by Michelle Tea
It’s like jazz, Ziggy explained. It’s like he’s scatting. You know? Bee diddy be bop, biddy bop, Ziggy proceeded to scat. Someone behind them hissed a shush at them. Probably the boy’s parents. On stage the poet began to beatbox, confirming Ziggy’s analysis and energizing the crowd, even Michelle. He sounded like a machine! Like a robot! How was he doing it! It was amazing! The audience began to clap along. It was impossible not to be carried away on this wave of excitement. Michelle, who loathed audience participation with a panic that approached pathology, timidly smacked her palms. Ziggy was hollering and throwing her hands in the air, making the Oo-OOOOO noise that was like a hip-hop birding call. Others responded in kind from around the studio. The boy made a sound like a needle being pulled from a record and was done. He smiled at the audience and shuffled meekly from the stage, his cloud of hair bouncing above him.
Michelle figured they were pretty much done, and then the last poet took the stage: Lucretia. Her hair was the color of faded jeans, and choppy. Everything about her was choppy—the sleeves had been sawed from her oversized T-shirt, her pants had been cropped just below the knee, high-tops puffed out around her ankles. Her face as she moved into the light was so stony it took Michelle a moment to register her as female, a recognition that immediately bled into an understanding of the teen as queer. A queer teen! Michelle turned and clutched at Ziggy wordlessly. A queer teen! Michelle and Ziggy loved queer teens. All queers loved queer teens. Queer teens triggered so much in a grown homosexual. All the trauma of their gay youths bubbled up inside them and the earnest do-gooder gene possessed by every gay went into overdrive. They wanted to save the queer teens, make sure they weren’t getting beat up at school or tossed from their homes to sleep in parks.
Nearly all the queers Michelle knew were fuckups in one way or another. Being cast out of society early on made you see civilization for the farce it was, a theater of cruelty you were free to drop out of. Instead of playing along you became a fuckup. It was a political statement and a survival skill. Everyone around Michelle drank too much, did drugs, worked harder at pulling scams than they would ever work at finding a job. Those who did have jobs underearned, quit, or got fired regularly. They vandalized and picked fights. They scratched their keys across the sides of fine automobiles, zesting the paint from the doors. Because everyone around Michelle lived like this it felt quite natural. One girl was doing an art project in which she documented herself urinating on every SUV she encountered. Everyone had bad credit or no credit, which was the worst credit. What they excelled at was feeling—bonding, falling into crazy love, a love that had to be bigger than the awful reality of everything else. A love bigger than failure, bigger than life. They clumped together in friendship with the loyalty of Italian mafiosi.
I Would Fucking Die For You, Michelle liked to tell Ziggy when they were wasted and sitting together on a curb, smoking.
I would fucking die for you too, Ziggy concurred. I would take a bullet for you. She dragged on her cigarette so powerfully the whole thing was gone in one pull. What about Stitch, would you die for her?
I Would. I Would Die For Stitch.
I would too, Ziggy nodded, without hesitation. Surely no one would ever be asked to take a bullet for another, but this was not the point. The world beyond them felt hostile, taking bullets was an emotional truth, it felt real.
On the stage the young queer seemed to know she was killing it. Michelle’s heart tore open and wept blood at the humanity of this girl’s experience. To be a butch girl in high school, to be better at masculinity than all the men around you, and to be punished for it! How everyone acts like you’re a freak when really you are the hottest most amazing gorgeous together deep creative creature the school has ever housed and you know it, somehow you know it, and everyone knows it, and no one can deal with it—oh, the head fuck of that situation, sitting on the shoulders of a teenager! Michelle’s hand was splayed on her chest like she was having a heart attack. Ziggy noticed.
Oh no, she said.
Michelle’s eyes were like a slot machine that had come up cherries. The youth looked so bitter and fierce at the smacking, stomping close of the poem, her eyes too old to be stuck in the smooth face of a teenager. She looked like she had been sustaining the ongoing tragedy of life for longer than eighteen years. Michelle’s heart had fully liquefied, was puddled somewhere else in her body.
The poet’s cheekbones were high and her tired eyes had an exotic lilt. Her dusky-blue hair, cut into no discernable style, was thick, itching to spring into curls. And her poem was good enough to win the competition.
Are We Just Picking Her Because She’s Queer? Michelle worried into Ziggy’s ear.
