by Michelle Tea
I can tell you more about Petra, but it’s the aftermath I want to get to. We made out on a pool table at this really divey bar, and when we came up for air she told me she bought my poetry chapbook at this little cafe, and the poems were really intense. She couldn’t see me anymore. She had a girlfriend vacationing in New Zealand. They could fuck other people but not have crushes, and she had a crush on me. I Have A Crush On You Too, I said. She drove me home in her truck. Then I saw her again at another bar and she asked if I wanted to go home with her. I talked to my therapist about it, she said, and she said why couldn’t it just be something light and fun and playful? Yeah, Why Not, and I was in her bed again. Up in her loft. The walls were covered with pictures of Petra. With her dog and with her girlfriend, who was bleached blonde and really sex-radical. The girlfriend was a sex worker, and she did performances about sex, and she wrote about sex and talked about sex with a slight lisp from her tongue piercing. Me and Petra fucked. I had been so filled with regret after that last session with the knife, I knew it would never happen again and I wished desperately that I had gotten more into it. I was getting a second chance, and I still couldn’t ask for it. The knife sat on the shelf with the other sex toys, gleaming its evil gleam. We did other stuff. When I launched my fist up her this time, I knew to do it hard. Petra can fist her own cooch. She told me. She can’t really get the motion, though. That was the last time me and Petra did it. I guess she liked me too much, or she worried she would. So we hung out a lot. She had me come over to her house for dinner, and she fed me amazing vegetables, stuff you really had to use your hands for. We plucked petals from an artichoke and dunked them in thick melted butter. We tore into raw red peppers and peeled juicy fat pomelos. Her dog was there. She would get horny and Petra would stretch out her leather leg and the dog would hop up on her leather boot and grind. Petra laughed. I loved her. I don’t know why she thought cutting off sex would extinguish the emotions. We were like boarding school girlfriends. In one last desperate act of seduction I wore the wig and a little majorette outfit to a party, and sat on her lap all night drinking tequila. She burned herself with cigarettes. On purpose. Held the smoking thing to her arm and gasped her little sex gasps. What a mystery she was. I was sitting on the lap of the sphinx. Unfortunately, Petra seemed immune to the majorette outfit’s charm. It did smell like mothballs. She left the party with a quick hug.
Later, we would drive to the beach in her truck, and on the wet sand she would dance with all the dogs, let them dive and leap at her like she was the great dog god. We talked about books. When my twenty-third birthday came around, I was working two jobs, all morning at a courier company, taking orders on the computer, and all afternoon at an ineffectual anarchist labor union, managing the office. I didn’t show up at the union on my birthday. Petra said she had a history of getting girls fired. She didn’t work, and got her money through scams, dyke porn movies and occasional under-the-table work. For my birthday Petra took me for Thai food and then to the women’s bathhouse on Valencia, where we sat naked in the steam and listened to this bitchy girl she knew go on and on about how one of her “slaves” was expecting too much emotionally, and the agreement was that the girl would just clean the house and that’s it, do the floors and the dishes, and now she was just getting too needy and was about to get fired. I began to understand what I had gotten myself into. Petra’s world wasn’t my world. What had I been thinking? I watched her listen to the slave owner, her matted hair hanging damply. I still felt like an imposter. I wanted her so badly, my heart hung out of my chest like some hound-dog’s tongue, pant, pant. We would see each other at bars and sit close and giggle. We’d go back to her loft and sleep together, no clothes, folded together. No sex. Then she stopped bringing me over and just drove me home in her truck after last call. Then came that final night, when I sloshed through the dark pumping bar with all the whirling girls. Petra was beside me and she was restless. Like she thought she had to be next to me but maybe she didn’t want to. I was an obligation, the little sister she had to take around with her. On the dance floor in front of us was a girl moving like a belly dancer, gyrating her hips and extending her fingers like the wings of a bird. Petra was lusting after her. She wanted to take her home, I could feel it as thickly as I felt my own hopelessness. I was a lump beside her, a little pal. She couldn’t cruise in front of me. We weren’t going out but we sure were doing something. I’m going home, she announced. Yeah, Me Too. I tried to sound bored. We walked out of the bar. She had a leather cap on her head, all her scraggly hair poking out in tangles. Petra smelled bad. Maybe she never washed. Sour scalp, b.o. and pussy. My nose ate it up. Desire, I’ve been told, is all about stink. Well. . . . bye, she said on the sidewalk. You can catch a bus right over there. She pointed to a shelter at the corner of Haight and Filmore. A quick hug and then her little strut up the street. I knew where to catch the fucking bus.
