Valencia (25 page)

Inside was a factory of men. It was like they were being mass-produced in another room, hundreds of buff and shirtless homosexuals dancing stiffly to monotonous rhythms. We dumped our stuff behind a podium, and Scrumptious grabbed me. Let's
dance
,
she said. I Hate Dancing To This Music, I whined, I Don't Know How. Scrumptious hopped up onto the podium and pulled me up beside her. Her wig was back on her head and she looked regular. There was a moment back at that party when I had looked at her ghastly bald head, the dark creases of makeup and realized she looked like a female impersonator after the show. I had felt a bolt of panic. The thought Who is this person? bubbled up my throat like unexpected puke when you thought you were just burping. But now I felt fine. Scrumptious was dancing. She danced good, and she was wearing those clothes. Fags clustered around the podium, hooting up at her, and then Tommy jumped up and took off her shirt, I took my shirt off, forget it, we were like a birthday cake plop in the middle of a dinner table. And I
can
dance to that shitty music on speed, I can do anything on speed, I'm fucking Jehovah. It was so moist in that club. Sweat rose from our bodies, condensed into a cloud that hovered by the disco balls, and rained back down on us. I took a break. Speed and water.
You have to put your shirt on
, some guy said, grabbing me. This happened to me a lot that summer. I couldn't keep my shirt on. It was a hot summer, and I was very angry. I looked around at the sweaty naked chests of a thousand gym queens. What About Them, I demanded. He shrugged.
Look, I'm sorry, it's not me, I
— It Is You, I snapped at him. You Are Part Of The Problem. I laid into him, I was on speed, my argument was finely honed and swiftly delivered. I could have stood there for hours debating with him, hollering above the impossible sound
system.
Put your shirt on or leave
, he said and walked away. Fucking Asshole! Scrumptious rubbed my sweaty back, she was so excellent. She helped me tug the small t-shirt back onto my sticky body. It nearly strangled me. The summer I only wore children's t-shirts. So cheap, sixty cents at Thrift Town, and they made me look like I had tits. We roamed around the boring club, bored. Downstairs was cooler and nearly empty. Industrial music, a little better. We danced. It was actually great, speed being a drug that turns all boring and repetitive tasks into something marvelous. I moved my body back and forth, back and forth, a glowing machine. I did it for hours, we all did, pack of androids.

I have to go
, Scrumptious said finally.
My feet hurt
. She was wearing heels with that outfit. We stopped at a twenty-four-hour donut shop for donuts and coffee. Why bother with the coffee, right? But the drugs were running low. We walked the long walk up to Market Street, Scrumptious's arm wound round my waist like a vinyl belt. Scrumptious was a physical therapist. She had a beautifully furnished apartment in Canada.
You'd love it
, she said wistfully. She had just broken up with her girlfriend, and her dog, Plum, had just died.
This was her collar
, she said, fingering the studded red leather she wore around her neck. Everybody loved Scrumptious, all my friends.
You have to move here
, they begged,
we love you!
It was like we'd all gone to high school together.
Don't you want her to move here, Michelle? Oh, she swept Michelle off her feet! In like, what, two hours! You have got to move here
. My friends
were completely ready to marry me off to Scrumptious. It was like we'd all forgotten we were on drugs. Scrumptious blushed. A bus dropped us off at the Castro, and we met more friends at a diner there. Vinnie and Bruce. I tried to tell them about our night, but I just couldn't. It was too much. The sun was up and the air smelled like someone had cleaned it. The dykes had really made a mess of the Castro, there was shit everywhere.
Jesus Christ
, said Vinnie, surveying the carnage. Vinnie, That's Scrumptious, I whispered to him. She's . . . She's Incredible. I'm In Love With Her.
Really?
said Vinnie. We sat down at a long table inside the diner, and everybody ordered toast. The boys ate real breakfasts, big steaming plates that made us sick to look at. We nibbled our toast and pushed it away. Nobody could eat. Just chewing felt unnatural. Smoking was good. The drugs had made us synthetic. We were polyester. How gross bodies are, so needy. Swallowing, ugh. We gossiped about which waiters used to be waitresses and vice versa. We paid the check and left, through the thrashed neighborhood to Castro Station where everyone was on speed like us or else had just woken up and was drinking the bad bar coffee. Gay Pride Day. We leaned against the wall in the sunny part of the bar open to the street, drinking whiskeycokes. A guy from Oklahoma started talking to Tommy, who was also from Oklahoma, and they got close over that. The guy was pretty drunk and kept hitting Tommy's glass with his own, saying,
We got out, we got out!
It was about nine o'clock. Soon the parade would start up, boys were already walking out into the
morning debris of the Castro. We went to Tommy's house to take showers. I was still sticky down there from sex with Scrumptious, whose motorcycle I would soon be stuck on the back of.