Ziggy shook her head. Her orange hair, separated by grease and product into individual clumps, swung like fringe. No, she’s really, really good, Ziggy said reverentially.
Better Than The Beatboxer? Michelle checked.
Better than the Beatboxer.
Beatboxing Isn’t Poetry Anyway, Michelle pointed out.
On the stage the girl accepted her trophy and did a friendly hug slash chest thump with the Beatboxer, who had come in second. Everyone who placed was masculine, had delivered poems laced with rage and anger. None of the girls, none of the little Stevie Nickses with their yearning poems of love and self-exploration, had placed. Michelle felt the sting of injustice as she observed this, then, upon remembering she was a judge, the prick of shame. She was part of the problem! Given a bit of power Michelle was no better than anyone else. Did she hate women, too? It was true she found much of the girl poetry limp and whiny, frustratingly vague. They hadn’t zeroed in on a social ill and gone to battle, they had turned their vision inward and taken the audience on a murky journey. Michelle guessed they’d all write devastating memoirs in about five years. She decided not to worry about it and went to congratulate the winner.
Mary Kay Letourneau! Ziggy shrieked, clipping her in the shoulder with their shared 40 ounce of Olde English.
What? Michelle cried. She’s Eighteen! That’s Legal!
Mary Kay Letourneau, Ziggy repeated, shaking her head. They moved together through the darkness of South Van Ness, passing Victorians protected from the street by wild invasive shrubbery and tall iron fences. The overhang of dying trees blotted the streetlights and the sidewalk was empty of people. In San Francisco’s nicer neighborhoods people with money had converted their yardscapes to pebble and driftwood, stuck here and there with spiny succulents. In the Mission nobody could afford to uproot the giants and so they eventually would tumble, crashing through a fence and onto the street, hopefully not killing anyone, blocking the sidewalk until the city came and dragged it away.
In the coming blocks hookers would suddenly materialize, women in big shoes and cheap little outfits. Sometimes Michelle would be walking alone in a similar outfit and the women would regard her skeptically, wondering if she was working their block. Men in cars would slow their roll, also inquisitive. Michelle offered smiles of solidarity to the women and flipped off the men, masking her fear with snobbish indignation, praying for them to drive away. Once, drunk, she removed a high heel and walked toward the curb as threateningly as one can with such a gait, one pump on, one pump held menacingly above her head. The would-be predator drove away. Mostly the men were simply looking to purchase sex, not terrorize anyone. Michelle understood that to truly support a prostitute meant wishing her a successful business, which translated to streets teeming with inebriated men propositioning anyone who looked slutty from their car windows. She tried to have a good attitude about it.
Michelle wrenched the 40 from her friend’s grip. She hated sharing anything with Ziggy, who bogarted the booze and whose strangely wet lips soaked cigarette filters. Once Michelle hit her Camel Light only to have Ziggy’s saliva ooze from the spongy tip. Ziggy would not take a languid, gentle inhalation but a stressed-out trucker pull, one and then another, making the cigarette hot, the tip a burning cone. Michelle did not know what to do with such a ci
garette. She would rather buy Ziggy a carton of Camels than share a smoke with her, but she was stuck. Ziggy was her best friend and everyone was broke.
Ziggy was both scandalized and delighted by Michelle’s love-at-first-sight encounter with the teenager. Her walk when newly drunk became a sort of dance, she swiveled out from her hips as she slid down the street. Like many butches, Ziggy dealt with her feminine hips by weighing them down with a lot of junk. A heavy belt was threaded through the loops of her leather pants. The word RAGGEDY was spelled in metal studs across the back, as if you could not simply see for yourself. All the dykes had recently discovered the shop in the Castro where leather daddies got their belts, vests, caps, and chaps. A bearded fag resembling the Greek god Hephaestus would pound the word of your choice into the leather with bits of metal. It was expensive, but worth it if you had it. Ziggy went from rags to riches regularly, scoring jobs at yuppie restaurants and then slipping on a wet floor and throwing her back out. She blew her cash on leather goods and rounds of tequila for everyone, plus some cocaine and maybe a nice dinner in a five-star restaurant where service people treated her like a pig. Whatever was left over was given away to people on the street, and then it was back to bumming cigarettes off her friends.
