TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 225, continued

[Tobie Shapiro]

June 9, 2000007


Dear intrepid few,

	Somehow, 225 wound up being longer than 
the average story, so I cut it in half.  Are you 
still out there?




 
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Squeeze Me and Art Comes Out (continued)

	By this time, I had met David, husband 
number three, and we were courting while I weaned 
myself from Glenn Watson, the guy who fucked, 
then kicked me out of his loft.  I'd arrive with 
my bottle of good imported wine which we would 
share, then we'd go up to his loft and make love. 
Glenn insisted on fellatio, his preferred method 
of sexual communication.  It kind of left me out, 
but I'd been tolerating this, as I'd never really 
known much better.  I knew to please the man in 
question.  The man in question was an artist.  He 
was eccentric.  He was talented, smart, had a 
lovely voice, sang as he puttered around his 
apartment.  He was terrific, if only it weren't 
for 90% of his behaviour, his sexual 
predilections and his ambiguous feelings toward 
me.  If he could just be an entirely different 
person, it would be perfect.  Of course, at the 
time, I didn't see it that way.  And as the weeks 
wore on, I succeeded in demythifying Glenn Watson 
and transferring my visions and hallucinations 
onto David Nygren, the new man in question.

	When it got serious between David and me, 
I arranged to meet Glenn for a goodbye.  David 
arranged to see his quasi girlfriend for a 
goodbye.  As I explained the new set of alliances 
to Glenn, it occurred to me that this might have 
a deleterious effect on the plans for my show. 
But I said goodbye to him anyway.  After that is 
when he'd write me letters, call me on the phone 
having consumed a bottle of something red or 
white, maybe even mixed.  Sliding around through 
his mushy words, he'd ask me why he hadn't 
treated me better.  Why had he turned me away?  I 
was the best thing to have come along for decades.

	But it was all talk from a safe distance. 
I was someone else's now.  The coast was clear. 
He swore on his drunken soul that he would make 
sure I still got my show.  And the drawings kept 
coming out:

	A man floating in the air with hearts for 
eyes.  He says, "I love all of humanity; I love 
the world, the solar system, the galaxies.  I am 
full of love for every creature in creation."  A 
woman floating beside him, hearts for eyes, sighs 
to him, "Yes, I love you too!"  The man turns on 
her, blasts in her face, "I didn't mean YOU!"

	David tried to set up a studio for me in 
his garage.  He came up with an elaborate plan. 
This had overhead and underhead lighting.  It had 
ventilation, central heating, large flat tilted 
surfaces on which to accomplish the actual works 
of art.  I'm sure if I hadn't stopped him, he 
would have put in air conditioning, a telephone, 
a sofa to rest on and a little refrigerator for 
snacks.  The overhead lighting would have been 
secured with the same stuff that holds up 
freeways, and he would have ordered special 
lighting that reproduced the exact effect of 
sunlight with a control that adjusted it to the 
hour of the day.  Dial in 5:30, P.M., Pacific 
Standard Time, on December 5th, 1984 and the 
mechanism he'd invented himself would set the 
circuits rolling, the light adjusted to pulsate 
at just the right frequency.  All the laws of 
physics would be brought into play.

	He would have done this, and more.  But I 
told him that all I needed was a light over a 
table and an area heater.  I'd do the rest.  This 
was not to his liking.  He insisted on doing the 
full pinnacle, state of the art design.

	"No no.  All I need is a table, a light, 
and an area heater.  I need slap dab, because I 
need it now."

	He said he could implement his plan expeditiously.

	"How long will this take?"

	"A few days.  That's all.  It's no trouble.  Really."

	I hated to deny him the pleasure of 
pleasing me.  "You're sure.  Just a few days? 
Because the show is in less than a month now, and 
I need to be working."

	He was glad to do it.  He was a busy 
significant other.  He even ducked out at the lab 
to put together the studio.  He was wrong about 
the few days, though.  A few days didn't even 
give him enough time to order the lighting.  He 
exerted himself in the garage while I sat on my 
hands, itching to go to work.  I couldn't even 
see this project taking shape.  I was tableless, 
lightless and heatless.  I waited.  Then I waited 
impatiently.  Then I started nudging him.

	"Really, David, just a table, a light and 
an area heater.  I really need this now."

	He gave me a look so disappointed, so 
crestfallen that I relented.  "Oh, go do your 
best."  In the meantime, I'll think up another 
career.  I'd been known to do that.  I cleared a 
place in the bedroom between my music equipment 
and my writing supplies.  On the carpeted floor, 
I threw down the eternal acid free paper, took 
out some pencils, and went at it.

