TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 173

[Tobie Shapiro]

March 8, 200007

Dear Oh dear,

	I have a long list of people that I've 
written down as possible clients for Feyna. 
Part of her whole presentation is the culling of 
recommendations for new customers.  She handed me 
an official form with numbers going down the page 
and lines to fill in with names and telephone 
numbers.  The list has a box next to each name. 
The box gets checked when the person you've 
listed says, "Sure, fine, send that woman over to 
us for a demonstration."  This is the only way 
Feyna will stay afloat in this job, because they 
don't give her leads to customers.  She has to 
find them herself.  I went through my address 
book and wrote down the names of anybody I 
thought would be remotely amenable.  I called 
quite a few, and naturally, they weren't in so I 
left messages on their answering machines.  But 
there were some I didn't have the energy to call. 
These were the people I haven't spoken to since 
villainman walked out on us.  I just didn't want 
to have to go through the whole revelation again. 
"Oh, Tobie!  How are you!?  What's new?  How's 
David?"   "Oh, him.  Welllllll, . . . "

	I feel like such a coward.  Then, on the 
other hand, I will get around to it.

	When?




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Coupling

	All the stories you read about sex leave 
a whole lot out.  Even the confessionals are 
mostly about with whom, where and with what.

	"Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a candlestick."

	The acts of sex are gripping and 
explosive.  Two urgent individuals longing for 
unison finally consummate their consuming 
passions.  They wrap each other up in their arms 
and legs and they make love intensely, both 
sighing and groaning, finally lying exhausted, 
the act done, the race to the finish over.  The 
scene comes in a dazzling array of 
configurations.  There is a lot of heaving, 
rolling, thrusting, caressing, many superlatives.

	But I have a different story.  My first 
introductions to sex were my mother's scientific 
explanations.  They included charts, diagrams, 
unabashed use of the full Latin names for body 
parts, flow charts, arrows and a question and 
answer period.  I learned all about what made 
babies, even how babies were formed, and what 
they busied themselves with in the uterus for 
nine long months.  My mother had been inspired to 
explain procreation in this straight forward way 
by her own experience with her mother who was 
silent about the whole thing.  Even when she was 
in college, she still thought the sperm crawled 
across the sheets to make their entrance into the 
land of Ovum.  So she would tell us everything, 
without the shame and without the euphemisms.  We 
would know, from her genuine talk, what she had 
to learn by banging her head on the medical 
school diagrams and looking at them cross eyed.

	She did well.  I understood all the facts 
about reproduction.  But she left out the part 
about the longing and surge of hormones, the 
expression of love, the shared experience that 
kept people coming back for more, everything that 
made birth control necessary.

	My conception of the act was that when 
you wanted to have a baby, the man and woman 
would get undressed and stand behind a door, or 
any other secretive location, and do what had to 
be done.  The man would put his delivery system 
into the woman's receiving port and impregnate 
her.  When they were done, they could go about 
their business again, of course apologizing for 
the inconvenience, and bizarre method.  But nine 
months later, you'd have your foetus, and you 
wouldn't have to have anything to do with the 
unseemly process until you wanted another child.

	It was my friend, Susan Mearns, who told 
me that people did this because they loved each 
other.  I refused to believe it.  Why would any 
two people who loved each other go through the 
contortions, and do something so disgusting? 
This had to be phony baloney.  I went to ask my 
mother.

	"Do people do that thing where you make a 
baby because they love each other?  I mean, do 
they really want to do it?"

	She was taken aback for a second.  Not 
for long, but I could see it in her eyes, that 
flash of, "Uh oh".  "Yes," she answered.  "They 
do it because they love each other."

	I walked away sickened.  I tried to 
imagine that somewhere in all the fighting, my 
mother loved my father.  I couldn't conjure it. 
Too revolting.  Susan and I drew a series of 
pictures, or, that is, she dictated to me what to 
draw, and I drew it, since I was the artist 
between the two of us.  She had been turned off 
of art because her father was Walter Keane.  You 
know the paintings of little children with their 
huge round eyes, one tear rolling down a cheek? 
That was her father's millions.

