by Michelle Tea
We left the throbbing nightclub and went to Iris’s friend’s house where the traumatized eighty-sixed girls were. The girl who lived there was super-deluxe political, she’d been on SSI for years because she convinced the State that she was incapable of working with men. She’d traveled through Central America, hitchhiking rides with gun-smuggling Zapatistas. She smoked pot from a pipe, leaning back on her couch, smiling a faint stoned smirk like she knew everything. She dressed schlumpy like Iris did. They passed the pipe back and forth while I sat chilly and exposed in my tiny slutty dress, feeling like a dumb girl. I kept wondering what Iris’s friend thought of me, did she think I was shallow because I was sitting there drunk in a black mesh loincloth, did she think I didn’t know how horribly awry the world was, or maybe she thought I didn’t care, or that I cared in a vague feed-the-stray-animals way but not in her complex intellectual way. That I was worrying at all about this makes me think I had joined them in smoking pot. But wouldn’t that have stopped me from barfing? Because I barfed in the activist girl’s house. Where’s Your Bathroom? I asked carefully, and it was a long slow walk down the hall because I didn’t want to jog and look desperate. The bathroom was messy and dim. I assumed my position around the bowl and let it fly. I was in there forever, wanting to make sure I got rid of it all. I crammed my fingers down my ragged throat and heaved and spit and wiped my lipstick-smeared mouth with toilet paper. I wobbled back down the hall in my heels. I wanted to explain to the political girl that I didn’t normally wear heels. Everything carried so much meaning. Are you all right? they asked. Umm . . . Yeah, I said hoarsely. I Puked. I figured she’d smell it, so I might as well be honest. The two of them were talking about that girl Iris had a festering crush on. They both worked with her. She’s a poet, I was informed. That’s Great, I said, stretching a big fake smile over my mouth’s barfy canyon. I’m Sure Her Poems Are Really Great. I was so sure that this girl was just really incredibly great. I was sure she never drank to the point of barfing, in fact, she probably didn’t drink at all, or smoke, or wear embarrassing, trampy outfits, or shoes she couldn’t actually walk in. Surely she wrote stunning poems that were very deep and smartly worded and grammatically correct because she went to college. A good one, a good girls’ college, and studied literature—she’s very well read. I let my plasticky smile droop into a drunken frown. Iris, Let’s Go, I whispered. She didn’t really want to, but she did. We were girlfriends.
11
Here’s a sad thing that happened about a week after New Year’s. Just a little chip off the great vase of sadness. I was in this bar, a dark place with round candles in glass glowing at the tables. I was co-hosting an open mic for girls. Poetry, right, but they did all kinds of things: puppets, lip-syncs, chain saws and one naked girl playing a cello. A girl was doing a dance, I think it was supposed to be tribal, her raver idea of that. The girl was usually on a lot of drugs and trying to get me and Iris to have sex for the porn movies she wanted to make. She did acid and Ecstasy and speed, she had something like nine hairdos going at once—shaved, stripes, a few colors, a tail, all kinds of stuff. Later I nearly had an affair with her. I really tried. She’d cut out using the drugs but had this maternal girlfriend keeping her in line. But this night she was still the crazy girl who was always high. You’d see her dancing forever at a club, topless and wrapped in a feather boa, the drugs shooting off her skin like a glow. She’d been a stripper in Amsterdam. So at this open mic she danced, naked but smeared with paint like mud, paint in her fucked up hair, crusting the short bits together. She had candles and a big shell that held incense or sage, something smelly to stink up the bar. She had bunches of flowers and that was the best part, thick green stalks, long flowers like a royal scepter, strong flowers like a branch wrenched from a tree. She played some trippy music on a little radio and writhed and twitched and held the flowers, moved them all over her face, dark around her eyes. People paid attention, more than they did to the poetry. Her pubic hair was one more dark spot on her body, and the bitch who ran the bar was going nuts about her being so naked. It kept happening. You have an open mic for girls and they all want to take their clothes off. I thought it was great. I wanted to get in a fight defending it. The naked dancing girl convulsed on the floor on top of all those flowers and I winced because I was planning to take them and I didn’t want them crushed. She finished up and took her little radio and the smoking seashell and padded barefoot back to the bathroom to wash off. Her back was stuck with leaves and bits of flower and stuff from the bar floor.
