Enrique

Making art is Enrique’s happy place.

Enrique Alonzo Cabrera, 53, grew up in Escondido, graduating from Orange Glen High School. His father was in the construction trade and his mother was a hospice caregiver. By the time he was finishing high school it was clear his parents didn’t approve of his being gay.

So Enrique and his partner moved to Baltimore in the early 1990s and stayed there for seven years together before Enrique missed the west coast and decided to move to Hollywood. There he met his second partner, the owner of a cafe on the corner of Western and Santa Monica, and who Enrique said was one of the longest-living AIDS patients. Enrique volunteered with an AIDS support group. The two had an argument one night that got loud and ended up with Enrique being thrown in jail for spousal abuse. He still feels remorse that he was locked up when his partner died. Out on parole, he went on a bender and had a quick fling in the bathroom of a gay nightclub downtown. His tryst date told the police Enrique forced him to have sex with him, so Enrique ended up in prison on a sexual assault charge.

He was on parole seven years, with “a Martha Stewart on my ankle,” avoiding certain neighborhoods, even avoiding some church dinners to comply with the mandate as per where registered sex offenders can congregate. He’s been “off paper” for twelve years now.

It was about the time he got out of prison, going to evening support groups, that he met a woman who painted with feathers. “She had been in a concentration camp. She still had the tattoo on her arm,” Enrique said. “I was blown away by the way she painted using the tip of a feather. The only paintbrush she had in the camp was a feather. Here was someone who has gone beyond what any of us has ever been through, and she created this amazing artwork.”

The woman’s story stuck with him. He read books on art at the downtown public library. And after finding discarded paintbrushes and some half used containers of paint in a dumpster, he started making origami roses while sitting at Jack-in-the-box in Hillcrest nursing a cup of coffee. He paints napkins, lets them dry and fashions them into roses. Curious customers make a donation by buying a two Jumbo Jack combo on a cash card for him in exchange for one of Enrique’s painted origami roses. On Mother’s Day business is good.

It doesn’t take much money to get a meal, he said. “In all honesty, if you’re starving in San Diego it’s because you want to.” It’s the lack of affordable housing that is the biggest stumbling block to his getting off t street.

Enrique said family issues keep him from contacting his brother or sister for help with housing. “They’re pentecostal,” he said. “They’re not snake charmers or anything, but it’s enough to keep me away.” He’s fine with his secret sleeping spot near Balboa Park.

As an insulin-dependent diabetic, so he uses his food stamps to buy nutritious foods. Church meals are helpful, he said, but aside from hot soup and an occasional salad, they are often sugar-heavy. So he’ll save his dessert in a tupperware container and eat it in small portions when he’s feeling low. The diabetes is also affecting his eyesight. But nothing stops him from doing his artwork. “Art is my happy place,” he said. “All I want to do is feather work and roses.”