I dove onto a plastic seat and cried. I hated San Francisco. All the sex-radical girls and their slaves and their leather. I cried and wished for cigarettes. I thought I would run away. To Tucson, Arizona. I’d only just left the place. Flipped a penny when I found out my Tucson girlfriend had acquired a boyfriend. “Heads” was Javalinaland, the plot of lesbian separatist land out in the Arizona desert where I could build a shack out of scrap wood and dead cactus and spend a few months falling to the dirt with heat stroke, avoiding rattlesnakes and bonding with wimmin. “Tails” was San Francisco, where I could start smoking again and walk around lonely in the drizzle writing vague love poems in my head. It had come up tails, but I was losing my faith in the penny. Tucson would be bright and warm and slow. San Francisco was filthy. The rainy season had started and I’d be damp for months. In Tucson I would be dry, I could sit in a cafe and be far away from Petra. I would be in exile. I would need a Walkman. For the Greyhound.
I sank some coins into the pay phone. I had to let my friends know I was leaving. It was about two in the morning. Ashley’s machine picked up. Ashley, I’m Going To Tucson. If You Wake Up And Get This, Can I Borrow Your Walkman? I called Ernesto. Ernesto, I’m Leaving. Called Vinnie. Goodbye, Vinnie. A bus came and I got on it. I arrived back at my bright little bedroom in the Mission, a small, carpeted square. All my money was in a hiking boot in my closet, a tight little bulge in the toe. I took about half of it, grabbed some clothes and stuffed them into my black army bag. I took tapes, but nothing that would remind me of San Francisco. I was out of my head and probably a little drunk. The light in my room was so bright, it was manic. I called Greyhound, How Much For A Bus To Tucson? One way or round trip? Outside my window I heard some noise on the street, a woman yelling. Hold On, I said to the Greyhound lady and threw the phone on the rug, flung open my window. I saw a car, some men trying to pull a woman inside. I grabbed one of my candles, a pink candle in glass I had bought to magically seduce Petra, and I hurled it out the window. Leave Her Alone! The glass cracked on the pavement and the people at the car all laughed. They were just kidding. The pink glob of wax rolled sadly into the gutter. I got back on the phone. Sorry, I said to the Greyhound lady, who now thought I was insane. Seventy-two bucks for a round-trip bus to Tucson. I’ll Take It, I said. Who else did I have to call? My jobs, fuck them. The labor union was driving me nuts. I left a message on its machine, Sorry, I’m Going Nuts, I Have To Go Away. One of my roommates worked at my morning courier job. I left her a note to give to our boss: I Know These Are The Type Of Shenanigans That Get One’s Ass Fired, But I’d Really Like To Work Full-Time When I Get Back. I called Gwynn to tell her I was running away, and she picked up the phone on the first ring. Gwynn, I’m Going To Tucson. I’ll come. For Real? Oh, Gwynn was tragic. Michelle, there’s blood everywhere. Gwynn sometimes cut herself. Not in a suicidal way, just when she was really sad, which was often. She’d been up all night digging into her arm with a razor. Over the girl in the apartment upstairs. Oh, I wanted Gwynn to come so badly. It changed everything. It would be an adventure. Gwynn was a warrior, she was dee
ply wounded and she was beautiful. And indecisive. Oh, I don’t know, she said, picking crusty blood off her razor. She kept cursing as she nicked the tips of her fingers. Oh Gwynn, It Will Be So Good For You! Where will we sleep? I told her my friend Julisa would put us up, and if that fell through we could sleep outside, by the dried-up creek that ran through little tunnels beneath the city. I’d heard the Manson gang had hung out in those tunnels. Hideaways for outcasts. Oh, I don’t know. Gwynn didn’t like the idea of sleeping outside. It’ll Be An Adventure, I promised. You Can Write About It. Gwynn was a poet.
