Growing up black and queer in Houston, Texas, is not the easiest thing in the world, especially when you are also a sex worker during the AIDS pandemic. There are also gradations of blackness that have to be worked through so that you know what your worth is in society. This is not an easy read, but at the end of it you will have a greater understanding of the complexities in which we all live.
It started how you'd think, with this white boy throwing up in an alley. I'd pulled a job at a taqueria dumping pig guts out back. The cooks gave me grunt work, the way they do when you're starting out, like when my father had Javi and me pinching the shells off shrimp back in the restaurant as kids. It didn't matter that I'd been fixing mole in Ma's kitchen for years, I was short on money.
