Michelle Tea: Black Wave

Andy could recognize the threat of Linda. Unlike Penny or Captain, virtual one-night stands, Michelle kept returning to Linda. She talked about her too much, in that wistful way. Everything about Linda became sort of magical. She Wants To Own A Flower Shop, Michelle gushed. That’s Her Big Dream, Isn’t That Sweet? Andy thought it was actually pretty stupid, seeing as how there weren’t really flowers anymore, and her concern swelled. Michelle loved the tattoos on Linda’s calves, the Little Prince on one leg and Tank Girl on the other. When Andy named six other girls who had either one of those tattoos, Michelle iced her for the rest of the day. Linda wore slips as dresses, just like Michelle. She wasn’t butch and wasn’t femme, she was kiki, a 1960s throwback. Her hair was sort of greasy, which was right for the time. People were buying expensive hair products to make their locks hang as limply as Linda’s home-cut bob. She would bundle the length of it into twin buns on her head, like animal ears. Linda’s face was round, and since Michelle was so often looking up at her in darkness she began to think of it as the moon, the way it caught the light and glowed. Linda was raised in a hippie commune in Vermont. She was so obsessed with corn dogs she planned on getting one tattooed on her shoulder.

Andy conceded defeat and joined their affair, which had the desired result of squashing it. Everyone felt bad at the end. Linda had bitten Andy on the lip and given her a cold sore, so now Andy quietly held Michelle responsible for having contracted oral herpes. Michelle felt like her libido was out of control and this made her feel crazy and ashamed. Linda felt that where she perhaps should have had boundaries she in fact had none. She started hanging around with Ziggy, staying out all night and showing up for her morning shift at the bookstore looking positively greenish.

What Did You Guys Do? Michelle asked Linda after one such evening. Michelle had been home in bed with Andy, watching television and eating popcorn. She was trying to live a different life, and was worried about her ex, if that’s who Linda was.

I smoked crack , Linda whispered, scandalized by herself.

Oh My God! Michelle gasped, Be Careful! She tried to talk to Ziggy about it later. Don’t Smoke Crack With Linda, she begged her friend. Ziggy was tough and could handle herself in the druggie jungles of the Mission, but there was something vulnerable about Linda, something defenseless. Michelle could imagine her falling into the gutter and never coming back. She was too gentle, she’d be a goner. Michelle would find herself giving Linda spare change as she walked home from a bar five years from now.

Ziggy was annoyed at Michelle getting all nosy about Linda. Linda’s fine , she said. Linda’s a grown-up . Ziggy resented Michelle’s suggestion that she was a bad influence on the girl, plus a little hurt that Michelle wasn’t worried about her drug intake, too. She had initiated the crack adventure and consumed far more of it than Linda. What did that say about her, then? Was she already written off as a waste case, beyond help? Ziggy thought there was maybe no one in the world that worried about her. The conversation had made her feel terribly alone, and a fracture thin as a spider web had begun to climb the surface of their friendship.

Linda wasn’t all that long ago, Ziggy reminded Michelle as she pondered the teen poet Lucretia. Michelle had made many pledges to Andy, both spoken aloud and deep in her heart. I Will Never Do That Again, she had promised, referring to Linda. How many lovers did a person need, anyway? Why was she so greedy? In her heart she prayed to whatever was listening, Please Don’t Let Me Forget How Much I Love This.

Later, she was lying fully wrapped around her girlfriend, her face nuzzled in the glossy sweet stink of her pomaded hair. Royal Crown, the grease came packed in such an aesthetically pleasing container, squat and round, its tin cover pin-poked into a relief of a royal crown. It was rumored to be Elvis’s pomade, and even Michelle would rub some into her long, wet hair to make it fragrant and less burned-out looking. It smelled like oily flowers, like the worn pillowcases of long-ago lovers. Michelle worried as she pushed her face into her girlfriend’s hair that the product would give her zits, but she did it anyway, feeling devotion surge through her: Please Don’t Let Me Forget How Much I Love Andy. But she would.

Michelle came upon Lucretia at the Albion. This is fate! she thought. Yippee! She wanted to grab Ziggy and tell her the news — What Were The Chances? — but Ziggy was deep in a pool game with Fernando the Coke Dealer and she’d just ruin Michelle’s shot at romance or whatever anyway.

Hi! she said to the teen. What Are You Doing Here? Michelle could hear the words coming out too strong, too excited. She didn’t know how to play it cool.

Huh? asked the teen. She did not recognize Michelle. She had met her for two seconds after someone had thrust a trophy into her hand, all she remembered was the trophy.

I Was The Judge At The Teen Poetry Slam! Michelle gushed. I’m A Queer Poet Too! She stressed queer not because she walked around identifying as a queer poet but so that the youth understood she would fuck her.

Oh, Lucretia remembered, Right, thanks for that. My name is Lace—

Michelle! screamed Michelle. And she hadn’t even had any cocaine yet. She was just buoyant, it was her nature.

Yeah, yeah, I remember. Listen though, my name is Lacey. She said the name intensely, and through gritted teeth. Lacey . She flashed an ID at Michelle with the photo of a blond girl who appeared to have renewed her license on the heels of a Caribbean vacation. Her hair was knit into ridiculous bead-tipped cornrows and between the braids ran little aisles of sunburned scalp. LACEY JOHNSON, it read.

You Don’t Look Anything Like That, Michelle said, laughing. Are You Kidding?

Lucretia shrugged. They don’t care what I show them as long as I show them something. It’s just to cover their own ass.

Where Did You Get It? Michelle asked.

It was in a purse I stole, said the juvenile delinquent, boastful and sheepish at once, a combination Michelle found very attractive, though not nearly as irresistible as the crime itself. A flush of something billowed like steam through her body. Michelle had great admiration for criminals and crime, though only from a distance. To be so close to a purse snatcher was heady. Why should this blond girl, Lacey, have a nice purse, a safe life, when no one else did? Lacey, who vacationed in third world countries and wore culturally appropriated hairstyles. Also, Michelle could not imagine a way to get a fancy purse aside from stealing it, and if that was her option she might as well embrace it. Might as well make a religion out of it, a Robin Hood lifestyle. Michelle had read Jean Genet: I recognize in thieves, traitors, and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty — a sunken beauty, wrote the faggot. And Lucretia was beautiful. Her lips were full and sullen. Her eyes were almonds, the skin of her face was almond, her hair was lush, and she moved like a boy.

It was Lucretia who invited Michelle into the women’s restroom for a line of Fernando’s cocaine. This would be very important later, when Michelle would be charged by her friends of corrupting a youth, a queer one. Corrupting? Lucretia who spoke of spoonfuls of heroin, tiny puddles of sweetness and vinegar, Lucretia who knew where to get speed so pure it was lavender, like crushed amethyst.

It was Lucretia’s high school graduation money that had purchased a supersized bindle from Fernando, Lucretia’s fake ID that muddled the powder on the back of the toilet, and Lucretia’s twenty that got rolled up and stuck into Michelle’s nose. But it was Michelle who was unable to stand the awkwardness of being so close to the teen, her blood newly boiling with amphetamines. It was Michelle who blurted in her characteristic way, Want To Make Out? And the youth grabbed her by the chin.