ORANGE MESSIAHS by Scott A. Sonders (books to read this summer .txt) 📕

but as suavely as possible I offered, “You do look good enough to give sight to the blind, as if the dress was made for you. I’d even bet you modeled for the designer.”

I paused and put on my most innocent face. “Damn, you’re not gonna believe this, but I’m usually pretty shy. And I sure hope you don’t think this sounds like some sleaze-city come on – but I can’t help myself. You really look fabulous. You make what might be an ordinary dress look extremely sexy. In fact, it might be just too much for my sister. Like I said, she isn’t nearly as pretty as you are.”

As one may have guessed, I walked out of the department store that day with a very precious phone number and a hundred dollar babydoll dress for my imaginary sister. And that was all for the cost of a purloined Armani. Anyway, the dress would later prove a superb gift for the person it looked best on. Especially at the Bob Marley concert. I could find a second month’s rent another time.

I imagine that’s how things got started between men and women back then. Before watching too many B-movies, maybe they could still muster their own, if not clumsy but spontaneous, dialogues. Perhaps all it really took was a not too artful ploy and a mutual willingness to let each other think they’d won something. Maybe the world was more naive then. Or maybe it was a whole lot smarter.

* * * * * * * * *

Time would prove that Ramona’s mother initially felt at odds about her daughter’s new boyfriend being non-Mexican. After all, hadn’t Carla’s husband, an Anglo, deserted his family? And when she finally did meet me, she was further taken aback by my being Jewish. Anglo and Jewish, not a great combination as far as she’d been told.

She was good natured, though, and ultimately open-minded, wise enough to live and learn. She got used to me quickly. After the death of a child and all the crap she’d been through, she could probably have gotten used to almost anything. That woman was strong with a capital “S.”

Ramona and Carlos had only brief recollections of their wandering Anglo father. He had breezed in and out of their lives like a Santa Anna wind, disappearing again while they were in their mid-teens. But certainly the two sisters, mother and brother had become like real family to me. They were the home I’d searched for but never owned..

I’d never had a mother or a father, at least not ones that I knew. I’d grown up since before I could remember in foster homes, as “a ward of the state,” which in this instance was actually the County of Los Angeles. I was crazy about Ramona, but I’d always wished for a brother like Carlos.

I liked in him what I liked in me. Even early on, when he discovered my clandestine relationship with his sister, he’d cursed me, called me bastard, vowed to kill me. But then I reminded Carlos that it was he who introduced us in the first place. His eyes lit up with the iridescent sparks of warmth that gave his feelings away, confessed that I was as favored to him as the brother he’d once lost.

It was a mutual admiration society. As Ramona once quoted from her college chemistry book, “a covalent bond occurs when atoms share pairs of electrons.” There had always been a missing part of me, and at times I imagined that Carlos was that missing, covalent twin.

It is commonly said truth is stranger than fiction. And it was a quirk of reality that the tangible sibling of Carlos was quite unlike him in at least one especially devout and Catholic aspect. But before this is revealed, it may be noted that on a scale of “1” to “10,” Ramona was an “11.” She had breasts the shape and volume of grapefruit halves, with light brown areola and nipples the size of young grapes, that would grow big and hard when kissed. Her legs were long, tapered with a three-finger wide gap where her thighs and genitals met. Her waist was narrow. The skin of her entire face and body was smoothly colored, textured like a bar of fine milled soap.

And quite unlike most other Mexican-American females, she styled her sable hair short, blunt, almost boyish, a fashion that would later prove many years ahead of its time. All in all, Ramona, who described herself as “kind of attractive but no great shakes,”
looked to me like the second coming of Helen of Troy. If the need would have existed, I’d have waged war for Ramona.

But now I will return as promised and reveal that quirky aspect of Ramona’s subconscious. – There was an odd ingredient in our sexual recipe. And it surfaced the first time we made love, involving what I thought might be some fetish-like act of religious devotion that she, otherwise, took pains to hide. I discovered it shortly after I’d begun to caress her naked body. She reflexively and unconsciously made the sign of the Cross in front of her face. After some time had elapsed and at the height of her physical passion, she moaned, “No, no. No, no.” Then she bucked her hips, muffled a profanity, and orgasmed – hard and long. Finally, and as if this wouldn’t take some getting used to, she briefly turned away, whispered a Hail Mary, soto voce, cried briefly, then crossed herself again.

