TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 86

[Tobie Shapiro]

December 11, 2000000006


Dear You Who,

	Yesterday, the family (Meyshe, Feyna, 
Gramma and I) went to "Dick and Beanie's".  Dick 
and Beanie are a couple who spend much of their 
year travelling the world and collecting folk 
artifacts of every kind, for resale in the 
states.  They open up their house about twice a 
year to the public, and everyone files through 
gawking at the largesse.  This year most of the 
stuff was from Africa.  I'm partial, I think, to 
Asian things, but those were far and few between. 
Still, Meyshe managed to go through his whole 
list and get presents for everyone right there in 
Dick and Beanie's basement.  He's fast.  And he's 
usually right, too, although, I caught him 
collecting a necklace for me, I think, that I 
don't like and will never wear.  But it is really 
the thought that counts, and I will count the 
thought big.  I imagine a life like Dick and 
Beanie's.  They finance trips all over the world 
by sniffing out and purchasing crate loads of 
clothes, sculpture, knick knacks, furniture and 
house wares from places far flung, and then come 
home and sell them so they can finance their next 
trip.  I could never do that.  But I can do this. 
So I do.



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Scandal Wars

	My sister, Dana, dealt with our father 
very differently than I did.  Her tendency was to 
scream and flail, act out.  She was, and is, 
driven to high drama and hyperbole, so there was 
plenty of that around the homestead.  But my 
father was dramatic, too, just in a different 
way.  Maybe his drama was characterized by being 
on the level of a two year old, while Dana was 
more age appropriate.  In cases where I would 
have slipped away into my room, or treated insult 
and injury with sarcasm, she would holler in his 
face, or issue forth a passionate soliloquy 
deserving of applause.  This was why you didn't 
want to get the two of them paired off against 
each other.  Pretty much, we could be a peaceful 
family until you introduced either Justin or Dana 
into the mix.  That changed everything.  Both of 
them had this in common: they had no concept of 
the real consequences of their behaviour, and 
acted without regard to them.  The games they 
played with other human beings had no boundaries. 
Both lived in a world of their own imagination. 
Reality intruded occasionally.

	Dana was the firebrand.  I was the 
sensitive artist.  Dana marched out of the house 
slamming doors and yelling, "Fuck you!"  I inched 
my way out the front door and came running back, 
insecure, dependent.  When Dana enrolled at the 
University of California in our very own city, 
she moved out of the house and into a student 
cooperative.  She came home frequently enough, 
but was glad to be on her own.  That first 
semester, there was evidently a scandal in the 
co-op dorms.  Young women, who were called girls 
then, were found to be sleeping overnight in the 
co-op where the young men, who were called men 
then, lived.  Dana announced to us in a voice 
meant for the stage all about this scandal, and 
added with great affect, "And I was one of those 
girls!"  She looked over the rest of us for 
reactions to her disclosure.  When not enough 
shock was registered, she looked awfully 
disappointed.  This was her way of leaving the 
nest, with fanfare and hot noise.  But my father 
had to top her act; this is how he evened the 
score.  I swear that this was all played out in 
competition for my mother's attentions.

	One day, Dana had a few friends over from 
the cooperative.  They were sitting around the 
dining room table shooting the breeze, chewing 
the fat, shooting the fat and chewing the breeze. 
it was an animated discussion among women who 
were pioneers, on the front line of the cultural 
revolution.  I was busy doing whatever I was 
doing, also in the dining room, but mostly 
excluded from the conversation.  All this was 
going well enough when Justin, who had been 
listening from the kitchen, darted upstairs and 
then returned with a plastic object in his hand. 
He rushed into the room, making sure that his 
entrance was noticed.  He announced officially to 
the assembled women that he was a member of the 
sexual freedom league, and subscribed to "Screw" 
magazine.  My mother was not present to be 
humiliated.  But I was humiliated for both of us.

	He then took his "Screw" magazine with 
him, close by, to an electric outlet in the wall. 
He got down on the rug and plugged in his plastic 
vibrator, lay down on the floor and proceeded to 
massage his neck, his arms, his torso, while he 
explained to the assembled crowd that he was of 
the opinion that young people SHOULD be animals 
and that he truly believed in sexual freedom. 
After all, he loved going to the topless clubs on 
Broadway in the city, and he thought that he was 
an open minded kinda guy.

	The girls, who are called women now, were 
startled and confused by his display.  There he 
was, lying on the floor, rubbing himself all over 
with an electric vibrator, in the round about 
shape and size of a penis, his pornographic 
magazine opened on his chest, carrying on a nice 
speech about his views on sex, all powered by an 
overwhelming eight year old boy's sense of 
naughtiness.  He was doing something dirty and he 
knew it, to his great delight.  Would he shock my 
sister and her friends?

	Dana ushered her friends out of the room. 
Even she was at a loss as to what to do about the 
creature on the carpet.  I picked myself up and 
departed for the kitchen.  We all left him lying 
there like a turd in the punch bowl, and 
reassembled in the next room.  Justin was not to 
be discouraged by this abandonment.  He appeared 
in the kitchen minutes later, grinning at all the 
girls.  He said, "You liked that?  Huh?"  No one 
knew what to say.  They filed out of the kitchen 
and followed my sister out onto the front porch. 
The wind had been taken out of the sails, 
however, and a few minutes later, everyone was 
making her excuses about leaving so early.  They 
were all needed elsewhere, had homework to do, 
were late for an appointment.

	And so the score was even now.  One co-op 
scandal of a non virgin Dan.  One outstanding 
show of sexual perversion of the father.  It was 
hard to keep up with them.


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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net