by Michelle Tea
Michelle would miss San Francisco. She couldn’t think about it too much lest it give her a panic attack. Her bedroom, that blue and sparkly place, was all but empty of her now. She’d packed herself up and loaded it into the truck Quinn had parked on the corner. Her futon was the only thing left in the room. Michelle and Quinn would sleep one more night on it, then drag it down the stairs and leave it by the parking meter for some desperate person to take home. Until then Michelle would drink with the last of her friends. She would accept drugs from the tips of proffered house keys. She would play Truth or Dare.
Michelle dared a girl she didn’t know to stuff her ass crack full of leftover rice from a bowl in the fridge. Michelle then poured soy sauce onto it and dared Quinn to eat it. Michelle had seen Quinn watching the girl, who had long dyed black hair and the eyes of a crazy person. The party was thick with uninhibited druggie sex vibes. Quinn knelt before the strange girl, stuffed with food and spread across the Marina coffee table like a human buffet. She dug her mouth into the soft, cold pile of rice and swallowed. People cheered.
The two of them were visibly enjoying the attention. Michelle watched along with the others, her feelings swirling into violent focus. She had given the dare to let Quinn know she was on to her. Michelle had bitch’s intuition, she always knew when someone was vibing her date—if that’s what Quinn was—or when her date was even thinking about thinking about vibing someone else. That Michelle could detect the vibrations before the vibers were even sure of what they were feeling gave her a sensation of superiority and power. Michelle was of some other, rarefied realm, so above the mundane sexual tensions of commoners like Quinn and this girl with the rice up her ass, their flirtations as blatant and tacky as tabloids.
Michelle was disappointed in Quinn. The girl was a two-bit stripper who couldn’t wait to tell everyone about what a stripper she was, as if everyone in the room hadn’t already been a stripper for a million years. The girl was tedious. Michelle looked around for someone to get a crush on, but there was no one left. She knew everyone already, had known them for so long she was bored of their friendship, even. The cocaine was crashing Michelle before she was even off the ground with it. Michelle hated cocaine. Her mood darkened. Why did people bother when speed was so much stronger, cheaper, and kept you high so much longer? Well, maybe some people want to fall asleep eventually, a partygoer defended her shitty cocaine in the face of Michelle’s tirade.
It’s Like Watching TV With No Cable, Michelle said scornfully. It’s Like Playing Atari When You Could Be Playing Nintendo. Michelle’s reference points were whack.
Have another line, someone gently shaped a tuft of drugs into a stream and Michelle inhaled it. She felt okay for one minute, excellent for five, then promptly suicidal. She looked for Quinn. She was helping Rice Ass wipe soy sauce from her thighs with a dirty dishrag. There were probably roaches on the rag, it had come from the kitchen. Michelle hoped the girl found one on her pussy. Better yet, she hoped Quinn found it there for her. Wait, did she really hope that? She thought about it. She walked over to where Quinn was rubbing the edge of the dish towel under the elastic of the girl’s shiny underwear. All around them it was a melee of make-outs and more. Two people were showily fucking on the dirty armchair in the corner by the window. Outside the window Michelle could see the Filipino metalheads next door sitting on their back stairs and watching the spectacle. They sat out there most nights, drinking beer poured over ice and listening to Metallica cassettes on a pink boom box shaped like the grill of a Cadillac. They were pretty cool boys, one rode a dirt bike and was cute like a butch girl. Michelle wondered if she should invite them over. She’d miss them more than half the people currently celebrating her departure. She gave them a little wave and they waved back. She was at Quinn’s side.
I Want To Kill Myself, Michelle said.
What happened? Quinn smiled. Rice Ass hadn’t heard anything. She just sat there with her legs spread, smelling like Chinese leftovers. Liquid eyeliner flicked out from the edges of her eyelids and red lipstick had etched her mouth into a perfect heart-shaped pout. Michelle tried not to look at her and leaned in closer to Quinn.
I Want To Kill Myself, she repeated.
Are you serious? Quinn asked, bewildered. What are you talking about?
