Valencia

by Michelle Tea

  She was fingering her lower lip. Well, listen to this. Shelly grew up in a trailer park near the Everglades in Florida. She had already told me about how she saw Bigfoot there, all orange and furry, swatting for fish in the creek. But when she was like two years old a neighbor’s pit bull knocked her down and bit her bottom lip off her face. Did the dog eat it, or did it lie in the dirt like a bit of meat? Shelly’s mom sued the guy who owned it, there’d already been complaints and he was supposed to keep the beast chained up. She won a lot of money and took Shelly to the best plastic surgeon. They made her a new lip. Out Of What? Guess, she said. She was gloating. It was impossible to impress Shelly because she would just make up a lie to top whatever story you told her. They took a skin graft from my mother’s pussy! she screamed. Your Mother’s Pussy? My mama’s pussy! She Must Have Really Loved You, I said. Shelly wanted to leave the bar, looking around the bright darkness with wild eyes. Let’s make a movie. Shelly claimed to have bunches of cameras, video, Super 8. I assumed she was full of shit, but she left the bar and came back with two cameras, old and silver like laser guns from a ’50s science fiction movie. When Shelly actually delivered, it made me wonder if maybe she wasn’t a liar, maybe her lips were fashioned from her mama’s labia and the aliens were talking to her and the world was really going to end, soon, and shit would finally start to happen. We took the cameras into the street. I remember Magdalena Squalor was with us, and I was thinking shit, Magdalena is going to fall right in love with Shelly. Because Shelly was tough and southern and had a motorcycle and was obviously a freak. And plus me and Magdalena had exactly the same taste in girls—she was Iris’s ex-girlfriend, responsible for bringing Iris to California. But I had finally decided to like Shelly, makeup and all, and now Magdalena was going to ruin it.

  We went to the twenty-four-hour donut dive near my house, Johnny Donut, and sat with our donuts in the hellish brightness. The help didn’t care for us at all, or perhaps they were just so skilled at tuning out the clientele, the drugged and hyper denizens of 16th Street slapping down palms of begged change, the impatient kids the bars spit out lining up for pastries. Shelly sat with her strong legs spread and her boots scuffed on the linoleum. She and Magdalena both used to live in Georgia and they both loved Vic Chesnutt, so they bonded over their crusted sugar donuts and I was stuck with Shelly’s roommate, this girl on a lot of Prozac. Her eyes were really weird. Magdalena seemed in love with Shelly. Well, I didn’t care. Shelly was nothing but a big fat liar. The world was nowhere near ending, the world was ancient and it had no intention of stopping, would keep chugging on until it killed me, and I would never see the aliens. We made a little film about donuts. I ripped into a thick lemon one and let the sugary pus squish through my teeth. I filmed the pastry case, all the shiny greasy foods. I held the camera and pulled the trigger, heard the whir and click of the film inside. We wanted to film them making the stuff in the back, but they wouldn’t let us. But we’re making a movie! Shelly cried. It was really important. There was a black man in the donut shop, watching us fiddling with the cameras, and Shelly asked him to breakdance for her. What? Me and Magdalena shot horrified looks at each other. You want me to what? Breakdance, Shelly repeated. Shelly, one of us said. Why do you think I breakdance? Jesus Shelly, Just Because He’s Black Doesn’t Mean He’s A Fucking Breakdancer! What?! she exclaimed. When I was little all the black kids breakdanced. In the ’80s. They did it real good man, it was fucking cool. You really don’t breakdance? She ended up making friends with the guy. He was fresh out of prison, and Shelly was telling him a big whomping lie about having been a cook in the cafeteria of the jail he was just let out of. That food sucked, the guy complained cheerfully. Back out on 16th Street I had to pee. Pee right here, Shelly dared and of course that’s all that needed to happen for my pants to be down around my ankles. Not even in a corner, just right in the middle of the sidewalk, squatting. Oh shit no way holy shit I gotta get this. Shelly was crouched in front of me with the camera as I sprayed a dark fountain of urine onto the pavement. Ya gotta go, ya gotta go, observed a homeless woman from the donut shop doorway. That is the truth! Shelly hooted, shaking her head. I wiped with my donut napkin and tossed it in the trash can. I was just warming up. I figured I would scale the great brick fortress over on 14th Street, the old armory, this enormous abandoned castle. On one side skaters hang out and do ollies off the steps, on the other side homeless people piss and shit and it smells awful. The bricks are jagged, sticking out from the wall like small shelves and I’d always wanted to climb it. Shelly didn’t tell me to be careful. She stood with her camera poised and I grabbed the edge of a brick and hoisted myself up the building like a rock climber. It wasn’t so hard. The bricks were thick and dusty, and there were soft green carpets of lichen growing between them, as if the fortress were a thing of nature. I got up as far as the lower boarded-up windows where pigeons lived. There was a lot of pigeon shit so I was afraid to touch the bricks there. Keep going! Shelly yelled from the street below. Look in the window! There were some holes and cracks in the boards, but I couldn’t get close enough. I guess I was scared to. I had heard all about the dead junkies the city pulls out of there, and of course the rats. I climbed back down. That was great, Shelly said, hitting the camera. It was late.

