Juliet Takes a Breath Read online

  “Sweet. Done,” she turned around to grind coffee beans, “Assisting anyone I know?”

  “Harlowe Brisbane,” I said, ignoring my buzzing cell phone, “She wrote Raging Flower: Empowering Your…”

  “The pussy book lady,” she exclaimed, spinning around, coffee beans tumbling to the floor, “ like The Harlowe Brisbane? No shit?”

  Some of the other lesbians in the coffee shop perked up.

  “Billie, this chick is working for Harlowe Brisbane!”

  Billie, head shaved and slim as a pipe cleaner, slammed down the milk crate, “No fucking way, I love her. Think maybe we could get her in here for a reading one day?”

  I turned and saw a few women staring at me, waiting for my response.

  “Umm maybe,” I replied as the cute barista girl slid me my drink, “That’d be mad cool. I’ll ask her,” I reached for my wallet, sliding my phone back into my pocket, “How much again?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Billie said, holding a fist out, “Just ask Harlowe about that reading.”

  I bumped Billie’s fist, “No doubt,” I said and headed to the very back of Blend, away from all the inquiring eyes.

  Harlowe Brisbane is a bonafide celesbian…

  I checked my texts and there was a message from Ava:

  Chica, call me, text me, anything me. Are you a hippie Portland dyke yet? Besos.

  Would I ever be a hippie dyke? Did I even want to be that? Sitting on a red vinyl chair at a table that was a giant ceramic mosaic, surrounded by gay women and alternative-looking folks, I didn’t know how to answer Ava’s text so I called her.

  Ava spoke fast in between cracks and snaps of her gum. Her enthusiasm for all the things she’d heard about my life in the last few days poured through the phone. I told her about Phen and the cardboard Harlowe. We talked about my crash-and-burn coming out situation. For every detail she already knew about me, Ava added one about herself. I told the family I was a lesbian. Ava said she’d been dating a boy, then a girl, and was doing the whole “casual, low-key, college, no labels thing”—her words not mine. I asked her how Titi Penny and Uncle Lenny took her coming out.

  Ava said, “Prima, I didn’t really come out. I’m just living and they’re down for however I’m living in the moment, you know?”

  I didn’t know but I wanted to. I wanted to be that cool. How could three years make such a huge difference in whether one was a nerdburger or the coolest low-key ‘no labels’ cousin? In an attempt to up my coolness, I told Ava about the free coffee and how excited the lesbians that worked at Blend were about me being there. I felt like I could be friends with them. In essence, I’d found my people. Ava popped a tight bubble with her gum.

  “Juliet, what makes you think those white chicks are interested in being your friend?” She asked quiet.

  “Free coffee equals friendship Ava, come on,” I replied.

  “They’re down for Harlowe. They’re down for each other. They’re not down for you, Juliet Palante from the Bronx, you know?”

  “Yo, Ava, I don’t think it’s that serious. Everyone is super friendly. Like, it’s nice to just be surrounded by other people who aren’t straight or so hood that they’re constantly checking your hood pass. It’s comfortable here. And honestly, I could use some friendly faces.” The ice melted in my coffee. I waited for her approval.

  “I get that. Still, you should come to Miami and spend some time with me. I’m always going to be down for you,” Ava said.

  “I know, cuz. I doubt I’ll be able to take a trip to you this summer. I’ll be here until August,” I said, with a sigh. I wondered when I’d be able to find time for a visit.

  “Listen, watch out for those white girls, okay?”

  “Ok, cuz,” I replied, shaking my head.

  Ava told me she loved me and made me promise to keep her updated on everything. I sipped my coffee and wondered when she’d gotten so militant. “Watch out for those white girls, okay?” Like, what was that? Were we in a scary movie or something? White girls could be annoying but mostly they were just harmless. Sometimes it was easier to be around white girls anyway; all the things that made me weird in my neighborhood seemed cool to them.

