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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (May 18, 2001)
may 18. 2001 * J n t * 08.39 BOOKS ▼ assy, punky, raw, dirty, true and familiar. These words immediately come to mind to describe spoken word artist and author Michelle Tea, as evidenced on the first page of her book Valencia, just nominated for a Lambda Literary Award: “1 sloshed away from the bar with my drink, sending little tsunamis of beer onto my hands, soaking into the wrist of my shirt. Don’t ask me what 1 was wearing. Something to impress Whats-Her-Name, the girl I wasn’t dating. She had a girlfriend, she didn’t need two. She need ed someone to sleep naked with and share some sexual tension, and for that position I made myself available.” So begins the liquid ride through Tea’s book of inebriated lesbian avenging and sexy adven ture. Her writing is charged with exhilarating energy that appeals with a bang and claws its way into your head. This book does not fall short on girls— they’re everywhere, on every page. We imme diately encounter Petra and her violent, knife- wielding safe sex; and Willa, the jaded poet with eyelashes from here to eternity who won’t "V ' ‘x t î Æ t , . '. take her clothes off, even to fuck; and Gwynn, the recreational wrist slasher; and Iris, the Pis- cean boy dyke and careless heartbreaker. Poetic and frantic, insightful and energetic, this work brilliantly evokes the ups and downs of tangled affairs, drugs and friendships in a post-punk, urban dyke setting. Valencia is more of a memoir, although it’s classified as fiction, which, Tea explains in an interview with Just Out, “kind of saves my ass a little bit.” I’m left amazed that any one person has the stamina to go through so much chaos in such a short peri od of time. Valencia is a fast read, only because I was San Francisco au th o r unable to put it down. I mean, this girl is so and spoken w ord a rtist wild, 1 vicariously was captivated by her adven tures and left feeling a little bored with my life mixes a lively brew at the end. She shows us that in every nook and cranny of life lurks a novel. b \ H adley S c o n But Tea also documents quiet moments with insightful metaphor-driven prose: “Mov ing toward my house with the windows open “Every night she pressed knives to my throat, wide like big mouths eating the sky. You could or called me on the phone and invited me over sit in the window and be its teeth, my favorite to cuddle...and still 1 went home and wrote place to be.” poems about how it wasn’t enough. Something W hat’s marvelous about Valencia is Tea’s ability to relate her personal interactions with a gaped in me, stupid and puckered like the maw of a fish, that ugly.” tremendous amount of heart and soul, giving Although Tea doesn’t hesitate to be brutally the story the depth it needs to endlessly honest about others, she doesn’t spare herself engage. Further, she doesn’t overanalyze her either. She brings the reader fully into the world; that task is given over to the reader. moment by explicitly conveying the intimate Instead, she chooses to reflect on her actions details of her own experiences—details that and let the reader know how she feels about resonate with the sometimes gawky exploration things as they unfold. Here, Tea reflects on the gnawing emptiness of life that every reader can relate to. “The awkwardness of not knowing some- she experiences with one of her girlfriends: Eager nominee Michelle Tea will be seeing stars at the upcoming Lambda Literary S Tea partv m ÊÊÈ ones body, I had no idea what to do. I shoved my fingers into her. You can do it harder, she said, and I did. These girls. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t hurting her. I remembered Petra, the last place my fist had been. The vagina is not a delicate place, I was learning this slowly.” Tea now is working on a 400-page book called The Chelsea Whistle. She says it deals with "family stuff, childhood and adolescence.” Even when she talks about her writing process, it feels like one of her books. I &.V \ V' / > “I still am figuring out how to structure my time better. But another thing for me then— this was like five or more years ago— is that 1 was just a total experience junkie. I wanted to have tons of sex with tons of different girls and figure it all out, crack the big mystery of the body, live like a flapper in Paris or some thing. And that particular energy was really feeding my writing at the time, so once I set tled into a single girl, the momentum would cease a bit and the inspiration would fizzle. It depends on where you’re writing from. 1 was writing from this place of kind of being the tragic lone wolf, wronged by girls, which is a fine place to write from for a minute, but you can’t live there forever.” W hen asked what she would be doing if she wasn’t writing, Tea responds: “I don’t have much skill or interest in anything besides writ ing. I can read tarot cards— maybe 1 would have gone deeper into that and really honed my psychic ability and made a few guest appearances on Unsolved Mysteries.” Tea is also the co-founder of Sister Spit, a women’s spoken word group from San Francis co that came into being in 1994. She describes the catalyst that drove it to life: “Me and Sini Anderson, who also started Sister Spit, liked going to the drunken, belligerent boy open mikes and yelling at everyone to shut the fuck up before we read and heckling the stupid boys trying to be Bukowski. But we knew the city was filled with girls who would not want to deal with that to read their poems, and who could blame them? So we made a space where they’d be listened to and appreciated, without having to crack a beer bottle over someone’s head. [So] Sister Spit came into being...as a weekly, girls-only alternative to the male-dominated spoken word scene in the city. It was always free, and though everyone was welcome in the audience, it was girls only on the stage— and girls includes tranny girls and tranny boys, too, for that matter. However you’re ‘girl.’ ” Tea will not be with Sister Spit during its next go-round in Portland as she will be at the Lambda Literary Awards ceremony in Chica go. Yippee! Good luck, girl! J H SISTER S pit will perform twice at Portland State University: a benefit for the Hambleton Project 7 p.m. May 30 in the Smith Ballroom and a free' tO'Students show 7 p.m. May 31 in the Muldcul' tural Center. Tickets are $7'$10for the benefit, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. HADLEY S cott is a Portland free-lance writer who hopes all the gals who read this book are inspired to raise some hell. m ■ escapc m ws single Girls Night Out ® EVCM W EvtWW Open a i 11:00 am ¡even dayr a week Brunch fpecialf on Sunday Join us for FREE j u s t n r n i V oice P ersonal Ads, open everyday & night YOUNG M EN S G RO U P meets every Wednesday fr» 7pm free chips and salsa, free fun, free friends and free women (wail, maybe). * " '* " • * *4 7 P #I» Latin, Caribbean & Tropical (virine and Fidi h r / VH Monday through hmday 151) W e t Blvd. in Hilkdale 50H T H T W 503 236-6411 - 201 SE 12th (comer of 12th & Ash) mm. 7 pm. 4612 S E Hawthorne Blvd. • 503-233-3996. 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