But Ziggy’s hips: a Leatherman was snapped to the belt, like a Swiss Army knife but more so. The gadget flipped open into a pair of pliers with a world of miniature tools fanning out from the handles. Screwdriver, corkscrew, scissors, tweezers. The Leatherman was a lesbian phenomenon and life ran more smoothly because of it. Ziggy had that on one hip and a Buck knife in a worn leather sheath on the other. A hankie forever tufted from her back pocket, corresponding to the infamous faggot hankie code. The hue, pattern, or even material flagging from Ziggy’s ass transmitted the desire for a particular sexual activity, right or left pocket communicated whether the butch would prefer the giving or receiving end. Ziggy’s tastes were varied and shifting and hankies of many sort danced between her pockets. That night a flash of lamé dangled from her right cheek, signaling her wish to be fucked by a fancy femme.
In Ziggy’s other pocket sat a leather wallet, hooked to her belt loop with a swag of silver chain. The nights Ziggy packed, yet another layer of leather and metal would be rigged across her hips, a heavy dildo curled in her underwear. The overall affect of these accessories was not unlike a woman dancing the hula in a skirt of shells and coconuts, or belly dancers draping their bellies in chain mail. The swinging, glinting hardware propelled Ziggy forward from her core, and, though your eyes were drawn to the spectacle, the flash obscured the femininity—like dazzle camouflage. A lot of butches wore this look, but Ziggy did it best.
Gay Men Fuck Younger Boys All The Time, Michelle said fiercely.
Okay, NAMBLA, Ziggy snorted. Okay, NAMBLA Kay Letourneau.
Not Like That, Michelle said. Just—You Know What I Mean. Older Fags And Younger Fags, Like Legally Young. Daddies. Zeus And Ganymede.
Ganymede was a child, Ziggy schooled her.
Yeah, You Were There, Michelle retorted, On Mount Olympus. You Were Working The Door. You Carded Ganymede. Michelle’s joke reminded her of a true story in which Ziggy picked up a girl with hair so short there was almost nothing for her Hello Kitty barrettes to clamp onto and who wore a pink dog collar around her neck. The girl left her ID on Ziggy’s bedroom floor by accident. She hadn’t been old enough to get into the bar where Ziggy’d seduced her.
That’s not the same thing, Ziggy defended. That girl lied to me. Just by being in the bar she was pretending to be at least twenty-one. That was not my fault.
So, Michelle said, If That Poet Lied To Me About Her Age It Would Be Okay?
It’s too late, Ziggy said scornfully, swigging the Olde English. You met her at the Teen Poetry Slam. It is too late for you, NAMBLA Kay Letourneau. Ziggy’s hips swiveled as she skipped along. She sashayed down the block, nearly running into a shriveled old crackhead woman who had emerged from the mouth of an SRO hotel. At least Michelle thought she was old. She might have been thirty, but crack is such an evil potion it turns maidens to hags in a season.
You know what to do!!!! the woman croaked in a prophetic timbre. Her lips were split with dehydration and cancer. Do it! Do! It! Do it now! Do it now! Michelle and Ziggy looked at one another, alarmed. Lifelong city dwellers, both were accustomed to the spooky public outbursts of addicts and crazy people, but Ziggy tended to treat them as oracles dispensing coded messages.
Do what?! Ziggy asked, suddenly desperate. Do what?! Oh god! I feel like that woman just looked into my soul! Ziggy’s eyes got the focused-unfocused look that only a drunk Pisces with eyes that color green could achieve. She retraced her steps and pulled a palmful of coins from the tight front pocket of her leather pants. She placed them in the woman’s chickeny hand.
You know, she told Ziggy. A bright piece of her fabric wound around her head and her eyes stared out from the cave of her face. You know!
I do, Ziggy replied solemnly.
Michelle thought Ziggy was probably crazy herself, but there was a chance she wasn’t and that the street people of her neighborhood were, in fact, prophets, apocalyptically wise, witches damaged from being born into a time with no respect for magic. Michelle preferred this story over the alternative of everyone having chemical imbalances and genetic predispositions toward alcoholism. She supported Ziggy and helped her puzzle out the cryptic warning of the street oracle.
Is There Anything You Think You Should Do Right Now? Michelle asked.
Ziggy thought.
Write a novel? she mused. Ziggy stuck to poetry, but it was hard to make money as a poet and Ziggy really liked money. Another option was moving to Los Angeles to direct films but that seemed like such an intense thing to do. Apply for a grant? She dug deep. I was thinking about doing yoga, she said. Recently Ziggy had briefly dated a bicurious yoga instructor who kicked everyone’s ass at pool. Prana, the girl, smiled after sinking the final ball, raising her fingers to the barroom ceiling in a spiritual gesture.
