Michelle Tea - Black Wave

You out late last night?

No, I Don’t Go Out. I Stay In And Watch Friends . I Rent Movies. I Sleep A Lot. I’m Working On A Scrapbook Project That Is Taking Up A Lot Of My Time.

You writing another book?

Yeah, Michelle lied. It’s Just In My Head Right Now. I Have To Write It There First And Then Put It On The Computer.

You should write a screenplay, Kym suggested. Being in Los Angeles and everything.

Yeah, Michelle said. Well, Being In Los Angeles And Everything There Are Already A Lot Of People Writing Screenplays.

What’s the book about?

Um, It’s About A Crack-Smoking, Aging Psych Nurse In New England.

Whoa , Kym said. I’m not going to tell your mother that. What happens to her?

I’m Still Sorting It Out, Michelle said, distracted by a woman on the television. Her face was smeared with probably blood. On the black-and-white television it looked like chocolate, like fake blood, Karo Syrup and food coloring. But Michelle presumed it was, in fact, real blood. The woman’s mouth was open in a scream.

You might not get to finish it now, Kym said practically. I mean, how long does it take to write a book?

I Don’t Know, A Year? It Depends?

Kym was quiet, considering. You could do it. There’s that National Book Writing Month, right? Where everyone writes a book in thirty days? You might do it. I’d forget about publishing, though. It might not be worth it to go through the trouble of putting out a book if we’re all going to die the day after it comes out, you know? Kym’s voice had a certain crushed quality to it. She kept the phone jammed between her head and a throw pillow, her throat bent around the receiver.

Will You Explain What Is Happening? Michelle asked. Because I’m Confused.

The planet’s dead, Kym said, cheerfully. You know, the ocean keeps rising and it’s so awful, it’s full of computers. And the weather patterns have changed and the hurricanes are getting so much worse, there’s a chain of tsunamis somewhere out in the middle of the ocean and they’re just going to take out most of Southeast Asia sometime this year, and the drinkable water is all but gone, there are all those water riots, we had some this year, not New England we but America we, I think maybe you had some down in Los Angeles—

Michelle bristled at being lumped into Los Angeles we, but bit her tongue. On the television screen the news guy cried so hard his face was wet.

— and basically, you know, there’s no food, everyone has cancer, right, there’s no clean power so every time you turn on your lights you’re killing something that hasn’t already been killed while most things have already been killed, right, there’s the food shortage because there’s a land shortage because the land, the soil, is so dirty, dirty dirt, right, you know what I mean, and the nukes that got exploded last year I mean that whole region is just gone now and then there are all the nukes underneath everything and in the actual ocean, there are nukes getting exploded in the sea, can you imagine, that would make a big wave, right, and the chemical compounds being created in the ocean, these totally new, really bad chemicals are being manufactured sort of organically, well not organically because it’s not organic, what’s in the ocean, but the chemicals we dumped there are coming together and creating these totally new chemical compounds no one understands—

I Saw It! Michelle gasped. I Saw The Ocean, Here In LA, With This Smoke Coming Off It—

Yeah, it’ll kill you, stay away from it, not that you can, really, I mean, not in California right, you live right on the ocean, we do too, we’ll probably all keel over before the month is up, but the idea is that we’re all doomed, really doomed, and you know human nature is so terrible, once things get worse they’re going to really get worse, like science-fiction worse, people eating each other and I don’t know, looting, yeah, but looting who cares about looting it’s going to be total anarchy, just very abusive, a very abusive environment on earth once everything gets so bad, no gas no water no food, just total collapse. Kym laughed. We finally have something that all the world’s governments can agree on. Everyone wants to die. This whole world has a death wish, it’s always had a death wish, it makes sense, it does, it’s just sad. It was a nice place. When I was young we still had animals, we had, you know, land, with trees and grass, that wasn’t so long ago. It’s stunning how quickly things went bad. We had zoos. You and Kyle never even got to go to a zoo.

No? Michelle asked. When I Was Very Little? She had a memory of animals in a pen, small beige furred things, but she couldn’t be sure if it was a memory or a wish or a dream.

There were still some around but they were really pathetic. I mean, zoos have always been pathetic I think, but they got so bad when the animals began getting sick. Animals know, Kym said. Animals know. Watch. I bet the cats will start to die off. The domestic animals, the pets. They know .

Her conversation with Kym was growing wider and more tiring. She arranged for Wendy to call her when she returned from work. Michelle killed the telephone and returned to the TV. The plane crashes were beginning to run together, swoop crash explode, swoop crash explode. Michelle wondered how it felt to steer the planes into the buildings. The planes entered as if into water, a liquid column, smooth. Then the blooming fire, a flaring burst against the sky. Again and again they ran it, until it looked beautiful. Michelle turned the sound off. It was a ballet. It was stop-motion photography of a milk drop or a bullet coring an apple.

Beatrice phoned next. I don’t think I’m going to stay open today, she said simply. It doesn’t feel safe. Or respectful, selling things. Michelle felt a bolt of love for Beatrice. For being such a high-strung hippie, for keeping a junkyard of books open on that slick strip of commerce. For crying all the time. It’s a day for us to be with other people, she said sniffily. Michelle hung up. She was thrilled to not have to go to work.

Kyle picked her up in his Honda Civic, which made creaking, tweeting bird noises as it drove. Squeak, Squeak , Michelle made puppet noises at Kyle, pushing her chirping hands at him as he aimed the car into the sole In-N-Out Burger that had remained open all day. A giant American flag had been draped across the dead trees that ringed the drive-through. What did America have to do with it? Michelle wondered. Were people going to die as Americans rather than as earthlings? Michelle braced herself for a surge of nationalism. Suicide and patriotism, people feeding themselves to the lions with the stars and stripes clenched in their teeth? Michelle realized the end of the world might actually be profoundly tedious. That story hadn’t occurred to her.

Michelle knew that the In-N-Out Burger workers made more than minimum wage and, thus, were making more per hour than she was making at the bookstore, with benefits. Perhaps it was time to investigate the fast-food industry. It was stable, she noted, she’d just gone through Cowshwitz and had seen the gears churning. Unless the cows started dying off before they could be slaughtered, Michelle figured the burger shacks would stay in business longest of all. And even if the cows did begin dying in the mysterious mass deaths that had claimed all the other species, Michelle bet the companies would still sell the meat. People needed food and everyone was going to die now anyway. Michelle anticipated a severe drop in safety standards.

I Wonder If I Should Get A Job At In-N-Out, Michelle wondered aloud.