Read Online Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera - Free Book Online

exchange easy remember-whens. I munched on my cereal and hoped I would know Harlowe like that one day.
    Researching badass women in history and organizing a book reading worked for me. The two components made sense. Readings at school were often all-white—boring. People read things about the silences in the trees and most nights some privileged wannabe “outsider” white boy claimed the open mic to lament the fact that no chicks would bang them. LGBTQ events didn’t feel like family yet, either. Even the letters themselves made me feel like I was hovering above a movement and not connected to it via blood and tissue. The on-campus LGBTQ group called itself the Gay Brigade. I always needed a few drinks to loosen up and feel comfortable in my skin at their events. I was like one of one Latinas in the group anyway. Mainly, I went to snuggle up with Lainie in public, surrounded by other self-identified homos. A reading from Raging Flower in Portland with real-life adult gay people sounded like it could break open my chest. Whatever Harlowe needed me to do, I’d do it.
    Phen looked at me and placed his hand on my arm. “Juliet, I apologize for being rude and for imposing my nakedness on you. I would feel blessed if you let me take you around Portland.”
    Through the haze of our morning smoke-fest, I saw him as a misfit in a sarong, an equal.
    â€œNo worries, man,” I said, “I’d love to bounce around this city with you.”  
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6. PGPs and Big Punisher
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    We caught the Tri-Met bus on East Burnside and 16th. Phen wore a tattered red Che Guevara T-shirt, ripped army green work pants that cut off right below his knees, and dusty black combat boots. His tall frame made it look like he had robbed a militant ten-year-old of his clothes. Thick little me had on my favorite Baby Phat jeans and black and white Bx T-shirt. I wore red plastic-framed glasses and had my labret pierced; glasses because I was a nerd with bad vision and the labret in attempt to hide both of those facts. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget the crispy Jordans. They’d be broken in perfect by summer’s end.
    Waiting at the bus stop we looked like a streetlamp and a fire hydrant out for a day trip. A bus pulled up and Phen ushered me in first. My nose twitched and eyes watered. What the fuck? A stench I had never known infiltrated my olfactory sense. I couldn’t comprehend how a bus full of white people smelled so bad. Didn’t they have mothers? When I was 11 and my chubby chest turned into actual breasts, Mom swooped in, handed me some Dove deodorant and gave me the low down on covering up.
    â€œNena, from now on you must always wear a bra. Your breasts will get bigger like mine and Grandma’s. You must protect them. Trust me, eventually you will need the support, as well. Men in public or even in the house should never be able to see the outline of your tetitas or the poke of your nipples. Put your bra on the second you wake up in the morning. Men can’t handle seeing those things. It makes them crazy. Remember, they’re just not as smart as we are, mama. From now on, you must shower every day and always wear deodorant and perfume. I do not want my little girl to be stinky. You are too pretty for that.”
    Boom. Instant knowledge of appropriate feminine hygiene. This must have been a busload of no-shame-having motherless children because there were loose sagging tits, sweat stains and B.O. running free like locusts. Some of the men on the bus looked like normal white guys but their beards were thick, unkempt, and their T-shirts were yellowed from sweat. I didn’t understand them. What kind of white people were they?
    Back home, my brother and my cousins hit up Butta Cutterz, the local barbershop, once a week to get tight shape ups. My older cousins wore the best colognes, too. Real talk, sometimes the hood stinks, but I was not prepared to find myself in the middle of a