TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 189

Mon Mar 26 07:33:40 PDT 2007

March 26, 2000000000007

Dear Longing Throng,

	Through Jdate (Jewish dating service on 
the internet) I have met a handful of men whom I 
would all categorize under the heading of, "No 
Soap".  The correspondence segment always worked 
rather well, except for one fellow who insisted 
on meeting before the mutual discovery of trading 
e-mails.  He was twenty years my senior, and when 
we met, we met in a  diner in Berkeley where the 
politics are famous for radical, and all the 
owners and waitresses are 
gay/lesbian/transsexual.  All through the chat 
which lasted an hour and a half, my new friend 
bragged about his involvement in the weapons 
invention trade, and was especially proud of his 
having come up with the idea to arm missiles with 
multiple warheads.  The heads turned in that 
restaurant.  It all went to reinforce my idea 
that one should correspond first, and later maybe 
meet for coffee only at some place close to my 
home where I can run away on my shoes if things 
don't go right.

	Now, I'm corresponding with a fellow who 
was born in 1928 (why do the older ones go for 
me?).  This is just eight years younger than my 
mother, who just turned 87.  But this guy seems 
to be a live wire.  He is taking a Shamanistic 
training course, a three year course that will be 
over this June.  He's still working, in computer 
software invention (I think).  He's been invited 
to Frankfurt, Germany to take part in a 
convergence of Jews and Germans who are going to 
discuss the happenings of the second world war. 
From the copy of the invitation to Frankfurt that 
he sent me, I gathered that he was born and 
raised in Germany, and escaped via 
Kindertransport to the U.K. when he was a little 
boy, along with his sister.  He makes plans to do 
things years in the future, and looks forward to 
celebrating his 80th birthday in November of 
2008.  In his e-mails, he is compelling and 
intelligent, inventive and comic.  And he's also 
78 years old.  Still, he's the most interesting 
geezo I've come across yet on Jdate.  I think 
I'll write to him, but I don't know whether I 
should go any further than that.  I'm the spring 
chicken, going to be 60 in July.  I've got my 
whole life ahead of me, as does everyone if you 
look at it that way.

                             ßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßß

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Cohabitation

	Arthur and I moved in together because my 
father kicked me out of the house.  He was 
ranting about how Arthur was a murderer, stealing 
his daughter and taking what was most valuable 
from her.  He made him out to be some vile 
kidnapper, or more likely, a rapist.  This was 
odd, because at the time, I was still billing 
myself as a virgin.  I told no one that I'd had 
sex with Arthur.  Only part of that was for 
everyone else's benefit.  Part of it was for my 
own, not wanting to admit the depths to which I'd 
sunk.  I was not happy with having slept with 
Arthur.  I suspected myself of being sex crazed, 
because I had even wanted it.  I know, strange 
thought patterns for a woman of nineteen who 
should have been at the start of a long glorious 
career as a sexually active celebrant of life.  I 
played the cello as if I knew what sex was all 
about.  How could I do that?  It was perhaps a 
masquerade.

	My father's tirade against Arthur was one 
of territory.  He saw that his daughter was 
removing herself from his orbit and would soon no 
longer be his personal object, a piece of a soft 
sex toy for him to diddle with.  So he accused 
Arthur of all these things, called me a whore and 
shrieked at me to get out of his house.  No such 
scene took place with my sister.  She was vocal, 
even obnoxious about her sexual awakening, 
letting on to the family in a conspiratorial tone 
that she'd been caught sleeping overnight at her 
boyfriend's cooperative along with several other 
of her co-opmates at Stebbins Hall.  We were all 
supposed to remain motionless, in awe of her 
revelation.  My father did not shout at her, nor 
call her beaux, Eric, an assassin.  Dana got 
entirely different treatment than I did.  Still a 
virgin, I was the slut.  He really didn't like 
his plaything, his property, being seduced away. 
And that's part of what made me ashamed of having 
had sex with Arthur, that it in some way 
validated my father's role in my sexuality.

	So, outside the front door, with no place 
to come back to, I sought safe harbor in Arthur. 
That's when we decided to move in together.  I 
remember sitting down at the table with a piece 
of lined paper and a pencil, recalling all the 
hideous arithmetic I'd suffered through in 
elementary school.  I set about figuring a 
budget.  How were we going to make it on the 
money we had?  Arthur had a part time job through 
the University.  He worked in the archives 
department for the Registrar, filing things away 
and pulling things out, filing things away and 
pulling things out.  It was a circular sort of 
job, and it must have lent some nominal meaning 
to his pointless life.  He endured it.  I would 
drop in on him at times, sit up on the table 
along with his stack of, "To be filed".  I'd 
cheer him on, and make big eyes at him.  The pay 
was not great, and he didn't bring in much, but I 
noted the amount at the head of his column and 
moved over to my column.  I had no part time job 
anywhere.  I was entirely supported by my 
parents, and took it completely for granted.  But 
after the great eruption in which I was thrown 
clear from my parents' house, I had to call my 
mother to make sure I was still going to get my 
monthly stipend.  She said yes, but begged me to 
come home.  She was sure she could speak to my 
father about it, bring him around.  I told her 
that Arthur and I were going to move in together 
and that I was working out a budget.

	At the head of my column, I wrote down my 
monthly pay for being a daughter, keeping the 
family secrets, making sure the beans were 
unspilled.  Dysfunctional families can't afford 
any leaks.  We run a much tighter ship than the 
White House.  After I combined the two incomes, I 
set to work noting every expense that we would 
have.  I was thorough.  I was obsessive.  I got 
it down to details such as figuring out how many 
pint sized jars of mayonnaise we would use in a 
month, how many sandwiches from how many loaves 
of bread.  I didn't allow for any nights out on 
the town, but I was careful to list an allowance 
for pens and pencils, erasers, stamps and 
bandaids.  Just how many bandaids would we use 
every month and how much did a box of bandaids 
cost?  What size bandaids?  What sort of bruises 
or cuts might we sustain, and how many in a month?

	When I was done, I added up all the 
expenses and subtracted it from the total income. 
We couldn't make it.  I scrimped on the bandaids 
and mayonnaise.  We still couldn't make it.  I 
tossed the figures around for a while, and still 
came up negative.  Still, we were going to do 
this, so I disregarded my calculations, deemed 
them neurotic and we went out to find an 
apartment.

	The day we moved in, Arthur told me he 
didn't love me any more.  I sat on a box, 
stunned, and dumbly wept into my fists.

	"What will we do?" I cried.

	"Let's go to bed.  Maybe I'll feel better in the morning."

	And he did.  He felt better for several 
weeks, but I was now on my guard, on high alert. 
I closed down my heart, and turned away from him 
while I longed for him.  He kept me on my toes 
with, "I love you," "I don't love you," "Let's 
get married," "Let's split up."  The honeymoon, 
which had never begun, was over.  We were 
stuttering to a finish.

                             ßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßß

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-- 

Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net