by Michelle Tea
I Am?
Totally. What are you going to do on the day it’s all over.
Michelle drew a blank. She shrugged. I Don’t Know.
Shock, Joey confirmed. You don’t really believe it’s happening.
Totally, Michelle affirmed. But if she knew she was in shock, was she still in shock? Was it like being crazy, how if you knew you were crazy you were somehow less crazy? I Don’t Know How To Believe It.
It will sink in, Joey promised. Once people start dying you’ll get it. Once you start seeing dead people. My upstairs neighbor jumped off the roof yesterday. It took her fifteen fucking hours to die. She just lay there in the back lot sort of wailing, like an animal. She’s wailing and my fucking housemates are fighting about flags. Your shock will wear off.
Michelle could feel a pull in the thinnest, gauziest layer of her denial, like a run in a pair of panty hose. Michelle stayed still for it, then shook it away. There was a vast, flat coldness underneath her denial. I Don’t Want The Shock To Wear Off, she told Joey.
Maybe it won’t. He shrugged. Maybe it’s up to you. He pushed through the door with a jangle, leaving Michelle alone in the dust and light and walls of books.
Every day the same sequence of events occurred within Michelle. She woke up hungover, totally sick inside her body. An alcohol hangover was normal, had been normal for years and years, but something had changed recently and the alcohol hangovers had become more brutal. Michelle trudged through intense nausea on her walk to work, the rise and fall of potential vomit mimicking the motion of her legs as she plodded sturdily onward. She never puked, but she always wondered if perhaps she should.
Arriving at the bookstore she opened the door with her key and did what she was paid to do. She flicked on all the lights. She turned on the cash register. She positioned herself behind the wheeled wooden cart holding the ten-cent paperbacks, the books bought against your better judgment when you could no longer endure the performance of a haggling junkie. You bought the thing for a quarter then sold it out front for a dime. Michelle wondered how the store even stayed in business with such practices, she presumed the trade of first-edition Norman Mailers on the Internet was what paid her paltry paycheck.
The dime cart was terribly heavy, especially with Michelle so weakened from drinking. It would take her forever to push it out the door, books tumbling to the sidewalk—the sun, insistent and deadly, the torturing dictator of a third world country, shining on her, turning her cells against her with its radiation. Michelle would feel faint by the end of it. She would retreat into the kiosk and stick her head between her knees, her entire body whirling beyond her control, dizziness and nausea and intense dehydration, the dew of her sweat coating her skin clammily while her throat, so dry, caught on itself like Velcro, choking her. Weak from not eating, her nerves jagged with coffee, her eyes blurred, dulled from the brightness outside, tearing from allergies or something, who knows, who knows what was wrong with Michelle. Maybe she was dying. Everyone had cancer. Michelle had had little spots removed from her body years ago, a recipient of the free health care San Francisco gave to the poor. A doctor at the charity clinic had frozen the moles scattered across her skin and sliced them off with a sharp little tool. Michelle felt like a dumpstered vegetable, good enough if you just cut the rot away. She thought of Stitch, how Stitch should get it together and go to medical school, get paid for cutting people with sharp little razors. Mornings in the bookstore, her body gone psychedelic with sickness, Michelle wished someone would come and cut away the problem within her, whatever it was.
Sometimes she knew it was the alcohol. In the morning a thought competed with the distracting illness of Michelle’s body and the blare of the alarm clock—Stop drinking. The thought throbbed at her temples as she plodded through the studio. Stop drinking stop drinking stop drinking. The chant bubbled up to her consciousness. Hmmmmmm, maybe she should stop drinking? It was an extreme thought, it gripped Michelle. It seemed sort of fun, like accepting a dare, like the clean slate of potential, a new school year begun, and Michelle, tricked out with a new pencil case clattering with Number 2s, is inspired to be the best student ever, ready to understand mathematics for the first time in her life.