I feel like I'm not telling you enough about Scrumptious, particularly since by now we were in love for real. Her outfit looked even better at nine in the morning. The day looked lazy around her, like it wasn't trying hard enough. The simple streets and all their houses.
I've got to go back and change
, she said. Oh, I said, Do You Have To?
Yeah
, she laughed, looking down at herself.
And I don't think I can ride my bike
. My heart slumped in my chest. Really?
Yeah
, she said,
I'm wrecked. Are you disappointed?
She touched my cheek. We kissed passionately in the street outside Tommy's, and Vinnie took pictures. Upstairs I begged Tommy for something to wear. Something clean and not gross. I got to wear her one-piece Team Dresch bathing suit, with Mariel Hemingway leaping a hurdle on the front and tour dates on the back. I felt better after the shower and the fresh outfit, but we were all crashing. The beginning of the end. We dumped the rest of the speed onto Tommy's drawing table and cut it up fine, divided it into lines. Vinnie and Bruce wanted some. You Don't Understand, I told them. This Is To Keep Us Alive. We gave them a little. Where Is Scrumptious? Scrumptious was taking forever. We phoned the home of my ex-girlfriend. I had forgotten all about her. Scrumptious, Hurry Up. Irritated. No one could decide whether to ride with Dykes On Bicycles or skateboard or what.
Ride a bike with me
, Tommy begged. I Can't, I said, I'm Dying. The bell
rang. It was Scrumptious. Her face was blank and uneventful with no makeup or hair. She wore a tank top, neat shorts, sneakers, and . . . freedom rings.
Freedom rings!
everybody shouted,
Freedom rings!
Everyone wanted to wear them. As a joke. Stella didn't get it. You couldn't really call her Scrumptious now. It didn't work. She looked like eight hundred other lesbians, she looked normal. She was normal, she was a normal lesbian from Canada with a very nice apartment and a job as a physical therapist. She kept talking about how much better Canada was. They had socialized health care and no guns. We should all move there.
You'll come and visit, right?
I wondered if her Ecstasy was still working.
What's so funny about freedom rings?
she asked. You couldn't really explain it, you just got it or you didn't get it, though Tommy did launch into a brief monologue about capitalism and assimilation and the marketing of homosexuality. She was like Linus going on about the true meaning of Xmas and wrapped it all up with a passionate plea to please let her wear the freedom rings. How could Stella say no? They jangled on Tommy's bony sternum as we slopped to the parade.
I'm Gay!
she kept yelling, delirious.
Happy Gay Day!