You Know What I Mean, Michelle snapped, sick of repeating herself, sick of hunching over because Quinn couldn’t pull herself away from Rice Ass’s crotch, sick of Rice Ass’s flawlessly made-up face staring at her with those sociopathic blue eyes, sick of feeling like indeed, yes, she had become the psychotically jealous person at the party, at her own party, her own going-away party, this was how she would be leaving San Francisco, in ruin, humiliated, staging a suicidal cry for help because she could not deal with the attentions of her casual and married drug and sex acquaintance being pulled from her for five minutes.
You Know What I Mean, she said again, choking on tears now, and dashed down the long hallway into her empty bedroom.
I Didn’t Really Want To Kill Myself, Michelle insisted a little later. It Was A Feeling Of Wanting To Kill Myself. It Was How I Felt. But I Would Never Do That.
Well, Jesus, Quinn huffed. Michelle was snotty with tears, her face was already swelling. Her emotions were a feral animal that she could not get her arms around.
I Was Just Upset, she said. I Feel So Emotional About Leaving San Francisco And I Look Over And You’re Giving The Poor Man’s Bettie Page A Rim Job.
But you dared me to! Now Quinn was mad. We were playing a game!
I Saw You Looking At Her, Michelle seethed. Vibing Her. And I Just Felt Like You Like Her So Much Why Don’t You Just Eat Rice From Her Ass Then? Michelle knew in her gut that cocaine was to blame for this harsh scene. If the cocaine had been better she wouldn’t have crashed so hard so fast, felt so crazy. If the cocaine had been good she would have felt powerful and sexy and she would have eaten the rice from the stripper’s ass, or had the girl eat the rice from her ass. She would have done something lunatic and memorable and very, very sexy. With better cocaine she could have left San Francisco like that, high on the wave of her own reputation. Not like this, with people down the hall gossiping about her in her own living room. With Rice Ass, smug in her beauty, thinking Michelle an unhinged bitch. With poor Quinn rethinking her decision to slum it outside matrimony with a hysterical and aging femme who could not handle her cocaine—oh no, was that Michelle? That was Michelle. She wept into her futon. There was a slight knocking. It was Ziggy, calling into the bedroom. She cracked open the door.
I’m going home. You’re leaving in the morning, right? I’ll come say goodbye. Rice Ass flew up suddenly behind her. Her face, undeniably striking, gorgeous even, pushed through Ziggy’s orange hair as if through a fringed curtain. She rested her chin on Ziggy’s shoulder.
Thanks for the party! she cried cheerily. She shot a wink at Quinn. Let’s go, she pulled Ziggy by her studded belt backward out the door. Michelle listened to them clatter down the stairs, their voices rising giddily from the sidewalk below the window.
Ugh, I can’t believe she’d go home with that person! Quinn spat.
Ugh, I Can’t Believe You Care! Michelle raged, a fresh batch of tears exploding from her eyes. She’s Like A Trashy Fucking Dime-A-Dozen Stripper! Gross! And If I Had A Best Friend, Which I Do Not, It Would Be Ziggy, So Shut Up!
Quinn put her hands up to ward off Michelle’s charging emotions. Sorry, sorry. She reached out and actually petted Michelle’s head. Quinn was a Libra, she couldn’t bear for the upset to linger. She’s actually a sex-work activist, that girl, Quinn said. She does really cool work. She’s unionizing the club she works at. She read your book, she really likes you. She couldn’t believe she was at your party.
Ugh! Michelle cried. She didn’t know what to say to all of this, so she made unattractive animal noises instead. Ugh! Ack! Ech! She slammed her head back down on the futon and cried. She cried for her room, which was not hers anymore. She cried for the bookstore, w
hich had employed her in spite of her being so unemployable, just because they thought it was cool that she’d written a book. Now who would employ her? She cried for the friends who had come to her party, who she had all but ignored in the face of Quinn’s flirtations. She cried for the friends who hadn’t come to her party because they weren’t really her friends anymore, just people she used to be friends with, how had that happened, how had Michelle allowed them to drift away? She cried because Quinn’s giant palm was resting on her thigh and it didn’t mean anything.
