Black Wave (9 page)

Kyle, too, had previously suggested Michelle move to Los Angeles and write a television pilot, but Michelle had resisted. She did not want to write television pilots, she wanted to write another memoir, something that was feeling harder to do. At twenty-seven, Michelle had already covered the bulk of her life in her one published book. She recalled Andy pulling away in her fabulous car, hollering out the window,
Don't you ever fucking write about me!
Michelle was haunted by the thought that the work she did, her art, brought pain to other people. People she cared about, whom she'd been close to. Her mothers were bummed. Kyle was uneasy, though he did his best to be supportive. Now Andy was resentful in advance. Michelle's bravado—don't act that way if you don't like to see it in print—was wearing thin. It seemed to require a certain ugliness to maintain it. She'd grown weary of herself. Perhaps she would try something new. Could she write about herself without mentioning any other people? That seemed impossible. She could
fictionalize things but this ruined the point of memoir, frustrated the drive to document, to push life in through your eyes and out your fingers, the joy of describing the known, the motion of the book ready-made. It had happened! It was life! Her job was to make it beautiful or sad or horrifying, to splash around in language till she rendered it perfect. Perfect for that moment.

Michelle didn't believe in perfection, in writing or anything else. Belief in perfection was a delusion that spawned mental illness. But she could capture the essence of a moment, the moment her mind conjured the words to document the scene—yes. This was writing to Michelle, but it was no longer allowed. Poor her! She would have to write fiction—real, actual fiction. She would have to write a screenplay. She didn't want everyone hating her forever and she didn't want to be a loser. She would have to move to Los Angeles.

9

Kyle was thrilled that Michelle was finally moving to Los Angeles. In two phone calls he secured for his sister a studio apartment in Hollywood. The studio was $400.

I'm so glad you're not going to hang out in San Francisco forever, waiting to get evicted,
Kyle clucked. News of the city's dot-com upset was leaking out of San Francisco and into the nation. Rents in San Francisco were now officially more expensive than in Manhattan. People were charging $2,000 to sleep in a closet. High-paid Silicon Valley execs were spending the night riding buses, unable to find a vacant apartment. Strippers were coming from all over the country to dance in Bay Area strip clubs, collecting big tips from Internet nerds. The city was coming apart.

But Michelle had paid only $200 to live in her shab-by-chic room. And she was in no danger of being evicted. Her landlord lived right downstairs, a sad widower named Clovis who gave the household platters of supermarket cookies at Christmas. Michelle had learned that before the
straight girls had occupied it, the flat had been a haven for fucked-up, dysfunctional lesbians. Ekundayo's room had been a practice space for Tribe 8, the dyke punk band that performed topless and pulled dildos from their pants, goaded men from the crowd to fellate them, and then castrated themselves and flung the silicone into the audience. Man-hating lesbians who couldn't cope with reality had lived there, pulling traveler's-check scams, faking insanity to get on SSI. Roommates had pooled lists of ex-boyfriends and hustled them out of money for nonexistent abortions.

When she moved in, Michelle had had no idea that the house had been a magic castle of queerness with a secret outlaw history. It was as if the Dillinger Gang had hidden out there. A lesbian porn had been filmed in her bathroom! An infamous lesbian hooker had once lived in her bedroom, had nailed hardware into her floorboards to tie down her lovers! Michelle had restored the flat to its former glory, all rooms occupied with barely functioning lesbian alcoholics. And now she would leave.

But Michelle loved her bedroom. The floors were blue and the wall behind her lousy futon was also blue, and stuck with chunky glitter. Three windows looked out on the street below, where a stolen car ring operated out of a garage. The dismantled alarms wailed all night, but Michelle was used to it. Gauzy thrift-store curtains hung in the windows, tied back with Mylar ribbons. A giant bullhorn mounted on a piece of rotting wood dangled in the center window. Michelle had found it on the street, the source of so many unexpected treasures. The ocean of poverty pulled many gifts to shore. Stolen luggage was often gutted on the sidewalk, and Michelle was not above rummaging the contents. She'd found velvety platform shoes,
satiny gowns, chipped knickknacks. It was okay that she didn't have money to shop ever because the streets provided her with such hunter-gatherer thrills.

