Michelle Tea - Black Wave

Really? Michelle said. Are You Serious? Do You Have Xanax For Yourself Right Now? Kyle’s words were so fast and crazed, they sickened Michelle like a carnival ride.

I’m fine, Kyle snapped. Stop projecting. I think I’m having a normal reaction to learning I’m going to be dead at twenty-six. But yes, I took a Xanax.

Can I Have Some Xanax?

I don’t know, Kyle said. I’ll have to see how many I have. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the pharmaceutical industry. I don’t want to be without antianxieties if the world is ending.

I Don’t Understand, Michelle wrestled with the information. Can’t Someone Do. . Something? What If They’re Wrong? What If They Kill The Planet And They’re Fucking Wrong And The Tsunamis Never Come And We’re All Dead?

How do I know? I’m not a scientist. I cast movies and stroke the ego of a crazy person. Do you want to know what I’m casting right now?

What? Michelle asked.

This movie about a Nordic boy who is lost on the coast of North America and raised by Native Americans and then grows up to save their tribe.

That’s So Racist! Michelle exclaimed. Why All These Movies About White People Saving Brown People?

I know, Kyle said. I’m casting that, plus a film about a really mean mother-in-law.

Oh, Kyle.

And now the world is ending. I wonder if I’ll have a job?

People Will Want To Go To The Movies, Michelle predicted.

But what if everyone loses their minds? Kyle worried. My boss is already so unstable. Things might just fall apart. People are killing themselves in New York City.

People Aren’t Killing Themselves Everywhere?

Not like there. They got the news first. And they’ll be one of the epicenters of the waves, one of the impact sites. It’s just hitting people there harder.

Michelle looked out her window, peeking through the shades. The rottweiler’s panting breath hit her in the face. Michelle was experiencing a disconnect, or perhaps her environment was. If the world were really ending, would the rottweiler remain at the window? Would cars keep cruising the freeway behind her building? Michelle could hear the smooth sweep of them, like rain.

Promise You’re Not Fucking With Me? Michelle demanded. Your Psychobitch Boss Didn’t Ask You To Try Out A Premise On Me? This Isn’t A Treatment For A Film You’re Casting?

No, I wish. Bruce Willis is not coming to save us. Turn on the TV, see for yourself.

Michelle knew once she turned on her television it would remain on for a very long time. She considered people leaping from buildings. She didn’t want to see that. Michelle just wanted to get back into her futon for the slightest bit longer. Just drink some water, let her headache subside.

I want you to know that I love you, Kyle said. I love you and I’m glad you’re in Los Angeles and that we can be close. You should come to my house today. Kyle lived out in North Hollywood, in a suburban neighborhood ten degrees hotter than any other part of the sprawl.

I Have Work, Michelle said.

No, Kyle said. You won’t work today. They’re closing everything. In case of attacks or riots or mass suicides or looting. Everything is closed but the In-N-Out Burger. Just come over.

Kyle! Really? Michelle thought of her mother: Is this a gay boy thing, this drama?

Girl, Kyle sighed. Just turn on your TV.

In the kitchen Michelle killed cockroaches with her bare hands. She’d become immune to it. Every morning they were there, scuttling across the counter, seeking refuge in the slats of the plastic dish rack. The only weapons handy were the dollar-store glasses prone to shattering, and so Michelle began bringing her hands down on them with a slap so hard it pulverized them, it juiced them. Her hand would go warm and tingle, vibrations rising up her shoulder. She would turn on the faucet and rinse the tiny carcasses from her palm. The big ones, the baby ones they called tweedlebugs — she smacked them all to death.

I Am Killing Roaches! Michelle hollered. With My Bare Hands! Michelle needed a witness. To both her bravery and the mundane horror of her life.

Michelle’s studio was full of bugs. Michelle thought perhaps the government should visit her apartment and investigate, maybe there was something they could learn about sustaining life, because the bugs had learned to work it out. Invaders, but still. Jungle bugs, stowaways on ships, on trucks driven up from the tropics. They would emerge from nowhere, alarming Michelle. One looked like a feather, it had a million wispy legs floating its slinky body across the linoleum. It was almost beautiful, except it made her throat close and her eyes water. When Michelle killed it, its legs shriveled away and it became just another stain on the kitchen floor.

Beetles fat as tanks waddled from cracks in the walls, sturdy, shiny beetles that looked fake, like a gag beetle you’d scare a coworker with. Or a robot bug plodding toward you by remote control. Michelle screamed. If she killed the beetle she would hear its body crunch. Her arms rolled with goose bumps.

Michelle grabbed a glass and captured the formidable beetle. She released it in the alley below, knowing that it would only find its way back inside.

On the first day of the end of the world, Michelle got out of bed, walked into the kitchen, and smacked some roaches. She dumped a half-empty champagne flute swampy with dead fruit flies into the drain. She made coffee. Michelle made her coffee camp-style, tucking a filter into a plastic cone and hovering it over a mug. She knew she needed to buy a coffee machine or a French press or something, but she’d been scared to spend the money. Michelle wondered if things would perhaps become free now that the world was going to end. Would people become very greedy or very generous? Michelle could imagine manufacturers succumbing to an insanity of scarcity, raising their prices and padding their mortality with profit. She could also imagine them shrugging a cosmic oh-fucking-well and releasing their inventory, allowing the world to take whatever it wanted.

If Michelle had only a bit more time left to be in the world, she wanted to stop worrying about money. The relief of that possibility, never before considered, shone over her head like a new sun. Imagine, to stop worrying about money! Michelle was born into such anxiety, it had been her placenta, the water breaking between her mother’s legs, dollars and coins scattered on the ground. They’ll nickel and dime ya to death was a phrase Michelle was acquainted with. No heirlooms, no property or fortune to be passed on to her. Michelle received bitter chips of wisdom from her mothers instead. Money goes to money, like cash was a carousel and Michelle’s people did not have a ticket to ride. Just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor man. The advice seemed to contradict. If money went to money, then a poor girl would find it difficult to find a moneyed man to marry, no? There were no rich men in Chelsea. Indeed, in Chelsea, Massachusetts, it was just as easy to become an unwed teenage mother with a jobless baby daddy as it was to marry anyone, period. Anyway, if rich people sucked so bad, why was Michelle being encouraged to marry one?

Here at the end of the world, Michelle was suddenly over poverty. The shield she had welded around her heart to protect herself from the pain of it was corroding like rust in the rain. It had felt so strong, but there in the apocalypse kitchen Michelle felt it flimsy as a floppy disk — so much philosophy, political analysis, rebellious identity, and liquored intoxication just to stave off the simple scary sadness of being broke. Michelle began to cry. The anxiety of being poor and not understanding how to not be. Learning she would die so soon had cracked Michelle’s bravado. Her hand holding the plastic coffee thing over a mug, she fed slow gulps of boiling water to the grounds. Still hungover, spacey, tired, not caffeinated, in that honest pocket, a tender, beaten place, not yet inflated with the day’s efforts, Michelle felt the broken reality of her life. She was not her mothers, but she was in fact her mothers’ daughter, valorizing a struggle that was breaking her down.