She left the candles burning on the stage, she left the flowers lying beaten on the floor, and I went for them like the kid who’d busted the piñata. I wanted to give one to Iris because things had been so weird. We were trying to be nonmonogamous so that she could make out with and eventually sleep with that girl I didn’t like. I would be very lofty and intellectual and cool about the whole concept and then she would show up looking like something terrible had happened to her neck, and I’d collapse on the sidewalk and weep. I figured I’d give her these flowers. I looked around the bar. It was filled with women. The lady who owned the place was busy pouring beers and couldn’t yell at me about the naked girl. I went to the front of the bar to this big round booth, black leather, and Iris was sitting there with that girl, the both of them in the booth’s dark curve, the free beer she got off me frothing on the table. They looked at me. Here, I said to my girl, thrusting the lily at her like a sandwich or the ten bucks I owed her. I left pretty quick. Like I handed her my heart and left fast so I didn’t have to see what she did with it. I didn’t want to know. Her and that girl and their big empty faces. I walked back to the bathroom. This girl I kind of liked was in there. We started shoving each other around, started kissing against the wall. Joey had this big, excellent body, she was really very cute, and I was so happy she felt like kissing me. Ha, I thought with her tongue rolling in my mouth. It was pretty perfect. We pulled away and smiled hot little smiles at each other, flushed, rearranging the spit in our mouths, and then she left the bathroom, and then I did. I saw Iris against the bar, alone with the lily and her beer. Where’s Emma? I asked about her floozy. I Just Kissed Joey In The Bathroom. You did? Her face got kind of broken-looking. She was pissed. You Were With Emma! I yelled. We weren’t kissing! she yelled back. I knew that. It was almost worse. I Came To Give You Flowers, I said, And You Were With Her. Iris was such a shithead. I was so good, picking up the bruised flower with its green blood and rumpled petals to bring to my girl. She broke my heart, so now I have to write about her forever. It made everything different. It’s something that can only happen once. You will cry a thousand times but they’ll only be echoes. The dancing naked girl came back with all her clothes on. That Was Really Great, I told her. She was very high. Yeah, she said, her eyes darting around. Later she told me she did it all for me, the dancing, the candles, some sort of ritual seduction, but it sounded like she was lying. I Thought You Liked My Girlfriend, I said then, and she said No, you, always you.
12
I felt like someone stuck some awful inflatable toy under my ribs and pumped it big and puffy until all the lungs and the skinny highways of veins and all the tender nameless organs got crushed up against my stomach. I felt like I was going to faint or puke or cry. All because of Joey, that girl I made out with in the bathroom to make Iris jealous. I’d crushed myself out on her and it was making me sick. She was a big heart walking down the street, not a sweet curvy heart fit for holding nothing but melty lumps of chocolate. I mean she was like the heart she carried under her ribs, a big strong one, thick and heaving. Gory and beautiful in its honesty. That’s what I saw as she swung her bicycle through the cafe door, all smiles, puffy jacket, knit hat on her greasy head, black glasses wrapped around her face like alien eyes. She looked like she was hiding from someone, on the lam. She leaned her bike up against all the other bikes and whipped off her glasses. She hugged me with the fat arms of her powder blue ski jacket, just like the one I had had as a
kid. I don’t have to tell you I was happy she was there. Iris had taken to sleeping with the awful wench Emma. I’d show up at Iris’s house like usual and she’d not even cleaned, the dick left in its harness on the floor, sheets in a tangle, evidence everywhere. But her stereo, that was the worst. PJ Harvey, right there, a sleek vinyl scab on the turntable. She was fucking Emma to PJ Harvey, our music. It was like all the girls were interchangeable. We were the passing bodies of her landscape, we were trains or clouds and the music was Iris’s soundtrack for her love affair with herself, the music and the gasps and the giggles. Valentine’s Day morning I woke up early in my own bed and made a trip to Rainbow for breakfast stuff, fake sausage and fake Canadian bacon, eggs, Odwalla. I bought her a rose, bagels. Soy milk for coffee. As the 14 Mission bus heaved and jerked along its route I realized I might be surprising Emma as well. I thought about walking into the bedroom and seeing Emma’s mousy head of hair poking up from the blankets, her body curled around my girl in sleep. I was glad I’d bought some grapefruits. They’d make such a great thud as they hit the wall, maybe even splatter if I threw them hard enough. The eggs would be a mess, that I was happy with. Food carnage all over that unfaithful girl’s walls, knocking over bongs and spilling her putrid pot water onto the carpet. I was livid, almost disappointed when I found a single solitary Iris, her sweet drowsy face happy to be about to get fed. But I’d gotten so involved in the fantasy I felt like the scene had already happened. Too shaky to cook. You would’ve flung the food all over the place? Iris asked, kind of delighted. Really? I Would Have Kicked Her Little Ass, I lied. It’s Fucking Valentine’s Day. Iris loved the idea of girls fighting over her, it made her melt right back into her futon. Emma’s a black belt in karate though, she warned me. She’d probably really hurt you. Oh, fuck both of you, I thought and scrambled some eggs.
