TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 225

[Tobie Shapiro]

June 8, 2000000000000000007



Dear Long Lost Forest,

	This has been quite a gap since I last 
wrote in.  I can't even remember if I told you 
all that Feyna came home from the hospital a 
couple of Tuesdays ago, the 29th of May.  She 
said she felt strong.  We gave her a few days to 
ease back into life, and then we went to pick up 
Mint at the vet, be instructed on how to give her 
the anti-nauseant shots, and take over her care 
again.  When we got to the vet, she talked to us 
and told us that she wasn't going to teach us how 
to give Mint shots.  Mint was too wild, and we'd 
get clawed to death.  This was actually good 
news, because it meant that she was gaining some 
strength and spirit.  In fact, since we'd dropped 
her off the Wednesday that we brought Feyna to 
the hospital, Mint had greatly improved.  She'd 
kept all her food down, they'd increased the 
amount of food they were putting through the 
feeding tube, and she had started to take an 
interest in eating kibble on her own again.  She 
had gained a few ounces.  This was such a relief 
that we both sighed and got teary.  I really 
thought Mint wouldn't make it.  She was just so 
sick.  But it looks like this cat will survive!

	Directly following Feyna's return from 
the hospital, she took up communications with a 
fellow on Match.com, someone she'd exchanged 
e-mails with before her incarceration.  They 
progressed to talking on the phone,        for 
hours and hours.  Then, they had a date on Friday 
(a week ago).  They went to dinner and a movie. 
He is very sweet to her.  And affectionate. 
Considerate.  Sensitive even.  They hit it off, 
and now she has a boyfriend.  He's smitten with 
her.  She's needed this for a long time.  A long 
time.  Since she split up with her first 
boyfriend when she was 15.  Maybe this will put a 
dent in Alex!  I can only hope.



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Squeeze Me and Art Comes Out

	When Bernie's behaviour finally scared me 
enough, I asked him to leave.  We'd been standing 
in the dining room, facing each other.  In the 
interest of being completely honest and open with 
each other, he told me the dream he'd had.

	In front of him, standing in a row, were 
all the women he'd ever known, his wives at the 
front of the line.  For Bernie, I was wife number 
three.  The second wife had been a television 
exercize queen who had regular spots on various 
news casts.  He had told me that he'd been Karen 
Lustgarten's manager, and co-wrote a book with 
her.  It sounded very good at the time I heard 
it, but it didn't turn out to be the Lord's truth.

	Bernie and I went down to Los Angeles 
because I was scheduled to appear on several talk 
shows as the eccentric young handwriting analyst. 
Instead of staying in a hotel, we stayed with 
Karen and her significant other, Ivan Ladizinsky. 
Karen and Bernie were still on good terms.  I 
don't know how that happened.  After living with 
Bernie and his impressive baggage for any length 
of time, I would think the parting would not be 
friendly.  In one of the breaks during Karen's 
and Ivan's vitriolic, vengeful fights, Karen 
talked to me about her marriage with Bernie.

	"My manager?  No.  He was too depressed 
to do anything.  Co-creator of the book?  No.  He 
did the photography.  I'd lead him to the spot, 
tell him the angle I wanted and he'd take the 
picture.  He was barely functional.  I put his 
name on the book to make him feel better about 
himself."

	Well, that cleared up a mystery.  Karen 
was a red haired Amazon, tall, strong, with a big 
face and big features, very glamorous.  Their 
marriage had lasted three years, I think. 
Bernie's first wife, the mother of his two 
children, Alexis and David, was standing next to 
Karen in Bernie's dream.  I keep remembering her 
name as Stella, because of the association with 
hollering.  When Bernie and I showed up at her 
door in Los Angeles to take Alexis and David out 
for a bit, she appeared in the doorway with a 
formidable scowl on her face.  When it registered 
who was at the door, she winced, turned to face 
the inside of the house and screamed at the top 
of her lungs, damaging the villi in my ears, 
"ALEX!  DAVID!  Come on!  Hurry up!  Your excuse 
for a father is here!"  There was no response, 
which is standard for eighteen and twenty year 
olds, but was more a testimony to how used to the 
decibels they were.  She waited a few moments, 
then opened her head and yelled, "GET THE HELL IN 
HERE!  RIGHT NOW, OR I'LL KILL YOU!"

