TheBanyanTree: another more stories

[Tobie Shapiro]

September 18, 20000006


Dear companions,

	Have some more.  They keep shooting out of me.

 
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

	Two weeks before final exams, I would come down with a 
legitimate illness.  Slowed, needing sleep all day, weakened, and 
attacked by a general malaise, I would stay home from school, 
punishing myself for not being sick enough to stay home.  I didn't 
believe my own body which told me I was ill.  But the coincidence of 
it being so close onto final exams ripped my faith in my own 
sensibilities.  So I hovered between being very sick and being sick 
of myself.  During the day, everyone else was out of the house and I 
had to find things besides my unending homework to amuse me.  Oh 
sure, I watched rotten television, but there are just so many grade B 
and C- movies from the thirties and forties that one can watch 
without getting even sicker.

	I had two tape recorders, one tiny cheap little number we'd 
gotten in some all purpose store while we were travelling on vacation 
someplace.  It had two speeds: slow and even slower.  The other tape 
recorder was school issue that for some reason had come into Peter 
Aschenbrenner's hands and he had leant to me.  This one also had two 
speeds, but they were slow and faster.  So I had actually three 
speeds to record and play with.  I used these two tape machines to 
put into physical form the impromptu opera that I performed using 
everything at my disposal.  I remember that the characters in the 
opera were supposed to be sitting at a table which was sinking into a 
dung heap.  It was a modern opera, atonal and annoying, nothing to 
hum on your way out of the theatre.  I yodelled, sang, did 
Sprechstimme, used the playing of combs, thumped on tables, played 
the dial tone on the phone and played music boxes of which I had 
quite a few.  I discovered that by recording a music box on one tape 
recorder on high, then slowing it down and recording that on the 
other, passing it back and forth that way, I could slow down the 
tinkle of the music box until it sounded like slow rumblings of some 
instrument whose deep sounds were so subterranean that you could hear 
the vibrations and count them.  Then I could likewise speed the tape 
up so I had little birds or chipmunks singing in falsetto with wildly 
quivering vibratos.  I remember one couple of lines were:

	"Will you pleeeeeeeease pass me the butttttttttter?"

	"I would be pleeeeeeeased to pass you the buttttttttter!"

	This tape must exist someplace, but its physical well being 
has to be dubious by this time, forty something years later.  If I 
could find it, maybe I could resurrect it.

 
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

	William Godsoe was my boyfriend after Arthur broke my heart. 
It was rebound.  I met William at Labindustries where I was working 
as the boss's daughter.  That's a tough job, boss's daughter.  You 
have to be an example and work harder than the rest of the employees 
so you don't seem privileged and spoiled, but when you do work harder 
and better, the others resent you for it.  Somehow I kept a balance 
and had acquaintances who liked me enough to invite me into their 
social circles.  Donna Cook was married to Gareth Cook, and Gareth 
grew up with Dweller in Riverside, but that's another story.  Donna 
had met a guy who worked down the road and came over on his breaks 
sometimes.  I still don't know why.  The guy was  William Godsoe, and 
Donna thought him to be handsome, even dreamy.  I found his looks off 
putting.  His head was too big, his nostrils huge, and his manner was 
arrogant.  Plus he smoked heavily.  But I was desperate for a match, 
and so a flirtation began.  I forget the name of the company he 
worked for, but it was down at the end of 2nd Street where it dead 
ended into the street that went round the perimeter of the estuary.

	When we were already an item, I had a dozen long stemmed 
asparagus delivered to him at work.  I was full of surprises for my 
beloveds.  But the relationship with William went horribly wrong.  He 
was an alcoholic, something I didn't figure out because I knew 
nothing about alcohol, let alone alcoholics.  He had a jug of red 
wine in his tiny refrigerator, and not much else.  When he got up in 
the morning, he had banana liqueur, and throughout his bedroom were 
scattered maybe half a dozen finished glasses of wine, with the last 
sip drying in the bottom, the glasses tilted or fallen over.  It 
meant nothing to me.  I couldn't figure out why he kept falling 
asleep early in the evening, excusing himself for a moment and just 
not coming back.  One occasion was Valentine's day.  We were in his 
living room which served as a second bedroom for his execrable 
roommate, Lloyd Kravitch, a would be artist who wore striped shirts a 
la Parisienne because he thought that was requisite.  William told 
me, "Wait here.  I'll be right back."  And he padded off to the 
bathroom.  I stood in the living room patiently amusing myself with 
whatever I could, just juggling my brains.  But he didn't return for 
the longest time.  Finally, I went looking for him.  He was lying 
flat on his back on top of his bed, with all his clothes still on. 
He was out cold.  I got good and angry and went searching for a 
sewing kit, which I found in the supplies closet.  I threaded the 
needle and carefully sewed his clothes to the bed spread, all the way 
around his body, as if I'd followed the chalk marks at the scene of a 
crime.  I waited.  In the morning, or maybe half way through the 
night, he woke up and tried to stand up, but the whole bedspread came 
with him.  At first, he looked confused, then angry, then he laughed, 
but not happily.  Clearly, he got the message that my sewing him to 
his bed spread was not an act of fun, but an expression of 
dissatisfaction.  I said, "Happy Valentine's Day," and left.

 
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

	Donna and Gareth Cook were the ones who introduced me to my 
first husband, Dweller, or rather, "Bob" Cliff.  We fell in love 
quickly and were constantly together.  One day, we were without a 
place to be alone.  Dweller's parents were visiting and staying at 
his apartment, which was the upper floor of an old brown shingle on 
Oakland Avenue in Oakland.  Without a place to make love, we were 
getting desperate, and asked Donna and Gareth if we could use their 
bedroom. (How desperate can you get?  Pretty damn silly desperate.) 
They agreed readily.  Their bedroom was the upstairs of the cottage 
they lived in on Alcatraz near College Avenue in Berkeley.  The 
lighting was dim when we crept across the floor which was covered 
with rough weave jute squares sewn together like a checkerboard.  The 
squares of thick knotted grass hurt our feet when we walked barefoot 
on them.  We got on top of the bed and detected a bad smell.  When 
our eyes adjusted to the dark, we saw the problem right away.  Donna 
and Gareth's dog, a boxer named Bogie who had a vicious farting 
mechanism installed in him, had crapped all over the floor.  There 
were maybe a dozen piles of shit spilling over the woven jute and 
pooling on the floor.  We did not consummate.  I don't think.  (I 
could be wrong.  Remember, I said we were desperate).   When we asked 
Donna and Gareth about it, they said that Bogie had bad diarrhea and 
they found it easier to clean up if they let it dry.   Ah, youth!

 
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net