It looked like it was about time for me to get interested in a girl who wasn’t Iris, and Joey was plenty interesting. Inside the coffeehouse she took up space like a heart inside a body, like the room was a throne for her humble importance. She held a smudgy newspaper in her hands, eyes on the astrology column. I’ve got to confer with you about my horoscope, she told me, making my own heart bounce because I knew she had a real romantic horoscope that week. That’s when I know I like a girl for certain, when I search her zodiacal blurb for a hint of myself inside her destiny. I hated her saying that, making me get all melty, and encouraging the hopeful boing of my heart. Joey needed a tarot reading and that’s all she needed, but the ping-pong ball inside me kept on rattling. She held the cards in her hands, flipped them around sloppily, a dog with silver-ringed paws. She shuffled the deck like playing poker and asked if that was ok. She kissed the deck and slapped it down on the metal table. I laid the cards out, thinking, she should get someone different, someone who wouldn’t be looking for clues in every card. Oh, the girl was sad. I flipped them over, she had those merciless swords, sharp points tearing apart a flower. She had the murkiest water cards, she had the scarab that stole the sun and hid it beneath the ocean, and I knew if she just let me in a little more I could make the good cards come.
Outside, we smoked cigarettes in a garden full of girls. Joey was turning her petals toward all their different lights. Me wishing that I knew what her dream girl was so I could become it. Yeah, I knew that was a dumb thing to think, I could tell by the way it felt in the sad space of my stomach. All lousy, as I looked at my linty wool tights, re-evaluating my smudgy red eye shadow. She liked girls who looked like superheroes, the kind of girl superhero who required you to suspend disbelief in order to imagine her kicking ass. Like the ultra-skinny girl over there with the biggest eyes and perfect hair the color of roses. All these girls were the fanciest, as I sat on a small red table and swung my legs like a child, looking nervous. There was another girl and I guess she could’ve passed for Wonder Woman, her eyes were lidded with sharp blue, she had glittery barrettes in her jet-black hair and Joey’s head on her lap. I thought she should appreciate it more, touch her greasy swirls or something, not just sit there like she was waiting for the cameras to go on. Wonder Woman had Dr Pepper lip gloss that she let me borrow even though I told her that I hated Dr Pepper. It made me think of driving cross-country with my grandfather when I was a kid. I told them about how we’d pull into a hotel when the sun went down and he’d climb into bed with a bottle of whiskey and a single red can of Dr Pepper, smoke filterless L&Ms in the unventilated room, and stay up all night watching TV movies while I ducked my head under the covers, hiding from the glare and the thin haze of smoke that glowed like the LA sky at dusk.
God, I want to barf just thinking about it, said Joey the talking dog from her place on the superhero’s lap. So I kept talking because nothing gets me going like knowing I should shut up. Oh, I should be quiet and full of potential like all those still flowers, but I know I am a weed and I’ve got to blow my seeds around the garden. I have such faith in words, like the right combination spilling from my mouth could’ve made her look at me like she looked at all of them, eyes blue and bright as a kid’s. So I babbled about pot cookies and mystical experiences, the time I got so high I thought I was buddha and Jesus and had an orgasm right there on my bed just thinking about it, both hands tucked under the pillow. I knew I sounded like a lunatic and the dog grinned lazily. And when the superhero finally left the cafe, I learned that she was the straight girl Joey had told me about kissing the other night.