	The garage took three weeks and still was 
unfinished.  His generous gift of a studio, his 
grand, selfless, noble favour, now annoyed the 
hell out of me.  But how could I criticize him 
for doing this wonderful thing for me?  He 
deserved praise.  And that, too, pinched my 
spleen.  I was furious at his plot to save my 
world.

	A table.  A light.  An area heater.  He 
finally finished enough of his project to make 
some of it usable.  It was less than a week 
before the show.  I needed at least two dozen 
more pieces.  David's magnanimous offering had 
screwed me.  He was proud of his ingenious ideas. 
They were still ideas, however, and the upcoming 
show was real, or whatever was left of real after 
my hard work in disassembling reality.

	While all that was going on, there was a 
tiny problem brewing at Los Medanos College. 
There had been objections to the display of 
honest nudity in my works.  You know, it hadn't 
even occurred to me as an issue.  These pictures 
were so innocuous and innocent.  But the 
objections trickled in.  Two camps argued over 
the prospective show.  The school newspaper came 
to interview me.  I told them that the nudity was 
very abstract and it was utterly void of prurient 
insinuation, that the figures couldn't be clothed 
because they had been metaphorically stripped 
bare of social and psychological clothing.  I 
told them that no sexual acts were depicted, not 
even so much as a kiss.  The ardent student of 
journalism who interviewed me took careful notes 
and regarded me from a respectful distance, 
facilitating his objectivity.  In his eyes, I 
could tell he saw me as a star, a dedicated 
artist with an important show, and probably the 
only controversy to happen in years.  Here he 
was, wanting someday to be a Pulitzer prize 
winning journalist and this was his first real 
story, a story with meat, with ethical and moral 
issues complicating it.

	The story about the controversial show 
appeared in the college newspaper.  Forced to do 
something, the administration held a closed 
meeting, without my presence or contribution.  I 
still wonder what on earth they spoke about at 
that high level, top secret meeting.  Did anyone 
there actually argue that a bunch of cartoon 
penises and a swarm of pairs of cartoon breasts 
would comprise a threat to the well being of the 
student body?  Or were there political elements 
involved, maybe some moneyed contributor with 
phalliophobia?  After their grim meeting about 
the penises and breasts, a ruling came down from 
the college PTB (Powers That Be) that the show 
must go on, but there would be an admonishing 
sign outside the gallery explaining the serious 
nature of the works, the contextual philosophy of 
the works, the maturity necessary to view the 
works, maybe a reference to nakedness, a warning 
shot across the bow of those with delicate 
psychological constitutions.  I was an artist 
with a warning label.

	In the weeks before the show, I doubled 
up my inspiration and put out a prodigious amount 
of work.  I got sloppy.  I got loose.  My 
internal editor took a vacation.  I was going to 
cover those walls.  The day before the opening, 
David and I loaded the car with all the pictures 
and headed off to Los Medanos College.  It took 
us hours to hang the show.  Big ones, little 
ones, tiny ones, huge ones filled up the gallery. 
Then, I took my roll of thick archival mural 
paper, cut off about ten feet of it and tacked it 
on the inside wall to the right of the entrance, 
just after you stepped into the room.  I took out 
my big black charcoal crayon and drew a bunch of 
nude people running around in the background, 
then two people in the foreground, one naked, the 
other, the only creature in the whole show fully 
clothed.  It was a woman with curly dark hair, on 
the short side, her back to the viewer.  The 
naked person facing her was asking a question.

	"Well, who are you?"

	She answered, "I'm the artist of course".

	I got immense pleasure out of this.  I signed my name.

	At the opening, dozens of people milled 
about with glasses of punch in their hands  -  no 
alcohol.  This was a college.  Red dots appeared 
next to some of the pictures.  Some were being 
bought!  This was my claim to professionality.  I 
had spent hundreds supplying myself with paper, 
with drawing tools, with frames, and spent months 
working at it.  The return did not have me 
breaking even, but it was a physicality.  It was 
the first three hundred dollars I'd ever earned 
doing something I loved to do.

	While I was standing about at the 
opening, a student approached me, carefully.  He 
looked at the pictures on the walls, all these 
men and women torturing each other, suffering, 
coming to grips with or denying reality, 
clattering through life, careening into each 
other, knocking each other around, inflicting 
themselves on one another.  The student looked at 
me and tried to form a question.  It didn't come 
out right the first time.  He started again.

	"You been through a lot of pain or something?" he asked.

	I didn't have to think about it.  "I'm 
pretty sure I have," I answered.  "But I could 
always be wrong."

	The show stayed up for a month.  After 
that, the whole show, minus the few sold pieces, 
wound up in the garage again.  When we moved, 
they moved with us into another garage.  They all 
burned up in the 1991 fire in the hills.  I never 
took up the naked people again.



 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net