Michelle Tea - Black Wave

Michelle extended her arms and the actor seized them. Matt Dillon’s hands were upon her. He manhandled her limbs, twisting them to get better looks at each piece, flattering them with his attentions, studying even the crappiest among them — the faded word doubt scripted blurry on her wrist, the poky tattoo a friend had given her with a needle and India ink. He particularly enjoyed the illustration of a young devil child peddling a Big Wheel up her shoulder.

That makes me think of that band, Gaye Bykers on Acid, Matt Dillon smiled up at her. You know them? Michelle nodded, mute. Her personality, thoughts, and charisma had shrunk up inside her body like testicles dropped into cold water. Here was Matt Dillon, fondling her tattoos, making small talk, and she could not respond. Gaye Bykers on Acid, he repeated. He swallowed, staring at her, his Adam’s apple dancing in his throat. There’s Lesbian Dopeheads on Mopeds too, you heard of them? Michelle nodded. She had heard of them.

Michelle had the word Lezzie tattooed on her shoulder, right above the devil child he’d been admiring. Michelle wanted to disclaim the Lezzie tattoo to Matt Dillon. Or maybe she should flaunt it. You never knew with a guy. It didn’t matter anyway, Michelle was so unable to converse with Matt Dillon that he eventually dropped her arms and returned to the record bins in search of more obscure rockabilly, leaving Michelle alone at the kiosk to sink into a shame spiral about her clothes. She was wearing a pair of cutoff camouflaged pants for god’s sake, like a man, like a butch. Her T-shirt — armless, thank god — had the Nike swoosh with the directive RIOT above it. She had gotten it at an anarchist book fair. It was impressively punk, expressed an admirable impulse, but was it sexy? No. It was enormous on Michelle. She wore combat boots on her feet, boots she hadidly scrawled stars over with a paint pen one night, bored and drunk in Stitch’s room. Her hair was crunchy and blue. She had given herself bangs during a recent bout of PMS. The only time Michelle felt deep regret at not having a lover with her in her studio apartment was when she gave herself this haircut. A lover would have stopped her. The bangs of course looked awful. Michelle could look forward to the hair poking her in the eyeballs until she gave in and pinned them back like a small dog humiliated with hair accessories.

Michelle was powerfully hungover, as she was every morning, and she had picked her outfit blindly. She wore no makeup. What was she thinking? She lived in Hollywood. The most beautiful people in the entire world lived in Hollywood. People whose good looks commanded millions of dollars, people who then used those millions to become more beautiful still. Michelle had learned a valuable lesson: do not leave the house unless you look ready to meet Matt Dillon.

If she had looked cuter perhaps she would have had the confidence to speak to him. From then on, each morning Michelle would look into the broken full-length mirror, found curbside in the Mission and lugged to Los Angeles. She would stare into its glass and ask herself: Am I ready to meet Matt Dillon? She would take the time to ring her eyes in kohl or stick a pair of earrings through the holes in her lobes, but it hardly mattered. She figured Matt Dillon would never return during one of her shifts. These sorts of things rarely happened twice.

Michelle stumbled from bed and answered the telephone. The curved gray screen of her little television mirrored the gray of the apartment, warped it like a fish-eye security mirror in a convenience store. Michelle caught her reflection. The bloat of her tiny booze-belly pooched out, her face was drawn and haggard, needed watering. She had untangled the dreadlocks that stubbornly overtook her head, and now her hair frizzed out around her skull, damaged and staticky. She did not look ready to meet Matt Dillon. She looked ready to meet Krusty the Clown. She looked like Sideshow Bob.

I Have To Go Back To Bed, Michelle said. I’m Sick. She was. Her reflection had hurt her stomach. I Feel Awful.

You have to listen to me. Kyle’s voice sounded strung tight, vibrating with controlled anxiety, but Kyle often sounded anxious. Twice in high school Michelle had come home to find an ambulance out front, summoned by her brother who was sure he was having first a stroke, then a heart attack. His face felt numb and his hands tingled. His heart was racing out of control, his thin body shook with its gallop. Once inside the ambulance, his vitals being collected, he calmed. He flirted with the EMTs, charmed himself out of a bill, thank god. Kym was furious. Do you know what a ride in an ambulance costs? A thousand dollars! Are you going to pay for that?

Fine, I’ll just let myself die next time, Kyle replied. You have like three minutes to respond to a stroke before the brain starts losing oxygen. I’ll be a vegetable. You can pull the plug on me. He slammed the door to his bedroom.

Is this a gay boy thing? Kym looked to Michelle. The drama?

Maybe, Michelle admitted. She thought having been raised by a Scorpio nurse who talked constantly about infection and malaise and also a Libra stricken with an endless illness might also have exacerbated her brother’s condition. The grisly medical books that filled Michelle with a detached fascination gave her brother anxiety attacks. He didn’t like hearing about falling rectums or South American parasites that swim up men’s penises or junkies accidentally injecting a flesh-eating bacteria into their bodies.

You don’t do that, do you? Kyle had once focused his nerves on his sister.

Inject Flesh-Eating Bacteria Into My Body? Michelle tried to joke herself out of the conversation. Nope.

No, you know, you don’t do, um. . Kyle ransacked his brain for its scant drug file. Michelle held her breath. Morphine? You don’t do morphine, do you?

Morphine! Her brother was such an innocent. Who did morphine? Civil War amputees? All the doctors at Ma’s work have secret morphine addictions, Kyle said. You and your girlfriends don’t do that, do you?

No, Michelle was happy to tell him. I Don’t Do Morphine.

You don’t shoot drugs?

No, she was pleased to assure him. I Don’t Shoot Drugs.

Swear to god?

Swear To God.

You don’t believe in god, though.

It’s True, I Don’t. Not A Fearsome And Punishing Christian God Who Would Strike Me Down For Lying To You. What Do You Want Me To Do?

Swear on something you love.

I Swear On You.

That morning Kyle’s anxiety was insistent. Michelle, you’ve got to get up. You’re still in bed? Get up, please. There’s a state of emergency. They’re grounding planes.

What, Why? Michelle said. She stood up. The blood drained from her head, dizzying her, then filled her back up. On a recent morning Michelle had passed out on the toilet bowl shortly after waking up. She’d been hunched over, in her normal amount of hangover pain, clutching a glass of water, and when she sat upright it was like her blood swirled down some drain in her body and her vision got sprinkled with black confetti. The glass slipped from her hand and for a moment she was not there. It had scared her.

People are jumping from the buildings in New York City. People are jumping from the World Trade Center, the Empire State, the Chrysler Building. I can’t get through to anywhere, I’ve been calling New York, I’ve been calling Boston, calling the moms, everything is a mess. I’m so glad I got through to you.

What Is Happening?

The world is ending. It’s such a mess. Scientists can’t reverse anything. The problems, the oceans, we’ve passed some point where it’s going to accelerate and become like some sort of horrible like sci-fi movie where we all start eating each other and bands of crazed rapists roam around murdering each other and no one will be able to go into the sun or they’ll explode like vampires, it’s going to get so hot. The levees in all the cities are cracking under the sea, they can’t keep up with how fast it’s rising and all the shit in it, it’s going to be like that crazy molasses factory in New England that Wendy likes to talk about, the one that exploded and everyone in the town drowned in molasses. There is some tsunami that is big enough to take out the entire West Coast of North America. They’re tracking it. It’s just a baby now, a baby wave, but it’s going to grow big enough to do that, and once it does all the waves will be like that, like all waves just become tsunamis and the ocean eats the land.