I have always thought of 1983 as the year I came out of my shell, and as the beginning of one of the most creative and productive periods of my life. As I’ve noted previously, I had always been a very shy person.  I had very little self-confidence and could never comfortably get up in front of a group of people, for example, and give a speech or a presentation without getting all nervous and feeling sick. 1983 would be the year I started to overcome these obstacles.

After I graduated from the University of Arizona with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in May of 1982, I decided to take a six month break and just work at the grocery store. It got boring, however, and I missed school.  By the end of the year, I had taken the GRE and got very good scores. I was ready to go back to school, so I enrolled in three classes in the Spring of 1983 at the University of Arizona as an “unclassified” graduate student. Just for the heck of it, I took beginning Russian with my friend Scott, a course titled Latin American Political Development, and an Introduction to Sociological Theory, a graduate course in sociology. I also worked at Fry’s the whole time, continuing the pattern I had established when I entered college—to work part time, go to school part time and to have fun part time, which included going to lots of concerts and various events in the community. Unfortunately, as I was starting to get serious about studying sociology, this arrangement was becoming a bit difficult to sustain.

I’m not sure when I did this, but sometime near the beginning of the year, I applied to formally enter the graduate program in sociology at the University of Arizona. I had done very well my last two years of college, primarily because I so enjoyed taking courses in sociology, and learning about things like political power and social movements, as well as Latin American and Chicano history. I figured that the graduate program in sociology would allow me to continue in this vein. I really had no idea, however, what I was in for. Before I knew it, I was confronted with the fact that sociology is a social science, and as such, a student at the graduate level was expected to learn how to be impartial and study the topic with an objective lens. Sociology isn’t just about learning about how social movements work or how political power manifests itself, it’s about theoretical framewoks and paradigms, comparing and analyzing events, about using data to extract trends and develop hypotheses about why and how things happen in the social world. It’s about theory, and includes the study of great thinkers like Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber, among others. These guys wrote for a 19^th century audience often in German or in languages other than English. They were difficult to understand, and I, at this point in my life, was very opinionated, and wanted to change the world for the better, not study it. Also, sociology at the graduate level was a full time endeavor, and I just didn’t want to let go of my job at the grocery store, even though I was offered a stipend when I formally entered the Sociology graduate program. Needless to say, I didn’t last long in the graduate program. I took just a couple more courses, but by the summer of 1984, I had fully checked out of it. Other stuff had popped up and held my attention.

Here are a couple of samples of the work I did this semester:

Sociology 500 Midterm Exam March 8, 1983, Dr. Fligstein

“Cuba”, (paper written for Professor Seligson’s “Latin American Political Development” class Political Science 447, The University of Arizona, April 28, 1983).

In late 1982, I had joined Teatro Libertad, a leftist, mostly Chicano street theater troupe.  As a member, I had to learn how to act and sing in public. I was very nervous and scared at first, and I’m sure I was awful, but I didn’t give up and just kept practicing, and before long, I was able to perform in front of large groups of people without much difficulty at all. I got over being shy, and it felt great. The Teatro performed  a number of skits in a variety of places throughout the year and by year’s end, we had also written and performed  the first act of an original full length play called, “La Vida del Cobre” or the Life of Copper, about the 1917 Bisbee copper strike and deportation.  I played several different characters in La Vida Del Cobre, and contributed a lot of the music to the play. I had a great time, and being in a group like this helped me strengthen my self-confidence and performing abilities. I was doing political theater, and working to raise people’s consciousness about the power structure and the social realities in which they lived. I felt like I was making a difference.

In terms of my personal life in 1983, I was a mess. I was still in love with my friend Scott, but as the year unfolded and the AIDS crisis became more serious, people started acting strange, and I lost a few so-called friends. Scott also pulled away from me. He found himself a girlfriend, and we drifted apart by the Fall. My friend Frank and I had our ups and downs too, as I was always restless, and could never see myself as his lover or companion. He was a lot older than me, and had his own busy life that kept him on the road constantly, but he kept popping in and out of mine. There were others that came and went too. I was friends with a guy who worked at Fry’s named Henry at one point, but he was really not a good influence on me, as he was into being a little badass cholo, always getting into mischief.