  I was welcomed at Blend. Harlowe had opened up her home to me. The Harlowe Brisbane connection gave me access to other lesbians, their friendliness, and this free coffee. Was this my aura syncing up with the world around me? Harlowe deemed aura-syncing a necessary component of this internship, so why not rock with it? I expected a tingling or some sort of frontal lobe pressure. My family never talked about auras. Maybe auras and the Holy Spirit were connected in some way? Because there was always talk about El Espiritu Santo, even if just as an exclamation for something outrageous. I wanted to feel something, something that said “Okay, Juliet, this is your aura, get ready, we ’bout to get crazy.”

  My asthma attacks always came with warning signs. My lungs would burn slow, a tiny Pentecost behind the rib cage. This built tightness, as if the bronchial cords were filled with smoke. Each breath more labored until the crackle wheezes pierced through each gasp. The wheezing was the worst; it’s the sound lungs made because they ached. It’s the sound of damaged goods filtering in and out of your chest, past your ears, back into your psyche. My attacks were brought about by cold weather, infections, and unmanaged emotions. I knew these symptoms well. Were they connected to my aura? If my aura got super strong would it take my asthma away? I wondered if La Virgen dealt with auras, too.

  There was so much I still didn’t know. I’d come in confident. My letter to Harlowe burst out of me in one night out of the sheer belief that Harlowe Brisbane would listen. I believed I was important enough to grab her attention and she’d know what I was talking about when it came to feminism, racism, inequality, and family stuff. But all the phrases Phen spat at me lived below the first layer of my skin. Stuck, bouncing around with these words, it dawned on me to check Raging Flower. Maybe I’d missed all the radical pronoun terms amidst all the discussion about vaginas, and feminism, and the dismantling of the patriarchy forever. If Harlowe didn’t write about it then maybe Phen was just some weirdo giving me a hard time.

  I looked in my bag and realized that I’d left my notebook in the attic. With watered-down coffee and a whirring aura, I left Blend, nodding at the baristas, wondering what it’d be like to be their friend. My friends at college were a mix of theater nerds and student council kids, and many of them were Lainie’s friends first. I spent most of my freshman year awkwardly courting her, but dating Lainie didn’t make me feel like an official lesbian. 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. But surrounded by all of these queer-looking in-folks in Portland, those nerves died down. No one harassed them or even looked twice. I wanted that. It’d be fun to have a crew of dykes to roam around with instead of hopping from one group to another, always searching for a place where I felt at ease.

  Walking to Harlowe’s house, a young, brown-skinned woman wearing a tie-dye bikini top and jean shorts biked past. I smiled at her. She smiled back and rode past. No helmet, her face free of stress. The neighborhood gave off the same calm vibe. Instead of car alarms blaring and police sirens declaring ownership of neighborhoods, I heard the sounds of birds singing and the wind blowing. I could hear the fucking wind. I wanted to bring my mother here. She needed to know what a quiet neighborhood could sound like, what peace sounds like. There was nothing in the way of it. No trains careening overhead. The wailing of the Bronx was constant. But this neighborhood, East Burnside, offered wide-open sidewalks, and houses that didn’t have bars on their windows; it offered serenity. For a split second, I wondered if there was a price for this type of peace.

  8. On the Road to Polyamory and God

  I was about a block away when a black pickup truck pulled up alongside me. The window was rolled down and Harlowe’s face popped out across the driver’s side. Harlowe called me “sweet human” and motioned me
over to the car. She introduced me to Maxine. My hello was almost swallowed by shyness; Maxine’s well-defined biceps and perfect dimples made me feel weak in the hips. She wore a glittery purple bow tie and I just couldn’t handle it. I stood by the car the window and blushed without another word.

  “Nice to meet you, Juliet,” Maxine said. She extended her hand and I shook it. Her handshake was firm but not overdone. There was a hint of Southerner in her voice. Maxine kept eye contact with me. I blushed a deeper shade of brown.

  “Get in, beautiful Juliet,” Harlowe said. She waved me over and unlocked the door.

  “I’ve gotta go to the library today, Harlowe.” I explained about my notebook being home and wanting to find the library myself. I talked until I was the only one still talking. They laughed and Harlowe told me that my aura couldn’t have synced so fast. Her hand rested on Maxine’s knee. Maxine smiled at me.

  “Please, come with us. I’ve heard so much about you, Juliet. And from what I’ve heard, you might really dig this Octavia Butler inspired writer’s workshop” she said.

