TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 61

Thu Nov 16 08:37:10 PST 2006

November 16, 20000000000006

Dear Who,

	Feyna has a friend out in Walnut Creek. 
That is on the other side of a long tunnel built 
through the east bay hills, and out into a vast 
wasteland of strip malls, wealthy people trying 
to get away from the black blight, a different 
culture (some say no culture) a different climate 
(they get much hotter and colder than we get), a 
whole different world.  People shop out there. 
That's about what there is to do.  And if you see 
a person of colour, you know he or she works for 
pitiful wages as a janitor or domestic, nanny, or 
busboy.  I don't like it out there.  There was a 
proposition on the recent ballot to drill a third 
bore through the mountains so that more traffic 
could travel between the two worlds.  I voted 
against it, hoping that they would take option 
two which is waiting for everyone to go back to 
Contra Costa County for the night, and then 
plugging up the two tunnels that exist.  Just 
keep them out there.  Fat chance.

	Anyway, Feyna's friend has taken up a lot 
of her time, and sometimes is a good friend to 
her, but he and she get into arguments all the 
time over basic things such as feminism (he 
listens to rap music), culture (he is averse to 
it), his temper (he routinely dresses down people 
who displease him and is verbally abusive to 
Feyna.  Plus any other little thing that crosses 
their paths.  They disagree on all of it.  Then, 
he pressures Feyna to do things that are not like 
her.  He told her (get this) that she should 
shave under her arms because it wasn't easy on 
his eyes to see  her underarm hair.  And he 
wanted her to put on slutty hoop earrings, and 
dress differently for him.  He happens to be a 
dumpy little guy with orange teeth and a huge 
bushy Afro (he's white and half Jewish).  He even 
lies.  I've caught him in self aggrandizing lies. 
He also put Feyna down when she wrote a paper for 
the class they're taking together (California 
History).  He told her it was 8th grade stuff and 
she really should go back to high school to learn 
how to write a paper.  This hurt her feelings and 
destroyed her self confidence for a while.  Then 
there was the midterm.  It was all essay 
questions.  She scored a 97 and he scored a 93. 
He was mightily miffed and threw a little tantrum.

	As a mommy, I just have to watch this 
friendship develop and hope that when she's 
finally had it with him, or when he double 
crosses her, badmouths her again to someone else, 
steps over the line of what she can accept, she 
won't be too devastated.  But I can't stop it. 
She just has to learn this one herself.  And it's 
going to hurt.  She says she knows he's flawed, 
but she doesn't have the luxury of selecting her 
friends and jiggling their qualities to her 
liking.  She's right.  This guy and their mutual 
friend, Natalie, whom Feyna has known for five 
years, are the only friends she has.  I want her 
to look elsewhere for friends.  And she agrees, 
but doesn't know how to go about it.  What a 
mess.  I watch and know that she has to do this 
herself.  She's got to spring the nest.  Last 
night she came into my room and lay down on my 
bed because she wanted the company.  She said 
that she'd had a bad session with her therapist, 
because her therapist wants her to stop seeing 
Alex because he's verbally abusive.  This put her 
in a depressed mood.  She just wanted my 
presence.  She fell asleep on the bed, and I just 
wrote and read around her until she was awakened 
by her cell phone going off.  Alex had called at 
10:30.  She got up and went out to the hallway to 
answer the call.  I continued to read.  I 
continued to think of her in her rut, and I know 
she'll come out of this smarter and sturdier, but 
I dread the hurt it will cause her, and is 
causing her now.  I've suggested she go to Hillel 
or the JCC (Jewish Community Center) to meet 
others her age, but how can she take a lame 
suggestion like that from her mother.  She's on 
Match dot com filling out a form so she might 
find friends that way.  Just do it, Feyna.  Make 
yourself less dependent on Alex.  Have other 
choices.  I love you.

