Valencia

by Michelle Tea

  I really needed a hobby after breaking up with Iris, so I decided to stalk someone. I decided to stalk Fate. Because it sounded poetic and because she said I could. So I don’t know if it truly counts as stalking. I wasn’t risking a restraining order, or violence, or any of the drawbacks true stalkers face. Fate grabbed me in a bar, held me tight, told me I was cute. Fate was a pretty grabby person, I’d seen her go up to girls and stick her tongue down their throats as a Hello, so I don’t know why I thought I was so special. She was this really cute girl, fucked up looking in the best way, just layers of ripped-up clothes and studded leather scraps she wore in a true, punq way, not like some S/M lesbian trying to look like a bad girl. Scuzzy head of hair, blue, and a lot of tattoos. She had two Madonna tattoos, the True Blue cover on her forearm—head back, eyes closed, hair in perfect tousled spikes like a Nagel painting. Then on her shoulder, Madonna from the cover of Interview—bowler hat and polka-dot shirt, grabbing her crotch. She was going to get them covered up, which totally excused her for having them. So Fate grabbed me and gave me that simple compliment, and I went, Should I Stalk You? and she blinked and said, Sure. And I said, Really? ’Cause I Will. And she said, Sure, and let me go. That was all the action I got off Fate that night. She may have sat on my lap at some point, but Fate sat on many laps.

  Fate became my art project. I made this great note, hundreds of eyeballs with the words “I am watching you” clipped serial-killer style from different magazines. I slipped it through the mail slot at her apartment on Valencia, then walked up to the Kentucky Fried Chicken and got a bucket of gluey mashed potatoes. I had just gotten my tongue pierced and couldn’t really ingest anything that required chewing, and Fate herself had recommended the mashed potatoes. She had her own tongue pierced like three times, this clump of silver clattering around in her mouth. I sat across the street from Fate’s house and sporked the glop into my mouth, inhaled it to the back of my throat, and swallowed. You had to be careful not to inhale it all the way or else you’d choke. I was feeling pretty stupid about my new piercing, pretty fashion victim. The other night my new roommate, newer to my new house than even I was, had had this nice lesbian potluck, and all these lesbians brought over this lesbian food, healthy stuff with rice and greens, and I was starving. I’d been living off smoothies, so I attempted to eat some tahini-tofu thing, and I sucked it into my windpipe and couldn’t stop choking. All the lesbians just stared at me. I went to my room. I had pierced my tongue so I would stop smoking and because breakups always leave me with a need to make myself different. Since breaking up with Iris, I had acquired a sailor suit, just like the one my grandfather wore when he got his picture in the paper for being the youngest boy in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to go off to war. In the picture, my grandfather is skinny and kind of sinister despite his smile, like David Bowie. His eyes glow strangely. I wanted to look like that, different, so that when Iris looked at me now she would not think she knew me, that she owned any part of me by knowing it. If she had ever known me she would not have left, and I would parade her ignorance through my own transformation. Really I just wanted a new girlfriend immediately, to show her what hot property I was, how well I got on with things, and plus I missed spending all my time with someone who thought I was really great. I figured I’d slip Fate a few more notes, she’d see how really great I was, want to be my girlfriend, and I could forget all about that last one. I chopped up some more magazines and slipped the product through the mail slot, rang Fate’s bell and ran. It was pretty fun. I had some friends with me, we made a racket clattering up the street, me hissing Sssshhhh over their laughter. Bonzai, a video artist, wanted to make a movie about my pursuit of Fate. I thought I could maybe do a zine.

  I went to a play party at a warehouse space in Oakland. The girls who lived there would throw these parties where you could walk around and watch women in various states of undress having painful things done to them. This one was more of a fetish-themed dance party, though there were people being tortured. A girl was rigged up to this wooden structure, her hands stretched up with chains, and another girl was doing something like sticking pins in her, or pulling them out or maybe burning her. Quick, jabby motions that made the bound girl shriek milk-curdling shrieks. It was hard to see exactly what was going on because they were surrounded by so many girls, all watching intently with serious looks on their faces. There was a bar serving red plastic cups of beer, and a dance floor filled with girls dancing in shining leather and latex. I was wearing this leather and chain-link garter belt I had found on the sale rack at this overpriced fetish barn and had bought even though it was a couple sizes too small and hard to breathe in. I paired it up with some tall black go-go boots, and I looked like a gigantic slut. I looked like a slut a lot right then, needing attention and pursuing it with the artistry of an abused twelve-year-old girl. My heart was broken, I couldn’t be held responsible for my fashion.

