full name: Jillian Joy Liao
pronouns & gender: demigirl, she/they
birth date: April 8, 1991
time in town: entire life
housing: Historical Downtown with Miranda Hartman
occupation: DJ & radio talk show host at The Station
personality: Jules can be a tough pill to swallow for those that donβt operate or, at the very least, have a respect for the frequency they operate on. They are who they are without any explanation or excuse, take or leave. Bold, brash, loosely reined and larger than life, Jules tells it like it is with little fear of repercussion. Sheβs incredibly person-oriented for someone who does not mold or shape themselves to the expectations upheld by others; they are loyal to the bone and will go out of their way for the people she cares most about. Theyβre meticulous where it matters, little things crawling underneath their skin and lingering more than they ought to that can often lead to a histrionic approach. For a good time, a long time, or wherever the wind carries her, she is an (albeit unpredictable) constant so long as her insecurities are assuaged and she has a sense of appreciation. They know the importance of protecting their heart and their inner child, and is not afraid to flex into unorthodox positions in order to do so, an entire gambit of blasΓ© ignorance or outright lashing out resting in a vast well of emotion right underneath her skin.
When she looked in the mirror, Jules never saw a Jillian staring back at them. It was always someone else, someone that they could never pinpoint. Lingering on the edge of her tongue, looming over a precipice, static in the air right before a lightning strike. Anticipation hummed in her veins long before she had a name for the sensation β they were born six days late to Kenneth and Cari, parents nearly a dozen times over by the time Jules came into the world, red faced and screaming. Ken and Cari had met in their middle school days, the both of them all too familiar with a childhood spent bouncing from one foster home to the next. They liked to consider each other true found family, something theyβd pieced together over the years of knowing guttural heartache and longing that came with the territory of belonging to the state. They belonged to each other, even after the pair were adopted by respective families. Ken and Cari knew that in some cases, you did choose your family, and they opted to choose each other. The dominos continued falling as the universe perfectly aligned things for the two of them, a long overdue hand to swing things in their favor: they got married shortly after college, and began expanding upon their family by opening their doors to foster children.
Jules would be the second biological child out of seven children total; Ken and Cari adopted two children prior to Julesβs birth after a complicated pregnancy, and proceeded to adopt three more after Jules. Life was nothing short of chaotic, messy, an outside of the lines kind of colorful underneath the Liao roof, where pennies were often made to stretch miles beyond the terrain they were meant for but every child went to bed with a full stomach and a full heart, which, for Ken and Cari, was all they could ask for. For Jules, it meant a boisterous upbringing with a plethora of built-in best friends and what felt like a never ending adventure every time they walked through the doors of their home.
Merrock was home; always had been, and despite best efforts, always would be. School did not come easily to Jules. Their interest was typically elsewhere, buried in the inner workings of the social scene that they were dedicated in rooting themselves amidst or in someoneβs car during science listening to the newest CD release for the first time. Structure and formality and the traditionalism of an education hurt her brain more than it grew it β she felt trapped when it came to academia. People and music liberated them, though, perhaps the two pillars of their life that only grew sturdier when the feelings of inferiority and insecurities of academics targeted their weak spots. Childhood, adolescence, all of the moments of liberation without responsibility sat comfortably in Julesβs hands. She didnβt want to give that up, while everyone else around her couldnβt wait to grow up, graduate, and leave their small town in favor of the world. It brought about the seeds of shame deep under Julesβs skin, because they knew leaving wouldnβt be in the cards for them. College wasnβt in the cards, even after panic applying to a few local schools once the fear of being left behind by the people she loved most sunk in. Jules graduated and with it came an emptiness that theyβd spend close to a decade trying to fill. Β
Working bartending and waitressing jobs around town to make enough money to pay rent, Jules very quickly came to the conclusion that life had to be more than this. It couldnβt and wouldnβt, if she had any say in the matter, be some dull grey void after following a technicolor childhood. Sure, they could stand to be a little more realistic, but a fervid optimism and grit powered them through into their twenties, a time period where making dedicated playlists for each of their friends for any and all occasions and the very brief stint of DJing at weddings and local bar mitzvahs opened up a small window in the corner for them. Theyβd make weekend trips to Boston, Philly, even New York to see if major radio stations or record labels would take her on as an intern, eager to have a purpose to the days and work in a career surrounded by the medium that supplied the purpose in their life. It quite literally took banging down doors to so much as stick her arm into the room, but at twenty-three, Jules managed to score a summer internship program at a label in New York with another cluster of college seniors and fresh graduates, all chasing down the exact same dream.
They dreamed of working as a promotional representative, maybe even to scale the ranks someday and be in charge of a cluster of artists, but the problem was, the ladders they needed to climb were missing rungs and took sharp turns and were over-crowded. Zest was not their problem, and there was no fear of burnout, but the competition bit even harder than she did. At the end of the summer, when nearly all of their money had ran out after their big summer in the city and everyone else was being offered jobs or content to scrape along at the bottom of the barrel, Jules was disillusioned that her best had somehow not been good enough, offer-less from the label and everywhere else in the city, and ready to come home with their tail tucked between their legs. It was back to the usual of bartending and waitressing and swearing that she was, indeed, a competent event DJ with the added flavor of failure on top of it.
Jules hardly realized that her time in New York counted as experience to put on a resume until their days of being unable to find a good set on the radio came along; lamenting about how The Station was in need of someone with taste and being met with the response that a new late night DJ was needed. No one wanted to work the graveyard shift, but Jules was happy to retire bartending in exchange for sitting in a chair queuing up playlists. She was right at home at The Station, climbing up the albeit short step-stool of a rank there and earning herself primetime hours as a DJ, as well as their own talk show, The J Word. They watched as former classmates and friends returned back home, and it helped regulate their experience and remedy long-harbored feelings of jealousy or self-resentment, no longer feeling inadequate but rather well-equipped to help the transition back home, now a big fish in a small pond.
Jules has been at The Station for nearly seven years now, living downtown with their best friend in the entire world. Theyβve had a lot of maturing to do as the years have passed, but the one accomplishment they are most proud of isnβt tied to accolades or honors or achievements that an institution of any kind could possibly bring, something that they know few people are still able to keep in such tight clutches β their inner child is not only in tact, but nourished and loved and cared for, having found their own family in the music, the friendships, and the life that they have created for themselves without the use of a rulebook or guidelines. When they look in the mirror, they may see a fluctuating image of themselves, never fully defined, but always carrying the constant of peace with who they were, who they are, and who they have still yet to become.
