TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 63

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 18, 20000000000000000000006


Dear dear dear,

	Rats.  It's Saturday, Shabbos, and I woke 
up early.  I could have slept in, but NO, I have 
to wake up before seven o'clock.  And what is 
there to do while everyone else sleeps?  Well, my 
mother has a cold so I can avoid doorknobs and 
cupboard handles.  I can take zinc and hope I'm 
not infested.  These are activities you see.  I 
wish I could go back to sleep and have a big 
dream, but that isn't going to happen.  I'm up. 
So I'm up.  So the least I can do is type out 
another Life Story.


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How to go crazy

	Harry used to say that my father was one 
of the comic figures of the 20th century.  I 
couldn't see any humour in him that wasn't 
fatally stained with wickedness.  Harry laughed 
even at the way he held his violin case, tilted 
forward against an imaginary blast of wind.  He 
laughed at the way I described my father marching 
dramatically out the back door to go to the 
voting booth, his practice ballot trailing behind 
him.  Everything was a show, a big show put on 
for the viewing by others who may have been a 
part of his life, or total strangers who weren't. 
There was always some role he was playing.  I 
wish I could have had Harry's attitude, or 
actually, I wish I'd had Harry's distance from 
him.  Harry didn't see my parents much.  I think 
he was introduced to my father once or twice, but 
over a period of seven years, that isn't a lot, 
so how could Harry have grasped the malevolence 
in him?

	Dweller got along with Justin as well as 
can be expected.  My father was a little taken 
aback by Dweller because Dweller was a nice guy, 
and relatively absent of serious neuroses, so he 
didn't react to my father in a serious way.  He 
took all of his stunts at face value, missing the 
undercurrents, all the hidden messages, all the 
guile and sadism.  I hadn't pieced together what 
had happened to me yet.  It was all a jumble of 
scenes and regrets, anger and total despair, 
hatred and craziness.  Still, every time he 
pulled another number, my antennae were up 
catching the whole thing.  I may even have 
attributed more to him than he deserved credit 
for, but nothing just slipped past me.  Unless of 
course, I didn't know about it, and then a whole 
lot could have slipped past me.  The point is, I 
doubt it.  I doubted everything.  I did.  Since 
my mother kept looking the other way and making 
excuses for him, I didn't quite believe solidly 
what I was seeing.  That can make your head spin 
on its stick.  And my head did a lot of spinning. 
I've never succeeded in imparting quite the 
reality that was my father to anyone outside the 
family.  First of all, who could believe it? 
Second of all, if you did believe it, you'd still 
be missing the impact, the gestures, the 
planning, the schadenfreude that went into his 
behaviour.

	An example of how I was driven crazy:  I 
came downstairs dressed up to go out to play 
chamber music.  I stopped by the hallway mirror 
near the kitchen to check on my face (was it 
still there?).  My father was sitting in the 
kitchen and my mother was at the stove, stirring. 
My father took a long leering ogle at me, clapped 
his hands then rubbed them together and yelled 
out, "Boy!  You're built like a brick shit-house! 
If I were your age, would I ever screw you!!"

	I felt as if someone had stripped me 
bare, as if I'd been violated.  I also felt like 
I must have dressed on purpose somehow to elicit 
this reaction in him.  I covered up and walked 
past him quickly, then past my mother.  I went 
upstairs, changed into a sack dress and came back 
down.  My mother met me at the stairs.  I had an 
expression of disgust, alarm and shame on my 
face.  I looked at my mother for reassurance, 
someone was witness to the abuse.  Instead, she 
said,  "He has no idea what his effect is on 
other people.  I'm sure he meant it as a 
compliment."

	That's the point where the disgust alarm 
and shame turns into lunacy.  Was that really an 
acceptable way for a father to talk to his 
daughter?  Didn't what he said cross over some 
line from usual to whacked?  Should he be allowed 
to treat me that way because he had no idea what 
effect he had on other people?  Was it just a 
matter of a subtle rewording that would fix the 
transgression?  Had I just misinterpreted him? 
How exactly could he have meant this as a 
compliment?  What sort of compliment would that 
be?  Did my mother really believe that he meant 
that as a compliment?  Did she see his comment as 
simple social awkwardness?  If it were just 
awkwardness, and poor wording, was his in fact a 
declaration of admiration?  And should I just 
expect that of course if my father were my age, 
any reasonable father would want to screw his 
daughter because she was built like a brick 
shit-house?  What indeed are the virtues of a 
brick shit-house?  Should I have been proud to be 
built like one?  Was there something special 
about me that led my father to his exclamation 
that if he were my age, boy, would he ever screw 
me?  If there were something special about me 
that elicited that desire in a man, even my 
father, what might that special thing be, and how 
would I temper it?  Was it possible to temper it, 
so that I would be safe in my bed at night?

	In fact, I was not safe in my bed at 
night.  Sometimes, I would get into bed, stretch 
my feet out in between the sheets, and find that 
I'd slid my legs over an object.  I'd fish this 
object out and take a look, and it would be a 
surprise: a sleazy magazine opened up to the 
center fold, some two page spread of a woman 
going at herself with a tool, like a wrench, her 
legs flung out to the sides of the photograph, 
her fish-net stockings hoisted up and kept at her 
thighs by a garter belt.  And there would be a 
translucent white smear of a dried liquid spread 
out over her.  I honestly can't remember what I 
did with those magazines.

	Once, I came home from a date, and had 
brought my companion in to the kitchen to make 
him a cup of tea.  When I got to the island near 
the stove with the bar stools stationed around 
it, there was a similar magazine, opened up to 
the center spread, facing out to me  --  another 
wench with a wrench, and another squirt of dried 
jism on the page.  Without letting it register, I 
shut it quickly and pushed it to the side.  It 
was as if it had never existed, I put it out of 
my mind that fast.

	It took me decades to decode the 
incident.  First, was to remember what had 
happened.  I'd come home to find a pornographic 
magazine opened up on the kitchen island.  It had 
to have been put there.  In order for my father 
to have spread his teaspoon of semen out on the 
pages, it would have had to have been lower than 
the island.  Unless, of course, he was standing 
on a chair.  So he had to have had his 
interaction with the magazine and the lady in the 
center, someplace else, and then carried it into 
the kitchen and opened it up for me to see when I 
brought my date home.  This implies some 
planning, some malice aforethought.  He didn't 
just use the magazine for his periodic thrill and 
then forget to remove it.  Jacking off in the 
kitchen would have been a risky operation. 
People walk through there.  It's a hub of 
activity.

	It took me over two decades to reason 
this out so that I got the event into 
perspective.  He bought his hard core magazine, 
did his business on it in secret, then trotted it 
downstairs to the kitchen table after everyone 
had gone to bed, so it would be waiting for me 
and my date when I arrived home.  Doesn't that 
remind you of a dog marking his territory with 
his urine?

	I can tell these stories and piece them 
together as I have done, because I lived there; I 
knew the players involved.  Someone from outside 
the family would never have believed me.  What? 
That sweet eccentric mad scientist who's always 
so willing to do anyone a favour?  You must be 
out of your mind!

	And the thing was, I was.


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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net