TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 122

Tue Jan 16 08:24:42 PST 2007

January 16, 20000000000000000007

Dear Those of You Who Give a Good Hot Damn,

	Feyna has this friend, actually two 
friends: her old friend Natalie whom she met in a 
social skills group five years ago, and Natalie's 
friend, Alex, whom Natalie met when she was going 
to school in Monterey a year ago, and whom Feyna 
met when she went down to visit her there.  The 
three have become inseparable, and having friends 
has been invaluable to Feyna who never could hang 
out with anyone until now.  She is beginning to 
spread her wings, and this is good.

	What isn't good is Alex.  He lies.  He 
connives.  He changes his mind every week about 
his destiny.  He's moved from place to place, 
convincing Feyna that she really ought to go to 
school in the new place he has set himself up. 
He listens to hard rap music, eschews culture, 
makes fun of other people, looks down his nose at 
everyone (God only knows the things that he's 
said about me while I'm not in the room, even 
though I've taken him out to dinner and invited 
him over dozens of times), is verbally abusive to 
Feyna, swears all the time, I mean really swears. 
He tells her what to wear, had her wearing slutty 
hoop earings for a few days, and he told her to 
shave under her arms because it was not easy on 
the eye.  She actually did shave.  But rebelled 
after that.  I can never get a handle on where 
his job is, and how many hours he is working, 
what religion he considers himself to be this 
week (one parent was Jewish, the other Catholic), 
where he is living.  He says he owns two 
condominiums and cannot sell one because it has 
to be fixed up and he can't afford to fix it up. 
Many crises happen to him, only to clear up 
suddenly for no apparent reason.  I do not say he 
makes these things up, but they don't make sense 
the way he tells them.  There is always some 
group of facts that shine as fantasy, or 
exaggeration.

	Feyna and Alex are not an item, but she 
has stayed overnight at his condominium numerous 
times.  Currently, he has one condominium in San 
Francisco's Hunter's Point, the most dangerous 
neighborhood in S.F., and one in Danville in 
Contra Costa County, out through the tunnel on 
the eastern side of the Berkeley/Oakland hills. 
Yet he is crying that he hasn't the money to stay 
where he is (though I can't keep up with where he 
is staying.  He is holding down two condos at the 
age of 19?)  He hates his parents and bad mouths 
them always, hates Natalie's parents and makes 
fun of them constantly.  But he has control over 
these two young women as if he were a Svengali. 
Oh yes, I know that's a common complaint with 
parents of young women: the Svengali that stole 
their daughters away.  Now Alex is saying that he 
has to move to ... Nevada ... because it's 
cheaper to live there, and he can get a job there 
that pays over $260,000 a year (um.  come again?) 
so he can go to school in Nevada.  He has cousins 
there who are anxious for him to move there.  Of 
course, if this were the case, he could move up 
to Nevada for a few months and take home enough 
money to choke a horse with, to afford being 
here.  But logic does not hold.  Okay.  So he's 
threatening to move to Nevada, and Natalie and 
Feyna are beside themselves with grief.  What to 
do?  What to do?  Well, Alex proposed last night 
that the only way he could stay here would be if, 
and he didn't like to say this, Natalie and Feyna 
pooled their resources and moved in with him, 
maybe in Sacramento (90 miles from here, inland 
and hot as Hades).

	So you'd be supporting him?  I asked her. 
She was pleased that I didn't explode.  I told 
her that I didn't explode because I didn't think 
she was stupid enough to do this.  With an 
unstable kid whose stories don't add up, who 
moves every few weeks, who changes his mind about 
his destiny and what he has to do every few days, 
who has scuttled Feyna's opportunities to meet 
other guys (she just met one through Match.com 
and I warned her that Alex would be jealous and 
might try to make a play for her, or figure out 
some way to get in between her and the new 
fella).  I had to tell Feyna that if she does 
this, I cannot stop her.  She is almost 20 after 
all, and I know she will do what she feels she 
must do.  But if she does, I am not going to help 
her out financially.  She will be all on her own, 
making a living, paying for school and books, 
food, clothing, shelter, medical expenses, visits 
with her neuropsych who is in Berkeley.  It will 
be her leap to independence.  She accepted that 
with surprising equanimity.  She says she's not 
thrilled about this plan, but it was the only way 
to keep him from moving to Nevada.  I've asked 
why this boy doesn't get a student loan to make 
his way through college (he's a psych major!). 
She says that Alex's financial advisor told him 
he couldn't afford it.  What smells funny here?

	This is what I'm dealing with lately.  Your comments are welcome.

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The Frenchman

	While I was in New York doing what I 
called, "Chasing the music business," I did take 
time out to go to museums.  This was in 1975, a 
full four years before Warner Jepson and I 
flattened out a flat at Westbeth and worked on, 
"Humpty D.".  I was still my zaftig self, staying 
with Eugen, the German chemist in his Passaic, 
New Jersey apartment in that city my father oozed 
up in.

	New York City is an exciting place. 
Within a few minutes of landing in New York, I am 
introduced to people in the arts and sciences who 
are at the top of their fields and at the top of 
their games.  They are very much alive with their 
work and know what they are about, as opposed to 
this insecure talented artist who was very much 
alive with her work, but didn't know what she was 
about.  In New York, since so much is going on, 
it's easy to get distracted.  And I got 
distracted a lot.