	So Susan said, "Draw a woman lying down 
on her back.  Now draw a man sitting on her with 
his legs outside of her legs.  Now make them both 
smile."

	They smiled.

	"No, you should have the man holding his thing so it stays inside."

	I erased his arms and redrew them.  He held his thing.

	"Good."

	And that was sex according to the sixth 
grade whiz kids who, between them, knew the 
technicalities and the human side of procreation. 
This was unsatisfactory, though.  It didn't 
answer my big question.  Why was sex so filthy? 
Why did my father make crude jokes about breasts 
and penises and women's holes and hair that made 
my mother reprimand him, grit her teeth and take 
him into the next room for an argument?  Why did 
he think it was so dirty, and embarrassing, and 
why did his face turn red when he mentioned it? 
Why did he suddenly start talking to us, his 
pre-pubescent girls, announcing, "This brings me 
back to my first sexual experience."  And then he 
was in the next room with my mother for another 
argument.  When he came back, he started all over 
again and described a woman that he took 
advantage of, but made a point of saying that he 
was very clear to her that he wasn't in love with 
her, and if she got pregnant, he wouldn't marry 
her.  Dana and I were chewing our dinner.  My 
mother was chewing her tongue.

	Why was sex so awful?  It sounded 
revolting, but why was it awful?  My mother and 
her diagrams with the arrows and flow charts told 
of a matter of fact, but fascinating scientific 
phenomenon.  But she wasn't the only influence. 
There were the lessons from my father which were 
of subjugation, degradation and dirtiness.

	Then there was the intense interest he 
had in my female parts, the comments he would 
make about me as a girl, and the way he bumped 
into me with his hand held out to his side that 
just happened to brush up against my bottom. 
This was also an influence in my learning about 
sex and what it was good for.

	I dreaded starting my periods.  I was 
scared to death.  As it was, I was a target, and 
I was a cylinder.  What would happen when I 
developed and became a woman, acquired a womanly 
shape and couldn't hide it?  Would I have to fend 
off the men who, according to my father, were 
interested only in screwing me, and would do 
anything, lie, cheat, steal, plot and  lie in 
wait, to do so?

	I remained a fierce virgin way past when 
everyone around me at college was on birth 
control pills.  I resisted feeling anything when 
a boyfriend kissed me.  And I wouldn't let them 
touch me, unless I faked being asleep.  I'd wake 
up before anything below the waist happened.  And 
I'd feel soiled, guilty, like I had an unnatural 
and filthy drive to do a revolting thing, 
something my mother had to do with my father, 
probably when he won an argument.

	After the first love making with Arthur 
Glickman, I shut down all systems and couldn't 
feel anything during sex.  The kissing and 
caressing all went fine, but if there were 
penetration, I'd go numb.  Suddenly, I would be 
counting the seconds until my partner was done. 
It just didn't feel good.  It didn't feel bad. 
It just didn't feel like anything, and I wanted 
it to stop.  It was futile to work towards a 
climax.  I was removed from the experience, 
observing it from far away.  If there were 
anything I thought I wanted, I would never say 
so.  There was never any talking.  I musn't 
instruct the man on what to do.  First of all, 
that would let on that I actually had desires, 
which would be filthy of me, a sure sign that I 
had a part in asking for my father's abuse, and 
secondly, I was supposed to accept whatever my 
partner did, without my advice, as all that sex 
had to offer.  I was gagged.

	Even so, I kept looking for the magic 
partner, someone who would bring to me an intense 
and loving joining, like the sex everyone talked 
about having, the sex everyone seemed to be 
focussed on having.  They were all luxuriating in 
pleasure and oneness, while the best I could do 
was try to think about something else while I was 
having it.  If I didn't, then my mind would fill 
to bloating with self criticism and weary 
expectation, narratives of what it should feel 
like, and what would be happening if I were 
normal.  I was disappointed in the whole 
business, shame and all.  I shouldn't want it, 
but I should enjoy it.  I should know how to 
reach orgasm no matter what my partner was doing. 
And somewhere in there, there should be a magical 
meeting of bodies and souls.  It would lift me 
out of my horrendous childhood and prove that 
someone could love me.



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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net