TheBanyanTree: Unnatural

[Tobie Shapiro]

July 19, 2000000000006


Dear fellow humans,

	There is a national heat wave.  That's 
what the papers reported and I heard it on NPR, 
so it must be right.  Here in Berkeley, it was 
actually nearly 90ºFahrenheit.  I am not going to 
do a conversion for you of the Celsiusian bent. 
Just suffice it to say that 90ºFahrenheit is hot 
enough to give me heat stroke, but not hot enough 
to bake me for dinner.  Just through the tunnel 
into the valley, the inland areas, it is at least 
ten degrees hotter.  The winds off the ocean 
never get that far, and if there is fog, the east 
bay hills gather it up to their bosoms and hold 
it close, not letting any of it drift over their 
shoulders east of them.  Since we don't watch 
television, I don't have to be exposed to the 
dolled up weathermen and weatherwomen who smile 
broadly announcing that it's a beautiful sunny 
day.  Everybody go to the beach and soak up that 
heat.  For someone who doesn't tolerate heat, 
those are sour announcements.  I'd talk back, 
rudely.  I know it.

	In my bedroom is the only air conditioner 
in the house.  On hot days, I seclude myself and 
turn on the machine, sit in front of it just as I 
sit in front of the heater in winter.  I adjust 
nature, wrestle with the environment.  It's the 
human thing to do.

	Don't you know that on the east coast in 
winter, when it's zero degrees outside, it is 85º 
inside; they have the heaters turned up to the 
maximum, as if a nice fire were crackling before 
each individual.  In Las Vegas, where the desert 
heat can easily fry a chicken on the sidewalk, it 
is 120º outside, and the refrigeration indoors 
has the temperature down to 60º.  We bend our 
environment until it breaks.  We are human and 
have illusions that we are in control, but we're 
not, of course.  We'll get ours in the end.  The 
polar caps will melt and we'll all be standing on 
our rooves hoping for a boat to come by and take 
us inland.  And the holes in the ozone will focus 
down on us as if God were holding a magnifying 
glass to the earth.  In the meantime, we deny 
nature.  It's a little game we play.

	Lola doesn't like her tiny wee breasts 
that are barely two nipples with some skin 
attached.  So she hires a plastic surgeon to cut 
a couple holes and stuff her chest with salt 
water balloons.  Now she needs a brassiere and 
she thinks the men like her better.  Where else 
would they look?  She can hold her head up, and 
she can't hear the salt water sloshing around in 
there.  She doesn't think about it, but she'll 
age around her implants.  They'll be standing up 
and bouncing while the rest of her droops.  It 
will look unnatural.  Put a shirt over it.

	Claude is fed up with the very idea of 
aging.  He's 36 and looks it, whatever that 
means, and he has a suspicion that he can't fuck 
all night without losing his erection  (oooh, I 
knew I put it someplace.  It's got to be here.) 
So Claude goes to a mustachioed doctor who has a 
diploma from medical school on the wall dating 
back to 1973, but he has a full head of hair. 
They are implants, but the illusion of youth is 
inspiring.  The doctor sets Claude up with 
testosterone shots and human growth hormones. 
Claude is stuffed to the brim with additives, 
even more than Lola and her soft little puppies 
with the pink noses.  He thinks this will reverse 
the aging process.  Any year now, he'll be 
needing his mother to wipe his tuchas for him. 
This doesn't happen.  Instead, he gets aggressive 
and bounces off the wall when his daughter gets 
home half an hour late.  He picks a fight with an 
innocent bystander, just unfortunate enough to be 
moseying through Claude's aura when the 
testosterone peaks.  Claude also gets headaches 
and his liver acts up.  He goes back to the 
doctor who assures him it has nothing to do with 
the treatments.  You look younger already. 
Claude's ice caps are melting.

	We yank the weather and we yank our 
bodies and we yank the earth as if it didn't 
matter what we do.  But everything matters.  We 
just don't like to think about it.  So, it will 
be a little surprise.  I like surprises, don't 
you?

Yours forever,

Tobie
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net