I took a cab to her house, on the toughest block of the lower Haight where boys grabbed her ass and threatened her with pit bulls when she walked alone. I found her on her mattress with the yellow sheets, her arms slowly scabbing. There were brown smears by the pillow. What Happened? I asked, hugging her. Justine, she said sadly. I had been in love with Gwynn once. I had wanted to save her. Then I realized Gwynn wasn’t meant to be saved. At least not by me. I got her out of the house, which I couldn’t believe. Gwynn is difficult to impossible to inspire. She was just so sad. Her whole face hung with it, like sadness was her personal gravity. We walked to the Castro to catch a train. The morning was taking shape around us, the sky slowly brightening into the deepest blue. It was the color of hope. We stopped at a gas station for cigarettes. If I was going to take a Greyhound, I was going to smoke. Romantic cigarettes on the side of the road. I was thinking that maybe I should leave for good. I’d never meant to stay in San Francisco. By the time we got to the Greyhound station Gwynn had decided to go to Oregon. Oregon? What The Fuck Is In Oregon? Eugene, she said. A town, not a person. Oh Gwynn, I sighed weakly. I knew how hopeless it was to persuade her. My energy was waning. I hadn’t slept, I was in the same clothes I’d worn to the bar, my feet squishy from sweat and last night’s rain. Before we’d left the ticket counter Gwynn decided not to go anywhere at all. We bought Cokes from the machine and smoked cigarettes while waiting for my bus to board. I’m Going To Get A Tattoo, I said. A Heart. Right Here. I touched my chest. Oh Michelle, Gwynn said mournfully. Don’t get a tattoo that’s going to remind you of a girl. The heart I wanted came from a deck of fortunetelling cards. A real heart, not a valentine. I got on my bus. It wasn’t so crowded, I got two seats for myself. I stretched out to sleep and woke up in total greenery. Outside, the earth rolled gently and there were lazy drooping trees and sunlight. This is where I belonged, this in-between place. I dozed back off. I could have stayed on that bus forever, someone else driving, always on my way, never arriving.
In a Burger King parking lot I smoked my romantic Camels. A guy from Florida told me he was on his way to Phoenix, to quit heroin. Greyhound is the coach of the desperate. He had his own cigarettes to smoke. We sat in our stories and stared out the windows. I realized I hadn’t brought any socks. My boots, these plasticky things I had bought at Payless when I was vegan, were falling apart. My toes felt pruny. It took sixteen hours to get to Tucson, we pulled into town around four in the morning. Half-asleep, I stumbled with my stuff to the Hotel Congress, where the Dillinger gang once hid out and was nearly caught by the law. One of the outlaws was shot out front and died in a puddle of blood. It was a hotel for fugitives. I got a room in the hostel part of the building. An old room. I imagined a band of bank robbers holed up behind the plaster walls. Army-style bunk beds and a porcelain sink with a hazy mirror. White toilet and a narrow shower, a radiator to hang my soaked socks on. I climbed up into the top bunk and stretched out, wondering if I was legally allowed inside the Hotel Congress, and if there was a warrant for my arrest in the state of Arizona. When I’d lived here I got in a brawl with a bouncer at the downstairs nightclub. It was my ex-girlfriend’s fault. She had been out on the curb waiting for me and heard the bouncer call some boy a fag, so she started arguing with him. By the time I came out the scene was really heated. Liz was a compulsive liar and loved to start fights, but I really believed in Liz, so I hopped right in, harassing the bouncers, calling them macho men, mocking them with a swishy little tap dance and muscle-man moves. They were trying to kick us off the sidewalk, but we were waiting for our friends. Liz sarcastically applauded their toughness, clapping her hands about an inch from the big one’s face, and finally he grabbed her and went to push her off the curb. Instantly I was on him, kicking with my patent leather pumps. I got him good in the crotch. I tore at his shirt and his hair, until his friends grabbed me in this police hold and I couldn’t fight anymore. This was life with Liz. Violence could erupt at any minute like a big song and dance number, a musical of seething rage. Y’all wish you had penises, huh? chuckled the bouncer. He was real rednecky-looking. They called the cops on us, assault, so we called the cops back on them, assault. We went home. The police cars pulled up to the orange trees outside our quaint southwestern adobe, and the trustfund deadhead roommates went crazy trying to hide the bongs and the pipes. Three mustached men leaned coolly in our doorway. I showed them the bruises on my arms from the redneck’s fingers. I was wearing this flowered little dress. Look at her! Liz shrieked. She’s ninety-eight pounds, you think she assaulted them? My little sister, who was visiting, cried in the corner. It was too much for her. This was her vacation. Me and Liz split town before our court date.
