Black Wave (4 page)

Ziggy was both scandalized and delighted by Michelle's love-at-first-sight encounter with the teenager. Her walk when newly drunk became a sort of dance, she swiveled out from her hips as she slid down the street. Like many butches, Ziggy dealt with her feminine hips by weighing them down with a lot of junk. A heavy belt was threaded through the
loops of her leather pants. The word RAGGEDY was spelled in metal studs across the back, as if you could not simply see for yourself. All the dykes had recently discovered the shop in the Castro where leather daddies got their belts, vests, caps, and chaps. A bearded fag resembling the Greek god Hephaestus would pound the word of your choice into the leather with bits of metal. It was expensive, but worth it if you had it. Ziggy went from rags to riches regularly, scoring jobs at yuppie restaurants and then slipping on a wet floor and throwing her back out. She blew her cash on leather goods and rounds of tequila for everyone, plus some cocaine and maybe a nice dinner in a five-star restaurant where service people treated her like a pig. Whatever was left over was given away to people on the street, and then it was back to bumming cigarettes off her friends.

But Ziggy's hips: a Leatherman was snapped to the belt, like a Swiss Army knife but more so. The gadget flipped open into a pair of pliers with a world of miniature tools fanning out from the handles. Screwdriver, corkscrew, scissors, tweezers. The Leatherman was a lesbian phenomenon and life ran more smoothly because of it. Ziggy had that on one hip and a Buck knife in a worn leather sheath on the other. A hankie forever tufted from her back pocket, corresponding to the infamous faggot hankie code. The hue, pattern, or even material flagging from Ziggy's ass transmitted the desire for a particular sexual activity, right or left pocket communicated whether the butch would prefer the giving or receiving end. Ziggy's tastes were varied and shifting and hankies of many sort danced between her pockets. That night a flash of lamé dangled from her right cheek, signaling her wish to be fucked by a fancy femme.

In Ziggy's other pocket sat a leather wallet, hooked to
her belt loop with a swag of silver chain. The nights Ziggy packed, yet another layer of leather and metal would be rigged across her hips, a heavy dildo curled in her underwear. The overall affect of these accessories was not unlike a woman dancing the hula in a skirt of shells and coconuts, or belly dancers draping their bellies in chain mail. The swinging, glinting hardware propelled Ziggy forward from her core, and, though your eyes were drawn to the spectacle, the flash obscured the femininity—like dazzle camouflage. A lot of butches wore this look, but Ziggy did it best.

Gay Men Fuck Younger Boys All The Time, Michelle said fiercely.

Okay, NAMBLA,
Ziggy snorted.
Okay, NAMBLA Kay Letourneau.

Not Like That, Michelle said. Just—You Know What I Mean. Older Fags And Younger Fags, Like Legally Young. Daddies. Zeus And Ganymede.

Ganymede was a child,
Ziggy schooled her.

Yeah, You Were There, Michelle retorted, On Mount Olympus. You Were Working The Door. You Carded Ganymede. Michelle's joke reminded her of a true story in which Ziggy picked up a girl with hair so short there was almost nothing for her Hello Kitty barrettes to clamp onto and who wore a pink dog collar around her neck. The girl left her ID on Ziggy's bedroom floor by accident. She hadn't been old enough to get into the bar where Ziggy'd seduced her.

That's not the same thing,
Ziggy defended.
That girl lied to me. Just by being in the bar she was pretending to be at least twenty-one. That was not my fault.

So, Michelle said, If That Poet Lied To Me About Her Age It Would Be Okay?

It's too late,
Ziggy said scornfully, swigging the Olde
English.
You met her at the Teen Poetry Slam. It is too late for you, NAMBLA Kay Letourneau.
Ziggy's hips swiveled as she skipped along. She sashayed down the block, nearly running into a shriveled old crackhead woman who had emerged from the mouth of an SRO hotel. At least Michelle thought she was old. She might have been thirty, but crack is such an evil potion it turns maidens to hags in a season.

You know what to do!!!!
the woman croaked in a prophetic timbre. Her lips were split with dehydration and cancer.
Do it! Do! It! Do it now! Do it now!
Michelle and Ziggy looked at one another, alarmed. Lifelong city dwellers, both were accustomed to the spooky public outbursts of addicts and crazy people, but Ziggy tended to treat them as oracles dispensing coded messages.