  Where was Fate? She was over on the couch where the porn movies were playing, with this red-haired girl she was maybe on a date with. I couldn’t figure it out. She’d been flirting with me pretty hard recently, but if she was on a date I would have to leave her alone. I mean, the reason my heart was currently in such sore shape was because that slimy creep of a girl Emma had moved in on my true love in a way that I thought was just incredibly disrespectful of girlhood and lesbian relationships, and I was getting a lot out of hating her and feeling superior about her apparent lack of a code of honor. If I wanted to hold on to that feeling, I was going to have to play by my own rules. So I flirted with Fate, left, danced a little, wandered around the warehouse. I bumped into this girl I had really hurled myself at when I first moved to San Francisco. I had been in a bar wearing a black see-through dress and some shiny blue panties, and I pulled off the panties and offered them to her as a gift. I really loved crazy women and just assumed everyone was with me on that, but apparently it was not the case. How long have you been here now? she asked me. I Don’t Know . . . Two Years? You’ve really grown up, she said. I went back downstairs and pulled Fate out onto the dance floor. It was hard to move around because a parade of girls in intense Victorian costume had emerged from the back room and engaged in some theatrical performance involving a crawling girl on a thin, glinting leash. My beer was sloshing all around the place. It occurred to me that I was drunk, and I wondered if it was a plus or minus for Fate to think I was a lush. The party cleared out at midnight, everyone having to catch BART back to the city. I attached myself to Fate and the red-haired girl of vague status, and we all got a ride with that girl I had given my panties to. I didn’t want the night to end. You Guys Want Tarot Readings? We stopped at my house to grab my deck, and went on to Fate’s place, which didn’t at all match her rough and tumble exterior. It was homey, clean, with plants. Green, living plants. I found out during the tarot reading that Fate and the red-haired girl were indeed on a date. They curled up on the couch like kittens. It was just a first date, though. My integrity went right out the window. It wasn’t like they were girlfriends. I wasn’t busting up a relationship, wrecking a home. If I stopped stalking Fate, I’d have nothing to do. Plus, she kept making out with me. Just grabbing me in bars and planting one of her platonic soul-kisses on me.

  Ashley was having a huge birthday party. She was a Taurus, and it would be an enormous bash for all the Tauruses. Lots of lesbians are Tauruses. There was a bull theme, so I figured I would dress up like a mariachi dancer and invite Fate, a Taurus. A fact which explained her clean home with the adequately watered plants. I cut her up another stalker note inviting her to be my date, and she said ok. I was so excited. I wondered if Iris would be there to see me on a date with such a cute and dangerous-looking girl. I spent weeks searching for the perfect mariachi dress, and I found one, tight red velvet with an incredible ruffle explosion happening at the hem. I got red lace to tie in my hair, a big shawl, clunky shoes. I got ready all day long. I bought red lipstick, I bought a flower for behind my ear and another for Fate’s lapel or wh
atever raggy t-shirt she would wear. All evening I left messages on her machine. She called me back in the early evening, groggy. She had just woken up, she had had a really weird dream. She was disturbed, she’d be ready in an hour. I’ll Wait For You, I said. Well yeah, I’d hope so, she said. She sounded cranky. I spent the hour perfecting my makeup and she showed up in leather pants, a shitty t-shirt and a black cowboy hat. The pants were new. I tried to safety pin the flower to her shirt but the pin tore the flower apart and the petals fluttered onto the sidewalk. The walk to the party was excruciating. I realized we had this flirtation based on flirting, and I didn’t know how to do much but giggle and say stupid things and she just kind of nodded and looked uncomfortable and told me she was freaked out by her dream and she’d decided to quit drinking and was in a weird mood. That’s Ok, I said. Could I stop acting so vacant? What was my problem?

  The party house had a big art gallery in the front where everyone was coloring on the walls with crayons, and there was a big sketch of a bull so you could play pin the tail on the bull and win a prize. Not many people were there yet. Me and Fate went out to the backyard where there were trees and a bonfire. We sat together in uncomfortable silence. Was it ok if I drank? I had never gone on a date with a sober girl before, but since most of my crushes were drunks it seemed like a logical evolution. I got some punch and sipped it real slow. Then this big group of Fate’s friends showed up, and she went off and sat with them on the porch. They were these super-rowdy girls hugging 40s in wrinkled paper bags. I wondered if Fate had had them come to rescue her. She huddled with them on Ashley’s porch, talking low and laughing loud and rolling cigarettes. I didn’t talk to Fate anymore that night. How’s your date? people asked. I Don’t Think I’m On A Date, I said. I wandered around the party. Some girls showed up dressed like a mariachi band, carrying a shitty acoustic guitar stuffed with candy like a piñata. Birthday-girl Ashley got to slam it open on the floor. The girl I gave my panties to at the bar was there again, and somehow we ended up in Ashley’s roommate’s closet. On the floor on top of all her dirty clothes, exquisite beaded dresses swinging above our heads. We had sex and left the used glove there in all the dirty clothes, and later the girl found it. She was really grossed out.