That was one way to approach the thought Stop drinking stop drinking stop drinking. But if Michelle stopped drinking, what would she do? That’s what Michelle did, she drank. She wrote, too—not so much right now but that was okay, that’s what happened to writers, you had periods where you were just living. Michelle preferred to see her whole life as art, she liked to think that she was always a writer, always writing, even when she wasn’t, even when she was just trying to get out the door in the morning without puking. Stop drinking stop drinking stop drinking. Okay, fine, Michelle placated the voice. She would not drink tonight, whatever night that was. She would not stop at the market on the way home. The Mayfair Market. Joey called it the Unfair Market. Then he started calling it the Unfair to Gays Market, even though they weren’t, it was just funny. Want anything from Unfair to Gays? Michelle liked the succotash, corn and beans, light and fresh, that was usually something she could eat without getting sick. Cold food was more soothing than warm food. Warm food was like vomit. Once Michelle had seen Jon Cryer shopping in the dairy aisle at Unfair to Gays. Duckie from Pretty in Pink! Michelle had stared openly at the man as he moved past the yogurt and butter with a woman and a child, his family. Duckie! Hollywood was so magical.
By the time Michelle’s shift at work ended she would inevitably feel better. She would feel better and she would be embarrassed at how dramatic she had felt earlier, with the stop drinking stop drinking stop drinking. Why was she so extreme all the time, Jesus. So hysterical. A little hangover and it’s, Oh, don’t ever drink again. A glass of wine sounded amazing, why would she deprive herself of a glass of wine after a day of work, people in Europe drank wine all day, their children drank wine, Michelle was screwed up from being an American, Americans didn’t know how to do anything properly, Michelle would have a European glass of wine and everything would be fine. Tonight she would not stay up all night, finishing the bottle, calling in another from the Pink Dot, no way would she do that. She would not be sick again in the morning, she would stroll into work strong and healthy, her heart in better shape, actually, from the antioxidant benefits culled from a glass of natural wine, from grapes, fruit, something that still managed to grow in the toxic soil of their planet, Michelle saluted the grape and its hardy, twirling vines. Nothing seemed as alcoholic as quitting drinking. That was one thing that alcoholics did for sure.
Michelle stopped at the Unfair and picked up a bloated jug of wine, one meant for a large Italian family to sip over a Sunday dinner. She brought it home and consumed the entirety of it. Each time she considered stopping—That’s it, that was the last glass, time to go to bed—a feeling like heartbreak washed through her body. It was the saddest feeling in the world, the feeling of going to bed, of ending the drinking. You can drink again tomorrow, Michelle promised herself. Go to bed. But she couldn’t.
In the morning she trod to work, stop drinking stop drinking stop drinking. The black wave of vomit stirring inside her commanded she pause in the middle of the sidewalk to lean against a street sign. The metal pole burned her bare arm but it didn’t even register. Michelle felt crazy. How was she sick like this again? How had she stayed up until four in the morning—again—when she had not wanted to do such a thing? She did not want to stop at the Unfair to Gays after work, but she felt scared. She knew that she would. She knew that she would forget how she felt right then, dizzy and trembling on a burning street sign, she would forget all about it, and the lure of the wine would somehow seem the only sane impulse. Michelle fished in her army bag for a pen. She pulled out a receipt from the bottom of the sack and kneeling on the ground she wrote, YOU WILL WANT TO BUY WINE DO NOT BUY WINE REMEMBER HOW YOU FEEL RIGHT NOW DO NOT BUY WINE DO NOT BUY WINE. She folded the note and put it in the front pocket of her bag, where important thin
gs like house keys and Chap-Stick were stored. Then she took the pen and wrote NOTE on her knuckles, a letter on each finger.
Michelle thought of a Dean Koontz paperback, the kind she purchased from junkies for a quarter. It had been in Michelle’s house growing up, Wendy was a voracious consumer of the sort of mass-market horror novels you could buy at Walgreens. Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and books by women in which the protagonist’s handsome new husband turned out to be a serial killer. In this Dean Koontz book, teenagers were being diabolically controlled via waves that were broadcast through their town. The teenagers would band together outside the reach of the waves and make plans to save themselves, but once they got home the power of the waves lulled them and they did nothing. It was such a creepy story. It was Michelle’s story. One of the teens wrote themselves a note in a moment of lucidity, only to destroy it once under the influence of the brainwashing waves again. At the bookstore that day, Michelle flushed her note down the toilet. It had made her feel crazy to see it, the desperate, capitalized handwriting, how the force of the pen had torn through the receipt, the word NOTE inked on her fingers that all the annoying junkies kept asking about. In the bathroom she rubbed the word from her skin with antibacterial soap, then ripped up the note and sprinkled it into the toilet. After work she bought a bottle of wine.