Do what?!
Ziggy asked, suddenly desperate.
Do what?! Oh god! I feel like that woman just looked into my soul!
Ziggy's eyes got the focused-unfocused look that only a drunk Pisces with eyes that color green could achieve. She retraced her steps and pulled a palmful of coins from the tight front pocket of her leather pants. She placed them in the woman's chickeny hand.

You know,
she told Ziggy. A bright piece of her fabric wound around her head and her eyes stared out from the cave of her face.
You know!

I do,
Ziggy replied solemnly.

Michelle thought Ziggy was probably crazy herself, but there was a chance she wasn't and that the street people of her neighborhood were, in fact, prophets, apocalyptically wise, witches damaged from being born into a time with no respect for magic. Michelle preferred this story over the alternative of everyone having chemical imbalances and genetic predispositions toward alcoholism. She supported
Ziggy and helped her puzzle out the cryptic warning of the street oracle.

Is There Anything You Think You Should Do Right Now? Michelle asked.

Ziggy thought.

Write a novel?
she mused. Ziggy stuck to poetry, but it was hard to make money as a poet and Ziggy really liked money. Another option was moving to Los Angeles to direct films but that seemed like such an intense thing to do. Apply for a grant? She dug deep.
I was thinking about doing yoga,
she said. Recently Ziggy had briefly dated a bicurious yoga instructor who kicked everyone's ass at pool.
Prana
, the girl, smiled after sinking the final ball, raising her fingers to the barroom ceiling in a spiritual gesture.

You Want To Do Some Yoga And Improve Your Pool Game? Michelle asked. One of the errant ways Ziggy brought in extra cash was pool sharking. Another was shining shoes with an old-fashioned shoeshine kit she lugged from bar to bar, a butch version of those Peachy Puff girls selling cigarettes and candy and useless light-up plastic roses. Just as the Peachy Puffs wore ridiculous and sexy costumes resembling the spangled outfits little girls tap dance in, Ziggy knew which garments would appropriately fetishize her labor. She shined shoes in a stained wifebeater and a tight pair of Levi's.

Maybe She Was Talking To Me? Michelle suggested. Do It. Like Make Out With The Poet.

The teen,
Ziggy corrected.

Lucretia, Michelle insisted. But the name was such a mouthful. Was it her real name? she wondered. San Francisco was full of people who changed their names upon moving to town. Trash Bag, Spike, Monster, Machine, Scout,
Junkyard, Prairie Dog, Flipper, Oakie, Fiver, Kiki, Smalley, Rocks, Rage, Sugar, and Frog were only some of the individuals Michelle had met since coming to California.
I don't think you should do it,
Ziggy said.

The thing was, Michelle had a girlfriend. Her last name was Warhol so everyone called her Andy, though the name on her driver's license was Carlotta. Andy was on a lesbian soccer team. Michelle liked to watch her spike the ball with her head like an aggressive seal. Andy cooked meals at an AIDS hospice in the Castro. She was older than Michelle and had been doing this for many, many years and had been around for the terrible era when gay men were dying and dying and dying and dying. Michelle had assumed Andy prepared healthful, nourishing, life-prolonging foods for these men, but as they all had death sentences what she did was cook them their last meals, again and again. Pork chops, ribs, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, fried chicken. Hamburger Helper when it was requested (and it was). Meat loaf, loafed from whatever meat could be found. Cupcakes and brownies and pies with ice cream. Andy fed Michelle, too. It was a foundation of their relationship. Without Andy there were many times when Michelle would have gone hungry, so broke and barely employable was she, so hell-bent on prioritizing liquor above food. Wasn't Beer Bread? Michelle asked in earnest. Liquid Bread? Especially Guinness, didn't they give Guinness to pregnant women in some country (Ireland she supposed), and wasn't Michelle Irish, didn't years of ethnic evolution give her a genetic gift for absorbing the nutrients in a pint of beer?

