Juliet Takes a Breath

by Gabby Rivera

I’d looked through metal bars my whole entire life just to get a view of both the sidewalk and the sunshine.

my family was my world and my mom was the gravitational pull that kept me stuck to this Earth. What would happen if she let me go? Would my family remain planted to terra firma while I spiraled out and away into the void?

We lived loud and hard against a neighborhood built to contain us. We moved like the earth pushing its way through cement sidewalks.

In each of their faces, I saw different versions of who I was.

Our love was safe if we kept it on our tongues and in between our teeth.

Was that even how they fit into sentences? I felt small, constricted, and stupid, very stupid. Phen dangled these phrases over my head. He was waiting for me to jump up and beg to be educated, beg for him to explain the world he inhabited.

The moment to retaliate passed by, leaving brass-knuckle bruises on my ego.

Phen used the phrase non-queers. As much as I wanted to dive into his language and understand his words, I also refused to bite. The way he used words felt like bait. He wanted to enlighten me, to educate me. I didn’t want to experience Portland or obtain a queer education that way, not from some smug dude. His energy drained me. I didn’t like the way he said dyke. Maybe he was allowed to say it by association, but he wasn’t an associate of mine.

Being around other gay people made me feel nervous, like someone was going to see us out in the world and we’d be targets.

The stress of being outed or attacked in public lived under my skin at home; I didn’t have to look over my shoulders here. None of that was present. I wanted this life.

Was this what it was like to be openly gay and at ease in the world?

it offered a melody. I wanted my mother to come here to know what a quiet neighborhood could sound like, what peace sounded like. Mom and I might even be able to hear each other speak and really listen. We could set our words on these sun-drenched branches and let the breeze guide us to resolution. For a split second, I wondered if there was a price to pay for this type of peace.

We need to create our own understanding of divine presence in a world full of chaos. My God is Black. It’s queer. It’s a symphony of masculine and feminine. It’s Audre Lorde and Sleater-Kinney. My God and my understanding of God are centered on who I am as a person and what I need to continue my connection to the divine,” Maxine explained. She took a long breath. “It’s everyone’s job to come up with a theodicy. One that has room for every inch of who they are and the person they evolve into.”

In all love and seriousness, she slowed down and looked me square in the eye. “You know just saying something is good enough until it isn’t. At all.”

Maybe America just swallowed all of us, including our histories, and spat out whatever it wanted us to remember in the form of something flashy, cinematic, and full of catchy songs. And the rest of us, without that firsthand knowledge of civil unrest and political acts of disobedience, just inhaled what they gave us.

Besides, the absolute last thing I wanted to do was make things more awkward, to feel even more distance between us. I’d rather sit tight in emotional purgatory than dive right into the fiery pits of hell and question my parents’ motives behind our upbringing.

I was free of self-doubt. No question of whether I deserved this or if this was even my life. No one was yelling at me or trying to make me feel inferior. No one was telling me this was just a phase or that I needed to be better about knowing my history. I wasn’t worried about my mom or my girlfriend or anything.

“If Harlowe wasn’t white, would it be okay? Like, if you were dating a brown round Latina and she brought home something from a Black feminist collective or whatever, would it be weird too?” I asked, and helped myself to a delicious bite. Maxine took a deep, slow breath, crossed her muscled arms across her chest. “The thing is, Juliet, I’ve never appreciated someone else’s unrequested guidance on my identity. I don’t want their interpretation of who I am or where they think my politics should lie. My Blackness, my queerness, my theological inclinations, what I’m like at a family reunion, who I am in the classroom or in a relationship, all of that is mine,” Maxine said, each word chosen, thoughtful.

Lesbian, Bilitis, dyke—why didn’t words for gay women ever sound beautiful?

Was Harlowe racist? Was I oversensitive? Did my being from the Bronx scream so loud of poverty and violence that my actual story didn’t matter? What did it mean for me as a person and a wannabe feminist that I looked up to Harlowe? Was I proof that her feminism was for everyone? I stopped after admitting that I loved Harlowe and that made me an even bigger fool. How could I love some fake-ass, kinda racist (?), clueless person like Harlowe?

“Whatever pronouns a person chooses, if they choose any at all, are their right. Not a fucking preference,” she said.

“Your one job is to just accept what a person feels comfortable sharing about themselves. No one owes you info on their gender, body parts, or sexuality.”

“You are your own person. If liking girls is a phase, so what? If it’s your whole life, who cares? You’re destined to evolve and understand yourself in ways you never imagined before. And you’ve got our blood running through your beautiful veins, so no matter what, you’ve been blessed with the spirit of women who know how to love.”

“Because, well, at least to me, masculinity is forever linked to the feminine and to all other forms of gender expression. It’s only damaging and violent because we’ve elevated it above everything else. Society allows masculine people, specifically white men, to exert tremendous power without consequence, and that’s where the trauma comes in. It’s not masculinity in and of itself,” Florencio said. “But, to be perfectly honest, I’d rather spend my energy exploring and elevating divine feminine energy.”

“I’m afraid of looking like a dyke,” I said. “Are you a dyke?” “I think so.” “Then no matter what you do with your hair, you’re gonna look like a dyke,” Blue Lips said.

At no point in her retelling did she ask me how I felt when it all went down. I didn’t offer my perspective either. Before Miami, I would have blurted out all my opinions. But after being surrounded by a community of people who were committed to one another, to every political cry and hazy love daydream, I couldn’t spill my guts to someone who wasn’t asking for them.

“No one held you back from standing up and telling that room of people at Powell’s who you really were and what your story really was,” she said. “No one. You chose to walk away. This isn’t a judgment on that choice. This is me pointing it out. You did that. You let Harlowe’s narrative be the air people breathed about you. This isn’t about Harlowe or her whiteness; this is about choice. What choice will you make next time when someone says something like that about you? Will you walk away? Or demand your voice be heard? Will you speak your truth, Juliet? I mean, why did you even come here?”

All the women in my life were telling me the same thing. My story, my truth, my life, my voice, all of that had to be protected and put out into the world by me. No one else. No one could take that from me. I had to let go of my fear. I didn’t know what I was afraid of. I wondered if I’d ever speak my truth.

Love your fat, fucking glorious body. Love your breasts, hips, and wide ass if you have them and if you don’t, love the body you do have or the one you create for yourself.