Burro Genius
A Memoir
Victor Villaseñor
This book is dedicated to Ramón and the guys from Pozole Town, Oceanside, and to all boys and girls the whole world over who went to school with laughter in their eyes, warmth in their hearts, kindness in their souls, and then were systematically “broken” of their spirit—their genius, but here and there, some were able to refind that spirit because of an angel-teacher who helped give them back their wings. To these brave souls, both students and teachers, I dedicate this book.
The Kingdom of God is within us all.
Jesus Christ
What lies before us and what lies
behind us are small matters compared
to what lies within us. And when we
bring what is within out into the world,
miracles happen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Burro: a small horse, a donkey, biblically called an “ass,” one of the older and most widely used animals for work and burden throughout much of the world. An animal used to breed with horses to get a mule, a larger, stronger beast of burden than a burro.
Genius: guardian deity, or spirit of a person; spirit, natural ability. According to ancient Roman beliefs, a guardian spirit assigned to a person at birth; tutelary deity, hence the guardian spirit of any person, place, etc. A person having great mental capacity or an inventive ability; especially great and original creative ability in art, science, etc.
Contents
Epigraph
Preface
Book One
Chapter One
I’d been writing for thirteen years, received over 260 rejections…
Chapter Two
Dreaming, I slept in my large, spacious hotel room. Dreaming…
Chapter Three
Getting up that morning in Long Beach, I never found…
Book Two
Chapter Four
I was five years old. The year was 1945. My…
Chapter Five
Looking back, I now remember that it was just about…
Chapter Six
The very next day, I don’t exactly know why, but…
Chapter Seven
I really don’t remember too much more about the rest…
Chapter Eight
In the second grade, a bunch of us no-good Mexicans…
Chapter Nine
Knowing that I was king felt pretty damn—I mean, blessed—good…
Chapter Ten
Our huge house was DONE! FINISHED! COMPLETED! And this afternoon…
Chapter Eleven
Two weeks after the party, a car full of hombres…
Chapter Twelve
A screeching ambulance rushed my brother Joseph to Scripps Hospital…
Chapter Thirteen
My dad was right! Nobody was going to have to…
Chapter Fourteen
Getting home, Chemo immediately started telling my brother Joseph that…
Chapter Fifteen
The following day our parents returned from Las Vegas. My…
Chapter Sixteen
Howling! HOWLING! My brother Joseph’s dog Shep was going crazy-loco…
Book Three
Chapter Seventeen
I was CRUSHED! BEAT! Nothing worse could ever happen to…
Chapter Eighteen
Waking up the next day, I just knew that something…
Chapter Nineteen
That night, I didn’t tell my parents about the dolphins…
Chapter Twenty
I was in the seventh grade when I started going…
Chapter Twenty-One
That summer, I drove out with my dad to look…
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Victor Villaseñor
Copyright
About the Publisher
Preface
In the spring of 1962, I started writing this book. I was twenty-two years old. I’d been writing short stories for two years, so I figured that I was ready for the big book. I went through six different drafts of this book that first year, and I mailed out each draft to a publisher, but I only got rejected. The book became an obsession. With each rejection, I became more excited, because I’d now see how to rewrite the book and maybe, just maybe make it a little bit better.
I began to get up at two or three in the morning and work for twelve to fifteen hours a day. I’d get so emotionally drained by the writing, that I’d feel sick at the end of the day. My family became worried about me and they invited a friend, who was a writer in Los Angeles, to see me. He told me that he’d heard how serious I was about my writing, so he was willing to take a little time off of his busy schedule to glance at my work. I gave him the latest version of my manuscript. He took it home and came back to see me the following week. His face was long. He told me that he was sorry to say this but, as a family friend, he had the obligation to be truthful, so he’d tell me straight out that I had no talent. The book was terrible. And also, I was trying to write way beyond my mental capabilities.
He then explained to me that the world of writing was very competitive and so it would be wrong for him to give me any encouragement. He told me that the best thing for me to do was quit writing, not waste any more of my young life, and take advantage of my father’s business enterprises. I thanked him. I could see that he’d hated to say what he’d said to me. Then he said the strangest thing. He looked at me in the eyes and said, “You’re not going to pay attention to anything I’ve just said, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” I said.
He shook his head. I could see that he was really worried. A few months later, I went into the Army. I took the last version of my manuscript with me. I tried to work on it while doing my military service. Getting back from overseas, I leaped back into the book again with what I’d learned overseas, writing at an insane pace for a few more years. Finally, I quit the book, took the tools that I’d developed as a writer, and wrote three other books, and also sent these to publishers. I only received more rejections. Then I was almost thirty years old when I wrote Macho!, and finally got published after 265 rejections. Immediately, I returned to this book you’re reading, thinking I could now pull it off, but I was wrong.
