At my first job I worked with a Puerto Rican dude named Ray. We got along good. The work was cleaning duty for a music instruction place so we’d do a bunch of cleaning which was boring as fuck and then we’d have some spare time to play music before our next assignment. Sometimes we’d run over to his house on break because it was close and he was always generous trying to give me food and stuff. All things considered it was a good gig for a couple teenagers over the summer.

Like a month in, he invites me to a wedding his family is putting on. Can’t quite remember who it was for unfortunately. It was almost 20 years ago. He said I just gotta save up and rent a tux. I said hell yeah and we were all excited. We talked about it every week or so and every time he kept telling me, “these Ricans are gonna eat you alive, son.” And I’m white as fuck and autistic so I was like, “that sounds bad but he sounds excited so I’ll just assume it’s supposed to be exciting and not say anything about me being nervous” but inside I was all nervous like “I don’t wanna get eaten alive.”

Some time goes by, it comes time and I hadn’t saved up and I told him I wasn’t going. And he was pretty hurt by it. To this day I regret not keeping up with him and I regret not going to that wedding. Ray was nothing but kind to me and I snubbed him. I could have told my mom and maybe she would have helped me remember to save. And she would have told me to ask what the date was and get details and stuff. Like I just handled it really badly and I regularly feel bad about it.