If I take Lu out of the story, how does Michelle get sober? Michelle wondered. If there is no Lu to witness Michelle’s degradation, to watch Michelle jump out of the car at the red light by the freeway, run onto the freeway’s shrubby shoulder, and sit there under a bush, smoking, gazing down at the red lights of the passing cars blurred with her tears. Michelle couldn’t even remember what they were fighting about, she never could, and this put Michelle at a terrible disadvantage. As long as she was drunk she would lose every fight with Lu, she had no comeback for You were drunk. Did Michelle get sober in order to win their arguments?
If I take Lu out of the story there is no one to chase Michelle down when she runs away to the Frolic Room. You wouldn’t even be able to call it running away because there’d be no one to run away from. Michelle would just be another alcoholic warming a barstool in one of Bukowski’s old haunts, staring at a mural of dead Hollywood stars, trying to figure out who was who, but it was such a bad mural. Only Marilyn in her famous white dress was for certain. If Michelle couldn’t run away then she couldn’t be found. The bartender would never look at Michelle and say, Someone on the phone wants to talk to the girl with blue hair. Are you here or not?
If not Lu, then who would have come to find Michelle in the bar where she drank wine with some new friends? Who would have yelled, Do these people even know that you have a problem? That you are trying not to drink? Who would have convinced her to go home, still in the grip of fine, she was fine, it was fine for her to drink some wine—only to wake up in the morning full of despair. How had she gone and drunk again when she had sworn she wouldn’t? She must be crazy. If Lu wasn’t there to show her this insanity, how would she ever know something was wrong? How would Michelle ever get better?
12
You really can’t tell half the story. People wrap around each other like trees planted so close that they fuse together. If something happens they both fall. Then you’re just this busted tree walking around. Learning how to think again, learning how to be. It’s like you had a stroke. In an AA meeting where Michelle had shared that she was exiting an eight-year relationship, an old woman had held her hand and said, It’s like a death, and contorted her face in understanding. Because the woman was old Michelle presumed she had known death personally and was grateful for her condolences. Michelle felt like a part of her had died, the part that believed in love.
Michelle had always felt annoyance at the dramatics of jilted people claiming to have given up on love. It sounded so silly. No one gave up on love. Who could resist its pull? But now Michelle got it. It wasn’t a pose. She had pulled back the curtain and found nothing. No forever, no loyalty, nothing to stake a life on. She supposed this is what it had been like for Andy. Andy had really loved her, and Michelle had shat upon that devotion. Understanding for the first time Andy’s pain, wondering if she was perhaps a sociopath for it having taken so long, Michelle guessed she deserved it. She deserved to have the illusion of love ripped from her heart. Everyone did.
13
Most days at the bookstore Michelle worked alone, but Beatrice or her husband could pop in at any minute, so she could never really relax into slacking off the way she would have liked to. She would select a book that looked interesting, sit on a ladder, and try to look like she was just checking what shelf it should be placed on. This prevented her from really being consumed by the story the way she liked, but the husband especially was always looking for proof that Michelle was not earning her seven dollars an hour, and so she had to be vigilant. It also made it hard to steal books. Michelle had no qualms about stealing from the bookstore. Indeed she felt like she was doing them a favor by taking some of the dead weight of inventory off their hands. She never stole money and she didn’t steal first editions or anything bound for eBay. She just clipped titles she wanted to read but would never be able to really get into while balancing on a ladder at work. Besides reading and stealing, Michelle also enjoyed masturbating in the bathroom and talking on the telephone long-distance to her moms—but all these activities were risky. On that day, the second day of the end of the world, the husband came in unannounced. He was furious about permit parking.