Generally, people who did not drink like Michelle—
let's call it heavily—generally, these types of people would not want to date her. It was unusual how Andy not only accepted Michelle's inebriation but encouraged it. She bought her jugs of beer beyond Michelle's normal price range. She procured pills from folks at work and urged Michelle to take them. This dynamic inspired in Michelle a variety of emotions. Sometimes she felt like a helpless princess being attended to by a handsome butch. When Andy was a little girl she prayed to unicorns to not get boobs, and it worked. Andy was white as a ghost with a head full of black, black hair. Her black hair fell into a natural Superman swirl on her forehead. Andy was attractive in the manner of an old-fashioned movie star, Michelle thought, or maybe it was her chivalry, if chivalry was what it was. Sometimes Michelle worried that Andy just wanted to knock her out so that she didn't have to deal with talking to or fucking her. Michelle tended to never shut up and she wanted big drama in bed all the time, requiring her lover to be a roller coaster or tsunami.

Michelle and Andy were not faithful to one another. Theirs was a messily open relationship, one in which the boundaries were never fully articulated so could never be fully broken. In spite of this, there was the feeling that Michelle was shitting on the rules all the time with her haphazard acquisition of lovers.

An example: She had an affair with a junkie troubadour named Penny. Penny sang Johnny Thunders songs on her acoustic guitar as they walked through the industrial wasteland of her neighborhood, Dogpatch, a place not yet gentrified, with vacant storefronts and SRO hotels, in one of which Penny lived. Penny had tangled black hair that clawed out from her head like Medusa. She wore spandex
pants and clunky boots with broken zippers. The boots barely stayed on her feet so there was always the exciting possibility that Penny would wipe out. Walking down the street with her was like watching a circus acrobat. Penny's small room was padded with thrift-store clothing, mounds of it. They made out on a mattress on the floor, a muted black-and-white television strobing behind them.

In the morning, though, panic woke Michelle like an alarm clock. Who was this elegant skeleton she was curled into? This hair had a new smell, the dusty stink of Aqua Net Extra Super Hold and a drugstore perfume worn as a joke and also dirt and sweat and the tang of heroin itself, brown sugar and spoiled wine. Though Penny was who she'd wanted last night, slow kisses tasting of new intoxicants, Andy was who she wanted to wake up with, the shore she longed to beach herself upon. Michelle peered through makeup-crusted eyes at the collection of clothes making drifts up the walls—she would be smothered in an earthquake. Penny shambled out of bed, so frail in the daylight, and rutted through the base of a pile, extracting something that shimmered like the scales of a magical fish. She pulled it over the torn slip dress she'd passed out in and left to throw up in the bathroom down the hall.

Michelle fled. She wheeled about Dogpatch, an unfamiliar neighborhood. The apocalyptic times that were upon them glared from every bit of rubble, every mound of festering shit left by the packs of wild dogs she hoped she would not run into. Did buses even run out here? How had she arrived? Penny had met her on the corner, with her guitar. She had strummed “You Can't Put Your Arms around a Memory,” singing it with a cracking voice. Penny really was like a girl Johnny Thunders. Someone had tattooed the
lyrics to “Chinese Rock” on her shoulder with a sewing needle. It was a spidery tattoo, the lines shook crooked down her skin, but it worked with her look.

Penny was indeed amazing, but Michelle worried there was a time limit on that sort of amazing. That it was the sort of amazing that could begin to look sad with age. Michelle fought against this analysis, which seemed cruel and typical. The messed-up queers Michelle ran with tempted fate daily, were creating a new way to live, new templates for everything—life, death, beauty, aging, art. Penny would never be pathetic, she would always be daring and deep, her addiction a middle finger held up to proper society. Right? Right?

Andy had her own love intrigues, one with a shy photographer who'd grown up in Alaska. Andy insisted that this was not as glamorous as it sounded. Alaska! Michelle projected sleighs and fur coats onto the girl, who she had never met but whose name was, amazingly, Carlotta, same as Andy's. Like getting to go into the same public restroom, having a date with your exact name was a whimsical perk of lesbianism. Michelle imagined this Carlotta as a femme twin of Andy, standing on a windswept glacier wearing a fluffy hat cut from the pelt of a baby seal. No matter that the glaciers had long ago melted into floods and that baby seals were cartoony memories surviving on as stuffed animals. Unlike some of the younger people she was friends with, Michelle had remembered the hype of Alaska, had seen it on TV, had understood the state's brand. But all it had had going for it was the natural abundance thing, so when the planet started to die, Alaska had been one of the first states to tank.

Michelle was, for the most part, happy that Andy was
having affairs, unless she wasn't, and then she would demand painful information from her girlfriend.

Did You Touch Her Boobs? Michelle interrogated. Did You?