to smashing Santas.
#
We started out small, yanking Christmas lights off trees and rooftops. One night, we realized that we could redecorate people’s homes so that it seemed all those decorations were having an orgy. It was utter bacchanalia, what we were after. We could have an illuminated deer humping the Virgin Mary, and we could have Santa humping the deer, and we could duct tape Jesus and his little pecker to Santa’s face. The possibilities were endless. And at around the time that some shit-face British dude hid an explosive in his shoe—on a flight to Miami—we really hit our fucking stride. It was classic.
Our favorite activity, dubbed football practice, involved tackling the inflatables. It’s super fun. Just find a neighborhood that’s Christmas-heavy, you know, and you park at one end. Then you walk over to the other end. This works best when it’s you and a friend because you can race and you can keep a tally of how many figures you’ve tackled. Rafa and I would lineup, each on different sides of the street, then we’d count to three and begin the mayhem, diving into every inflatable character along the way, grabbing Santas and body slamming them, or jumping right into Mickeys’ faces. Even if these are sacks of air, the activity could be a bit iffy. Because most of those inflatables are actually anchored to the ground. When you tackled them, the anchors come loose, and they can gouge the living shit out of you. It happened to me—luckily, only nicked me, but got my jeans good. I dragged Mickey half-a-block. The fucker wouldn’t let loose. When I jumped in the truck, I took him with me.
Like anything, though, eventually the thrill of Christmas-bashing grew dim, and we began to eye larger targets. We spent a weekend visiting local dealer- ships at night, and slashing their mega-giant inflatables—the kinds you could see blocks away. Those were so dense with air that when we’d try and tackle them, we’d just bounce right off. That’s why we used my steak
knife. My favorite thing: when the big ones start to come down, it looks they’re going to crush you; they just buckle over and descend upon you from like twenty feet in the air, and there’s no thrill like running wildly, with all that hot air blowing up dust and dirt. Did it make me a little sad? Sure. I’d been a kid once. I knew what it meant to pass one of those mega inflatables on the highway, parents bickering, a little hope and Christmas cheer looming over the whole stretch of the city. But fuck it. In our headspace, we needed it. Hell. Given the chance, I’m not sure we’d have balked at hitting one of the towers.
Maybe we would have destroyed Christmas that season for all of Miami, but one night, on a routine job rearranging someone’s yard, cops showed up. They rolled into the neighborhood real slow-like, lights off, and we didn’t even see them until they were up close. It was Rafa, in fact, who shouted, “Pigs!” Lucky for us, we’d become cautious, and we’d parked on another block, so by the time the police lights blasted on, we’d already dipped over a few yards into our getaway, and we’d fled. But that next morning, we were heated. All the news channels took a break with the Muslim extremist bullshit to cover our Christmas- bashing. It was a big news story. Reporters had descended on all of Miami, interviewing people, collecting surveillance tapes. The police even put out a reward for anyone with more information that could lead to an arrest. Suffice it to say, we were in deep shit.
And rather than venturing out each night to kill the town, we’d gather around the TV at Rafa’s place and watch the news. Seeing kids sob and tell their stories about ruined Christmases made us a little sad, of course, but we also loved the attention; we loved the feeling of having done something in secret, of having gotten away. Sometimes the news stations would play grainy videos of us in action, and it was glorious; it was like reliving the Christmas-bashing. And there was something else that was happening: our violence was bringing the community together. Neighbors were chipping in and replacing each other’s broken Christmas decorations. “Look,” I’d told Rafa. “It’s like we’re the spirit of Christmas.” But the attention scared us plenty, so we stopped, kind of.
#
The last time we fought Christmas was at the start of the spring semester. Anyone with decorations still out, we’d reasoned, deserved a bit of ultra-vandalism. I’m not sure what got us back into smashing Santas. I remember that we were watching W.’s State of the Union address, and he’d said something about an axis of evil, and Rafa had said, “You know what would be an axis of good?” Since I’d known Rafa all my life, I knew just what the answer was: “Tell me Christmas- bashing!”
I know what you’re thinking. How could we outdo ourselves? What was there beyond football practice and the toppling of mega-inflatables at the dealership? In truth, not much. But there was something unresolved. It was more of a joke, certainly not something that would draw attention. I still remember when the seed of this idea came to me. We were circling our own block, sharing a joint, and I said, “Isn’t it strange that his house is the only one on our block not decorated.”
“Sohail?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Everyone around here decorates like mad.”
Rafa laughed. “Yeah, man. Fucking Christmas central, bro.”
“Know what? We should decorate his place. Just imagine how he’d react.”
