TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 65

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 20, 2000000006


Dear People with Noggins,

	My daughter and my mother are both sitting in the room as I 
write this.  They are discussing serious matters such as the 
arrangements for getting Feyna to my sister's house to have a 
photograph taken of her for her Match.com profile.  And a vigorous 
discussion is now taking place concerning Feyna's paper which is due 
tomorrow: she has to write a letter to the editor about the 
internment of the Japanese during World War Two.  My friend Harry Lum 
used to have to wear a badge that said, "I am Chinese not Japanese," 
to keep from being beat up.  Everyone is piling on top of me this 
morning.  Usually I'm quite alone in here when I type up my Life 
Story and send it in.  So if I'm distracted and there are huge typos, 
you will know why.


 
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About Earl

	I had a friend, Earl Baldock, an erudite, searingly witty, 
enormously gifted man, about ten years older than I.  I met Earl when 
I was seventeen and frequented a corner record shop at Telegraph and 
Durant Avenues in Berkeley, right near the entrance to the 
University.  The front of this corner shop was a bookstore, U.C. 
Corner, and behind the bookstore was a record store owned by an old 
Berkeley fixture who spouted crusty heresies from behind his 
trademark pipe.  He owned and ran this record store which specialized 
in Classical and international ethnic music  --  just my favourites. 
I used to drag my cello in there after school and leaf through the 
albums, coveting and buying records for my growing collection: 
Macedonian bagpipe music, an anthology of pygmy yodeling, the Dvorak 
serenade for strings and winds, Nonesuch recordings of every era of 
Classical music, obscure pieces by Telemann and Vivaldi, Terry 
Riley's Rainbow in Curved Air.  Earl worked there at the cash 
register, and we would chat.  It turned out that he played the piano, 
in spite of his missing the last part of his right index finger, so 
we made a date to play some cello and piano sonatas.

	He was miraculous.  He could do anything with his hands: 
construct a house, build a stained glass window, lay a beautiful tile 
floor, make anything into a lamp, and make me laugh as I made him 
laugh.  I had what you call a crush on him.  He was, of course, gay, 
but that hadn't occurred to me at seventeen.  I remember an evening 
sitting in front of his fireplace, motionless, thinking that of 
course he would soon hold my hand or kiss me, and it didn't happen. 
It was the mid sixties.  I graduated from high school and  I went off 
to Seattle to school; he went off to Alaska to homestead.  It was 
maybe five years later that I was standing on the corner of College 
and Russell streets when I heard Earl call out my name.  He 
approached as if he'd found his best friend again.  He embraced me. 
We talked and shot the wit back and forth for a while, and then 
promised to get together to play music.  I would bring my new 
husband, Dweller.

	When we arrived at Earl's house, an old Victorian on a block 
of run down houses, his was the house that looked marvellous.  He'd 
painted it, fixed it, decorated the inside.  There was an expanding 
hat rack that held up about a dozen hats, everything from flagrantly 
flaming to spiffy little riding caps.  Earl could sense Dweller's 
natural reserve, and he pulled one of the wildest hats off the rack, 
tossed it on Dweller's head.  There was a mirror on the wall.  He 
pushed Dweller in its general direction.  "Go on!  Take a look at 
yourself.  Don't be scared.  It's YOU."  This met with little 
enthusiasm.  We spent the evening playing music and fooling around, 
making each other laugh.  Dweller mostly stayed out of that.  He told 
us about his job at Le Petite Village, a fancy French restaurant, and 
how he'd been serving two couples who were dining together.  At 
dessert, three of them ordered coffee, and one of them ordered tea. 
When Earl came back to refill their coffee cups, he addressed the man 
with the tea.  "Would you like another tea bag for more tea?"  The 
man looked dreamily at his tea cup, then up at his wife opposite him. 
"No," he said, "I guess this old bag will do."  Earl was struck with 
wit and answered in a straight voice, "Well I don't know.  I'm not a 
very good judge of character."  Now, they could have gotten upset 
with him, or they could have laughed, and Earl's job hung in the 
balance.  A few seconds later, they all burst out laughing.  Whether 
or not Earl wanted to be a waiter, his job was secure there.

	Then Earl and I didn't see each other for a few years.  By 
that time Dweller and I had divorced, I'd become attached to Harry 
and my whole life had changed.  We kept in touch sporadically.  Earl 
was always there, through the music business years, the marriage to 
Bernie, and the onset of my relationship with David who would become 
my third husband.

	Whenever Earl and I got together, we laughed until we hurt, 
and we cried until we hurt.  He was my gay husband.  At one point, 
when I was considering not ever getting involved with another 
heterosexual man again, we even talked about getting married.  I 
figured the sex would be terrific; it just wouldn't be with me.  But 
David and I got married instead, and who can argue with the naked ass 
of history?

	When my life was in turmoil, with David's boys and my new 
twins, Earl called me one day and told me to get a baby sitter and 
come on over; he needed some company.  When I got there, he was in 
his garden, the one he'd built from a pile of rubble.  It was now an 
oasis of calm in the midst of the city.  A fountain trickled water 
into a pond which became a stream that circled back underground to 
the fountain.  He'd stocked the water with mosquito eating fish and 
Koi.  Everywhere there were flowers, shrubbery, exotic plants waving 
in the breeze.  He even had a green room he'd built on the side of 
his house, a room encased in glass that was always humid and warm. 
He started his plants there and transferred them to the garden when 
they were ready.  He led me out to a clump of bushes with bright 
magenta buds all over it.  He showed me how he was, "dead heading" 
the greenery, pinching off little sprouts of leaves to create more 
greenery, more flowers, dense and lush.  I leaned in and took the 
little branches in my hands, pinched off the leaves the way he showed 
me.  We'd been joking around before, but now we quieted.  For a while 
we were just engaged in our conversation with the plants, side by 
side, our fingers working in the bushes.  After a time, I sighed.  I 
said, "I see what you mean about a garden being calming."

	"Now you know," he expounded, "about the allure of gardening. 
You know there's an old Chinese saying:  'If you want to be happy for 
an hour, have sex.  If you want to be happy for a year, get married. 
If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, have a garden'".

	I let that sink in.  Then I turned to him and intoned in my 
best superior air, "If you want to be happy for an hour, have sex. 
If you want to be happy for a year, get married.  If you want to be 
happy for the rest of your life, jack off, and then shoot yourself."

	There was pandemonium in the garden of Earl Baldock.

	Earl and I remained friends until he died of Aids three years 
ago.  I had not seen him for a few years, and I carry that with me as 
an ache that will never be eased.


 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net