  Ok, so I finally got to sleep with Fate. Months and months later, when I didn’t even care anymore, which is how those things usually happen. She was coming around my house a lot, to hang out with my roommate Sam. Fate was drinking again, we’d all get cans of beer at the New Star Market on the corner, drink them in my room, smoking cigarettes, and Fate would give me shit about my music collection. Not enough speed metal. Fate kept referring to Alcoholics Anonymous. She called it The Cult, there were all these people in The Cult trying to get her to quit her drinking. Her face was dark when she talked about it. Her asshole sober boss who pushed her to go to meetings and then fired her when she “slipped,” picked up a bottle again and drank from it. I don’t know, I could never come up with a good reason not to have a beer, so I completely understood. Plus, she looked good with a beer in her hand. Now she had no job and nowhere to live. She was couch-surfing, staying up in Bernal Heights, housesitting for a girl who was on tour with her band. She had me come over and give her a tarot reading. The place was empty and she had Metallica on the gigantic stereo. She sang along in a muttery way, not too showy but you understood she knew the song well and that it mattered. I don’t know which song. When I spread the cards out on the big bed and Fate sprawled out next to me, belly down, I really thought we were going to have sex. But then she started crying. All the cards were bad. I didn’t know what to say. It’s ok, she said and wiped her face. I was impressed with how easily she cried in front of me. She didn’t seem at all embarrassed, her slick, reddened face was opened, soaking in the meanings of all her little destinies. I looked at her respectfully, feeling ashamed and dumb for having thought she was luring me over for sex. Did I think she was a stud? I gave her some money for cigarettes and left.

  A few weeks later, at the dyke bar, Fate came on to me like weather, a front of clouds, a boozy kiss and Can I come home with you tonight? Finally. Sure, I said. But something was off. Fate was manic drunk, I recognized it because it’s the kind of drunk I get too. When the bar closed down for the night I took Fate across the street to my bandmate Tommy’s house. Tommy’s new girlfriend, Bee, was in the band too, an amazing guitarist. But Tommy and Bee were cranky punk rock snobs. They adhered to the strict Pacific Northwest girlpunk tradition, as found in Portland and Olympia. Clean, grrl-positive kids with short hair and little sweaters, pegged pants and deliberate ethics. Middle-class and youth-worshiping, but with a consciousness about classism and ageism. They did not like drunken Fate, she seemed a hesher beside their streamlined aesthetic, a bull in the china shop of their kitchen. She picked up their instruments without asking and started plucking, the big taboo. She’s Cool, I kept mouthing, while they kept a mother’s eye on the bass held awkwardly in Fate’s inebriated paws. I think she did drop it. Onto the linoleum with a thud and a twang. It was time to take Fate home.

  The fucking happened so fast that by the time I realized I didn’t want it, it was over. Fate fucked me quick and rough with her grubby hands, impatiently pushing fingers into me, and I understood that she didn’t want it either. She was earning her keep. She only wanted to sleep, and to cuddle. She pulled her hand out of me and curled herself around my back tightly, as if there were something between us. It seemed like a brave and vulnerable thing to do, like when she cried above my tarot cards. I lay there with her foreign arm clutching me, knowing that she thought she’d earned this rest and closeness with the brief, perfunctory fuck. I had a tangled, icky feeling like a confusing, hungover morning. When I woke up, I found blood sticky on my thighs, seeping out from where her hand had torn me.

  17

  Spacegirl was worried about me. She thought I was dying of cancer. We hadn’t met yet, she was watching me on the cafe patio as I tipped the pill bottle into my palm and knocked back the tablets. There was that weird bald spot on the back of my head. I remember clearly that warm day, the medicine I was taking. I had a pussy infection. Something common enough, not gonorrhea or anything, but it made my pussy smell fishy. I was supposed to keep out of the sun, and I didn’t, so I got a really bad sunburn. Spacegirl was there, watching. Now that I think about it, she probably would have fallen right in love with me had I been dying. She was the kind of girl who would do really well with a weak, cancer-ridden girlfriend. She could be self-sacrificing and carry herself with a deep and noble sadness. Spacegirl had a motorcycle. It was a piece of shit, clunky black, and she had to start it with a screwdriver. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Spacegirl stared with concern on the patio, and she cornered me later at the bar. I saw her aiming her big body at me, her boots thudding heavy on the wood floor. When I heard her speak, all her makeup made sense. I had already been exposed to the southern phenomenon of butch girls and cosmetics, so her twang explained for me the powdery film on her face, the dark red lipstick. Are they contacting you? she asked, incredibly serious, her fingers touching the UFOs tattooed on my arm. Aaah, No. They will, she nodded. Obviously Spacegirl was a prophet. She grabbed my arm and monologued me for nearly an hour, and when she was done, I went and sat alone at the edge of the dance floor, letting everything she said sink in. It’s coming, Spacegirl had said. It was all coming and couldn’t you just feel it? Couldn’t you feel the end of everything, growing bigger like a hunger that chewed at your belly? Oh, I was so hungry for the end of the world right then. I was so bored. Spacegirl had been living in New Mexico where there were joint government-alien bases burrowed under the ground, enormous subterranean complexes stuffed with magnetic propulsion crafts and hybrid beings suspended in glowing tanks. Spacegirl saw them flying in the sky, she heard them pattering on her roof like elves. She left her radio on at night like that David Bowie song, and they talked to her as she slept. I’m not scared, she said, and nothing could do it for me like a tough girl
talking shit about UFOs in a southern accent. When they come down I’m gonna light up a cigarette and walk right in and say, “Whaddaya all eatin’, I’m cookin’.”

