Michelle Tea - Black Wave

Oh, Michelle felt so romantic! The boy pulled her closer and together they made fun of the docent leading the tour, a woman who didn’t know the Latin words for anything, who hadn’t discovered that she could speak Latin or Spanish or Swahili if only she flexed that part of her brain. Michelle and the boy whispered to each other in a succession of languages, their minds’ potential illuminated. The boy’s shirt was slashed as if it had survived a knife fight and Michelle’s pants were too tight. The energy between them flashed from pure to sleazy, they pecked each other’s cheeks and restrained themselves from groping. Michelle bit back her desire to slip her hand through the gash in his shirt, to press her ass against him. I’m your Eurotrash boyfriend, he murmured in Castilian Spanish. Their love expanded as they expressed it in Norwegian, German, Italian. So many nuanced words! Different kinds of words for different kinds of love and Michelle felt them all — sad love, inspired love, hopeless love, affectionate love, friendly love, desperate love, passionate love, murderous love, respectful love, platonic love, forbidden love, trashy love, sacred love, holy love. Michelle’s heart felt full and drooping as the blowsiest rose in the garden. The boy’s attentions buzzed inside it. She was so open to him, she shed pollen on the cobblestones.

The boy did not like how the designer of this garden had deliberately starved certain plants of water so that their stressed-out leaves would turn a more pleasing color. Neither of them liked how the designer had employed a worker to pluck every other leaf from the canopy of trees arcing above them so that the light filtering through the branches would be dappled just so. What A Control Freak, Michelle said, in French, just to hear the chic sound of it sliding from her mouth. She was concerned for the worker charged with this duty, imagined him a Mexican man struggling on a ladder, earning minimum wage, slowly losing his mind as he scanned the boughs — pluck a leaf, leave a leaf, pluck a leaf, leave a leaf — the cancerous sun mutating his body. His body, Michelle imagined, would be heavy, would wear coveralls, a navy blue jumpsuit sewn from stiff fabric. She thought she would maybe write a story about him, this man who plucked leaves in service to a megalomaniacal garden designer. She shared her inspiration with the boy, who gave her waist a squeeze.

I want to know your work, he told her in Armenian. I want to become familiar with your praxis. His hands, tipped with slender fingers, gestured out from his chest as he spoke, as if his desire were a gift he offered from his heart. Michelle didn’t know what praxis was, but she felt elated that the boy believed she had it, was dizzy with his desire to become familiar with it.

The boy’s work was flowers, plants. He believed it was people like the mad garden designer, with his need to manipulate nature like plastic putty, who brought problems into their world. The designer’s artificial aesthetic was a poison in the garden. The boy wanted to feed the thirsty plants water, to restore them to their native, less flamboyant color. He wanted to return the missing leaves to the anemic branches that rustled above them. Michelle wanted that, too. She imagined how damp and green the air would feel beneath a lush canopy, how shaded, how the boy would kiss her, brushing the animal fur of his cheeks against her skin, his gentle mustache. With every step Michelle could feel the pressure of a ghost hand between her legs and knew that the imprint was his, the boy had been there, had worked her like a puzzle box. With each step she savored the sweet, dull pain of how he’d solved her.

In her dream Michelle pulled a cell phone from her purse to check the time. Dreaming Michelle had a cell phone — observing Michelle noted this absurdity. Michelle didn’t want to be late to meet Kyle, Kyle was in the garden, too, strolling alongside a row of succulents with a man, his boyfriend. Kyle was in love, too! I’m In Love, Michelle said happily, for in love was her favorite place to be. I’m In Love, she blissed, Just Like Kyle. The thoughts came to her in Mandarin and she enjoyed the choppy, chunky noise of it inside her head, words beginning in a call and ending in a trill, squeezed, almost sung. She wanted to tell the boy how special it was that everyone she loved was in love, but her cell phone melted away into a Salvador Dali jumble of floating nonsense and Michelle realized then that she was in a dream.

Swiftly, reality slammed down on the part of her mind that could comprehend Latin, Armenian, Mandarin. With great sadness she understood it had all been gibberish, gobbledygook, she could not speak Cantonese or Tagalog or Portuguese. She was in Kyle’s bed, a single damp sheet knotted around her, the Los Angeles smog coming through the open window like the exhalations of a chain-smoking god. Michelle lay on the mattress feeling the dream evaporate from her body. In the next room she could hear the low chatter of the television broadcasting the apocalypse and hoped her brother had at least fallen asleep out there.

I Dreamed Of You, Michelle told her brother. We Were In A Garden And We Both Had Boyfriends. We Were In Love.

You had a boyfriend? Kyle asked skeptically.

Yeah Who Cares, Michelle shrugged. He Was Pretty, Like Johnny Depp. He Spoke Very Pretentiously And Seemed Well Educated.

Wait! Kyle winced. His neck was tangled and sore from sleeping on the sectional. The television had infiltrated his dreams all night, but he had dreamed, and where had he been? In a great garden, with his sister. We were in the Getty! he said. I did have a boyfriend! Oh my god. . He turned and stared at Michelle. Not only did you have a boyfriend, Kyle said, you had a cell phone. That’s how I know it was a dream!

Kyle’s dream boyfriend was a terribly handsome interior decorator who was not promiscuous and had glittering blue eyes. He was gentle with Kyle and in the dream Kyle had enjoyed it! They had strolled hand in hand, discussing the health of their surrogate, a college student who had agreed to carry their baby. Their surrogate was robust and loved the feeling of her body morphing in pregnancy. Having babies and giving them to gay men was her greatest joy. The dream had been a good dream. Kyle would have liked to contort himself back onto the sectional, finding the exact terrible pose he’d slumbered in and call for the dream to return, but he’d promised Michelle he’d drive her back to Hollywood.

On the second day of the end of the world, Michelle changed into something worthy of a run-in with Matt Dillon and left for work through the back door, passing through a small, sad square of concrete that functioned as a sort of pathetic backyard. Little green shoots came up through the rocky gaps in the pavement. Seasons of dead leaves moldered along the perimeter. Sometimes homeless kids slept there in the afternoons, protected by the building’s constant shade.

Turning the corner, Michelle walked along a stretch of sidewalk owned by the Scientologists. They had landscaped the walkway with those expensive fake plants, they trusted that the scant foot traffic of Los Angeles would prevent them from being messed with but Michelle couldn’t resist. She would pluck a single yellow orchid blossom from its stalk and vivisect it as she strolled, wondering at the plasticky fibers, the cool gloss of the petals. They felt so real but they weren’t. She kept the stolen flower low, they were as protected as endangered plants had once been. She couldn’t afford to replace even a bud and didn’t need to get hauled into court by a bunch of Hollywood Scientologists.

Michelle stuffed the shredded flower in the pocket of her cutoffs and watched the Scientologists dash in and out of their compound. She especially appreciated the maids, who wore real, old-fashioned maid uniforms, black and white with little aprons and nursing shoes. Michelle longed to get a job at the Scientology Celebrity Centre, cleaning the rooms of visiting celebrities while wearing such an adorable costume, but she knew they would never hire her. The Hollywood sign sat wearily on the dead grass, a wavering mirage in the smog. Michelle entered her bookstore.