Ah, How I love Thee, My Pinto

It is so funny now when I think back to the time my family and I first arrived to the States. Like many other immigrants, we liked to send home photos of our new life in America. One thing that stands out in my mind now is that almost all of us wanted to pose in front of someone else's beautiful car (back then, a Pinto was a beautiful car to us) to let our friends and relatives think that we too had a car, a luxurious item in our country.

After about six months of bean-picking, strawberry-picking, cuccumber-picking, we, too, had our real, used Pinto. It was ours. We had worked extremely hard to get it. Despite the dents, the loud engine noise, the smog, the many other problems that I just can't remember now, we loved it. It had weathered us through the hard times of our initial days in a new land. We found the beauty in it. We were thankful we had a car that we barely noticed there was no air conditioning. God had blessed us for we needed not to walk barefoot on the hot cement.

Now that I'm nearly 30 years past my family's beloved Pinto, I found out that finding love in the gay world is as prescious as having a used Pinto when your new future involves working in the field under extreme heat. God has blessed me with a love from a man. I have hope, and I'm thankful. I hope this love would prosper just like where my life is now--no longer working in the fields.