You Want To Do Some Yoga And Improve Your Pool Game? Michelle asked. One of the errant ways Ziggy brought in extra cash was pool sharking. Another was shining shoes with an old-fashioned shoeshine kit she lugged from bar to bar, a butch version of those Peachy Puff girls selling cigarettes and candy and useless light-up plastic roses. Just as the Peachy Puffs wore ridiculous and sexy costumes resembling the spangled outfits little girls tap dance in, Ziggy knew which garments would appropriately fetishize her labor. She shined shoes in a stained wifebeater and a tight pair of Levi’s.
Maybe She Was Talking To Me? Michelle suggested. Do It. Like Make Out With The Poet.
The teen, Ziggy corrected.
Lucretia, Michelle insisted. But the name was such a mouthful. Was it her real name? she wondered. San Francisco was full of people who changed their names upon moving to town. Trash Bag, Spike, Monster, Machine, Scout, Junkyard, Prairie Dog, Flipper, Oakie, Fiver, Kiki, Smalley, Rocks, Rage, Sugar, and Frog were only some of the individuals Michelle had met since coming to California. I don’t think you should do it, Ziggy said.
The thing was, Michelle had a girlfriend. Her last name was Warhol so everyone called her Andy, though the name on her driver’s license was Carlotta. Andy was on a lesbian soccer team. Michelle liked to watch her spike the ball with her head like an aggressive seal. Andy cooked meals at an AIDS hospice in the Castro. She was older than Michelle and had been doing this for many, many years and had been around for the terrible era when gay men were dying and dying and dying and dying. Michelle had assumed Andy prepared healthful, nourishing, life-prolonging foods for these men, but as they all had death sentences what she did was cook them their last meals, again and again. Pork chops, ribs, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, fried chicken. Hamburger Helper when it was requested (and it was). Meat loaf, loafed from whatever meat could be found. Cupcakes and brownies and pies with ice cream. Andy fed Michelle, too. It was a foundation of their relationship. Without Andy there were many tim
es when Michelle would have gone hungry, so broke and barely employable was she, so hell-bent on prioritizing liquor above food. Wasn’t Beer Bread? Michelle asked in earnest. Liquid Bread? Especially Guinness, didn’t they give Guinness to pregnant women in some country (Ireland she supposed), and wasn’t Michelle Irish, didn’t years of ethnic evolution give her a genetic gift for absorbing the nutrients in a pint of beer?
Generally, people who did not drink like Michelle—let’s call it heavily—generally, these types of people would not want to date her. It was unusual how Andy not only accepted Michelle’s inebriation but encouraged it. She bought her jugs of beer beyond Michelle’s normal price range. She procured pills from folks at work and urged Michelle to take them. This dynamic inspired in Michelle a variety of emotions. Sometimes she felt like a helpless princess being attended to by a handsome butch. When Andy was a little girl she prayed to unicorns to not get boobs, and it worked. Andy was white as a ghost with a head full of black, black hair. Her black hair fell into a natural Superman swirl on her forehead. Andy was attractive in the manner of an old-fashioned movie star, Michelle thought, or maybe it was her chivalry, if chivalry was what it was. Sometimes Michelle worried that Andy just wanted to knock her out so that she didn’t have to deal with talking to or fucking her. Michelle tended to never shut up and she wanted big drama in bed all the time, requiring her lover to be a roller coaster or tsunami.
Michelle and Andy were not faithful to one another. Theirs was a messily open relationship, one in which the boundaries were never fully articulated so could never be fully broken. In spite of this, there was the feeling that Michelle was shitting on the rules all the time with her haphazard acquisition of lovers.
An example: She had an affair with a junkie troubadour named Penny. Penny sang Johnny Thunders songs on her acoustic guitar as they walked through the industrial wasteland of her neighborhood, Dogpatch, a place not yet gentrified, with vacant storefronts and SRO hotels, in one of which Penny lived. Penny had tangled black hair that clawed out from her head like Medusa. She wore spandex pants and clunky boots with broken zippers. The boots barely stayed on her feet so there was always the exciting possibility that Penny would wipe out. Walking down the street with her was like watching a circus acrobat. Penny’s small room was padded with thrift-store clothing, mounds of it. They made out on a mattress on the floor, a muted black-and-white television strobing behind them.