TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 53

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 8, 20000000006


Dear Voters,

	We didn't listen to election returns as 
they came in.  Why bother?  It makes it into a 
sport where you're rooting for this or that team, 
and it gets the bile up, just makes you nervous 
and stressed out.  So we watched a movie instead. 
As it turned out, a depressing movie, except at 
the very end when the protagonist finally smiles 
a little.  Well, I rented three movies and one of 
them is bound to be uplifting.  I try not to get 
depressing movies, because I don't need any more 
of that.

	More of something else.


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	Thomas Haynes was the conductor for three 
orchestras in which I played.  There was the 
Young Peoples' Symphony Orchestra, the Berkeley 
High School Concert Orchestra, and the Berkeley 
High School Baroque Orchestra.  See what happens 
to a school system when you throw enough money at 
it?  You get the arts.

	I had a daddy crush on Mr. Haynes.  I 
wanted him to be my daddy.  So much better than 
the one I was born with.  I fantasized a lot 
about what kind of a real father I'd like to 
have.  He would be kind and funny, and 
knowledgeable, and humble.  He'd have a touch of 
sentimentality and he'd be glad for the good 
things that happened to me.  I saw that in Thomas 
Haynes, and that's why I idolized him.  Maybe it 
was just by comparison to what I had at home for 
a father.  There were plenty of kids who didn't 
like Tom Haynes.  But that didn't matter to me.

	Then there was his son, Bruce.  Bruce was 
a beatnik type, only he didn't go in for wearing 
all black and smoking cigarettes to a progressive 
Jazz background.  He played the oboe, 
beautifully, and he played the recorder, not, 
"toot toot", but professionally.  He was steeped 
in early music, and the recorder was the 
instrument used.  The oboe was a more recent 
development.

	I don't know when it was that I was 
introduced to Bruce Haynes, but somewhere along 
the line I got a powerful crush on him.  I 
dreamed of him day and night.  This was not a 
daddy crush.  This was the full. embarrassing 
red-in-the-face-when-he-walks-by crush.  The 
weak-in-the-knees crush, the 
pitter-pattering-heart-throb crush.  I worshipped 
him.  At the time I was sixteen, he was twenty 
two, and he was going off to the Netherlands to 
study recorder with Hans Brueggen, the foremost 
recorder player in the world.  Ah, before he left 
for Amsterdam, I shook myself.  Should I tell him 
how I feel?  Or should I shut up and remain 
anonymous?

	I consulted a mutual friend, Krehe 
Ritter, who was a french hornist with the Oakland 
Symphony.   Krehe was a perfectly normal 
adolescent at age thirty three.  He fit in nicely 
with the rest of my musical friends in high 
school, and he even had a crush of his own on 
Becky Warrick, an excellent flutist.  Krehe used 
to keep his eye on Bruce Haynes for me, while I 
kept my eye on Becky Warrick for him.  We'd 
exchange our observations, and our surmisals of 
the chances we had with our crushes.  At the 
time, it didn't seem odd that a thirty three year 
old man had a secret crush on a sixteen year old 
girl, but now it does.  This was something that a 
thirty three year old should have grappled with. 
What do you do when you've fallen for a child? 
What's wrong with this?

	As the date for Bruce's departure for 
Amsterdam grew nearer, I grew more desperate to 
decide on some statement, or no statement to 
Bruce.  I twisted and turned at night.  I begged 
Krehe to tell me what he thought my chances were. 
Then one day, I got a letter in the mail box from 
Bruce Haynes.  My heart stopped, then started 
again.  I stopped breathing, then began to 
breathe again.  I opened it.  It said:

	"Dear Tobie,
		How is it that one can think one knows someone ostensibly
	without knowing really what is in each others' hearts . . . "

	I gasped.  I didn't know what to do with this.

	"To me, you are like a flower, a dark 
flower, like a rose bud, as yet unopened
	to the sun . . . "

	Oh be still, my heart!

	"But I am going to Amsterdam, and there 
is nothing that we can do or say
	to prevent that.  I will write to you 
from Amsterdam, and I would be happy
	if you would write to me.  Perhaps, we 
can get to know one another.  Perhaps
	in time . . . "

	I called Krehe Ritter, but I didn't get 
far.  He was recounting to me the conversation 
he'd had with Bruce Haynes.  He said he'd asked 
Bruce what he thought of Becky Warrick, and Bruce 
had said, and I quote, "Becky is to me, like a 
flower, a dark flower like a rose bud, as yet 
unopened to the sun . . . "  I forgot all about 
reading Krehe the letter.  I crawled off to my 
room and set up an empty wine bottle and stuck a 
candle, guaranteed to drip, in the mouth. 
Remember when restaurants had bulbous Italian red 
wine bottles with colourful candles set in their 
mouths and the wax built up in cascades down the 
neck and the body of the bottle?  This is what I 
set up in my room.  Every night that Bruce Haynes 
was gone I lit the candle.  I called it my 
Amsterdam candle.  And while I lit these candles, 
I waited for letters from Bruce.  When that rare 
letter would come, I would read it ravenously, 
then analyze every word for possible double 
meanings and significance.  I'd immediately send 
off a letter to him, maybe ironing parrafin wax 
onto the paper after I'd written on it. 
Something exotic.  Something unique.  Something 
he couldn't forget.

	Every night I lit the candle.  And the 
used matches piled up around the base of the wine 
bottle.  So I gathered them up and put them in an 
envelope.  Then I started to number the matches, 
and write the dates on them.  Just to keep track 
of these sacred matches.  I gathered up the 
numbered matches, and, keeping them in order, 
sealed them inside envelopes which I labelled on 
the outside with, "matches number 22-54", with 
the dates.  Then I stored the envelopes in a safe 
place.  The envelopes piled up, and I put them in 
bunches, which I labelled accurately.  This 
qualifies neatly for Obsessive/Compulsive 
Disorder.  But it was a religion, and religious 
ritual is immune to such diagnoses.  Otherwise, 
we'd label most religions as disorders and take 
medications to cure ourselves.

	Months went by, and then Bruce came home 
for a spell.  I was invited over for a musical 
occasion.  We circled each other, spying from a 
distance, as if we'd not had a special 
relationship at all.  We conversed awkwardly, and 
soon he went back to Amsterdam to study.  The 
crush petered out with time and events that 
changed us.  I grew up and left home for Seattle. 
I had other worries.  And crushes became outmoded 
childish things, like pranks we play on ourselves 
while we could just as soon risk it, and get to 
know someone really, see whether it lifts off the 
ground or slinks into disrepute.


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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net