Michelle had loved her room so long, had lived inside it seven years, and now could feel herself being pushed out from it. It wasn't the economy. Clovis the Landlord had promised he would not raise the rent and he had no intention of selling the house. The man spent his lonely nights singing into his personal karaoke machine in the flat downstairs. The sound of him singing Sammy Davis Jr., his warbling voice floating up through the floorboards, broke everyone's heart. Everyone in the punk house loved their landlord. It was okay that the shower, a metal closet, was rusting through the bottom, surely harboring gangrene and soaking the house in soggy rot—Clovis's second-floor apartment was in no better shape. If he had the money he'd fix their shower, but to get the money he would have to raise their rent, and so they put a milk crate in the shower to stand above the jagged rust and wore flip-flops while they bathed, just in case.

When the word got out that Michelle was moving everyone assumed she was getting evicted. When she told them she was not, she was just vacating her $200-a-month room in the Mission by choice, everyone was baffled. Why would anyone do such a thing? To move to Los Angeles, that shit hole? Hers was surely the last room in town renting for under $800. Once she left the Bay Area she could never come back. She could never afford it. She was evicting herself, it was crazy. But the city had bad vibes and they'd infected her. Michelle hardly ever saw the sun anymore, sleeping until her evening shift at the bookstore loomed. Her boss had asked her if she had lost weight or
if she had just started to wear tighter clothes. The answer was both. Michelle was beginning to look like a Ramone. At night she began to dream that her room was haunted and the spirits wanted her dead. She had gone as far as she could in San Francisco. She would move to Los Angeles and write screenplays.

10

A problem with Michelle's plan to move to Los Angeles was that technically she did not drive. She'd been taught, briefly, years ago, by an old girlfriend and she hadn't felt incompetent. She'd enjoyed tooling around in the car under supervision, getting praised for how well she drove. She'd intended to make it legal, go to the DMV and get a license, but Michelle was so lazy and there were always other things to do, like drink and sleep and go to the bookstore. The DMV was in the Panhandle, wherever that was. Michelle didn't really leave the Mission. In a burst of can-do responsibility, she figured out the bus route to the office and arrived early one morning, prepared to spend the afternoon. But the woman at the counter turned her away quickly.

No more,
she shook her head.
No more driver's licenses.

What? Michelle had expected bureaucracy, hassles, annoyances—it was the DMV. A person didn't have to drive to know that—but she hadn't anticipated this.

No more licenses till 2000. January and July there will be a lottery if you want to enter your name.

You Stopped Giving Driver's Licenses? Since When?

January this year.
The lady was bored.

How Was I Supposed To Know That? Michelle felt outraged. Driving was a right, right? So she put it off for about a decade, so what? It was still her right, wasn't it?

It was in the news.
The woman spoke to Michelle as if she were a dummy.
It went into effect in San Francisco on January first, and in the state of California last month. No new driver's licenses. Not enough gas, you know?

The woman looked tired. She was Latina, her hair was in a claw at the nape of her neck, she wore gold hoop earrings and a little cross on her clavicle.
I'm lucky to still be here, they laid off half the office.
It was creepily quiet. A few people were renewing their licenses. Outside the windows was a patch of barren soil. The natives had died and the landscapers had tugged out all the invasive species and so there was just dirt.

Michelle left. She didn't take the bus, she walked. The Panhandle, the long park that ran into the frying pan of Golden Gate Park, was lined with trees in various death states. Some had been eaten from the inside out by invading beetles and some of those had been burned to stumps in an attempt to stop the outbreak. Some were starved of water by the drought and some of those were so shriveled they had toppled over and smashed like plaster. Others were strangled by kudzu and Michelle at least appreciated the green gloss of their leaves. She hurried back to the Mission, which never had much wildlife in the first place and so was not as depressing as these doomed, once-green neighborhoods.

Did You Know This? Michelle was outraged. This Thing With There Being No More Driver's Licenses?

Ziggy nodded.
Yeah, everyone knows that.

How Did I Not Know?

I don't know, you don't watch the news or anything, read papers?

Michelle didn't. When she watched TV it was to view marathons of
Unsolved Mysteries
and when she read the paper it was for the horoscope and sex-advice columns.

Is There Really No Gas?

I mean, not a lot.
Ziggy shrugged. They were sitting on the stoop on the side of the queer bar, smoking. They had smuggled their pint glasses of beer out with them and if the dyke who owned the bar, who was their friend, caught them she would tell them that they were compromising her liquor license and make them feel guilty, like they were bad friends. They kept the beer low, sneaking glugs behind their army bags. It was too much to expect people not to smoke and drink at the same time. It was almost cruel. Michelle imagined it was like the mythical blue-balls syndrome men experience. To have the compulsive glow of a wonderful buzz and not be able to eat half a pack of cigarettes while quenching your smoke-parched throat with beer? It was inhuman. No smoking in bars, no more driver's licenses.