In the corner store we pulled fat bottles of water from the shelves. No one thinks it’s weird that we have to buy clean water, and that’s how I know we’re going to hell. Joey needed candy. We hovered over the racks, she grabbed Starbursts and bunches of chocolate and I ladled a handful of artificial fruit stuff, lollipops and colored gumballs, hard blocks of Jolly Ranchers sticky under cellophane. The stoic counter guy rang up our purchases. Outside, winter made like it was leaving, and I felt it all inside me as I took off my fluffy jacket and my tight, filthy thermal. We walked the warming February streets, this phony spring making me different, making me want to fly right out of this city and land someplace new. Do You Look At Yourself In Every Window You Pass? I laughed as she nodded. I Do Too. She sang Carly Simon. We were in a band together right then, and she was the singer. She sang like . . . I would sit inside my chest thinking it couldn’t get any worse, my heart, and then I’d hear her sing and I’d beat my drums like I was driving away every feeling I’d ever had, slamming at her and the garden girls, Iris and her new Emma. Bam bam bam.
We entered the cool cave of the practice space with all the long-haired, goateed boys stoned on clouds of pot and playing with power tools. I tossed my fluffy coat into the hollow of my bass drum and lay on the carpet with my worn newspaper. A shirtless boy came in and told us he had to cut the power for a minute, and I thought about being alone in the cool black room with Joey. Let’s go smoke, she said, and I grabbed the cigarettes off the amp. She started talking to me about Wonder Woman. I feel like something big is happening, but I don’t know what to do about it. With The Straight Girl? I asked in the blankest voice possible. With everything. Back in the sun we walked to the edge of the parking lot where a black Impala convertible sat, rusted and rotting, looking like it just got dredged from a swamp. Rainwater pooling on the floor. We climbed up onto it and sat our butts backward on the edge of the windshield, feet stretched into the front seat. Before she even joined the band, I would think of her each time I passed the car, the little round medallions with the red and black racing flags affixed to the dash. On the rusting Chevy, Joey told me about her date the other night with a girl she used to like who she maybe liked again. How her heart was shut off and it felt pretty good. How she just wanted to play around and this girl and that girl and this girl and I smoked my cigarette and went Uh-Huh. The sun made me feel like a restless country girl even though I’d never been on a farm. I knew what I stood for, even if nobody else did. I knew the piece of me on the inside, truer than all the rest, that never comes out. Doesn’t everyone h
ave one? Some kind of grand inner princess waiting to toss her hair down, forever waiting at the tower window. Some jungle animal so noble and fierce you had to crawl on your belly through dangerous grasses to get a glimpse. I gave Joey my cigarette so I could unlace the ratty green laces of my boots, pull them off, tug the linty wool tights off my legs. I stretched them pale over the car, the hair springing like weeds and my big toenail looking cracked and ugly. I knew exactly who I was when the sun came back and the air turned warm. Joey climbed over to the hood of the car, dusty black, and said Let’s lie down, I love lying in the sun, but there wasn’t any sun there. We moved across the street onto the shining white sidewalk and she stretched out, eyes closed. I smoked my cigarette, tossed it into the gutter and lay down beside her. She said she was sick of all the people who thought she felt too much, who wanted her to be calm and contained. Who? I asked. All the flowers, the superheroes. I thought about how she had kissed me the other night, quick and hard, before taking off on a date in her leather chaps, hankies flying, and I sat on the couch and cried at everything she didn’t know about how much I liked her, and someone put an arm around me and said, You’re feeling things, that’s good. Yeah, I said to Joey on the sidewalk, I Feel Like I Could Calm Down Some. Awww, you’re perfect. She flipped her hand over and touched my head. Listen, we’re barely here at all, I wanted to tell her, rolling over, looking into her face, we’re barely here at all and everything goes so fast can’t you just kiss me? My eyes were shut and the cars sounded close when they passed. The sun was weak but it baked the grime on my skin and made it smell delicious. A little kid smell. We sat up to pop some candy into our mouths, and then Joey lay her head on my lap, spent from sugar and coffee. Her arm curled back around me and my fingers fell into her slippery hair. On the February sidewalk that felt like spring.
