TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 31

[Tobie Shapiro]

October 16, 20000006



Dear You All You Are,

	Today is moving day.  I've been packing all week, with the 
help of The Family Packers, who were a godsend.  What would I have 
done without them?  This morning, I got up at 6:00 and ripped the 
bedding off the bed, put it in the big boxes they provided me, marked 
them, sealed them and went off to tie up other loose ends.  I will be 
out of commission for a couple days at least, since this computer 
will be ripped off the desk it is sitting on and won't be hooked up 
again until Tuesday late.  Then, to work out the bugs.

	I am ready to move.  I have said my goodbyes to the house.  I 
may cry, but I won't wail.

	Now this.



 
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LIVE NUDE WOMEN

	When I met Bernie, the second husband, he was billing himself 
as an art photographer.  He showed me some of his pictures.  They 
were of a couple of models, totally obscured, wrapped in sheets, 
their heads stretching the cloth, or the cloth crumpled around ankles 
while an elbow was evident under the sheet elsewhere.  They were 
good.  I thought he was a serious artist.  To bring money across the 
table, Bernie held photography workshops, or at least that's what he 
told me.  One such workshop was coming up.  He was interviewing 
models to pose for this workshop which was going to take place at a 
beach on the Pacific Ocean, south of San Francisco.  When he had 
secured three or four models, most of them trained dancers, he put 
his ad in the Chronicle to attract people who wanted to take the one 
day workshop.  I saw the ad, and my opinion of Bernie changed 
radically.

	The ad was a two liner.  It said, in capital letters, "LIVE 
NUDE WOMEN" then dropped the caps, "models.  Photography workshop at 
beach."  It gave a date.  Call Bernie Lustgarten.  It invited a 
certain kind of clientele.  And he got them.  When the class 
assembled for the preamble at his apartment, they were rancid old 
men, and randy young men, no women.  Some of them were rheumy eyed 
drunks, and maybe one or two knew the ins and outs of a camera.  I 
felt a little queasy just being around them.  But I was going with. 
Me and my journals and a few good books were going to the photography 
workshop at a nude beach with LIVE NUDE WOMEN models.  We caravanned 
down to the beach, a place Bernie said he'd used frequently.  There 
was no one else on the beach.  There was a formation of huge boulders 
at the edge of the water.  And the ocean waves crashed tempestuously 
over these rocks.  That's where he had the LIVE NUDE WOMEN models 
pose for the first hour.

	They disrobed near the rocks and took up positions on them, 
draping themselves over the promontories, balancing on edges, bending 
over with their hair blowing in the wind.  The men with their cameras 
had ring side seats and rushed to get good shots of the behinds and 
genitalia, a circus of breasts performing for them.  They licked 
their chops and they stared and ogled.  The models took a break for 
lunch.  I'd made them all chicken and pesto sandwiches which was lost 
on them, really.  They'd just as soon have bologna and cheese on 
wonder bread.  One of them came over to me and complained a little. 
"I've done a few of these shoots for Bernie, and they keep getting 
worse.  Out there on the beach just now, I made the mistake of taking 
a pose bending over toward the rocks, and I could just feel the wind 
hitting  me when all the old leches went running behind me to get a 
good shot of my ass.  It's disgusting really."

	I nodded.  It was disgusting.  I sat there on the sand, 
writing in my journal, and an old cockeyed galoot stood over me.  I 
looked up at him for a second.  He didn't even acknowledge me, but 
kept gaping, boggle eyed at my journal.  That was, until I realized 
he was actually staring down my blouse.  I hunched over quickly 
covering my body and my writing.  He stood there for a moment, hoping 
I'd change my mind, but I didn't.  He said, "Shit," under his breath, 
and slithered away.

	When I talked to Bernie about his ads and what kind of people 
it attracted, I referred to the event as, "Bernie's Breast, Butt and 
Beaver Shoot."  He didn't like that.  But he insisted the, "LIVE NUDE 
WOMEN models," ad brought in the biggest number of "students".  Those 
students didn't want to learn the lot they had to learn.  I felt 
crawly being around it.  And I never attended another workshop.  I 
let Bernie make the sandwiches, and do the charade by himself.  I 
knew I was crazy when I married him.  For some reason, some dark self 
destructive reason, I was punishing myself.

 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net