The World Is Ending, Michelle said grimly.

You know how to drive, who cares?
Ziggy said.

I Can't Rent A Truck, she said, Without A License. I Can't Rent A Car Or A U-Haul Or Anything.

Ziggy sighed deeply, took an even deeper pull of her squishy cigarette, and sighed out all the smoke.
Look, you want the van, just ask for it. Take it. You'd be doing me a favor.

What? Michelle yelped, surprised. Did You Think I Was Being, What, Passive Aggressive? I Don't Want The Van! I'm Just Complaining About My Life!

Really, you'd be doing me a favor. There are so many tickets on it, next time I get one they're going to tow it. And if I don't start paying them off they're going to boot it. And it won't pass smog. It's doomed. Just take it.

Are You Serious?

Yeah. You can drive a van?

Yes! Michelle cheered, having no idea whether or not she could drive a van. Oh My God! She flung herself at her friend in a fat hug, knocking over her drink, sending beer everywhere and the pint glass rolling into the gutter.

You guys!
Their friend the bar owner came over, grabbing the glass from the street.
That's it! Really! You guys can't drink here anymore!

Michelle stood abruptly, knocking over her own.

Really,
their friend the bar owner said. She was not an unkind person. She was deeply disappointed in Michelle and Ziggy. She had given them many opportunities to change their behaviors and they refused to be different.

Sorry,
they mumbled in sheepish, busted unison and shuffled off to the Albion, where somehow you were permitted to smoke inside despite the ordinance and where cocaine was freely for sale despite the illegality. It was where they belonged, anyway.

Ziggy dumped the van on Michelle the very next day.

But I'm Not Leaving For A Month, she protested.

You want it, take it now or else I'm torching it.

Ziggy had once made a little bit of money helping some
skaters she drank with torch their car for insurance money. According to the poem she wrote about it, in which she compares the flaming hunk to the burning, ruined earth, it was an awe-inspiring experience.

It was awkward for Michelle, driving the van around the Mission. It was enormous and it shuddered. The plastic case that locked over the engine, the doghouse, grew so hot that Michelle's foot burned. Her blind spot was too big. It was a relic, people gave her dirty looks when she drove it, which was not often. Mostly just from parking space to parking space as she waited for the day she would leave the city.

Michelle was withdrawing from her life in preparation for the strange pain of leaving. She slacked off at the bookstore, not even pretending to work, just openly reading magazines or talking to Kyle on the phone long distance. She was pulling away from Ziggy and Stitch, staying in her room when she heard Stitch making smoothies in the kitchen, not coming out until she heard her friend tromp down the stairs. Mostly she stayed in her room anyway, sleeping off whatever she had done the night before. (Increasingly, this was heroin with strangers.)

Michelle had a few rules about the heroin to keep her safe from the worst-case scenarios everyone knew so well. Never shoot it, duh. Take one day off in between, at least! Never do it alone. That would be extremely addict-y. And why would she want to? The best part of the drug was bonding with another person about what clandestine idiot badasses you were. To have your clandestine idiotic badassery witnessed by another. To have bad-kid bonding and to have sex all doped up on a dirty fluid that gave each coupling the illusion of love.

It was surprisingly easy to find people to do heroin with
her. After Stitch told Ziggy, Ziggy told Linda, and her old crush showed up at her house. People always showed up at Michelle's house. Despite the violence of their neighborhood the door was rarely locked. Michelle had once come home to a party in her living room, lines of cocaine on the table, and a Kenneth Anger video in the busted VCR. No one who actually lived in the house was there. The house had ceased being a home and had become a sort of bar, a public space where anyone could show up and get a drink.

No, Michelle said to Linda, who had come for heroin. You'll Get Addicted.

No I won't,
Linda said, sounding unconvinced.
And even if I did it wouldn't be your fault.

Michelle didn't believe this. It would totally be her fault if she gave Linda heroin and the girl got strung out. Was this the kind of influence she wanted to have on the people in her life? It was a question of karma, which was complicated, subtle, and real. And anyway, she just didn't want to see Linda become a heroin addict. But she would.

Another person Michelle turned on to the drug was an androgynous person she'd spotted at the Albion. Michelle couldn't tell if the person was a boy or a girl or someone born male who was dressed like a girl or a dyke who was somewhat transgender or what. All Michelle knew was that the person was tall, like almost six feet, with a sweet, hard face and strange, smudgy makeup and odd leather clothes from the thrift store. The lipstick on their face was too dark. It was an interesting look, sort of Lou Reed circa
Rock 'n' Roll Animal
, only taller, and a girl. Right?