When I woke up in the morning my socks had dried into stiff boards on the radiator. I would have to go without. I put on some shorts and a flannel I regretted once I left the hotel. Tucson just never gets cold. It was February and had to be about ninety. I dragged my stuff over to Julisa’s house. Her house was beautiful. A little adobe with a porch that cradled cats and futons and hammocks. Majestic cacti and tall stalks of okra grew in her garden. It was magical. Julisa was happy to see me. She was this voluptuous, earthy chick who threw potlucks for Earth First! and worked at a day-care center. I went to work with her and hung out with the kids. They thought I was a boy. I had no hair, I’d left my wig in San Francisco. With Petra. I couldn’t stop talking about her, and Julisa wanted to know everything. She was curious and fascinated and judgmental and then insisted she wasn’t being judgmental. We were eating cheap delicious food at a Guatemalan restaurant. You had rough sex? she asked plainly. Yeah. You liked it? Yeah. I do not like rough sex, she said to her boyfriend, a hippie. He didn’t either. That’s Great, I said, and drank my beer. Around the corner from Julisa’s house was a little tattoo shop called Denim & Doilies. I went there with my little fortunetelling card and some money. The tattoo guy’s name was Picasso, this big biker guy, his hair held back with a studded piece of leather. Now that’s a real heart, he said appreciatively. He took me around back to the private room with the reclining chair, and stuck the outline of the heart onto me with some Speed Stick. I had no reference point for tattoos, I didn’t know how much they should cost or what they should feel like. Now I know that Picasso ripped me off and he was sadistic, digging the needle in deeply. I held on to a stuffed kittycat with a pierced septum and tore the fur from it. It really hurt. I felt the stinging in my nipple, which Picasso was trying to get me to pierce. One Thing At A Time, I said. He took frequent cigarette breaks, and I talked about Petra. He brought in some magazines to distract me. I picked up one of the modern primitive ones. That’s Her, I said numbly, staring at the cover. That’s Petra. She looked sharp and dangerous, her fanged chin jutting out like a dare. No shit! Picasso called out to his wife, a skinny, chain-smoking biker lady. That’s her girlfriend, he bragged. Petra! the lady cooed. She’s Not My Girlfriend, I pouted. Petra was never my girlfriend. Did you, like, fuck her? I nodded. She fucked her, he told his wife. Petra! she exclaimed again. Do you know Zanya too? She turned to a photo of another pierced and tattooed naked girl, Petra’s friend. Yeah, I Know Her, I said wearily. Zanya! she shrieked. Zanya’s her favorite, said Picasso.
You could get stuff pierced at Denim & Doilies, by this really hip, good-looking fag. His ear was a slinky of stainless steel, his hair was long and dark, he was about seventeen and he was already much too jaded for Tucson. He invite
d me to a party the next night. A dyke party, he said with a little tinkle in his voice. When Julisa came to the shop to pick me up, she had the boy give her a tour of the piercing area. He showed us all the gleaming needles and I thought of Petra’s knife. So you stick these into people? Julisa asked. Oh, yeah, said the boy. Grrrrrreat, she said. Julisa had this really sarcastic way of saying “great.” She looked at the pictures on the wall, cut out from magazines. They chain themselves together by their bellybuttons? she asked, pointing to one. That’s not codependent? Before I went to bed that night I covered the new tattoo with Saran Wrap, so the goo wouldn’t get all over Julisa’s sheets. It nearly looked like a real heart, hanging rawly outside my ribs the way I wanted, a mess of wet red and pus and salve. Gory. But when I woke up in the morning it looked like I’d been shot in the chest. I’d sweated out bunches of the ink. Why’d you do that? Picasso cried when I called the shop. His masterpiece. He’d been so proud. Now you can tell everyone you own a Picasso, he’d said, taping a square of gauze to my chest. And now I had ruined it.