Quinn was thinking the exact same thoughts as Michelle: that their whole connection was a mistake born of drugs, that if not for Quinn’s weakness of will she would be back with her husband where she belonged, plucking tender pops from a warm bowl of popcorn, snuggling. You know, she began, I think I’m going to head home.
What? Michelle was alarmed.
Don’t worry, I’ll still drive you to Los Angeles, okay?
You Have To, Michelle begged desperately. You Really, Really Have To.
I don’t actually have to, Quinn corrected her. She was glad this person was leaving. When Michelle was gone Quinn would go to Kabuki hot springs and spend all day in the sauna. She would find kale, somewhere she would find it, and she would eat it. She had had her dalliance with heroin, maybe she’d write some poems about it. It had been crazy and Quinn had been looking for crazy. But she was done. She craved feeling her husband beside her, the sleeping bulk of him, like snuggling down with a bear in the woods. She found her jacket on Michelle’s floor, red leather with extreme snaps and lapels. No one looking at Quinn would ever think she had a husband and you know what? Quinn thought that was cool.
See you in the morning. Get some sleep. Quinn crouched beside her crying friend and gave her hair a ruffle. Michelle shrugged it off. Sometimes Michelle felt like everyone else was a poser and she was the only authentic person in the whole world. She was 100 percent on this. There was nowhere else for her to be, no husband to return to, nothing safe, nothing anywhere. It was a lonely thought. She fell asleep trying to make it feel triumphant.
14
Michelle woke in the morning to the noise of Ziggy hip-chucking the bedroom door open. Layers of paint kept it stuck to the jamb, it required a bit of violence to pop open. The punch of it giving way stirred Michelle, alone on her futon. Her sinuses, clogged with snot and cocaine, had drained into the left side of her head as she slept, and so her face looked lopsided, puffier on that end, like a fun-house mirror or the boy from Mask. Ziggy walked into the room with two coffees steaming from their paper cups. Rise and shine, LA woman. It was incredible how well Ziggy functioned. Her neck was spotted with hickeys as if with leprosy. Her goggles held her unwashed hair back from her face, which was scrubbed clean. Ziggy used fancy face wash that heated up as it lathered. She smelled like the inside of an Aveda salon. Michelle did not know how she did it. She had been up all night fucking that girl and had arrived exactly on time to awaken Michelle, with coffee. Michelle lowered her face into the steaming cup and let the bitter cloud rouse her.
Your married woman’s outside and ready to go, Ziggy said. You excited?
Michelle shrugged. Do I Look Like Mask? she asked, touching the swollen roll of her face. Like Eric Stoltz In The Movie Mask? Where He Has That Disease, You Know, It Makes His Face All Bumpy?
And Cher is his mom? Ziggy asked. And she’s like a biker and gets him a hooker for his birthday?
Yeah!
I fucking love that movie. Ziggy pulled a pack of Camels from the ass of her white jeans and lit up in the empty room.
But Do I Look Like That?
Ziggy squinted at her friend. I don’t know, she said slowly. I don’t think you look like Cher.
No, Do I Look Like The Boy, The Boy In Mask!
Oh god! Ziggy snorted a cloud of smoke from her nose. No, you don’t look like the boy in Mask. Why? Because you were crying?
You Can Tell?
Ziggy nodded. Michelle drank her coffee.
You didn’t have a great going-away party?
Michelle’s finger shot out and poked the mottled skin of Ziggy’s neck. You Did.
That girl’s crazy, Ziggy said with a grin. She rubbed her neck and winced. She bit my fucking throat off. She drew on her cigarette like an asthmatic sucking on an inhaler and tossed the butt out the window. I should get back there, I left her outside in her car.
Who? That Girl?
Lelrine, yeah. She’s out front with Quinn.
That Girl! That Girl!
Yeah. Ziggy shrugged.
God, I Fucking Hate That Girl!
Ziggy looked unfazed. She likes you. She brought your book, she wants you to sign it.
Ugh! Michelle cried and reinserted herself into the futon, sinking her face into the pillow. Ack! Ech! Ziggy kicked her gently with the toe of her motorcycle boot.
Get up, she said. Get off that and I’ll drag this downstairs for you.
