by Michelle Tea
In Iris’s house we drank a variety of beer. Laurel and George drank Oatmeal Stout because they were vegan and it was the only beer that wasn’t prepared by straining the stuff through animal bones or something. Candice drank nice German beer because she had lived in Germany until she was five and was reclaiming her ethnic heritage, and everyone else drank Mickey’s or split a 40 of something cheap. And we talked and we smoked a lot. We gave each other tattoos with needles and india ink. That was the night Iris tried speed for the first time and didn’t tell anyone. She was just terribly efficient and smart with the needle. She tattooed the number 13 on her own shoulder, and it looked real good. She tattooed Fag on George’s wrist, and the letter S at his temple. Supposedly if you have a tattoo on your face you are legally recognized as unemployable and it’s really easy to collect SSI from the government. The S didn’t have any kind of meaning, George just liked the letter. Each day after this he would choose a different whimsical S word and say that’s what the letter stood for. I tattooed a little triangle on my ankle, surrounded by three little circles. It was the Wyrd Sisters. I got the design out of The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, which I had stolen from the library. It symbolized general feminine weirdness, witchery, fate, destiny, synchronicity, and it seemed a good way to mark the moment. I put a pool of dark ink into the cap from my Mickey’s, and I dunked my needle and began to poke. A drop of beer mixed in with the ink and I thought that was funny. A Mickey’s tattoo. Laurel and George were fairly impressive potheads, and dreamy Piscean Iris was recruited into their habit with ease. Though I didn’t enjoy pot all that much, I joined in because they were having so much fun. The idea was to smoke until we lost the pipe. The four of us, me and Iris and Laurel and George, were kind of a gang. We were going to get matching flasks and engrave Queer Drunk Punks on it. When the pipe was finally lost in the cracks of the pull-out sofa, me and Iris decided it was time to go out to buy some potato chips.
I remember standing in the brutal fluorescent light at the corner market and not knowing how to act around her, I was so high. We had had an affair, and now there was all this thick awkward tension. We were two stoned girls peeping clumsily at each other around racks of shrimp-flavored chips and squat tins of nacho cheese. We bought our chips and left. Another good stoned thing to do was play Uno, the card game. The four of us had these epic Uno games that went on for hours, and we talked incessantly through them, processing our childhoods and how shitty the world was and thank god we had figured it all out and found each other. She is really belting it out, one of us said about the song on Iris’s stereo and we all stared in horror, comprehending in a united stoned consciousness that the phrase “belting it out” came from the cries of someone being hit with a belt. Holy Shit. Then Iris realized that it was abuse when her father used to hit her with his belt, and we all had a moment around that. The card game went around like a carousel, primary colors and simple numbers. At one point Laurel and George left the room, and Iris looked at me, and I knew it was going to happen. I did a soft lunge at her and she caught me with her mouth and it was such a thrilling kiss, knowing that our friends would come into the room any minute, making up with intensity what we were losing with time. We detached, and George and Laurel were back with more beer. It was so late that me and Laurel just decided to sleep there. Which meant the three of us on Iris’s narrow futon, Iris, me, Laurel, wall. Did Laurel fall right asleep? It seemed so. Me and Iris faced each other in the dark cigarette smog of her bedroom, kissing these secret kisses, careful for squishy noises. Very desperate kisses fueled by the frustrating presence of a third party who may or may not be asleep. Very cautious touching, no rustling sounds, no noticeable movements. The restraint was terrible because it was obvious how incredible it would be to just fall into her, this terrific girl, but surely the restraint was actually better, drawing our attraction into a taut wire, electric and humming. We slept.
In the morning we were girlfriends. It happened that quickly, and immediately the excellent group friendship died. We killed it, me and Iris. We couldn’t stop staring at each other. It was a real problem. Laurel would be in the middle of some great story and then—forget it. A big annoyed sound. What?! I Was Listening! I can’t talk to you if you both keep looking at each other. But I Was Listening! Forget it. The word “codependent” was fun for everyone right then. We’re Not Codependent! It’s a useless thing to defend yourself against, like alcoholism. I had only been codependent with shitty, kind of mean people, so it was fun to get all codependent with Iris. But the lofty and elaborate group plans we had made went kersplat. Like train hopping, something me and Laurel and Iris were going to do. We would dress like boys and bring nothing but cans of beans and matches, use each other’s bellies for pillows and arms for blankets. Duck beneath still hunks of train, escaping the trainyard cops who shot hard pellets of salt at our butts. I’m not traveling with a couple, Laurel said darkly. What About New Orleans? We had talked about that too, about living in chipped wooden homes that crawled with slow roaches the size of turtles, drunk on the heat. I would sit on iron balconies in thin slips that clung, humid, to my skin, writing stories while Iris and Laurel smoked their pot and ate vegetables. I am not traveling with you two! I shrugged. Finewhatever. Then Candice decided Iris wasn’t spending enough time with her, or in the house, and plus she was a big slob and wasn’t taking care of her wedge of the chore wheel. The Michelle-Iris romance blossomed as we became misunderstood outlaws, cast out from our circle, each the other’s only ally. The Shakespearean peak was Laurel’s announcement that she was in love with Iris. I need to talk to you, she said, all heavy, one afternoon in the house where we shared our drama. We made plans to meet later at a cafe on Valencia, and I didn’t want to because it meant an hour or two I would spend pried apart from Iris. Time I could spend at a bar with her, looking into her eyes. It was that gross. We would just stare at each other, run home to have sex at her house, run to the bar for last call and just gaze at each other. It was very meaningful, we shivered with it. Get stoned and make out for hours. Once, when I was very high on pot, Iris raked her fingers up my back, and I had a vision of the world being born, dry land splitting into rivers. I was out of my mind.