That was the morning Julisa was taking me to a rodeo protest. There were all these kids at her house, kids from PETA, Earth First!, Voices for Animals. I used to protest the rodeos when I lived in Tucson. We stood with our signs and were abused by the cowboys. At one point Julisa lay down on her back and had us hog-tie her. I want to know what it feels like, she explained to the crowd. Her skirt came up around her waist, showing her white cotton underwear. The cowboys didn’t know what to make of it. It was performance art. Actually, it made me think of sex. Petra had ruined me. That night I went out for drinks with my other Tucson friend, Laura. Like Julisa, Laura was theoretically bisexual. She always had a boyfriend, but her friends were all dykes. We drank beer at this bar that had a big candy dish full of free cigarettes. Free buffet, too. The living is easy in Tucson, if you can find a job. These kids were all students. Laura’s new boyfriend was from Israel and was leading a toast in honor of a Jewish holiday. What’s The Holiday? Well, these people were going to kill us but we killed them instead. That’s Excellent, I said, and toasted. A girl sitting next to me kept hitting on me harder and harder the more she drank. She was a medical student at the university. She gave me cigarettes, eventually she was giving me hickeys, chewing on my neck right there at the table. I still had the hazy ghost of a hickey from Petra, and I figured if I could keep getting it touched up by other girls it’d be like it never went away. I have beer in my car, said the girl, so I went. I don’t remember her name, it started with a vowel. Let’s call her “Edie.” Edie had a six of Newcastle in her back seat but no way to open them. I ended up breaking the neck of one on the curb. We strained it for glass with our teeth as we drank. Come in the car, Edie urged. I Have To Meet Someone In An Hour, I said. The boy from the tattoo shop, who was going to take me to the dyke party. Don’t worry, I’ll drive you, she said. Come on, come in. It was a Camaro. I figured I should do it. For artistic reasons. I climbed into the car and Edie climbed on top of me and we made out. She had a Luther Vandross tape playing and she was singing it to me and it was really gross. What did she want me to do? Stare longingly at her? Somehow Edie found a way to kneel on the floor of the front seat and she got my pants down and put her face in my cunt. I kept thinking about how I was in a Camaro. I was doing it for Petra. She would really appreciate it. She did recently tell a crowd of people Michelle had sex in a Camaro once, and for a second I had no idea what she was talking about. Then I remembered. Edie. Edie, I Have To Go. I was wearing this necklace made of small fragrant beads of myrrh, and in our fumbling it snapped and fell between the car seats. Oh, Edie moaned. I’m going to find that some day and it’s going to make me really sad. Jesus. She was worse than me. Edie drove me to the tattoo shop and walked me inside. I’m sure she was hoping I’d bring her to the party but I did not want her hanging on me all night. I’m just another one of your conquests, huh? she demanded as we approached the shop. I’m just another notch on your belt. She was pretty drunk. The piercing boy closed up the shop and I said my goodbyes to sulking Edie. I never saw her again. Since the piercing boy was only seventeen years old I was elected to buy liquor for him and his friend. They wanted Zima. Really? You Guys Drink Zima? They insisted it was good. We were late getting to the party, which was a birthday bash for this girl, Daisy, who had phenomenal hips. I’ve never seen anything like it. She was very sexy. A few girls were in tuxedos, and Piercing Boy abandoned me pretty quickly for some other boy. I recognized a couple of girls from when I had lived in Tucson and started a Queer Nation, but they were involved in their own romantic intrigues, rushing in and out of rooms, huddling and confiding. No one was very interested in me. There was a lot of liquor and food, so I sat at the table and drank vodka and picked at the remnants of a chocolate coconut cake that was divine. I wrote a poem about Petra and her stupid girlfriend, and this lumberjacky girl in a baseball hat came over to see what I was writing. I told her all about Petra and her dumb girlfriend. I Guess I Shouldn’t Be So Mean About Her Girlfriend, I confessed. It’s ok, she said authoritatively. It probably keeps you from turning your anger and criticism inward. She was a therapist. I hated her. I thought we would never leave the party. Dykes are really sceney everywhere, not just in San Francisco. Anybody who doesn’t think so is just part of the scene. I went home to Julisa’s. She had a futon in every room in the house. I grabbed the one on the porch and slept outside in the warm cactus air.