My Friend Michelle

My friend Michelle has the foulest mouth I’ve ever encountered, and that’s saying something. When she was crossed in business, she fumed that she wouldn’t bend over and take it up the ass. Once, we were in her huge SUV, entering a mall parking lot, when a Mercedes cut her off. She yelled out of her indow “Whore!” The Mercedes stopped in front of us and the Whore marched over to the window.

I was horrified and pictured a fistfight. Not only that but there was $1000 in cash in plain sight, Michelle’s weekly pin money for blowing on designer goods. The Whore was a normal looking middle aged woman who barked, “Would you like to repeat that in my face?”

I gestured wildly to the Whore, making the “crazy” sign with my pointer finger, hoping she might back down from a nutcase. Michelle held her ground without repeating the word, and the Whore went back to her car. It was one of many times I found myself both impressed and terrified by Michelle’s rage.

Michelle and her husband owned a thriving alarm business and had an office behind their house where I was their administrative assistant. I am seriously incompetent in an office setting but it took them a while to figure this out. They were both clean and sober after years of wild living, and both were heavily tattooed in an era when that was still considered sketchy. The husband had been a heroin addict and Michelle had been an alcoholic. He disparaged AA meetings but Michelle enjoyed them, dressing up in Gucci and Dolce every Friday night to flaunt her status and gossip with her girlfriends.

Underneath her bravado, of course, Michelle was a troubled and deeply insecure young woman. Years of parental abuse had taken their toll on her. She strived to be a good mother to her young son and her teenage step-daughter. She was tender with the former and brutal to the latter but the husband never stepped in. He was as quiet as she was loud but when he got angry, there was hell to pay. Or so she said.

Michelle and I grew close quickly. It wasn’t long before she insisted on keeping the bathroom door open so she could keep talking to me while she peed. Her combination of thuggery and neediness was irresistible. Even after she ran over my dog Lassie we remained friends.

Michelle and I could make each other laugh hysterically with just a glance. When I told her that I’d always hated being called “Joni” she proceeded to call me that every day. When I expressed my dislike of Bob Seeger, she began to blast his music in the office and to burst out in his songs when I was off-guard at my computer.

Michelle was preoccupied with labia, and she liked to describe her girlfriends’ imperfections in that area. One was called a swordfish and I can’t remember the other names she made up. She once caught me in the bathroom and made a big deal about my abundant pubic hair. Twenty years later she still teases me about it.

It’s impossible to convey her wild sense of humor, but it’s a large part of why I love her. She could projectile-spit on demand, and was rightly proud of this talent. She would stand yards from a target, positioning her body like an Olympic javelin thrower, and she would point at the target like Babe Ruth calling his shot. The spit flew through the air and always hit the target.

Michelle was competitive in more areas than labia. She was extremely proud of her handwriting and was pissed off when I showed her my own nice cursive. She decided that the guys in the office should judge between our handwriting samples and she refused to accept their decision that mine was the best. How could I not love her?

Seeing each other every day in the office, we developed a deep intimacy. She befriended my son, who was away at college, via email discussions. Soon, they were exchanging horrifying images in their mutual love of the dark side. I was pleased by their friendship at first. When I passed her computer one day and saw an image of a naked girl covered in shit, I had second thoughts.

The night Michelle ran over my dog, I was home alone with my younger son asleep in his bed. I heard a screech of brakes outside but ignored it until a knock on my door. Lassie had wandered into the street, thanks to the gardener who forgot to lock the backyard gate. Michelle couldn’t stop in time to avoid Lassie, who came inside through the dog door, injured and bleeding.

I ran to my dog, who bit me. I was beside myself with fear. Michelle wrapped Lassie in a towel and drive to the emergency vet hospital. I called a friend to come and sit with me.

The vet finally called and told me that they’d tried to save Lassie but she was gone. I could hear hysterical sobbing in the background. It was Michelle. I asked the vet if Michelle was alright. The vet commented that she’d never heard anyone worry about a friend after hearing about the loss of a pet. She didn’t know how much I love Michelle, a broken baby bird with a mouth like a whole fleet of sailors.