Michelle Tea - Black Wave

Michelle’s morning hangover and subsequent posthangover plan that afternoon was no different than any other hungover day in Los Angeles. She woke up on the futon, her head stuck to the pillow with sleep, her body dampened with a mild sweat, cooked with heat, the sunlight like lasers shooting through the venetian slats, burning her skin in stripes. She was underslept. Her body had metabolized the wine to sugar and she’d woken high from it, bouncy, her heart racing, dehydrated. Michelle woke up craving pineapple juice, rounded triangles of watermelon, long salted slices of cucumbers. She thought of San Francisco, of its dampness and mold, right then she did not miss it. She enjoyed the “tan” she was getting just snoozing, naked, in her bed at home. Sleepily she drifted away from herself, gazed down at her somewhat tragic life and found it looked good, like a Tennessee Williams play. Hangovers made Michelle tender, made her nostalgic — not for her past but for the life she was living right now, the moment passing through her fingers. She was not deep enough inside it, she had to live harder somehow, write it out, or maybe she just really needed to get laid. She should make Joey take her to a gay bar, or maybe start flirting with some customers at the bookstore. In that sleepy, sentimental moment Michelle pledged to lay off the alcohol for a while. At work she would seek out poetry books to augment her contemplative mood. She would read philosophy and self-help. She would cut down on her drinking, maybe take a break for a month. She would feel on the verge of changing her life.

By the end of her shift Michelle would feel normal — stronger, caffeinated, fortified. She’d think about how gloomy she’d been all day, how dramatic. She would laugh at herself, quietly, inside her head — how silly, how histrionic! She would stop at the Mayfair Market on the way home and purchase a bottle of wine. Why was she so extreme all the time? Get too drunk and it’s all, Oh, I have to stop drinking! Why so hysterical? She would have a glass of wine with dinner — civilized, European. She would fill tortillas with honey and cheese and let the blue flames of the stovetop singe them. Maybe Michelle would work on her scrapbook afterward, just for like an hour, then go to sleep, No calling the Pink Dot. No need to, she would just be having a glass of wine with dinner.

Michelle lay in bed teetering between her plan for the day (the same aspirational plan as every day) and her understanding of what would actually happen (the same drunken ending as the many nights before). Her hangover beat like a heart inside her head. If Beatrice and the husband came in today her hangover would be painful. If it was just her and Joey she could make her hangover funny, a sophisticated gag. She would tell Joey all about calling the Pink Dot, the flies dive-bombing the wine, and it would be funny, really funny, funny in a way it couldn’t be alone. Joey understood tragicomic lifestyles like only faggots do. Michelle would give him all the details of her nightgown and Joey would die, Joey would love it.

Joey didn’t drink anymore, not after almost dying of a heroin overdose while working retail back in New York City. He’d worked at a couture boutique and everyone who worked there was really hot and had a problem with heroin. They would go downstairs to the basement, shoot up, clamber back upstairs to collapse on a couch and stare at the customers. He got fired for dropping his bagel in front of the designer. He’d been nodding out early in his shift, standing in the middle of the boutique, swaying, an egg bagel in his palm. It landed all over the floor. You’re dropping your bagel, hissed the manager, and sent him home forever. Dropping the bagel was Joey-speak for not maintaining, for losing control, dysfunctioning. Michelle felt proud that she had never dropped the bagel at work, never, not ever.

There was another new employee at the bookstore, an unemployable rocker chick whose parents were friends of Beatrice. Beatrice was doing the parents a favor, paying the rocker chick minimum wage to alphabetize a crate of CDs in the back room. The girl was very twitchy and wore a stormtrooper doll on a cord around her neck. She’d been there for three days and had already passed out and been sent home twice.

She keeps dropping the bagel, Joey clucked.

Amateur, Michelle said.

One morning the telephone rang and rang. It rang and rang and rang and rang. Who the fuck is calling? Michelle wondered uselessly, unable to answer the phone. She wasn’t ready to be in the world yet. The digital beep trilled, the phone’s red light flickered. Maybe Joey had a celebrity sighting at the bookstore. Michelle had had her best celebrity sighting about one week ago, a life-changing experience. So far the celebs at the bookstore had been impressive but minor. Alan Quartermaine from General Hospital came in with his boyfriend, oh yes, Michelle was sure, that was his boyfriend, Alan Quartermaine was gay! Michelle couldn’t believe she hadn’t realized that, all those years watching General Hospital in the 1980s! She had much more respect for the actor. He played straight so convincingly.

Many shoppers had faces that nagged at Michelle. That was life in LA. She had seen them in commercials, speaking a single line on a sitcom, the silent villain in every movie ever, but she could not place them. She stared, but they probably liked that. All actors were narcissists. Kyle told her this. Kyle said that many nonnarcissistic actors were completely talented, but it took a narcissist’s particular and terrible skill set to make it in the industry. Michelle stared at a customer with unruly black curly hair. She was on the verge of giving up when it came to her: Booger from Revenge of the Nerds ! She phoned Joey at home to tell him.

That actor was on Moonlighting too! he added.

Oh, Right!

Then Matt Dillon came in. Apparently Matt Dillon came in all the time. He collected old rockabilly records. Beatrice kept a stack for him in the back room. Michelle had become obsessed with Matt Dillon at a young age, after watching him die in a hail of bullets in Over the Edge , a great seventies movie about disaffected youth shooting guns, having sex in unfinished suburban tract homes, and lighting their school on fire. The obsession was stoked when he fucked Kristy McNichol in Little Darlings , and went totally haywire when he embodied all Michelle’s favorite characters in all her favorite S. E. Hinton books: The Outsiders, Tex, Rumble Fish. Michelle was crazed with him in Drugstore Cowboy . Any movie where Matt Dillon got shot was an amazing movie. He was the number-one influence on her sexuality, a bigger influence than queerness itself, as everyone Michelle had ever been hot for resembled, in some vague way detectable only to her, Matt Dillon. And now he was in her store. And he wanted to talk to her. He had brought to the counter an ancient rockabilly record and asked her to play it on the turntable in the kiosk.

It looks good, no scratches, I just wanna make sure, he said in that lackadaisical voice, the voice of Dallas Winston in The Outsiders . Michelle’s hands were trembling. She got the record on the turntable without smashing it, though the needle was dropped into the groove a bit sloppily. She turned back to the register. Matt Dillon was leaning against the counter listening to the scratchy record, an old man’s voice and a shaky guitar. It sounded good, it sounded very old and unknown. Matt Dillon liked it. He smiled.

Let me see your tattoos, he commanded.

Like all tattooed females, Michelle went through the world dodging the grabby fingers of men. People reached out and stroked Michelle’s arms in ways they would never touch another stranger. The bounds of common courtesy and basic privacy were breached daily. Lemme see your ink, douchebags would mumble, their hands already wrapped around her forearm. Nice tat. Nice ink . Or the grossest, Nice body art. It filled Michelle with rage. But this was Matt Dillon.