  That’s all she wrote. Harlowe hopped out and let me sit in the middle. Thoughts of the library evaporated. I didn’t know who Octavia Butler was but if Maxine wanted me there, that’s where I was going to be. Even if it meant not being able to breathe because my thigh was touching hers

  Squeezed in between them, I was hyper-aware of my body. My D cup breasts filled the space in front of me and pushed further out than Maxine’s or Harlowe’s chest. I was both uncomfortable and so proud; I’ve always loved my breasts. I’ve loved them for the way they defied gravity: full, brown, perfect. They held court over my soft belly, another part of me that I was always aware of, another section of thickness that announced itself by daring to exist. My thick, soft everything was a direct contrast to Maxine’s muscular and firm build. Her solid shoulders were wired into lean limbs knotted with firm muscles and flawless skin. My acute sensitivity of Maxine’s presence made me feel tight all over, made my mouth ready to taste something sweet.

  We made a hard left and my body slid into Maxine’s. I froze there. She didn’t shift or push me over. I didn’t even think Maxine noticed the difference between when our thighs weren’t touching and when they were. But I did. The AC pumped out weak blasts of semi-warm air. I felt ungodly hot. Maxine smelled so good, like shea butter and incense.

  Harlowe eyed me for a moment, smiling, like she could sense the embarrassing crush-like feelings in my brain. I thought she might call me out but instead she moved into the extra space between us. Harlowe rested her head on my shoulder. I sighed, relieved, and Maxine caught my eye. I turned away so fast, fast enough to not let out any stupid doe-eyed grins. Someone had to talk, otherwise this tension of fluttering beats in my chest was going to kill me.

  “So like, how did y’all meet each other?” I asked, “Is there a really juicy love story or a good friends thing or what? Tell me everything.”

  They laughed and leaned forward a bit to meet eyes. Harlowe and Maxine went back and forth for a minute deciding who would start off. Maxine cleared her throat.

  “It was at the Oly Queer Punk Festival. Maybe ‘98 or ‘99,” Maxine said. She stroked her chin as if there was a beard or goatee under her fingertips. “I think Gossip played for the first time that night.”

  “Yes, Beth stripped down to a white lace garter belt and a cone bra,” Harlowe added,

  “You were reading Audre Lorde in between bands breaking down and setting up. All those bodies pressed together, and there you were reading in the middle of it. Unbothered. Beautiful. “

  “Zami is one of the finest pieces of written work, ever,” Maxine said, “I read that book in bathrooms, on busses, everywhere. And in the middle of the chaos at that show and all those pages, was you.”

  “Some moony-eyed, hippie white girl that wouldn’t, and still won’t, leave you alone,” Harlowe added, turning to face me. “This was before Raging Flower and before Max’s M.Div. and before we were primaries, poly, before any of that. It was the love boom.”

  It became clear to me that if I didn’t start asking for clarity in the moment, my notebook would be filled with contextless phrases and words that an Oxford dictionary might not even have definitions for. I cleared my throat and asked, “What’s a poly primary emdiv?”

  Maxine laughed without malice. It relieved my anxiety. I laughed too, even though I wasn’t completely certain what the joke was.

  “Poly comes from polyamory, which, barebones, is the idea that an individual can love more than one person. Harlowe and I are in a poly relationship, meaning that we agree to allow room for the exploration of intimate relationships with others,” Maxine said. She tapped her thumbs on the steering wheel. “Primary means main, right? So if Harlowe is my primary partner…”

  “Then she’s your main chick,” I interrupted, thinking of the way boys on the block talked about girls.

  “Right, but there aren’t any ‘side chicks’ in this scenario because everything is out in the open. One person is not hidden from the other. And my relationship with Harlowe is given top concern,” finished Maxine.

  “Huhmm…” I exhaled, thinking all of that over. Polyamory. Shit sounded a little like a hippified way of rationalizing outside booty or not being able to commit or something. But I liked the idea of mutual respect and honesty.

  “So, like, if Harlowe met someone mad cool, you’d be totally fine with her hooking up with them?” I asked, eyebrow raised. “That seems suspect. How do you deal with jealousy?”

