The Girl Can't Help It (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine April 2003

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The Girl Can't Help It (Cont.)

WHERE DID JULIET'S Body come from?

"A mystery," she says. "I was adopted. But they should have known. First thing I ever said to my father was 'Juli run fast, Daddy! Juli run fast!'"

Growing up in the 1970s among Cleveland's black middle class, Juliet made her parents very nervous. "I ran and ripped and punched boys and got in trouble," she remembers. "I ended up having a huge, monstrous rebellion. A mohawk instead of Jheri Curls. New wave instead of R&B. I was the high school chick you don't see in class because she's out by the bleachers getting stoned."

In 1984, during what was supposed to be Juliet's junior year of high school, she dropped out for good, took up with a girlfriend, moved to a skanky part of town, and started delivering pizza to pay for pot, coke, and lots of alcohol.

"It was huge ghetto, huge drug people—more into substance than I was, if that's possible," she says. Eventually, it all led to crack and homelessness. After three years, Juliet checked into a shelter and started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, at first more out of chronic hunger than moral awakening. She got clean, and she got fed. "They kept asking if I wanted more spaghetti," she recalls fondly.

Her body responded. She started working out, thriving on gym routine—lift this much, rep that, continue until further notice. She joined the Army in 1990. In basic training, for the first time in her life, she felt at home.

"The Army takes people who don't know shit and teaches them everything," she says. "How you fold your clothes, how you balance a checkbook, how you eat. I did what they taught me." The Army trained her as a firefighter, and in 1991 she transferred from Indianapolis to Fort Carson, in Colorado Springs, where she found the combination of adventure and rescue just right. Now that she's a paramedic, most of her work involves emergency care. During one recent week, this meant dealing with a string of teen suicides, drug problems large and small, fatal car wrecks, and a trip to the state mental hospital at the request of a "sweet old black cat" whose much younger lover had gone off his meds.

Next, she intends to rise through the firefighting ranks. First stop: lieutenant.

"I want it," she declares. "I'm a motivator. I have a love for the job. That can rub off on other people. It's a team sport. It's a lot of work. Hell, yes!"

She can live in the firehouse, no problem; be one of the guys; earn her place in the paramilitary pecking order. Hadn't you noticed?

"Would you look at me walking down the street and say, 'Hey, lemme go fuck with her'?" While you're at it, would you goose her? A superior in the Army did that, not once but twice.

"Could have been a power thing," she muses. "I asked him nicely if we could step outside. When we were alone, I said, 'If you ever do that again, I'll yank your balls off and shove them down your throat.' He stopped. And see? He kept his dignity."

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