Over the next few decades, I sold other books, but I’d always return to this book. I accumulated more that a hundred different drafts. I got married, became a national best-seller author, had two sons, but still no matter how much I’d try to pull this book off, I just kept missing the mark, even though some publishers were saying that some parts of the book were beautiful. Then my father passed over to the Other Side, and my mother passed, too, and somehow, with both of them now in the Spirit World with my brother Joseph, the Voice within me grew stronger, crystal clear, and I was now able to complete this book.
Thank you. Gracias. It took me forty years of wandering through the jungles of my mind, heart, and soul to finally realize this book. Enjoy. From mi familia to your familia.
BOOK one
CHAPTER one
I’d been writing for thirteen years, received over 260 rejections, and had just gotten—thank God—my first book published! The year was 1973. I was thirty-three years old, in Long Beach, California, at a CATE conference, meaning California Association of Teachers of English. I was in the back room along with five other writers. All of the other authors had previous works published. We were waiting for the main speaker to show up. This writer wasn’t only published, like the rest of us; no, he’d had a best seller, was a nationally recognized speaker, and was going to show up any minute and give the keynote address to the luncheon of the whole CATE convention.
Karen, our pu
blisher’s publicist, was nervous as hell, pacing the room and trying to figure out what to do. The national best-selling author should’ve arrived at least thirty minutes ago. He was supposed to have flown in from the East Coast the night before on the red-eye.
Myself, I was pretty nervous, too. I’d never been in a room with so many writers before. In fact, I’d never even met a published author until about six months back, and that was when I’d been in the Los Angeles office of my New York publisher and I’d finally found out that yes, yes, yes, I was really going to be published! I immediately called my mother and father, screaming to the high heavens—I’d been so excited. Bantam from New York was going to publish my book Macho!
The room we were in was small, but felt much larger because of all the excitement. I had no idea what was expected of me, so I stood in a corner by myself, playing it safe and just watching everything. Hell, the only reason I was even here was because our publicist Karen Black—who was actually white—had called me up out of the blue yesterday afternoon, I guess, as an afterthought, and said, “Don’t you live just south of Long Beach?”
“Yes, I do,” I’d said.
“Good. I hope you’re not too busy or will take offense that I’m calling you so late, but you see, we’re going to have several of our authors giving workshops at a CATE conference in Long Beach this weekend, so why don’t you drive up the coast and join us?”
“Cat? What’s that?” I’d asked.
“No. CATE, California Association of Teachers of English. They buy a lot of books. This conference is very important for us, and could be for you, too.”
“Oh, I see. Yeah, sure, I’ll come,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Will I be attending one of the workshops?”
“We thought you might present a workshop.”
“Me?”
“Yes, of course. You are a published author.”
My heart began pounding. “What would I give a workshop on to English teachers?”
“On your experiences in writing. On that special English teacher who inspired you to become an author,” she said full of honey. “’Bye now. We’ll see you there. Don’t worry. You have a creative mind. You’ll come up with something.”
She gave me the address, and then this morning, I drove in my white van up from Oceanside, where I still lived on the ranch on which I was raised, to Long Beach. I’d never heard of CATE in all my life, much less did I know what it meant to “present” a workshop. All I knew was that I’d flunked the third grade twice because I couldn’t learn to read, had a terrible time all through grammar school and high school. Then after ten years of writing, I was finally able to sell my first book to a leading mass-market paperback publisher in New York.
And now, standing in a corner, I felt pretty green. After all, these other writers in the room had been published before and they were talking to one another like they were all best friends, swapping publishing stories, laughing happily, eating cookies and drinking coffee. I was drinking water. One sip of coffee would have shot me through the roof. Listening to the conversation around the snack table, I was beginning to understand that these other writers had not only already had several books published, but that most of their books had first come out in hardback, then had come out in mass-market paperback.
I was quickly learning that it was not very prestigious for me to have first been published in paperback. Because paperback books didn’t get reviewed, and reviews were what got an author attention, respect, and sold books. Hell, I was still so wet behind the ears that I hadn’t even realized what a review was until a few weeks back. So I said nothing and just kept listening closely, trying to learn all I could without showing my ignorance. Also, I could now see that these other writers were dressed more like city people. I guess that it had been a mistake for me to come in Levi’s, cowboy boots, a big belt buckle, a Western shirt, and my old blue blazer.