Brand new girls were with us. Bonzai was on acid. She took one look at the tiny band of protesting Christians clustered around the Muni entrance and started having a freaked-out bad trip. They had their big bleeding signs, hell this, sodomy that, and Bonzai started crying real tears, her big brown eyes all swirly and pained. The Christians were surrounded by a blue fence of policemen.
Bonzai turned and ran back down Market Street the way we came, and Ashley, who had done no drugs and was very clean and well-rested and centered, turned on the heels of her little boots and ran after her. I couldn't deal with Bonzai or with the Christians. I sat down on the pavement, and Stella wrapped her arms around me from behind. I had a 40. I thought it would somehow help. I drank it and watched the parade float by. Everyone had so much energy. Who was this girl hugging me? Sleep deprivation makes me question my relationships to everyone. I get really confused. The sun was so hot beating down on our heads and when the gay cops passed we booed them and everyone around us booed us for booing them.
A good person is still a bad cop!
Tommy shouted. She seemed to be holding up pretty good.
Barbie oppresses me!
she screamed at a pack of drag queens, clunky and hung with the dolls. We all got nuts when the mayor rode by in a limo. He Is Not! I shrieked. You Are Kidding Me! We gaped at him. Such a bad man, he looked totally
Weekend at Bernie's
with his bloated hand propped up and that dead little smile. Mayor Jordan. Remember when he got naked with those DJs? Bonzai came back to the fold, her eyes haunted and dilated. Oh God, We're All On Drugs, I moaned. Bonzai looked at us accusingly for not feeling the pain of the protesting Christians. I know what it's like to be struck by injustice while you're fucked up, it's catastrophic and isolating, but there was nothing I could do. I could barely make it to the giant mob scene shopping mall eatery in the grassy area. We waited in line for food and tried hard
to eat it. I lay in the grass with Stella and attempted to sleep. All these people with life inside them kept coming up and taking our picture. I couldn't talk. I couldn't form sentences. I could breathe and I could twitch, that's about it. And I had to co-host the open mic that night. A band was booked to play, and I expected it to be packed. Somehow I made it back to the Mission on a bus and me and Stella separated, each to sleep and freshen and meet that night for my gig. Finally home, I lay in my bed and thought about every horrible thing I could think of: poverty, my own and the world's, Iris, who didn't love me anymore, all the people who didn't love me anymore, plus all the people who never did and never would. I thought about loneliness and all the years my fast-paced lifestyle was shaving off my life, how my lungs were blackening and how my teeth were falling out because I had never been to a dentist. I thought about all the people who didn't like me because I was loud and I never stopped talking. I never shut up, never let people get a word in, and probably I drank too much. And my writing was self-indulgent. I was vain.

When I exhausted my misery I got out of bed, showered, changed and went to meet Stella. She was waiting at 16th and Mission in a pair of white jeans. Thank god Tommy still had the freedom rings. Stella couldn't stop asking about them. And her sunscreen, which Tommy also had—when could she get it? Later, I promised. I couldn't believe she was wearing white jeans. You are such an asshole, Michelle, I continued with the self-flagellation.
Why do you care what color jeans she wears? You are shallow. Nobody came to the open mic. Nobody. Just the band and a couple of girlfriends and my co-host, Iggy. And Stella. I tried to hold it together for the band because they were all clean and sober and I didn't want them to know I was on drugs, but I kept nodding off or slipping into hallucinations while talking to them. I Haven't Slept, I apologized. I'm Sorry Nobody's Here. I was full of apology. When would the endless day end? After the pathetic show, me and Stella went for greasy tofu burgers at the twenty-four-hour donut shop and then we went home. My home. We did not have sex but we kissed and it was weird. Kissing was an expression of affection—what was this affection based on? My mind chugged like a scientist over a mysterious tube. I didn't know this girl at all. My tired spun-out head whirled with it. I barely slept. I do speed once, I'm up for three days. Stella slept, no problem, snoring in short, delicate snorts throughout the night, which of course didn't help. In the morning she had to go shopping. In the Castro, a part of town I could have lived without seeing again for a few days. Into the used leather store to try on dozens of leather chaps, none of which fit. There was an enormous pile of discarded cow outside her dressing room door, and I was sitting on top of it when Candice walked into the store. She gave me a face. I guess I must have looked funny, sprawled out half-dead on top of all that leather. I'm With Stella, I shrugged.
Really?
Candice wrinkled her nose. Candice didn't like her, but Candice liked few people. She had only recently decided
I was ok. I shrugged again, helplessly. I had only wanted to have a little fun and now I was married and would perhaps never sleep again. We moved on to a trendy thrift store, and Stella put half of it on her credit card. She started to fuck me in the dressing room, but she was just teasing. What could I do but endure? I kept hoping she'd buy me something. She seemed to have a lot of money. Back at my house my roommate Sam was stressing out about the flyers for her club that she still hadn't made.
I know—you two!
She had us get naked and crawl around like animals and pounce while she took pictures with her clicking little camera. We were moving around the filthy linoleum in my bedroom. I hadn't cleaned since the breakup, just kept moving my bed around and pushing things into different corners. In a lame attempt to make myself feel alive again, I'd painted my walls blood red. A passionate shade, but I woke each morning filled with rage, like those inmates they did color and mood studies on in prisons. Red makes the angry angrier. We moved into the bathroom and took a very silly picture of Stella up on the toilet licking the lightbulb on the wall and me underneath her licking up at her snatch. I kept trying to kick-start the excellent feelings I had had for her the other night, but if you want to feel like you're on drugs, you have to do drugs.