You Look Like Lou Reed, Michelle told the being, who took that as a compliment. Michelle was perfect, she was perfect inside, she had the perfect balance of beer and also vodka plus some of Fernando's stash and she felt loose and
daring, she could talk, she could talk to anyone, she could talk to this person who she was thinking of as a being, whose gender, come to think of it, she had no desire to know, why should she care, this person's gender was Lou Reed. All she needed to know was: A. Does the being like girls of Michelle's particular sloppy, down-on-her-luck femininity? and B. Did the being want to do heroin?

My name is Quinn
, said the being, and Michelle almost smacked her hand to her forehead, it was just too much, it was too perfect. Quinn was like a noun that meant Androgyny, Lou Reed, Drugs. It was a synonym for New York City, 1983, red leather. Quinn had blocky black glasses on their face and a rattail snaking down the back of their neck.

I'm Michelle, said Michelle. I Don't Even Want To Know What Your Gender Is, Okay? Don't Tell Me. It's Just Lou Reed, All Right?

Quinn nodded, excited.
You mean you really don't know?

I Don't!

That's pretty cool,
Quinn said, and a slight shyness came about them like a vapor.

I'll Pay For The Heroin But You Have To Buy It, Michelle instructed. I'll Show You Where, I'll Show You Who.

What do I say? How do I ask for it?
The being seemed delighted by this turn of events. Michelle could tell they'd be a true adventurer.

I'll Tell You Everything, Michelle said. She left with the being, not even bothering to say goodbye to Ziggy or Stitch.

At home at her desk Michelle chopped pens and dribbled water into a spoon and played PJ Harvey on her boom box. The being watched with muted interest, inhaled the liquid obediently, and followed Michelle to her futon. They had
an intelligent face, something Virginia Woolf–ish about it, perhaps in the nose.

You know,
they said,
I met Lou Reed once and he told me I looked like a poet. So that's so weird that you said that.

It's Weird, Michelle said, And It's Not. She was high enough to be in the space where all things are so deeply one, so nothing was really a surprise. And You Are A Poet, Right?

Of course,
said Quinn.

Of Course. Michelle would have nodded if she could have moved her head, which was perfectly sunken into a perfect pillow. Of course Quinn was a poet, wrote by hand in a notebook forever tucked into a messenger bag, had the sort of literary vibrations Lou Reed would pick out of the air on a New York City street. Michelle felt proud of herself. Whatever Lou had seen in the being, she'd seen too. They shared a certain wavelength.

Why doesn't everyone do it this way?
Quinn asked, blissed out on their back on Michelle's futon.
Why even shoot it, this is so perfect, you couldn't get it more perfect than this.

I Know, Michelle breathed. It seemed so desperate to shoot it, sort of American. Greedy. Vulgar. This way, you simply breathed. You inhaled water, like a mermaid. Michelle rolled over in such a way that if the being found her alluring it would be easy to take advantage of her.

I'm seeing things,
Quinn said, their eyes gently shut. The poet's face looked chiseled from a fine European marble. The eyes gently rolled the eyelids.

What, What? begged Michelle, who believed drugs were holy, connected you to the divine. This belief fell apart if you traced the drugs' route to her bedroom—from poverty-stricken people to violent, bloody-handed drug lords, up the butts of people desperate enough to shove drugs up
their butt and risk prison for the money, into the hands of more desperate or ruthless people here in her own country, finally making it into the streets of her city, cut with who knows what chemicals, sold by individuals trapped in the throes of their own addictions, individuals who had an arm, a leg, a chunk of their ass eaten away with abscesses and various flesh-eating bacteria. No matter! In the hands of lesser people drugs were a menace, but Michelle was a lover, a spiritual seeker. The drug's moody wave washed over her as Quinn detailed their gentle hallucinations—violet, flashes of color.

It's you,
Quinn explained to Michelle,
You are the violet.
This delighted Michelle, who felt crucially seen for the first time in her life. Not seen by dates who'd known she was cute or liked her writing, or by girlfriends who saw her lack of fidelity, her shallowness, her mania. Seen by a stranger whose drug-addled mind beheld her mystical reality. She was violet! She always knew she was special. The drug dropped her down a well of deep love for this genderless, many-gendered being, this Quinn.