  Spacegirl was a liar. I didn’t care. She lied right to my face and I let her, pushed her to unwind these stories into vast landscapes that I wanted so badly to believe in. It is a true talent, one I’ve witnessed mostly in drag queens, to tell lies so detailed and glorious that your victims don’t even care that they’re being taken for fools, gladly they become gigantic fools, and I was a fool for Shelly. That was her real name. “Spacegirl” came about because no one would know who I was talking about so I’d have to yell Spacegirl! Spacegirl! until that’s all anybody called her. Shelly was tall and looked strong, like she could really kick up some shit. Her hair was bleached and greasy with long bangs that fell into her face, pasty white with all that makeup. Her nose went up like a ski slope and her eyes were tiny. I kept trying to figure out if I liked her. The makeup threw me off, but I did know that I absolutely needed to impress her.

  We were together at a bar and I was explaining the bald spot on the back of my head. Usually people think I did it on purpose, shaved a hole to be weird or cool or something. It drives me crazy. I always think they must see me as such a really dumb person to think I would do that. I was glad Shelly had thought it was cancer. Really it was a birthmark, or used to be a birthmark. This mass of bumpy brown skin, sprouting hairs, bleeding when my mother ran the brush over it, really gross. They brought me to a doctor and the doctor said if I didn’t get rid of it by the time I hit puberty I could get cancer and die, so Shelly had something right. I had to have an operation. I remember being on a stretcher, the bright lights of the ceiling whizzing by like lines on a highway. It was one of the Shriners Hospitals, where burned people came from all over the world to get better, and I was lucky to live so close to it. I saw a small boy in a wheelchair, the doctors were building him a new nose. He had two holes in his face and some bandages like scaffolding. Big doctors pushed me around like a shopping cart. What’s her name? Swankowski? They told Polish jokes. They had a mask of gas to knock me out. Did I want bubble gum or cherry? I picked cherry and the mask came down over my face, heavy plastic and rubber, and the doctors were liars, it didn’t taste like cherry, it tasted like death, thick poison death. I kicked and swung at the guy for all of three seconds and then I was out. Then I was back again, right away it seemed like, an eyeblink, but all this stuff had happened. I could feel it. I was a flat white body in a cold empty room, sickened and aching and my head was wrapped in a big bandage. I started crying. I was about seven. I had needles and tubes coming out of my hands, stuck there with bloody bits of scotch tape. I started crying for my mother, Mama, Mama, and a little old man, flat and white on his own metal bed, said, It’s ok honey, your Mama’s coming, and I was calmed. They cut the ugly birthmark off my head, and they cut a flap of skin from my ass and they stitched it to my head, to hold my brains in, I imagined. They took the skin from my ass so that no one but my husband would ever see the scar. I figured I could never pose for Playboy. I got to stay out of school for a while, on my stomach on the couch, while my mother changed the bandage, peeling the gauze from my ass, tugging gently where it had begun to knit to the skin. Daubing it with Mercurochrome, so bright red and liquid that I thought it was blood, that my bum was cut and bleeding like crazy. On the end table near my head was a vase of flowers, orange tongues of tiger lilies and the fat yellow head of a sunflower. I got them for being sick, like winning a pageant. When Halloween came and I was still bandaged up, my mother took the gauze and extended it down from my head and I was a mummy. My mother was so scared that the operation would make me ugly. I had very long hair, thick and blonde and it was a big concern how much would be cut for the surgery. Would I be a freak? She held her breath when the bandage came off. The trauma of the surgery was still so recent that the new skin sat swollen and puffy on my head and my mother shrieked, It looks like a pancake! and passed out right there in the office. That’s Why I Call It My Pancake, I told Shelly.