Behind the closed doors of the next room, we could hear the low, rumbling noise of all the people at the conference eating lunch. I figured that it had to be a good-size crowd of people by the sound of the ruckus of plates and conversation. Our publisher’s publicist was now chain-smoking as she paced the room. Checking her watch for the umpteenth time, Karen now sent her assistant, Sandy, to check for any messages at the lobby, then told her to also go out to the parking lot and glance around. Boy, it was all like a movie. Here I was in the back room with a bunch of real writers, and any second now a nationally recognized author was going to come rushing down the hallway and lead us through the two closed doors where a whole convention of teachers was waiting to meet us.
My heart was pounding a good million miles an hour with all the excitement. After all these years, I was really a published author, standing there eating carrot sticks right along with other published writers. Before this, all the writers I’d ever seen were on the back covers of books and on posters up on the walls in libraries and bookstores. I had to keep pinching myself to make sure that all this was really true. Every day, for over thirteen years, I’d been dreaming of something like this.
Suddenly Sandy came rushing back into the room, handing Karen a note. Our publicist glanced at the note, and it looked like she was going to scream, but she didn’t, and gave a little curse instead.
“Damnit!” she said. “He didn’t take the red-eye! His plane has just landed! His limo driver says that he can’t have him here for at least another forty minutes. We can’t keep this convention waiting any longer!”
Wow, this was all becoming more like a fast-paced movie by the moment, I thought. But then, the next thing I knew, Karen turned her attention to us, the writers, who were across the small beige-green room by the coffee table laid out with snacks.
“Have any of you ever been a keynote speaker?” she asked.
None of us answered. We just glanced at one another.
Seeing our reaction, Karen crossed the room in large, confident steps. I could feel her determination. She was going to get something out of one of us, and immediately, too.
“Look,” she said to us in a calm and yet forceful voice, “behind those two green doors we have a convention room full of English teachers. They’ve been patiently waiting for over thirty minutes. I need to give them a speaker in the next five minutes or less. Can anyone of you handle this situation?”
I glanced around at my fellow authors, and I couldn’t believe it. Not one of these writers, who’d had hardcover books published and knew a hell of a lot more about what was going on than me, was coming forward. I took a deep breath, straightened up, picked up my Western hat off a chair, and stepped forward.
“I can do it!” I said in a loud, clear voice.
She looked at me, saw my hat in my hand—which I was very proud of because my dad had given it to me—glanced at my shirt and jeans and down to my boots.
“Which title is yours?” she asked.
“Macho!” I said.
“It’s about Chicanos, right?”
“No, not really. It’s about a young Mexican boy coming across the border without papers to the United—”
“Chicanos, Mexicans, they’re all just about the same, right?”
“Well, yeah, in a way, except they’re totally different, because one is born in the United States and the other is born in—”
“Have you ever spoken publicly before?”
“Well, no, not really, but I know I can do it just like, well, I knew that I’d someday get published.”
“And how long did that take you?”
I didn’t appreciate the way she was looking at me. “Not very long,” I said, lying.
She turned away from me. “Haven’t any one of you other writers ever been a keynote speaker?” she asked.
The most smartly dressed writer among us, a woman, who was probably—I guess—in her late thirties or early forties, spoke up. “I have,” she said. “Several times. But I was also given notice beforehand, so I’d have time to prepare.”
“Don’t you have somethin
g prepared for your workshop?”
“Certainly, of course. But as I’m sure you realize, a workshop and a keynote address are very different,” she said, raising her left eyebrow in one of the most dignified arches that I’d ever seen.
Karen turned back to me. “You do realize,” she said, “that public speaking is very different from writing. Few authors are good public speakers. One is done in private and the other—maybe we’d better just wait,” she said, turning to her assistant Sandy.
I was beginning to like Karen less and less. Yeah, sure, she was good-looking and smartly dressed, too, and had probably been the top student in her class all through grammar school, high school, and college, but she just didn’t seem very open-minded or flexible. I liked her assistant Sandy a lot better. She seemed softer, less judgmental, and more open. I guessed that Karen was single and in her mid-thirties. Sandy, I bet, had a boyfriend and was in her late twenties and had had more than just straight A’s going for her in school. Myself, I’d mostly been a C student, had wrestled, worked on the ranch, and now had a girlfriend to whom I’d recently proposed, but she’d turned me down. Also, I had such a baby face that, until about two years ago, I was still ID’d regularly in most bars.