Michelle Tea - Black Wave

Michelle allowed the pen to be shoved into her fingers. She stared at the red piece of paper. She procrastinated by scratching out the numbers one through five.

1. Have sex with Matt Dillon.

The husband looked at her with raised eyebrows. His eyebrows were wild, the hairs looked like they were having a party.

You’re serious? I want you to take this seriously.

Mmm-hmmm. Michelle chewed the pen.

We can help you with that, he comes in here — Beatrice, doesn’t Matt come in here all the time?

Oh, yes.

Michelle wants to have sex with him. He studied Michelle. I thought you were a lesbian? Michelle shrugged. Okay, okay, continue, the husband prodded.

2. Stop drinking.

3. Leave the country.

4. Meditate.

5. Write something good.

The husband analyzed Michelle’s list. I see you have a negative, he observed. “Stop” drinking. Try to reframe that in a positive way.

Nearby, Beatrice leaned on a pile of books, her elbows jammed into the top paperback, the whole stack trembling with her breath. She looked at her husband adoringly. Michelle realized they were in love. She had assumed they were just resigned to each other.

Paul used to be a counselor, Beatrice said dreamily, brushing moisture from her cheek.

Paul winked at his wife, a twitch that brought the unruly tuft of his eyebrow in contact with the brush of his mustache . I did. But then I had an acid trip and realized that people need to find their own way. It isn’t for me to say what experiences are healthy or not healthy. Maybe it’s beneficial for a soul to, for instance, sink into depression and end their life. They could take that experience into their next life and become a healer, how do I know? The picture is much, much bigger than we think it is. Anyway, back to you.

This game, or whatever it was, made Michelle uneasy. It was absolutely the opposite of how she lived her life. Michelle didn’t have goals or plans or wants or needs. The chances of them coming her way were slim, and then what? Then you were a loser. If you just stayed open and rolled with things you could be a champ. Plans led to disappointment, to regret, to chain-smoking and sadness. Michelle refused to be tragic. She would resist having plans.

Paul pointed at number two. How about “I want to be sober”?

I Don’t Want That, Michelle gulped and shuddered. That’s Not What I Wrote.

You wrote you want to stop drinking, it’s a negative. What’s the positive? I want to be sober. You want to be sober.

No, No, No Way, Michelle said. I Just Want To Stop Drinking The Way That I Do. I Want To Drink Differently.

Like how?

I Want To Not Get Drunk? Michelle said.

Okay, well, why do you drink, when you drink?

To Get Drunk, Michelle said.

Hmmm, you want to stop drinking to get drunk. But you drink to become drunk. So you want to continue to drink why?

You Know, Just To Be Able To Drink.

For what reason? How often do you drink? Do you drink every night?

Yeah.

And do you get drunk every night?

Yeah.

And how often would you like to drink, ideally?

Michelle shrugged in a full-body jerk, like Paul’s hands were clamped onto her shoulders and she was trying to throw him off. I Don’t Know. I Don’t Want It To Be Such A Big Deal. I Want To Drink Whenever I Want To Drink And Not Have It Be Such A Big Deal. I Don’t Want To Be Sober.

And the store became full with the shrill sounds of alarms then, of ambulances and fire engines tearing down the street, coming to a halt outside the gates of the Scientology Celebrity Centre. The gates were long and iron and very majestic, the trio could see it through the front window. More vehicles came, and then more and more again. Ambulances, mostly. Their sirens were unbearable. Oh, Beatrice expressed pain in her face, clamping her thin, spotted hands to her ears. Michelle took her list and crumpled it in her fist, tossed it in the basket. She didn’t like seeing it there, red in the otherwise empty bin. She wanted it to not have ever existed. Outside in the street a maid was hysterical. She was waving her hands and screaming and crying, her body racked with sobs as if her crying were vomit, a deep heaving. EMTs took her to the side. Gurneys were being relayed from the compound. The street filled with clogged traffic. Cars honked. Ambulances pulled away only to be replaced by more. Smaller cars managed to scoot around the flashing spectacle, driving up onto the sidewalk and peeling off. One woman, her car too large, climbed out of it. She was crying too, not as terribly as the maid, more like Beatrice, her expression calm below the tears, her face wet as if she’d lifted her face from the sink while washing it. She threw her keys to the street and left her car. She walked away from the traffic, back in the direction she’d come. The car behind her couldn’t accept this. It rammed into the abandoned vehicle, rammed it again.

Oh no, Beatrice said.

Not good, Paul agreed. Not good, not good.

The bookstore shook with the impact of the abandoned car being rammed through the French restaurant next door. The breaking glass sounded the way fireworks looked — a sparkling, bright explosion, slivers and shards pushed brilliantly into the air, a rain of tinkles growing lighter and fainter, a wind chime. Piles of books throughout the shop tumbled and slid, paperbacks and LPs skidding down the aisles. The shelves, crammed as they were, held together. Michelle and her bosses were ducked into themselves, as fetal as a person can go and still remain standing. In the silence left by the fall of glass, close enough to be heard above the constant ambulatory wail, a man yelled, Fuck this! Fuck this!

Oh, please don’t let anyone be hurt, Beatrice prayed.

They don’t open till dinner, Paul said. How often do I complain about that, huh? How many times have I told Allan to start opening for lunch? What do I know. They could be dead now. I could be dead, I could have been sitting there eating a croque monsieur.

They’re so bad for your condition, Beatrice said.

You get my point, though. You can’t listen to other people. Remember that, Rochelle.

Poor Judy, Beatrice sighed. This is going to ruin her vigil.

That night Judy spoke to Michelle for the first time. She came into the store as the sun was setting, the sky streaked with orange and purple, glowing down on the silhouetted neighborhood, the Scientology Celebrity Centre a haunted mansion in the darkness. The ambulances outside the gates had been replaced by news vans. Dishes of light angled at news people, stylists stood by with blotting papers and aluminum cans of hair spray.

Michelle had been collecting bits of gossip from shoppers and junkies as the sun sank. Tom Cruise had killed himself. Michelle’s childhood love, John Travolta — Vinnie Barbarino and Danny Zuko, gone bulky and grotesque with the onset of manhood — he too had offed himself, right across the street from where she had stood, leafing through photo books of natural wonders. Michelle thought back to playing Grease with Kyle as children, both of them fighting over who got to be Sandy, tugging the neckline of their T-shirts over their shoulders, Tell me about it. . stud, mashing an invisible cigarette into the ground with the tip of their invisible stiletto sandals, their bony hips swinging. Each sibling was in love with John Travolta. Michelle could never have imagined that the man’s life would come to its terminus across the street from where she stood, twenty-eight years old, the world beginning its ending around her.