	There were rumblings from the back of the 
house.  Eventually, both Alexis and David 
wandered indolently into the living room, 
stopping to adjust shoes or pick up some 
distracting object.

	"When are you going to bring them back?" Stella barked.

	"Couple hours," Bernie murmured.

	This woman had him scraping and shaking. 
The kids stumbled out onto the porch and Stella 
slammed the door fiercely.  I hadn't gotten 
introduced, not as Tobie, not as, "my wife," 
nothing.  Stella had taken one look at me and 
sneered, "Lucky you".  That was our entire 
communication.

	The kids piled into the car.  David kept 
quiet.  Alexis, heavily made up and in flashy 
fashion, said, "Mom doesn't like you.  Where're 
we going?"

	Those were the two ex-wives.  And in the 
dream Bernie was describing, both of them and 
then I were standing at the front of the first 
row of all of Bernie's females.  He continued. 
He was standing, facing all of us.

	"I took out my penis and started pissing 
on all of you.  The piss kept coming out of me. 
I pissed on everyone, but especially you.  I 
pissed on your hair, in your eyes, all over you. 
You were soaked in my piss.  And I kept pissing 
on you.  It never stopped coming out of me.  When 
I covered you once, I pissed on you all over 
again."

	I wondered why I was listening.  There 
was something vaguely hostile about this dream of 
his.  I interrupted him in mid stream.

	"I think I've heard about enough."

	"I'm just being honest," he insisted.

	"Your honesty has an edge to it, and it makes me mad."

	He stopped talking for a blink.  I was preparing to walk away.

	He said, "How can I live with someone that hates me?"

	"I didn't say I hated you.  I said what you were doing made me mad."

	"No, you said you hated me."

	"I didn't."  This was giving me the queazies.

	"You said you hated me.  I heard you."

	This was a little startling.  "Do you 
mean that you heard me say, quote, I hate you, 
unquote?"

	"Yes," he answered.

	Uh oh.  Auditory hallucinations.  I 
started to back away from him.  "I didn't say 
that, Bernie.  I really didn't."  He'd heard what 
he'd heard.  It's just that it hadn't happened. 
If he were capable of hallucinating a fabrication 
of words and sounds, then his reality was more 
warped than I'd believed.  Suddenly, he looked 
like a crazy man to me.  A crazy man with a very 
hostile dream who had a few paranoid issues about 
me.  I looked around at the house we were 
sharing, the mess that I'd somehow invented and 
brought into my life.  My own hallucinations of 
who Bernie was and what I felt for him became 
real to me.  I scared myself.

	"I think you had better leave," I said.

	He put on his jacket, swiped his car keys 
from the table and silently stole out the front 
door.

	After Bernie's departure, I furiously 
aired out the house.  I opened windows to let his 
presence dissipate.  And I turned fans on to 
circulate the air.  I had no idea where Bernie 
went, and uncharacteristically, I didn't really 
care.  Now, I was left with myself, alone with 
Vogelsang, my cat.  We stared at each other.

	Now what?