  I was at a bar again with Shelly. She was showing off by picking me up in the air and tossing me around, how big girls flirt with me. Petra was there that night. She grabbed me for a hug on her way out. Be careful with her, she said, nodding toward Shelly. What Do You Mean? I asked. Do You Know Shelly? Curious and defensive. I just get a bad feeling off her, Petra said, shaking her head. I hated when people pulled this psychic shit on me. Like, we’re all supposed to honor each other’s intuition and Different Ways Of Knowing, but don’t come at me with esoteric warnings about someone I have a crush on. Petra’s revelations trapped me. Go home with her, have fun, just keep your money in your shoe. I don’t trust her. We’re Just Friends Anyway. Out front Shelly grabbed me for a goodbye hug and a kiss and her tongue slid into my mouth and for a minute we were really kissing. I’m sorry, she said. Why Are You Sorry, I laughed. Shelly straddled her motorcycle and stuck the screwdriver in the ignition, was gone. I took a cab home with Candice and my new roommate Sam. What was that? they jabbed me, and I shrugged. We’re Just Friends. But Listen To This. I told them about Petra’s creepy warning. I think she’s right, Candice said. What? Candice had this really final way of delivering her commentary. Like everything is decided and that’s it. I don’t like her, she said. I don’t like her either, Sam chimed in. She reminds me of someone who’d beat you up at the roller rink. Now, what was that supposed to mean? Wasn’t that the prevailing aesthetic? Weren’t all the dykes trying to look like the mean girls at the roller rink? Maybe Shelly was just too authentic. Do you really believe she was abducted by aliens? Candice demanded. They Don’t Abduct Her, I scoffed. They Just Talk To Her. I didn’t feel like explaining the psychology of my acceptance of Shelly’s compulsive lying. I got out of the cab.

  For a while Shelly was having this thing with a straight girl who was on speed or heroin and had a boyfriend. It was very intense, possibly a past-life thing. They weren’t fucking. Shelly wouldn’t fuck a junkie and plus there was the boyfriend. They would just get drunk and make out and the girl would start crying and Shelly would kick her out. The girl came to the bar once. She’s stalking me, Shelly said. She was this really boring-looking blonde girl, I couldn’t believe that this was the person who succeeded in captivating Spacegirl, however briefly. Shelly claimed to be married. To a woman, some girl back in Atlanta. They’d been together twelve years, they were nonmonogamous. Shelly only mentioned her sometimes, and it was always different. They were in love, the woman was jealous, they were getting divorced, she was coming to San Francisco, she was staying in Georgia and building a home for them. I felt embarrassed for Shelly when she talked about her wife. It was such a sloppy lie, such an obvious one, and not nearly impressive enough to suspend disbe
lief for. I would change the subject, get her talking about Armageddon. It’s comin’, Shelly promised. The sky above our heads was huge and fragile. When Shelly became obsessed with Anastasia she shut up about the wife. Anastasia was this very glamorous girl who was nonmonogamously involved with Petra, which lent some credence to Petra’s psychic hunches. There was intrigue with Anastasia, again very intense stuff, probably past-life and all hush-hush because of Petra. I’m Sure Petra Doesn’t Give A Shit, I told Shelly, but she shook her head, lips tight with the deep secret of her and Anastasia’s love. I didn’t want to hear it anyway. Anastasia was incredibly gorgeous, and sweet as well, but everyone had a crush on her and I thought it was very unoriginal of Shelly.

