Black Wave Read Online Free PDF Page A

loyalty of Italian mafiosi.
    I Would Fucking Die For You, Michelle liked to tell Ziggy when they were wasted and sitting together on a curb, smoking.
    I would fucking die for you too, Ziggy concurred. I would take a bullet for you. She dragged on her cigarette so powerfully the whole thing was gone in one pull. What about Stitch, would you die for her?
    I Would. I Would Die For Stitch.
    I would too, Ziggy nodded, without hesitation. Surely no one would ever be asked to take a bullet for another, but this was not the point. The world beyond them felt hostile, taking bullets was an emotional truth, it felt real.
    On the stage the young queer seemed to know she was killing it. Michelle’s heart tore open and wept blood at the humanity of this girl’s experience. To be a butch girl in high school, to be better at masculinity than all the men around you, and to be punished for it! How everyone acts likeyou’re a freak when really you are the hottest most amazing gorgeous together deep creative creature the school has ever housed and you know it, somehow you know it, and everyone knows it, and no one can deal with it—oh, the head fuck of that situation, sitting on the shoulders of a teenager! Michelle’s hand was splayed on her chest like she was having a heart attack. Ziggy noticed.
    Oh no, she said.
    Michelle’s eyes were like a slot machine that had come up cherries. The youth looked so bitter and fierce at the smacking, stomping close of the poem, her eyes too old to be stuck in the smooth face of a teenager. She looked like she had been sustaining the ongoing tragedy of life for longer than eighteen years. Michelle’s heart had fully liquefied, was puddled somewhere else in her body.
    The poet’s cheekbones were high and her tired eyes had an exotic lilt. Her dusky-blue hair, cut into no discernable style, was thick, itching to spring into curls. And her poem was good enough to win the competition.
    Are We Just Picking Her Because She’s Queer? Michelle worried into Ziggy’s ear.
    Ziggy shook her head. Her orange hair, separated by grease and product into individual clumps, swung like fringe. No, she’s really, really good, Ziggy said reverentially.
    Better Than The Beatboxer? Michelle checked.
    Better than the Beatboxer.
    Beatboxing Isn’t Poetry Anyway, Michelle pointed out.
    On the stage the girl accepted her trophy and did a friendly hug slash chest thump with the Beatboxer, who had come in second. Everyone who placed was masculine, had delivered poems laced with rage and anger. None of the girls, none of the little Stevie Nickses with their yearningpoems of love and self-exploration, had placed. Michelle felt the sting of injustice as she observed this, then, upon remembering she was a judge, the prick of shame. She was part of the problem! Given a bit of power Michelle was no better than anyone else. Did she hate women, too? It was true she found much of the girl poetry limp and whiny, frustratingly vague. They hadn’t zeroed in on a social ill and gone to battle, they had turned their vision inward and taken the audience on a murky journey. Michelle guessed they’d all write devastating memoirs in about five years. She decided not to worry about it and went to congratulate the winner.
    Mary Kay Letourneau! Ziggy shrieked, clipping her in the shoulder with their shared 40 ounce of Olde English.
    What? Michelle cried. She’s Eighteen! That’s Legal!
    Mary Kay Letourneau, Ziggy repeated, shaking her head. They moved together through the darkness of South Van Ness, passing Victorians protected from the street by wild invasive shrubbery and tall iron fences. The overhang of dying trees blotted the streetlights and the sidewalk was empty of people. In San Francisco’s nicer neighborhoods people with money had converted their yardscapes to pebble and driftwood, stuck here and there with spiny succulents. In the Mission nobody could afford to uproot the giants