At the cafe with Laurel, I had a tasteless little bagel with a thin layer of cream cheese on it, and I couldn’t eat because my stomach was tangled and heavy with this sense of impending doom, like I was ten years old and in big trouble. I hate people being mad at me. I wanted to start crying and apologize for whatever I’d done before Laurel even opened her mouth. I’m in love with Iris, she said. You’re Not, I replied. I am, she said. I nibbled at my lousy bagel. Supposedly there had been a moment when Iris liked Laurel, thought she was cute, maybe had a crush on her, and I came in with my dump-truck presence and mowed down all the possibilities. What do you do? I had a deep, adolescent understanding that you do not let a boy come between you and your girlfriends, and I supposed this noble notion had to transfer from boy to girl. And there was Laurel, looking very grown-up and even businesslike about the whole thing, the Laurel who’d gone to Brown and had a responsible job at a software company in Berkeley, the Laurel I rarely glimpsed, seemingly years older than me though really she was younger. I was about to cry and she was contained. I thought about one recent night, Iris waiting in my room, when in the dark parlor I had bummed a latex glove off Laurel and she was so pissy about it. It’s my last one, she said, irritated. I’ll Get More Tomorrow, I said. You’re Not Going To Use It Tonight. She handed it to me and stomped back into her room. Everything was clear now. I’ll Break Up With Her. Laurel raised her eyebrows. I’m not asking you to do that. Her tone was not kind. It’s The Right Thing, I said. You’re My Friend.
I left her in the cafe, walked down Valencia Street, crying. Finally I had found a girl who really just liked me so much, and now this. A girl who was nice and let me drink coffee and wasn’t waiting for anybody but me. I was supposed to call Iris and I didn’t. I went to a bar where a poetry
night was going on because I knew I could talk and cry to my poetry friends and they would buy me beer since I’d spent the last of my money on the uneaten bagel. I told my story again and again. You’re crazy, the poets said. I cried in my beer. Once I was drunk I made my way to the pay phone at the front of the bar, sunk my change into the slot, called my Iris. Candice told me she was gone, was looking for me, what was going on? I was trapped at the bar. I couldn’t go home, it was Laurel’s home, she would be there with George, who was also trying to ruin this great love. Both of them would be smoking cigarettes out Laurel’s window, talking about me with the Ramones cranked loud so I couldn’t hear. Then Iris came in, into the dark red and trashy bar, she came in like a young prince with her bike at her side like an obedient steed. She had no helmet on her head. Her hair was black, dyed that way, a gorgeous scruffy mess on her head. I Have To Talk To You, I said, leading her back to a little round table. My face was red and hideous from the crying, bloated and runny. I Can’t Go Out With You Anymore. It was an awful, delicious moment. Watching her pretty face crumple. She’d been searching for me, on her bike, riding through the city. Knowing something was wrong. Laurel’s In Love With You. She’s My Friend. What? Iris looked seriously confused. She had just started smoking again, and pulled an American Spirit from a mangled blue pack. But I don’t want to not go out with you, she said. I like you so much. Maybe she was crying now too. I like you more than anything. At the bar the poets, all of them older, mostly with drinking problems, sipped at their beers and rolled their eyes watching us. We made them feel old. I could not break up with Iris. How could I walk away from this girl who liked me so much she could easily waste whole chunks of this, the prime of her life, simply looking at me? We would be fugitives together. We could go nowhere, not my house where Laurel lurked, and not Iris’s with that bitchy Candice. We would go to Ashley’s, the friend who miraculously never became involved in the intense group friendship that was more codependent than me and Iris ever were.