“Bro,” Rafa said, driving right past it, blunt in hand. “Yes! But you really want to eat where you shit? We never done nothing like this in our block. I don’t know. I don’t...What do you think?”
“I think he’d love it. I think it’d make his grounding more enjoyable,” I said, but then I second-guessed myself. We were wanted, after all. And I told Rafa that we should definitely hold off, even if we missed the dude. Still, it didn’t
stop us from joking about it. It should of stayed a joke.
So when we did venture back onto the vandalism circuit on January 29th, we were in good spirits. We thought of ourselves as custodians of the city, picking up the mess leftover by Christmas. We plucked some of those lighted deer from the Biltmore Hotel—only the best for Sohail. Then we swung by The Church of the Little Flower, which has this super nice life-size nativity. It was all a bit much to take, but we managed to pluck out the whitest little Baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. On the way back to our block, we stopped here and there, gathering strings of light and inflatables. Then, near Coral Park, we saw the coolest thing: a pink Flamingo figurine with a Santa hat, all lit up. And it wasn’t the cheap plastic variety. This was a woodcut, beautifully crafted, smooth to the touch. So we ripped that bad boy out, slid it over the rest of our booty and, feeling good, went to Sohail’s place.
It must have been three in the morning. This time of night, our block was dead. We parked under a tree, in the little shade blocking the moonlight, and feeling quite comfortable and at home, we set out to decorate Sohail’s place the best we could. We envisioned a Christmas palace—the kind of house that all the people of Greater South Florida would pilgrimage to just to see. What a shame that Sohail’s family didn’t decorate. Their yard was perfect for it: lots of grass, just a few palms. We found the perfect place for the nativity, in a bed of white and pink petunias surrounded by mulch.
Since we hadn’t been able to fit the cow and sheep and the donkey in the truck, we situated the deer around the nativity, and the pink flamingo, too, as witnesses to the birth of Christ. All along the walkway, we anchored down inflatables of every variety, but we held off on plugging them in. Because we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves. We worked silently, wrapping lights around palm trees, and attaching all these cords together with the extension cords we’d swiped. Before we plugged it all in, Rafa and I stood
there, proud of the work we’d done. We bumped fists, and he said something like, “We’ve been breaking things so long, I forgot what making something felt like.” He was right. I took the end of the electrical cord—the master cord that we had managed to attach everything to—and I walked it over the side of the house where I knew there was an outdoor outlet.
I plugged it in, and Jesus, it was gorgeous. The fans in the inflatables whirred and the bags of air stirred and rose. That’s when I noticed the pigs— fucking devils. They’d been smart this time; they’d likely parked farther down the street to avoid detection. All that time, we’d been decorating, and little did we know that there were four officers closing in on us. Rafa was standing right in front of the doorway, really relishing in all of it. It was the most joy I’d seen on his face in years. But I needed to warn him that we were busted, and I didn’t know what to do. If I ran out toward him and yelled, it would reveal my position and I’d get busted too. If I fled, then I’d feel guilty for letting him take the blame. And as I breathed and tried to control my heart rate, and thought through what course of action I should take, I heard the front door to Sohail’s house open, and I saw the shadow of a man cross over Rafa. It was Sohail’s father, and he was holding a gun—a fucking real-life gun.
Sohail’s dad must have been scared, especially with all that anti-Muslim shit the media was spewing. And maybe building a nativity on a Muslim man’s house was a tad insensitive. Couldn’t he see, though, how funny it was? Couldn’t he see how much such a prank would make his son laugh?
I don’t know how else to make sense of it. Because, next thing I knew, the pigs drew their weapons. One stepped into the light and shouted, “Put that down. Right now!” Sohail’s father, barefoot, shirtless, and only in his plaid boxer shorts, was trembling. He knew what I didn’t know then. It took Trayvon Martin and Markeis McGlockton and Jordan Davis and all the other casualties for me to know why Sohail’s father looked like he could piss his
pants. So when he eventually did put his weapon down, and motioned as if to say something, an officer tazed him unconscious.
And Rafa, who was already on his knees, hands behind his head, gave me the look as if to say: just run, man. No use in us both going down. But where could I run to? I saw Sohail step into his yard, sporting his Star Trek pajamas; the guy was utterly dazed by the lights and the cops and the whole of it. He collapsed on his father and sobbed, and I saw another cop draw his weapon, so I hid behind the A/C unit, and I waited all night. Because I was scared. I waited for the police and the ambulance to leave, and when all was clear—when Rafa had been taken into custody, his truck impounded—I walked home, showered, and then, drove to campus to measure mollusks and their fucking assholes.