¡Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons

by John Paul Brammer

Trauma lives in the body long after the events that birthed it go away. It builds a home for itself in our memories, where it asserts itself as reality: I was treated this way because there is something wrong with me, and if I am to protect myself, then I must carry a healthy, vigilant sense of paranoia with me at all times. Never again, it says.

Wanting to recover those things was like feeling homesick for a home I never had. That, to me, is Chicano.

that race is a lie. But it’s a lie like money is a lie, which means it’s real, because it’s a system. You can’t really opt out of it.

Maybe remembering is the same thing as imagining.

If my voice might do more harm than good, then I am not the voice that needs to speak, even if I am in love with the sound of my own voice.