Ashley had a beautiful backyard, oddly big, planted with flowers and a cluster of cactus and a big pine tree and the plum tree with the blossoms that smelled so good. Her house used to be a Chinese restaurant, and if you dug into the dirt of her yard you would find old bones of ducks and pigs. Iris had a tent, we would pitch it and live there in Ashley’s backyard. With the chain-link fence that separated her Taurean greenery from the Big 4 Rents lot full of huge cranes and wrecking machines and metal dumpsters. I left this hysterical message on Ashley’s machine, and she called me back right there at the bar, the Casanova, a great bar, dingy and red, the bathrooms smelling like vetiver. It’s gone now. Swallowed up by the yuppies who are swiftly ruining my neighborhood. The bartender handed me the phone. I’m in love with you, Ashley gushed in a stricken voice. Ha ha just kidding. Yes, we could live in her yard, but she thought we were acting like idiots. Just go home, she said. You and Iris are in love and that’s that. Very simple. We drank at the bar ’til it closed, then Iris rode me home on the back of her bike. Her home, not mine. Laurel found out I didn’t end it with Iris and gave me a big Whatever. You were trying to do the integrity thing, she said cynically and I hated that slur on my initial pledge. I’d meant what I’d felt. But what did it matter anyway now that the friendship was so ruined? It was just gone. Laurel wasn’t ever going to show that deep and shadowy place way inside her, you couldn’t even glimpse it now, it was just hardness, ruined. And George wasn’t going to stop being annoying and Candice wasn’t going to start being pleasant. It was just gone. Eventually Laurel went off to Europe alone and George carried on solo as a soldier in the war against love, trying to get Iris to break up with me because, I don’t know, I’m a social climber, and not really an environmentalist because I always got nachos from El Farolito in the big styrofoam containers. And Laurel got a girlfriend in Amsterdam, and George got a boyfriend who wouldn’t top him, and eventually Candice did like me, and eventually Iris no longer did, and my older poetry friends from the bar left behind secret addictions as they moved to far away states to dry out, and Ashley got a boyfriend and disappeared completely, and here I sit with my coffee.
8
But back to when it was thick and glistening and alive. I mean life, never knowing what was going to happen. That’s what I was full of one night. Gliding up 16th Street, heading home, past the old guys selling syringes, the lines of kids waiting to get into the Roxie, waiting to get a falafel or a burrito. Moving toward my house with the windows open wide like big mouths eating the sky. You could sit in the window and be its teeth, my favorite place to be. The house felt like a squat then, because we were all moving out. The landlord had refunded the last month’s rent, making that month free. And the uptight roommate, Denise, who went to est-like gatherings in the mountains and made me go out into the driveway once and tell the two women shooting up behind her car to leave or else the cops would come, she had finally moved out, and the whole place had really fallen to shit. We were smoking cigarettes all over the formerly nonsmoking house and tripping on moving debris, crates, clothes, bundles of blankets that were really beds. Dozens of keys to my house seemed to float around and I never knew who’d be camping in the hallway when I got home. That night it was Iris, lying on her back on my floor, music on big and bright as lightbulbs. She flashed me this smile, Hey, like she was surprised to see me even though it was my house. I kissed her and tasted beer. I have to tell you that Iris looked like all these different people, a glamorous model, a fifteen-year-old boy, a fairy or elf or little kid. Big lips like a sofa you could plop right down on. Eyes all blue and slinky. The eyes were the glamorous part, all girl. No boy could have eyes like that, lashes long enough to swing from. She told me we were going to Tower because her friend Josiah liked a boy who worked there, so we headed up to the Castro drinking beers and I still had my glide. Josiah brought this really cute love note to give to the boy, he was passing it around, creasing it nervously in his fingers. Josiah was from Athens, Georgia. He’d only been in town a day or two and already he had all these leads on work and sex. He pursued each need with an admirable Virgo ambition.
Tower was so bright and Josiah’s boy wasn’t there. His Name Is ChiChi? Oh, I Know Him. Everyone Knows Him, He’s One Of Those Club Kids. Kind Of Shallow. Well, That’s Cool If You Don’t Mind. Iris stole a CD. She didn’t want our trip to be for nothing. She shoved it right down her pants. I didn’t even know until we were blocks away and she lifted her shirt and there it was, pressed against her belly, that space between her jeans and skin which often hid stolen goods. Usually beer but once a whole bottle of wine and was that a score. Josiah wanted men so we stayed in the Castro. For the Boy Bars. Smug little clubhouses, I know about them. The Bear was a leather bar, denim really. I went there once and all these fags were paying a dollar to spank Mr. Leather-Something-or-Other. It was for charity. The Midnight Sun, the Phoenix, the Jackhammer. Twin Peaks, but you certainly didn’t want to go there. Uncle Bert’s was pretty good. Then that one where you had to pass through a heavy leather curtain to get inside, what’s that one called? That’s the one we wanted. The guy checking IDs smiled at me like, Cute, a girl! and I smirked at him and attempted to lift the curtain, which was the weight of a whole dead cow. Inside, it was dark and a chain-link fence lined one wall, an attempt to make the place seem dangerous. Please, I’ve been to sleazier places than that. The Paradise in Cambridge, where Patrick got fucked on the pool table while dick movies played on TVs above the bar. The Nine Circle in New York. It had dick movies too and the floors were wet and sticky, no doors on the bathrooms. Like someone’s scuzzy basement.