	I took myself to the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, went up the grand wide staircase, inside 
the grand entrance, and all around the exhibits. 
I can't remember if museums were still free then. 
Yes, children, there was a time before Ronald 
Reagan when everybody could afford a trip to the 
museum.  You could just walk in the door and own 
the place, the same as Mr. Rockefeller, the same 
as Madame Speaker of the House.

	I knew there was a special floor reserved 
for musical instruments.  I asked the nice docent 
where to go.  The third floor, she said.  You can 
take the elevator.  I was already excited, 
waiting for the elevator to come.  I'd heard 
about the exhibit of musical instruments from all 
over the world, and this was what I'd come to 
see.  All the zithers you could shake a stick at, 
so many crumhorns they could blow you away.  When 
the door opened onto the third floor, I saw the 
portals to the exhibit and I passed through those 
portals into heaven on earth.  All in glass cases 
were instruments from every island and continent, 
organized by location and type of instrument.  In 
fact, I was not, at that moment, good at figuring 
out how the place was organized.  I was too 
ecstatic.  Drums found after WWI in the desert in 
North Africa, made out of helmets, skulls and 
stretched skin.  A case full of Stradivariuses, a 
whole family put together from his workshop. 
Indian stringed instruments, the ones intricately 
inlayed with silver and gold, many many strings, 
many sympathetically vibrating strings.  European 
versions of bag pipes, Russian balalaikas.  Asia 
was strongly represented with Chinese mouth 
organs (the Sheng) and stringed boxes (the Erhu). 
There were hurdy-gurdies, pianos from every era, 
percussion sections that were beat on by every 
colour hand, invented instruments made by some 
people with bizarre imaginations.  There was 
history, beauty, the soaring hope of Homo Sapiens 
Sapiens.  I was completely overcome.  I was 
deliriously happy.  I was looking through the 
glass aching to break past it and touch, try out 
each of these instruments, see how it felt in my 
hands, get a sound out of it, worship the wild 
diversity and the mysterious song that is sung 
through every culture.  I stepped back from the 
glass, half expecting to be ordered to step back 
from the glass.

	"Keep your hands in the air, Miss.  Do as 
I say, and no one will get hurt."

	What I noticed as I stepped back was my 
reflection.  And behind me was the reflection of 
someone else watching me.  I turned around. 
There was a man, about my age, staring at me.

	"Oh.  Sorry," I said, reflexively.

	He answered in a thick French accent that 
he was amused by my excitement, and that I must 
enjoy music very much.  He struck up a good 
conversation.  And, did I say that museums are 
the best places to meet single members of the 
opposite sex?  We walked out of the museum 
together and had coffee somewhere, anywhere.  He 
lived in Montreal.  He was going back in a day 
and a half.  Would I follow him up there?  Just 
for a spell.  I could stay with him.  He taught 
French to adults in a continuation education 
program.  He could show me the city, a wonderful 
city, he said.  I had never done anything so 
foolish in my life, so exciting, so blatantly 
stupid, and I decided to go.  I booked a flight 
and notified Eugen that I was going to Montreal 
to see a friend.  I was not fully honest with 
him, but I didn't outright lie.  I was sleeping 
with Eugen while I was connected to Harry back in 
San Diego, and I would be sleeping with Bernard 
Dufayard in Montreal, while I was sleeping with 
Eugen in Passaic.  This looks tawdry.  Just 
thinking about it brings up the shame molecule.

	Montreal was a wondrous city.  Bernard 
Dufayard lived in a dingy greasy flat at the top 
of a four story walk up.  It was a two and a half 
room apartment.  His bed was a mattress on the 
floor, and I should have been afraid of catching 
something, but I forged ahead.  The whole visit 
escapes me.  I remember three things well.  With 
a bunch of French Canadians we went up to a 
country farm where the owners rented out a mess 
hall to anyone who could pay.  They roasted a 
lamb over a spit and served a many course country 
meal.  Everything was in French and I didn't 
understand a thing.  They sang a drinking song 
and each person was supposed to slog down a 
jigger of Calvados very quickly, one long 
continuous gulp, while everyone else sang.  It 
went around the table.  I didn't drink, and I 
wanted to pass, but they actually forced me to 
drink this fire water against my will, 
practically holding me down while they poured it 
down my gullet.  I was a spoil sport and spit it 
out on the grass.  I was not well liked after 
that.  And I remember one morning Bernard getting 
up to go to teach French looking in the mirror 
while shaving, rehearsing to himself, "Good 
morning.  My name is, 'Your French teacher'." 
Then I remember my climbing over Bernard in Bed 
to reach something on the other side of him.  He 
was fast losing his appeal for me, with his 
preaching about revolution, his arrogance, and 
his lack of couth.  He said, "You have zee nice 
ass.  And you know how to show eet to me."  His 
idea that I would purposefully display my rump to 
him was preposterously narcissistic.  I rolled my 
eyes.  Then he said, "Do you stay here wiss me, 
becawse I am zee good lovaire?"  And I couldn't 
miss my cue.  "You're not a good lover," I said.

	Not long after that I booked my flight 
back to New York, and then back home to 
California.  My adventure had become some sort of 
aimless spree.  I was not proud of myself.  In 
fact, I returned with a healthy dose of self 
loathing, embarrassed that I had parted my legs 
for nothing more than a whim.  And I didn't even 
get a good song out of it.

                             VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
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-- 

Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net