Outside, Lelrine clambered off the hood of her purple Datsun, where she had been perched, flirting with Quinn. She charged toward Michelle bearing a copy of Michelle’s book. Michelle autographed it. She inscribed, To Lelrine, On the day of my departure. I will never forget you. Lelrine looked different in the daylight, with no makeup on her face or rice in her ass. She was in her walk-of-shame ensemble of satin hot pants, a ratty T-shirt stretched like skin across her intense tits. Michelle would have to find out from Ziggy if they were real. Michelle sort of loved fake tits. It was her favorite part of any strip bar, the girls with the boobs that looked like someone had hurled them onto their chests from across the room, strong as muscles with a little wobble. They fascinated Michelle.
She waved to the pair as they drove off in the little purple car. She sat on her front stoop and thought nostalgically how she would never sit there again. So much had happened on that stoop. She’d cried, of course, over girls who had stopped loving her, and she had smoked many cigarettes, she had drunk beers. She’d written part of her book here, her back against her front door, pen in a notebook, crying over a girl who had stopped loving her while smoking and drinking beer. She wanted to nail a plaque to it, the stoop. There was that one sweet crackhead related to the woman who lived on the first floor. Michelle would often come down and see the lady sitting on the stairs, nodded out. Michelle would startle her and the lady would swiftly begin sweeping the stoop with her hands, brushing debris into her palm with her fingers.
I’m Susie’s cousin, she’d say in a stuffed-up voice. Susie said I could sit here. She’d dust a little path for Michelle to pass through.
It’s Fine, Michelle assured her. Generally Michelle didn’t mind if people sat on her stairs. Sometimes gangs of boys with bottles of beer would be intimidating, but they weren’t shitty to her and once even helped her upstairs with her laundry. Susie’s cousin was very tender and had such a strange, froggy voice. Stitch enjoyed imitating her.
I’m Sooseez cousin, Stitch would roll her eyes back and pantomime sweeping with her hands. Sooseee said I could sit here. Stitch did really good impressions. She did the Susie’s cousin imitation to Ekundayo once and it made her hostile. Ekundayo acted like drug addicts were holy and became defensive if you laughed at them, like you were being racist or poking fun at a disabled person.
It’s not funny, she said.
It Actually Is, Michelle said. It’s Actually Quite Funny. Stitch also did a killer imitation of a junkie they’d seen nodding off with a bag of chips in his hand at the gas station, but she only did it privately, to Michelle, to make her laugh. People could be really sensitive about drug addicts.
Michelle thought about Stitch, upstairs in her bedroom, her choppy haircut asleep on some strange pillow filled with barley or natural husks. The pillow was horribly uncomfortable but Stitch swore it was good for your neck. Stitch. Michelle’s eyes teared. She wasn’t going to wake her friend up, Stitch knew she was leaving. She could have come down and said goodbye. Whatever. This city was stupid. Michelle lifted herself off the
stairs and walked slowly toward the U-Haul, where Quinn sat resentfully in the driver’s seat.
15
The heat in the truck’s cab was grisly. California was on fire and once out of San Francisco the highway shimmered in the windshield like a mirage. The land on the margins was dry, even charred. The farmland decreased as they drove. The water was too ruined for effective farming and the animals were out of whack, the bugs and the birds, the pests and pollinators. They drove past wide plowed fields whose sickly crops had been abandoned. What Do You Think That Was? Michelle asked, staring at the mangled stalks, everything hay colored beneath the brutal sun. Quinn shrugged and kept her eyes on the road.
Michelle hadn’t left San Francisco in eight years and Quinn, a native, never had. The ocean was a giant toilet lapping at San Francisco’s edges, but mainly things were functioning. On the highway Michelle felt alarmed at all the dead land. These towns were abandoned. A gas station had been torched, blackening everything around it in a wide, ruined circle. Michelle leaned back against the leather seat, her skin stuck hotly to it, suctioned with sweat. She watched the wasteland glide by on the 405.
Then, the cows. The cities of cows stretched out into the trashed landscape for miles, a pixilated black and white, their spotted backs blurring together until the sight of them all became something else entirely, a surrealist landscape, an M. C. Escher drawing referencing infinity.