TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 195

[Tobie Shapiro]

April 5, 20000007

Dears,

	By the end of the second seder, I was 
ready to collapse inside my own clothing, a 
cartoon like act where the clothes sit there 
alert while the human being inside them withers 
away into a nubbin and then disappears in a puff 
of smoke.  The second seder with the sixteen 
people (not seventeen) went well, and the food 
was startlingly good.  The most fun was watching 
everyone, the adults and the kids wandering 
around the house looking for the afikomen. 
Whoever found the most got a prize.  The second 
most got a prize, and the bronze winner got a 
prize, too.  The rest of them were out of luck, 
and could only reward themselves by eating the 
matzah they'd found secreted in mystifying places 
all over the main floor of the house.  But they 
couldn't eat it, actually, because you never know 
how long it's been sitting in its hiding place. 
Every year, someone finds a piece of the afikomen 
that had been there since the seder a year ago. 
Tuesday night, someone found a piece of the 
afikomen that was above the lintel of the 
bathroom door.  No one could remember when it was 
put there.  It could have been years.  Matzah has 
a long shelf life.

	I am back to my old self, almost.  The 
day of the big seder, I got up at 5:00 to make 
sure Feyna got off to the airport limousine by 
5:30.  It was a good thing I did, too.  At 5:30, 
I saw no sign of her upstairs, except for her 
bowl of cereal which she'd placed out on the 
counter to soak.  I went down to her lair in the 
basement and found her lying on her bed in her 
jammies, snoring.

	"Feyna!  It's 5:30.  The bayporter should 
be here to pick you up now.  You have to get up!"

	"It's only 4:30."

	"No, Feyna, it's 5:30!"

	"It's 4:30."

	"No, Feyna.  It is 5:30 and you better 
get up fast, get dressed and get out to the curb."

	"What am I gonna do?"

	"You're going to get dressed like 
lightning and grab your suitcase before they get 
here."

	She got up quickly and came upstairs 
immediately to eat her cereal.  I was astonished! 
I would have skipped breakfast so fast it would 
have made your head spin.  But she went ahead and 
sat there, spooning it in before returning 
downstairs to get dressed and prepare herself. 
Luckily, the bayporter was ten minutes late.  She 
made it.

	Later, she called from Tijuana, full of 
enthusiasm.   What were they doing?  They were 
going to go to Costco in Tijuana!  Costco??  Why 
go to Costco?  You can do that anywhere!  But 
that's what they were going to do.  Travel to new 
places, do old things.  I should have told her to 
pick up a gallon jug of Best Foods mayonnaise for 
me.




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How to prove, "I love you"

	During our short lived cohabitation on 
Spaulding Street, Arthur and I tried out for the 
roles of husband and wife.  It was a one bedroom 
apartment in the back of a house.  There was a 
long walkway to the left of the front door of the 
main house that zigzagged to the entrance to our 
nest.  I don't call it a love nest because there 
was scant little love that went on in there.  I 
remember going to bed at night, lying there in 
the dark, waiting for Arthur to prove that he 
loved me by wanting to make love to me.  That was 
the sign I was waiting for.  How did I come up 
with that equation?  Where was it written that on 
the nights that the honey pie wishes to make 
love, he loves you, and on the nights that he 
rolls over and conks out, he doesn't love you?

	I imagined him hiding on the other side 
of the bed because he was in a state of utter 
revulsion at the thought of me.  I had not yet 
learned to hide on my side of a bed, holding in 
whatever desires or revulsions of my own I might 
have.  Because I needed constant proof, I 
approached Arthur every night by nuzzling up to 
him, nestling against his back, kissing his 
shoulders, reaching for his penis.  He would 
shrink from me, shake me off, say, "Do we have to 
do this again?  We made love last night!"  So, 
naturally, I was soaked in shame.  I must be a 
sex crazed pervert.  How could I desire physical 
union when Arthur, who must be the normal one, 
since if I knew anything it was that I was not 
normal, was sated by last night's love making, or 
last week's, or last month's?  It was I who was 
in error.  What was wrong with me that I needed 
sex so frequently?

	And I wanted experimentation, too.  I 
subtly suggested oral sex, and Arthur was 
repulsed. "That's disgusting," he commented, and 
folded himself up in a Z to protect his very 
private parts from the bearded lady sharing the 
bed.  I took these refusals as indictments 
against me as a woman, me as a human being, me as 
a functioning unit with working parts.

	I was wearing my night gown, sitting on 
the edge of the bed, cross legged.  Arthur 
reached over and tugged at the hem of my night 
gown.  He pulled it over my knees.