	This had always been the deepest 
quandary: what to do with myself and all my 
expectations of me.  Now that there was no one 
who'd promised to be my manager, I couldn't live 
on that dream anymore.  I was aware that I'd 
taken a year of my life and spent it all on self 
delusion.  That was not easy to take.  I made 
myself a bed on the living room floor because 
there had been a moldy smell in the bedroom.  I 
put down a few layers of blankets for a mattress, 
put a bed sheet folded in half on top of that, 
then piled a few more blankets on top of that.  I 
dropped a pillow down for my head.  I placed a 
stack of paper and pens at the head of the bed. 
Then I got an extension cord and dragged the 
little television into the living room, 
positioned it near the pillow.  I tucked myself 
in, turned on the T.V.  I watched late night talk 
shows and bad movies.  Vogelsang crawled into the 
bed with me.  She spelunked all the way to my 
feet, then turned around and came back to flop 
herself in my arms.  That was our nightly 
routine.  Ritual helps.

	One night, I was lying there excoriating 
myself for all the bright and brave things I 
hadn't done, and all the stupid and cowardly 
things I had done.  I pulled the pile of paper 
closer to me and picked up the pen.  I drew a 
naked woman, in very abbreviated simple lines, 
loosely following a human form.  Her breasts were 
flying in either direction, her arms and legs 
were wavy parallel lines, her head tipped back, 
her hair electrified, as if she'd stuck her 
finger in a socket.  Her mouth was open.  I'd say 
she looked distressed, frantic, overwhelmed.  I 
liked the funny drawing.  It said something to 
me.  That's when I added the text balloon.  She 
was screaming, "The angst!  The angst! I can't 
stand the angst!"  I smoothed the drawing out 
flat on top of the pile and turned in for the 
night.

	I woke up a few hours later and took up 
the pen and paper again.  I drew a naked man, 
same loose lines, standing with his head hung low 
in front of him.  Next to him was a little boy in 
the same pose.  They both had penises dangling 
there at their crotches.  I added two text 
balloons.  The father says, "I hate myself".  The 
boy says, "Me, too, Dad".  I smoothed that one 
out and closed my wobbly eyes.  But I didn't keep 
them closed long.  I drew a nude man and woman 
facing each other.  They were both saying, "Let's 
meet half way".  Then the next frame showed them 
both saying, "You first".  A miniature boy with a 
cute round tummy balancing on a man's head.  He 
is shading his eyes with one of his hands, 
searching out into the distance.  The man has a 
blank look on his face.  The picture showed him 
from his shoulders up.  The little boy, using the 
bald pate of the man as a crow's nest, announces, 
"Nope.  No clearer from up here".  A pot bellied 
man standing in a dignified pose, of course 
completely naked.  His hands are on his hips, his 
nose in the air, above the riff raff.  At his 
feet is a woman bent over on her hands and knees. 
She is smooching the man's feet:  Kiss kiss kiss, 
smooch, smooch, smooch.  The man has his text 
balloon above his head.  He proclaims, "I'm too 
good for this".

	The drawings came out of me one after the 
other.  There was no pause between them.  They 
made me laugh and they made me wince.  I showed 
them to my current paramour, the agoraphobic 
artist, Glenn Watson, the one without a doorbell. 
He laughed himself silly and told me these 
drawings were superb.  He wanted to get me a show 
at the college he worked at, out in the valley, 
through the tunnels, in the searing heat and 
franchise businesses.  All mall and name brands. 
Shop here.  Shop for life.  But Los Medanos 
College was an oasis of an educational 
institution in the midst of the tracts and 
billboards.  He said he wanted to get me a show 
there before I got famous.  And I must say there 
was more than ample time before fame found me. 
Fame missed me on the way in and the way out.

	Glenn was able to convince those in 
charge of the Los Medanos gallery to offer me a 
show.  It was very exciting.  A hundred 
characters in their states of complete 
psychological nakedness, stripped of artifice, 
their motivations blaring to the world.  We are 
all lovers and we are all rascals.  I had several 
months to get the show ready, and the material 
was piling up.  I went out to the art warehouse 
store and purchased a hundred high quality thick 
pieces of drawing paper, in various large sizes. 
I purchased soft pencils whose marks on paper 
would last forever.  I went for eternal.  And I 
also bought a roll of thick drawing paper that I 
could use to put a mural on a wall.


	to be continued


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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net