There was also a guy named Peter, with whom I became quite infatuated, but that went nowhere either. It seems like all the guys I was attracted to were straight, and that was a major bummer.  As I’ve mentioned before, I also still tried dating women, and there were a few here and there that also popped into my life at the time. One woman, named Lee, was also in my Russian class, and she actually got to visit the Soviet Union over Spring Break. She sent me lots of Russian souvenirs, including a balalaika. She was very nice person. Overall, however,  I felt lonely and unhappy, and after having had a taste of what “married life” was like when I was with John in 1979-80, I longed to have a steady male partner. It would take a couple of more years, however, before I found one.

Early in the summer of 1983, I signed up to take a course in radio programming from KXCI, a brand new community radio station that was planning on going live by the end of the year. I paid $475 to attend the radio course over the summer. (It was not free, as some have mistakenly written). My love of music, which I had been indulging in since childhood, was finally going to take center stage, and I was going to have the opportunity to share the music I loved with the whole community. Over the past 10 years, I had been collecting albums and had immersed myself in learning all about contemporary urban folk music, soul music, jazz, oldies, pop and other musical genres. I also had some basic knowledge of Latin music, but it would soon deepen and it quickly became a major focal point in my continuing musical education.

The radio course lasted a few months, and by late Fall, the station was ready to go live. I was a devoted volunteer at the time, and did a lot of work at the station.

KXCI and Teatro Libertad were where my heart was at this point in my life. I wanted to convince people to become politically active and to take a stand and work to make the world a better place. I had signed up to take a graduate course in Social Psychology with Dr. Patricia MacCorquodale in the Fall, but I withdrew from the course before the semester was over. Academia, it turns out, wasn’t for me, at least for the time being. I couldn’t see myself as a professor doing boring studies, writing boring papers, and teaching all the time, although teaching probably would’ve been more fulfilling than doing research. I would take one more sociology class the following Spring semester, but that would be it. After that, I was done with the program.

As the station went live, I was given two slots to fill in the programming calendar, one a Latin show on Thursday nights which I dubbed “The Chicano Connection”, and the other a morning music mix program that took place on Friday mornings from 9am to noon. I was still rather shy and wasn’t a great announcer when I started, but again, I kept at it, and got better over time.

My knowledge of music and my shows were also starting to get noticed out in the community, and I quickly became known for playing stuff that nobody else was playing or was long forgotten. Senator Dennis DeConcini even wrote to the station early on and noted how impressed he was with me and Kidd Squidd. I was in heaven. I even played political folk music, but this would eventually get me into trouble.

Here are more of my playlists from December, 1983. (click the title to see the list).

The Chicano Connection, December 15, 1983.

The Morning Music Mix, December 16, 1983.

The Chicano Connection, December 22, 1983.

The Morning Music Mix, December 23, 1983.

The Chicano Connection, December 29, 1983.

The Morning Music Mix, December 30, 1983.

Even though my personal life was a drag,  this was indeed an amazing time in my life. I had some wonderful friends, many of whom I haven’t seen in a long time. For one reason or another we all just drifted apart. Some have moved away, some are still in town, and others have passed on. As I was thinking back on this particular year, I was overcome with emotion for the first time since I started this writing project. I really miss these folks. I still love them with all my heart. They were all wonderful, talented people. I’m lucky I still have friends like Ron and Jane. Our friendship has stood the test of time.

There’s one final thing that I want to say about this particular time in my life. I have a few regrets, that’s for sure. There are some things I did that I should not have done, and over time I’ve paid the price in one way or another for these mistakes. I likely hurt a few people along the way, and to this day I feel very sad about all of that, but I realize nothing can be done about it now, except to say I’m sorry to those who find this and know what I’m talking about. It was all so long ago. I was young and still had a lot to learn at the age of 24. Some things I figured out pretty fast, while others would take a lifetime to finally figure out.  Overall, I feel pretty good now and I am happier than I’ve ever been. I look forward to continuing writing my life story. I’ve come a long way on this project. 24 years down, 37 more to go…Stay tuned!