	"Cover yourself.  It's not exactly the 
most beautiful part of a woman's body."

	And cover myself, I did.  Twice over and 
forever after.  I do not walk in front of the 
partner unclothed.  I change from my street 
clothes into my night clothes, magically, without 
exposing any part of my body that is 
questionable.  An arm, yes.  A foot, fine.  Even 
a knee, passable.  But a breast, no.  A sprout of 
pubic hair, no.  A tuchas, no.  See how much I 
learned from Arthur!  But as chicken as he was 
about sex, he was courageous in other realms.

	One Sunday, we'd taken our breakfast at 
the International House of Pancakes.  We wiped 
our mouths, paid our bill, left a tip, and walked 
outside.  Before we could turn in the direction 
of our apartment, a strange man, our age, bumped 
into Arthur, and called him by name.

	"Arty!  What are you doing here?"

	"Leo!  I thought you were in New York!"

	The old schoolmates stood there at the 
corner, animated, laughing, recalling names and 
events.  Arthur turned to me.  He introduced me 
to Leo, as his woman, and Leo was introduced as 
an old friend from high school.  We invited him 
back to our place for dinner that night.  He 
accepted.  He showed up with a bunch of flowers 
in his hands, and presented them to me.  I put 
them in a tomato sauce can.  They spread out 
loosely and hung over the edge.  I set the 
bouquet on the window ledge above the sink.

	I stirred and sauteed, heated up and 
seasoned our dinner.  We had no table, so we took 
our plates to the living room and sat on the 
floor.  Leo ate every molecule of food on his 
plate.  Being a proper hostess, I offered Leo 
some grass for dessert.  Oh, Leo had had grass 
before, and this was a fine idea to him.  We 
passed the joint around and dislocated our 
brains.  Acting out my role as home maker, I 
cleared all the dishes, brought them to the sink, 
and stacked them haphazardly atop the pots and 
pans I'd used in cooking the meal.  The kitchen 
was an appalling chaotic mess, not a square inch 
of counter space visible.  This was not a job I 
was able to undertake while stoned.  I returned 
to Leo and Arthur and listened to them rant on 
about high school in Jamaica, Queens, New York. 
It was like watching a ping pong game.  Follow 
the ball with your eyes.  First Arthur said 
something.  Then Leo said something.  Then Arthur 
said something.  Then Leo said something.  Then 
Arthur froze in his tracks, his eyes fixed on 
Leo.  I looked over at Leo.  He was acting 
strangely.  He was grimacing, then covering his 
mouth with his hands.

	He leapt up abruptly, ran like hell into 
the kitchen and sprayed his dinner all over the 
bouquet of flowers and vomited a thick layer onto 
the stack of dishes, pots and pans in the sink. 
I directed him to the bathroom.  He kept 
apologizing.

	"No.  No.  I'm sorry.  Maybe I poisoned you."

	I bestowed upon him a towel, a wash rag, 
a fresh bar of soap, and offered that he take a 
shower.  He was covered in his own puke.  I told 
him I'd find him some fresh clothes.  He could 
borrow some from Arthur.  They were about the 
same size.  He shuffled off into the bathroom and 
stared at the shower curtain.

	I left him there and went back to join 
Arthur staring at the unspeakable mess in the 
kitchen.  Food in several incarnations was 
globbed all over everything.  We stood there, 
stoned out of our minds, watching vomit settle 
over plates and bowls, the faucet dripped into 
the sink.

	"Still life with puke."

	What went through my mind was, "I can't 
do this.  I don't know where to begin.  I want to 
run home to my mother."

	Arthur shook his head clear of whatever 
he was thinking.  He put his hand on my shoulder. 
He said, "I'll do this," and he marched into the 
war zone.  I was dumbfounded by his display of 
bravery.  I was, in fact, humbled.  But not so 
humbled that I ventured to help out.  I was in 
favour of the apparent division of labour.

	Woman cooks and feeds.

	Man hoses down vomitus.

	Hypnotized, I watched Arthur turn on the 
faucet, employ a sponge and dish soap, go at the 
shrine with alarming fortitude.  When he was 
done, I applauded.  Leo emerged from the shower 
sheepishly, asked for a bag to put his ugly 
clothes in, and thanked us for our compassion. 
We spent the rest of the evening in the 
laundromat washing Leo's vestments, chatting 
about nothing much, and acquiring gradual 
sobriety.  That night, Leo slept on our living 
room floor.  Arthur and I slept on opposite sides 
of the bed.  But I didn't need any proof that 
night.  To do what he volunteered to do, he had 
to love me.





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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net