TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 83

[Tobie Shapiro]

December 8, 200000006


Dear All,

	When I got Meyshe up this morning, he said he had had an 
incongruous dream.  He dreampt of ancient Egyptians playing violins, 
violas and cellos.  This of course is impossible, he told me, as the 
string instrument family was not invented until the sixteenth century 
or thereabouts.  But he enjoyed the dream because of its incongruity, 
and laughed while he was lying in bed.  He laughs well, my boy. 
There are some who say that autistics have no sense of humour, but I 
know this to be false.  Meyshe and I have made a study of what makes 
things funny, and he'll ask me routinely about jokes and cartoons, 
"What makes this funny?"  We have it in categories: uncharacteristic 
social behaviour, understatement, overstatement, taking something 
literally that was meant figuratively, taking something figuratively 
that was meant literally, absurd, silly, etc.  He learned these 
things and then would laugh at the jokes.  Fascinating.



 
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A Busy Girl

	After Warner Jepson, my composition teacher, and I had 
consummated our mutual adoration, things changed for the lessons. 
Warner was a lot older than I, at forty nine to my thirty two.  He 
had a lot more control over his hormonal drives than I did.  I think 
that sexual compulsivity is just part of being young and fertile. 
Nothing much matters but love, consummation and nesting.  Finding 
that right person.  Searching under all the rocks for likely partners 
can keep a body very busy.  But by the time you're past those prime 
child bearing years, there are additional priorities besides rutting. 
So Warner was capable of sitting at the piano and going over a score, 
or working through my latest composition, and saving the lust and 
love making for afterwards.  I, on the other hand, was terribly 
distracted by his breathing, by his presence next to me, by the look 
of his hands, the sound of his voice.  I really couldn't concentrate. 
I don't think it was a matter of self discipline.  I think it was a 
biological imperative.  I mean that.  We are driven to combine 
chromosomes with each other, and at a certain age, that is what 
drives the creative urge.  It's hard to separate them.  Warner, then, 
was leading the way, and I tried to follow, knowing what was right, 
but wanting so much what was not.  Still, we did get lessons taught 
and lessons learned, and I was learning about composition.  This was 
the time when my little songs turned into full fledged orchestrations 
with viola, cello, bass, guitar, bassoon, oboe, percussion.  Whole 
scores came out of me.  I would have to find musicians to play them.

	One lesson after we'd closed the sheet music, Warner led me 
upstairs to his bedroom, and told me there was something he had that 
he wanted me to try.  He produced a tiny plastic zip lock bag with 
white powder in it, a little mirror and a razor blade.  He poured 
some of the powder out onto the mirror and began chopping it out even 
finer with the razor blade.  When it was finer than salt, he arranged 
little rows of the powder, two for him, and two for me, and 
instructed me to do like he did.  With his enormous nose, he leaned 
down and, closing off one nostril with his finger, he sniffed one of 
the rows of the powder up his nostril, then returned to snort up the 
other with the other nostril.  He told me it was my turn.  This was 
cocaine.  And I'd heard of it.  I'd heard that it was an upper, that 
you felt good about everything when you did it, and it wasn't 
addicting.  This was the common knowledge then.  This was before the 
widespread use of cocaine inspired studies that brought out some of 
the less salutary qualities of the drug.  As it was, cocaine was 
being billed as healthy as cornflakes.  I had no fear.  I did exactly 
what Warner had done, one little row at a time.

	In less than two minutes, Warner said, "I hope you're feeling 
something, because I sure do," and he grabbed me by the shoulders, 
pulled me close to him, took one of his big hands and opened it 
gently onto my cheek, then kissed me more deeply than anyone had ever 
kissed me before.  It was the first kiss done as it should be done, 
with all the soaring music and the heart pounding, the calls to grace 
of the spirit and the invitation to come home at last.  At that 
moment I felt nothing from the cocaine.  I just felt something 
brimming from Warner, and that is the feeling I tried to reproduce 
every time we made love.  Every time we were together, I wanted that 
same feeling.  And cocaine was how it had happened once, therefore 
the drug might be able to induce that same feeling again.

	"I hope I haven't started anything," he said under his 
breath, a few lessons later.

	Once a week I came to San Francisco for my composition 
lesson, and once a week when we finished the lesson, we got out the 
cocaine.  Once a week we made love.  And that was enough for then. 
But appetites grow for cocaine.  You need a little bit more for the 
same effect, and he had indeed started something, just as Harry had 
started something when he told me to stick my finger down my throat 
to urp up the meal that was making me uncomfortably full.  So here I 
was at thirty two, bulimic and on cocaine, a marvellous combination 
that could keep you busy all day.  When I was on cocaine, I had no 
interest in eating.  I had to eat first.  You couldn't do them at the 
same time.  I was a busy girl.


 
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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net