  Weekend mornings, Shelly would pick me up on her crummy motorcycle. I would jam the extra helmet over my head, and we would fly through the streets to this faraway diner for coffee and crab cakes. These ain’t crab cakes, she said. You come over to my house, I’ll fix you crab cakes. I loved being on the back of Shelly’s bike, like a girl on a float at a parade. We bought tall bottles of beer, Oatmeal Stout, good stuff, not malt liquor. We sat on the sidewalk and drank, making friends with all the other wandering afternoon drinkers, mostly homeless guys. Shelly threw parties at the tasteful apartment she shared with the Prozac girl. She had a tequila party and blended enormous margaritas and a cowgirl girl taught everyone to two-step. Another party was wine and Vietnamese take-out. Sam’s mom was in town so she was there too, drinking wine and smoking, getting tipsy. Sam didn’t know how to act around her mom and the girls all at the same time. Shelly had bunches of dildos, enormous glittery ones. Girls were putting them on beneath their clothes, and then Laurel let hers hang right out, this gigantic pink schlong, right next to the mom on the couch. The mom touched the dildo. Everyone was drunk and everything was dangerously possible, or so it seemed. The mom touched the dildo, lifted it and let it flop dully back onto Laurel’s thigh. I like mine a little harder, she laughed. I was sitting on the floor playing a private game of Truth or Dare with Melanie. We were talking about cuttings and knives and blood. Melanie was this intense girl with a dark past she would occasionally refer to in this passive way, a little worm I would suck into my mouth, hook and all, just like I did with Shelly. These girls were like thick novels with a binding you can crack. I dare you, she said to me, to go into the bathroom and kiss the first person who comes in. Ok, I said, But Not Sam’s Mom. Shelly’s bathroom was small with no light and no door. I sat on the edge of the tub and smoked, listening for footsteps. I heard some and got ready. Melanie walked in. Oh, I laughed, flicking my cigarette in the toilet. Melanie kissed me with a hard tongue and we went back to join the party. Eventually we would have an affair and it would totally ruin our friendship.

  I stopped seeing Shelly because she was working twelve hour days, for Anastasia. To save money, to take them to Europe. We can’t be together here, she said bitterly. She talked about some intense, romantic moment on the beach with “someone.” Who? I probed. I can’t say, she said, and gave me a meaningful look. Is Shelly clean and sober? Petra asked me one afternoon. No Way, I laughed. Well, she told Anastasia she was seven years sober. I shrugged, embarrassed for Shelly and for myself. Her messy lies were making me look bad. Are you fucking her? Petra asked, and I shook my head. We Just Kissed Once. I always thought, Petra started, that of all my friends, you would be most likely to sleep with a serial killer. Thanks A Lot, Petra, I said, thinking that of all the people I had ever slept with, Petra was most likely to be a serial killer. Anastasia is freaking out, she continued. She’s about to get a restraining order on that girl if she doesn’t back off. Really? Shelly called me about a week later, she was moving back to Atlanta. I had this dream, she said in a heavy, trembling voice. San Francisco was crashing. It was sliding into the ocean, people were dying. It’s the big one, Michelle. It’s coming. I’ve got to get out of here. I saw it. So Shelly left. I never heard from her again.

  18

  Scrumptious stood on the corner in a vinyl outfit that spread black like an oil slick across her body. It wasn’t hers. None of it was hers, not the clothes, not the hair—a wig—and not the leather jacket. That leather jacket was Iris’s, those stickers peeling on the back, the thick, crinkled arm I’d hung on for months. Who was this girl wearing my ex-girlfriend’s leather jacket? She was Scrumptious, but not yet. Her real name was Stella, she didn’t become Scrumptious until later when we were all so high. Stella drove to San Francisco alone, on her motorcycle. All the way from Canada. She was supposed to stay at this notorious pervert house that had a red basement hung with rubber slings and photos of girls with carved skin on the walls. But the place was already packed with perverts, so she was shunted to Iris’s house, to sleep on the pull-out couch. That’s My Ex-Girlfriend’s Jacket, I said, filled with dread at the thought of looking at it all night. It was the night of the Dyke March, that’s why Stella was so done up, the brilliant silver wig that bobbed in synthetic swirls at her shoulders, the slick second skin of vinyl. She looked like she wanted to get laid, and I guessed that she would have no problem on that most bacchanalian of nights, when girls grow fangs, and hair sprouts on their chests, and no one goes to bed before six. I wasn’t planning on going to bed at all. I had a bag of crystal in my wallet and my heart was still smashed. This time last year I’d had Iris on my arm, licking her mouth in the street. Now she had the other girl, and I would spend the night in fear of bumping into them. I couldn’t wait to do the drug. I had done it once before and wanted that feeling inside me again, like needing to hear your favorite song, an external experience made internal, made intensely personal. Blood zinging through your body like pinball and you own it, the king of your own glowing kingdom.