	Another choice

¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶

How Dweller got his name

	My first husband was really named Robert 
Cliff.  I met him through Donna and Gareth Cook 
who worked at LABINDUSTRIES while I was working 
there.  He was Gareth's friend from Riverside 
where they grew up together, a whole circle of 
friends.  He told me many stories about his 
upbringing in Southern California.  Riverside was 
a college town and his father had a chiropractic 
practice in Riverside.  His father was a rigid 
son of a bastard, and took his chiropracting 
seriously.  Any time Robert Cliff experienced the 
slightest physical malady, a cold, say, or a 
headache, his father would spread the poor kid 
out on the table and give him a colonic.  That 
could cure you of speaking about any illness 
forever, though it wouldn't cure you of the 
disease for a minute.  And if there were anything 
else wrong with Bob, his father would get him in 
the ol' chiropractic grip and adjust his spine, 
because everything from appendicitis to 
meningitis could be traced to the spine being out 
of alignment.  So Bob was well adjusted, there's 
the joke.

	He was an older brother to John, and 
according to Bob, he was a rotten older brother, 
a do-gooder and a tattle tale, a superior little 
whiff of a saint in the making, intolerable.  He 
was the good son, and John was the fuck-up.  That 
was until Bob decided to marry the Jew girl and 
John took on the mantle of favoured son.  I met 
Robert Cliff as arranged through Donna and 
Gareth.  They told me I had to meet this friend 
of theirs.  He was an engineer, they said, but, 
well, not an engineer, meaning he didn't live 
down to the bad rumours about engineers, how 
rigid and nerdy they were.  I had no expectations 
of what an engineer might be like.  I just wanted 
human.  Human looked awfully good from my perch 
on the edge of sanity.  Just send me someone real 
and not too terribly screwed up, and I'll be 
happy.  We were supposed to meet at the house 
that was in front of Donna and Gareth Cooks'. 
Donna and Gareth lived in the cottage out back 
with their seriously farting dog, Bogie.  Their 
neighbors up front were having some sort of 
gathering, and Bob and I were both invited to be 
there at four o'clock.  But Bob didn't show up at 
4:00.  In fact, as the clock ticked off he hadn't 
shown up by five o'clock.  So I prepared to 
leave.  I was heading down the front stairs, as 
he headed up.  He introduced himself, and I 
introduced myself, and it was pretty much love at 
first sight.  What I liked about him was that he 
was human, more than human, a nice guy.  As Donna 
and Gareth put it, "The last of the  good guys". 
I don't know whether he was the last, but he was 
my first.  Compared to the men I was used to, Bob 
Cliff was a superman, a gold encrusted hero, a 
wise man and mahatma.  And from Bob's standpoint, 
I was the only truly creative free spirit he'd 
ever met.  We stopped on the front porch and 
talked.  We continued to talk.  We talked some 
more.  Donna and Gareth were thrilled that their 
little introduction scheme had worked.  "Bob and 
Tobie" became a word.

	It takes a while to meet all the friends 
and relatives.  My family was in town and a loud 
presence in my life.  His family, thank God, were 
in Riverside and Los Angeles.  We didn't have to 
meet them until we were solid enough for such 
disasters.  One night, we were going to my 
cousins, Yale and Anita Feder's, house.  Just for 
a casual get together.  Social life was active. 
Yale was the grandson of Bobka who was my 
paternal grandfather's older sister.  That's how 
I think it went.  I could be wrong.  They lived 
on Corona Court, a little cul de sac in North 
Berkeley.  They had two young daughters.  As we 
drove up we could see a couple of kids playing in 
the yard.  We parked the car, got out and walked 
up the path to the front door.  One of the kids 
looked at us and announced, "My name's Bob.  This 
is my friend Robbie."  And we said hello.  Then 
we rang the doorbell.  A stranger answered the 
door.

	We introduced ourselves.  "I'm Tobie and this is Bob Cliff."

	"Sure thing," he said, "I'm Robert.  You 
came to see Yale and Anita, right?"

	"Right"

	"They're in the kitchen with Bob.  I'll go get them."

	Another face appeared at the front door.  "Hi.  I'm Rob."

	Robert Cliff and I looked at each other. 
And while Yale and Anita were being fetched, I 
asked my Robert, "Do you have any other name 
you'd like to be called?  You're more special 
than this."

	Robert Cliff said, "When I was in high 
school, they called me Cliff Dweller."

	"Well, how would you like to be called, 'Dweller'?"

	"I'd like that."

	And for that evening and all through our 
love affair and our marriage, he was "Dweller". 
When we split up and he found a new, perfect, 
much more suited woman, he reverted back to 
Robert.  But it wasn't long before Cathy started 
calling him "Bert".  Names do matter.

¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶

-- 

Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net