TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 32

[Tobie Shapiro]

October 18, 2000000006


Dear Ye who listen,

	We are now ensconced at my mother's house.  We are surrounded 
by boxes, and we are discovering what is missing, and what doesn't 
belong here but should have been sent to storage.  Last night was our 
second night sleeping here.  The kids are familiar with Gramma's 
house, so there isn't that strangeness of an entirely new place, but 
we haven't gotten our routines down.  And we do keep bumping into 
Gramma and the way she does things.  This can all get worked out.  In 
the meantime, I need to keep looking for a place to rent, so that we 
can get out of here and leave Gramma in peace.  Life goes on.


 
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Aversion Therapy, Conditioning in the Young Adult Male

	This is about Julian Woodruff, a violist and composer.  He 
wasn't the first boy I ever kissed, but he was nearly the first boy I 
ever kissed.  As I recall, the very first time I was kissed was 
awful.  It was with an artist named Guy Colwell who had bright red 
hair and bad acne.  The kiss was like being forced to drink a cup of 
lukewarm creamed coffee.  It tasted terrible.  The kiss was very wet, 
so wet it left me wanting to get a towel and wipe myself off.  That 
was when I was nearly sixteen.

	Julian Woodruff was an odd and brilliant character.  I am 
sure he'd never kissed a girl before me.  As much as I was an 
outsider in high school, Julian was even more so.  These days, they 
would have labelled him as having a mild case of Asperger's Syndrome, 
and assigned him special services, special placements, training in 
social skills, physical movement therapy, maybe Feldenkreis, and 
other niceties.  I don't know whether anything remedial would have 
done him any good.  In fact, with such a label, it may have made him 
sick at heart, beaten, doomed.  I wonder about the diagnoses we give 
our children.  They are necessary, but regrettable.

	Julian was a talented composer, and an atrocious violist.  He 
just didn't have any looseness in his arms and hands.  But he knew 
the music, understood the music and was good to have in a string 
quartet for that reason.  He also had a good sense of humour, and was 
much too fine neurotic.  His home life was wretched, different than 
mine.  His parents fought with fists and I think there was drinking, 
but no one was trying to undo him.  He had no enemy in the family 
like I did.

	Julian and I met in the Berkeley High School Orchestra, and 
we hung out with the same people.  The flirtation between us went on 
forever.  We spent all our time together.  He looked at me in that 
way.  You know the look.  I knew what we were headed for, but of 
course, in high school, you don't dare mention it.  I remember 
walking home together, all the way from Berkeley High School to my 
house, the house I am staying in now.  It was several miles, and my 
hand was hanging loose there at my side, just ready to be held, if he 
should think to do so.  But he didn't.  Instead, he hinted that there 
was a popular song on the radio by a new group called The Beatles and 
he was thinking of it.  Did I know it?  But unfortunately, I didn't 
know it off hand.  I was too busy in my practice room with my 'cello. 
He had to tell me the title of it.  "I Want To Hold Your Hand."  And 
then he waited while I got the gist of what he was suggesting.  I 
said, "Go ahead," but he wouldn't make the first move.  He asked me 
to do it.  "Oh, for Pete's sake!" I said, and I took his hand.

	It was the same way for the first kiss.  We'd be playing 
around and talking in the  living room, our faces getting closer and 
closer, and then he moved in for the kiss, but stopped right in front 
of my mouth before doing the unthinkable.  He said, slowly, 
"Surprise!" as he drew his head back.  It drove me crazy.  But there 
was a first kiss, though I had to initiate it.  And a second kiss, 
which he initiated.  It was weird behaviour for a seventeen year old 
male, but I had grown to accept weird from the time I was chewing on 
my own toes.  Weird was normal.  I expected it.  It certainly didn't 
make me feel very attractive though.

	We went together for a while in secret.  That was his idea. 
We weren't to tell anyone that we were connected romantically, and I 
kept my part of the bargain.  Then after about four weeks of secrecy, 
he announced to me that it was time to tell our friends.  We told 
them.  No one was particularly surprised but Julian.

	One evening, he was driving me home from a rehearsal and he 
told me about a letter that had been written to Dear Abby a while 
before.  It seemed that there was a man who was repulsed by his wife. 
Physically repulsed.  He couldn't bring himself to kiss her or hold 
her, definitely not to make love to her.  But he swore that he did 
care about her, love her, and wanted to make the  marriage work. 
Abby's advice to him was scientific.  She told him that he should 
condition himself, increment by increment.  Little by little he was 
to start by holding her hand, something unthreatening.  And then 
after holding her hand for a while, finding it no longer repulsive, 
he was to step it up and maybe touch her cheek with his hand, kiss 
her cheek.  When he was used to that, he was to try to kiss her, 
knowing that at each step it would feel strange, maybe even 
revolting, but she assured him that with this method, he could 
eventually be able to make love to her, and even find pleasure in it 
after a long while, if he stuck to the rigorous plan.  Julian told me 
all this and then stopped talking.  I sat there in the passenger 
seat, going over what he'd told me.  Why he'd told me was the real 
question.  It dawned on me.

	"That's what you did with me, wasn't it!" I said, shocked to 
the soles of my feet.

	He erupted, "Well it worked, didn't it!?"

	It was very shortly after that that I broke up with him. 
Suddenly I found him and everything he did repellent.  Funny thing, 
love.

 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net