  Right away I saw Iris. I was at a little convenience store that was so packed they were only letting people in two at a time. I had a Coke to dump my whiskey into plus a granola bar for dinner and there she was, with her annoying girlfriend. They actually looked alike, physically. It freaked me out. Hi, I said quickly, and scooted away with my food. I was sure they were laughing at me, both of them in their creepy matching faces. I dumped some Coke into the gutter to make room for the whiskey. Standing amongst ten thousand lesbians I was suddenly a lot more conscious of littering. Girls were winding slowly through the streets, not so much marching as plodding. Thank god no one was chanting. Let me tell you right here that it is just so sad what a year can do to you. What a girl can do to you. It had just about ripped the life right out of me. I smoked cigarettes and walked through the Castro with Stella, the tower of glamour, and with Magdalena, who carried an enormous bouquet of daisies, cradling the thick green cluster. When she saw a girl she thought was cute she’d tug a single stem free of the bunch and hand it to her. She had the white and yellow blossoms pinned in her hair like little smiles. Everyone with a camera was snapping pictures of Stella and Magdalena. I hung off to the side in my unremarkable outfit, keeping an eye out for my Iris and her shiny paramour. I’d spent the past few weeks beginning bunches of little affairs and then bailing, and those girls were all milling about as well, a tiny army of girls I needed to avoid. I was feeling slightly under siege and was thinking maybe it might be time to leave San Francisco. Let’s Do Drugs, I hissed at Candice, who had gone in on the bag with me. Let’s Go. We rounded up some kids and tried to find a good place to debauch. Laurel was there. We’re Going To Do Speed, I told her. Speed has such a bad reputation. You can’t play around with it without everyone thinking you’re on the skids. I cannot be around that, Laurel said. I hate speed energy. She had her hand held out like, talk to the hand. People are terrified of the thought of me on speed, but the truth is it makes me feel strangely calm, like I’ve bundled the whole world up to nurse at my breast, grand and serene, all my daily manic energy concentrated into a fine point that sits in my belly and I am god. Oh, Laurel, I’m Fun On Speed, I protested, but she was not having it. And now my speed partners were tense because I had implicated them, and now everyone would think
they had drug problems, but I just cannot be discreet about drugs. We walked up one of the shadowy streets stretching up from Market and huddled together on the steps of a Victorian. I pulled the goodies from my wallet. Did you cut it? someone asked. Uh . . . No, I said. I didn’t know I was supposed to. I dumped some of the crumbled white stuff onto my ID and tried to chop it into a fine dust with my ATM card. You’re losing it! someone gasped as tiny crystals pinged off the card into the darkness. Well, You Do It Then. Someone more worldly than me took the drugs and went to work, while the rest of us watched fearfully for cops or the residents of the Victorian. Can I have some? Stella asked. I’ll give you money. Stella took a tightly rolled bill and lifted it to her nose. She was really something, her fake hair glittered as dazzling as the crystal she breathed into her nostril. She tipped her head back and sniffed, silver hair cascading down her neck. The drug shone pretty like snow and I was anxious for my turn. Stella was going to ride her motorcycle in the parade the next day and she didn’t have anyone to sit on the back. I Will, I said and dipped my nose to the drug, sniffing hard. It seared a chemical path through my sinuses and dripped bitter and gritty down the back of my throat. I drank some whiskeycoke. Yeah, you should ride with me. The more you talked to Stella, the more you could see how that outfit wasn’t hers. She looked great in it, but it was a costume. This S/M woman in Vancouver let me borrow it, she said. I don’t dress like this at all. She laughed. What did she normally look like? Who was she? I felt the pleasant rush of speed like an excellent tide, and instantly I was fascinated with Stella. Her eyes flickered at me like the tongue of a cat and I forgot about all the girls out to get me. Around the corner was the steady roar of every dyke in the world. We gathered our stuff and joined them, then met up with more friends who also wanted to do drugs. We searched out another hiding place, the vaguely wooded area behind the Harvey Milk school. There were a few trees, cement stairs we sat on as I busted the stuff out like a big dealer, chop chop. I did a little more. Tommy swallowed some Ecstasy and Stella said, Can I have some? I’ll give you money. We sat in the relative hush of our scrawny forest and chattered our speed chatter, squatted to pee against the skinny urban trees.