Michelle Tea

“It smelled of oily flowers, like the worn pillowcases of long-ago lovers.”

“i was really into communal living and we were all /such free spirits, crossing the country we were /nomads and artists and no one ever stopped / to think about how the one working class housemate / was whoring to support a gang of upper middle class / deadheads with trust fund safety nets and connecticut / childhoods, everyone was too busy processing their isms / to deal with non-issues like class....and it’s just so cool / how none of them have hang-ups about / sex work they’re all real / open-minded real / revolutionary you know / the legal definition of pimp is / one who lives off the earnings of / a prostitute, one or five or / eight and i’d love to stay and / eat some of the stir fry i’ve been cooking / for y’all but i’ve got to go fuck / this guy so we can all get stoned and / go for smoothies tomorrow, save me / some rice, ok?”

“Sophie knew about power animals,everyone did...Sophie thought she might be a cat, she liked cats a lot.”

“I wanted her so badly, my heart hung out of my chest like some hound-dog's tongue, pant, pant.”

“How many lovers did a person need, anyway?”

“Did anyone think this canon of druggie men were out of control? Only in the most admirable of ways! Out of control like a shaman or a space explorer, like a magician sawing himself in half. Out of control like a poet.”

“I was so sad that day. My heart was trying to climb from my body.”

“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 have 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.”

“Maybe we could all take care of each other, I dreamed.”

“Michelle felt that if people didn’t like the way they looked in her book then they should have behaved differently.”

“and give me insults, give meeconomic discrimination, give methe darkened parking lot of a windowless queer bar, give me fleets of bigots and books bannedin libraries across america, feed the worldwith lies about my life and plop a secondhelping of oppression on my plateand thank you for not making me straight.”

“She was just so sad. Her whole face hung with it, like sadness was her personal gravity.”