It wasn’t until long after the first of these loveplay incidents and many deep and intimate discussions with Ramona, that we both realized that she had inadvertently been raised by her mother to feel a great deal of guilt about not only the sex act itself, but the enjoying of the sex act, in or out of marriage. Oddly though, it was the forbidden feeling that she got from having a man inside of her that made making love all the more desirable and enjoyable. A much older friend later confided that once a mental connection is made, linking sex with forbidden fruit, the fascination for its flavor rarely fades.

And maybe it was because of her birthright of ancient Aztec blood, but Ramona’s entire body, even to the most hidden and wettest crevice, smelled like sweet incense and fine musk. But maybe this is only how she smelled to me, because I was so much in love. And maybe yet, this is only a weakness of humankind, whether fifteen or fifty-five, to easily confuse what is called “chemistry” with what is called “love.”

* * * * * * * * * *

At Jones, Jones, Jones and Schlumberger, I’d get what they referred to as “the opportunity” to visit one of their many construction sites and help out with whatever job the foreman would suggest. It was on one of those occasions that I learned I could load a dozen eighty pound sacks of Redi-Mix concrete onto a wooden shipping pallet without so much as a groan. I lacked the grace for gymnastics or basketball, but I had a very strong back. So when Ramona needed to replace the flat tire on her ‘66 VW Microbus, I was elected.


It was March 7th, 1972; an anniversary of the passing of Paramahansa Yogananda, spiritual founder of the Self Realization Fellowship. It was also the day Ramona’s VeeDub got a flat tire going around a curve on Sunset Boulevard, just a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean and immediately in front of the Fellowship sanctuary. She waited two hours for me to get off work and bring a new tire. Why she didn’t call her brother who worked right across the street from me, I’ll probably never know.

Never one to waste precious moments, Ramona had wandered around the grounds of the Self Realization shrine. It was a beautiful place crowned by a swan-filled lake, old green trees, and fully steeped in an aura of tranquility. There she met Sri Dayamata, who was bedecked in a saffron sari. That pale complected and regal woman, the current doyen of the Fellowship, wound up speaking with Ramona for several hours. Ramona was awed by the place, the talk and the woman. Afterward, Dayamata gifted Ramona with a paperback copy of “Biography of a Yogi.”

Even as Ramona was reading that book, it proved life affirming, and soon after, it proved life changing. Ramona became one of the few chicanas from East L.A. who transformed into a vegetarian and a hippie. And it was then she decided that Carlos and I should join her on a “pilgrimage” to visit her favorite uncle in San Felipé, Mexico.
Ramona had known her “favorite” and only uncle for what seemed to her to be “forever.” He had often visited L.A. and stayed with her family for weeks on end. But during his absence she missed his company and she would “stay close from afar” through her chance letters and frequent phone calls.

The book on the yogi had deeply influenced Ramona. It had confirmed and heightened her love and respect for all living things. It had become the turning point in her decision to finally become a vegetarian. In her words, “it helped to evolve (her) consciousness to a higher level.”

In a way, though, it also caused her to become more resolute about other things, and more resolute was not a welcome addition to her already stubborn character. Where she had previously been somewhat headstrong, she was now, more than often, downright imperious. And now she wanted to share this new found “consciousness” with her “Uncle Gordo.”

* * * * * * * * *

Spring break began on a chilly April morning. We had eight days of no school and I was given the time off from my internship at Jones, Jones and Jones. Ramona was packing a sack lunch to tide us over for the long day’s drive ahead. There were alfalfa sprout sandwiches with mounds of tehina, tomato and avocado on home-made, whole grain bread.

Also selected were oranges, bananas and red Rome apples, carefully inspected for bruises and ripeness, then stowed within the safe darkness of a large, brown paper shopping bag.

Great undertakings always begin on the week-end. Or so it seems, accustomed as we are to weekdays filled with drudgery and work we rarely enjoy. So with the sack lunches prepared to, as Ramona said, “nourish our bodies and souls in an appropriately vegetarian fashion,” the three of us piled into Ramona’s decal covered VW and headed south for a border that would soon and forever divide our destinies.

The Microbus strained its way down Interstate-5 toward San Diego. About an hour and a half into the journey we were cruising through Dana Point when Carlos said, “Hey guys, Richard Nixon’s house is in San Clemente. We’ll be there in about ten minutes. Whaddaya say we go egg the place and teepee the lawn?”

“Is that a political statement?” I asked, half believing that he meant it.

“No,” Ramona interjected, “that’s his idea of making his ass grass. And I don’t mean the smokeable kind.”