  “We embrace it,” Harlowe jumped in. “We’re all curious and beautiful humanoids. So why not just acknowledge that sometimes we’re gonna get hot for someone else’s mind, spirit, and sexy bits? Why not own it and discuss it as two adults? One person can’t be someone else’s be-all and end-all every single minute of every single day.”

  “My mom is for my dad,” I said softly, missing both of them hard.

  “Maybe that works for them. It works for a lot of people,” Maxine replied. “But to me, as a queer person, I have this opportunity to deconstruct and potentially abolish heteronormative relationship structures and create relationship models that work for me, that work for my needs and that don’t rely on mimicking straight codes of conduct. Codes that often adhere to strict and archaic gender roles, imbalances of power, and this idea that one half of the relationship is in charge of the other. All of us have the radical power to enter into relationships based solely on honesty and respect with immeasurable reverence to sexual and emotional intimacy. We can decide whether we want to love one person only for life, find a good thing with someone that opens itself up to several other love things with other beautiful humans, or something else entirely.”

  “Whoa,” I said, because that’s all I could say. All of Maxine’s words about love left me spinning. I wanted to ask a million more questions, but I thought about Lainie instead. I imagined her trying to poly me and me being like “hell no.” I wanted to ask Titi Wepa if she’d ever been in a poly thing. I wanted context from some other place that these types of things existed outside of Portland. I’d never ever heard of a polyamory thing happening in the Bronx.

  “Whoa is fucken right, sweet Juliet,” Harlowe, nodded, her bright blue eyes were fixed on Maxine. She reached behind me and rested a hand on her shoulder.

  “Oh, and what’s an emdiv?” I asked, as the phrase popped back into my head. “Is it a type of poly something?”

  Again, Maxine and Harlowe laughed, like the way my aunts laughed when I asked them questions about sex. They laughed as if they were related to me and it was okay to find delight in what I didn’t know.

  “M.Div. is a Masters of Divinity. I’m a professor of theology with a focus in Black Womanist Liberation Theology,” Maxine explained.

  “Holy shit, you can get a Master’s in Divinity?” I asked, impressed, “That sounds like some superhero stuff, like being a god or something. Are you a preacher too?

  “Nope,” Maxine said.r />
  “So what’s the point if you’re not bringing people to God?” I asked.

  “We’re all gods, Juliet,” Harlowe said, blowing smoke out the car window.

  “No, let’s be real. There’s only one God and He ain’t me, you, or Maxine.” Maxine poked my thigh and I froze, again.

  “I’m going to assume you were raised Christian, either Pentecostal or Catholic.” Her hand rested on my thigh. Blood rushed to my head, and my cheeks.

  “Uh, uh, yes, Pentecostal Protestant,” I sputtered.

  “Okay,” Maxine said, giving my thigh a small squeeze. “That’s where the one God thing comes from and also why I won’t be a preacher. You want answers. Make your own religion out of doubt and curiosity. Don’t go running after one God.”

  “Well, why not? Why not run after one God?” I asked. “I mean obviously there are other gods in other religions and stuff but I think it’s all based on one God anyway. It’s just the interpretation that’s different.”

  “Yes and no. The only thing we can really do, Juliet, is develop our own sustainable theodicies. You know? 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 melody of masculine and feminine. It’s Audre Lorde and Sleater Kinney. My God and my understanding of God is 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.”

  Harlowe snapped her fingers in agreement, the way people do when the spirit hits them at poetry slams. I wanted to tell Harlowe and Maxine about the time I met God. But I didn’t; I couldn’t. It was better to enjoy this silence. I tried to tell Lainie once. All I did was say that I knew for sure that God was real and it set off her debate team skills. You know, after she laughed and gave me that “Are you serious, babe?” face. She deconstructed the reasons why attempting to make God exist past the realm of faith and into the realities of the human world was absurd. We laid on her futon in the middle of her dorm room, surrounded by tea light candles. She argued that God couldn’t exist because God wasn’t made up of anything solid. God couldn’t be touched. God couldn’t walk into a supermarket and buy a gallon of milk. Lainie had a million reasons why God wasn’t real in the way that she and I were real. She explained that God was at best an elevated spiritual feeling and at worst one of the most brutal myths people have ever created.