You know what will happen? he raged, stuffed in the kiosk behind the counter, making it impossible for Michelle to retain her post there. The businesses will die. All of them will die. People won’t come here if they can’t park.
Well, The Businesses Are Going To Die, Michelle said. Right? She said this for herself more than the husband. It seemed she should be making an attempt to lift herself out of shock, but it was hard because so many other people were also in shock, and Michelle was finding it creepily easy to just carry through her day, ringing up records and purchasing paperbacks from junkies as if they hadn’t just officially entered the End Times.
The husband looked at her, first blank and then offended. We cannot lose our humanity because of what has happened, he proclaimed. We cannot aid in the unraveling of civilization. Do you want to spend the next year living like a dog? Because people will. People will die like dogs, you can go join them. The husband pointed to the door with such a fierce look on his face Michelle wondered if she was being fired. I refuse to die like a dog. I refuse to allow my world to go to hell because of this. We have built this neighborhood into the thriving commercial strip it is today through hard work and cooperation and I am not going to let permit parking destroy it, even if we’re all going to be dead in a year. He clutched at his heart as acidic bile rose inside him like molten lava. Especially if we are going to be dead. How do you want to spend your next twelve months, Rochelle?
Michelle, Michelle corrected him. She wasn’t mad, she didn’t know his name either. He was her boss. How did Michelle want to spend the next twelve months? She hated questions like that. She hated having to have a plan, ever. She knew that any plan she came up with would be a little pathetic. She’d rather keep it open, invite the randomness of the universe to toy with her. I’ll See Where Life Takes Me, she said airily.
The boss snorted. That’s imbecilic. You should know what you want. If this turn of events has a silver lining it is that people will have to know what they want. Why don’t you know what you want?
What Do You Want? Michelle asked, defensive. She had never talked to this man for more than two minutes and now they were having a deep, existential fight. And Michelle had started it.
I am living the life of my dreams, he said grandly, stretching his arms out toward the store. I built this place, every little shelf. I filled it with books and records. I make my living transferring works of art between people who love art, who love to read books and hear music. I help recycle. I have my woman. Michelle blan
ched. We have no children, nothing bringing us down, no drain on our resources. This is everything I’ve ever wanted. And I won’t let permit parking suck the vitality out of what I’ve created. He brought his fist down on the counter, jostling some office supplies and a copy of Jayne Anne Phillips’s Black Tickets.
Michelle wrote a book. Beatrice had crept into the store and hovered off to the side, listening to her husband’s grand pronouncements. The skin beneath her eyes was so pale Michelle could see tiny veins ferrying blue blood around her face. The husband turned.
Oh yeah? Maybe you want to do that, then. Maybe you want to write another book? Or maybe a screenplay?
I Was Going To, Michelle said slowly, But Now I’m Not Sure It Would Be Worth It. It’s Hard To Write A Book. It Might Take Me A While And Then You Have To Find A Publisher—
Your agent does that, doesn’t he? He does all that for you?
I Don’t Have An Agent, Michelle said.
Well, there’s one thing you can do, find an agent. This town’s crawling with them. They come in here all the time, I’ll introduce you.
Michelle shrugged. She hated when people acted like there were simple solutions to the huge problems of her life. The husband wasn’t just going to introduce her to an agent. And even if he did she’d still have to write the book, which would take her forever, and then it took so long for books to come out once they’re finished, by the time the thing got published the world would have been pulped. It was useless.
Don’t you want to write for the joy of it, the joy of writing?
Michelle used to. Back when she had first moved to San Francisco, when she’d had no friends. She was so grateful to have something that felt meaningful and filled up her nights. She would sit alone in bars and coffee shops writing, writing. But things were different now. There were stakes at stake. Getting published changed things. Her writing wasn’t a fuck you to her job, it had become her job, one that paid even worse than her day job but was somehow more important. Michelle tried to explain this to the husband but felt embarrassed. It made her sound like she thought she was so important, and she wasn’t. She wasn’t important at all.