TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 193

Fri Mar 30 08:06:02 PDT 2007

March 30, 2000000007

Dear Gathering,

	Feyna tells me she is not going down to 
Mexico so she can sit in a bar and get service 
even though she's only 20.  She doesn't intend to 
get drunk.  I trust her.  That is the last word 
about Feyna: I have always been able to trust 
her.  Meyshe, too.  They are both fundamentally 
and unwaveringly honest.  Loyal, too.  Feyna met 
a guy named Shawn on match.com.  They 
corresponded feverishly, finding out that they 
had so many things in common that they were 
nearly spooked.  They decided they must meet. 
Feyna had a good feeling about it.  So did Shawn. 
They were saying they were meant for each other. 
I warned Feyna that e-mail and in the flesh 
meetings are two different fish.  She was pretty 
sure this was going to work out.  They got 
together last Sunday.  They walked around 
UCBerkeley campus for two hours, had a bite to 
eat together.  Both said that they should 
definitely see each other again.  Now she hasn't 
heard from him since their meeting, and he 
doesn't answer her e-mails.  She's hurt, and a 
little bewildered, also angry.  Meyshe listened 
to Feyna's story and said that it didn't sound 
like Shawn was treating her with respect and he 
should be relegated to history.  He was sorry 
that she was feeling bad.  Was there something he 
could do?  There's your loyalty.

                         dddddddddddddddddddddd

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All over the spectrum

	When we lived back east in Silver Spring, 
Maryland, I was still young enough that the 
summer vacation seemed to go on forever.  There 
was plenty of time to lie around, get into small 
adventures, live through endless days while the 
sun inched its way across the sky.  Plenty of 
time to broil my brains and soak them as well, in 
the humid heat.  I distinctly remember not caring 
that it was hot during the day, but when it 
didn't cool off at night, it was unbearable.  I 
lay sweating and writhing on top of the sheets, 
trying to find a patch of cool cotton somewhere 
in the bed where my body hadn't yet warmed it up. 
Long long nights in the suffocating wet, hot, 
roiling air.

	During the days, I am sure my sister and 
I gave my mother more than enough to do, serving 
as referee to our constant fighting.  There was 
always somebody screaming, and it was usually I. 
I with the hollering, "Make her stop!"   I with 
the high pitched drawn out, "Nooooooo!  Leave me 
aloooooooooone!"  I running after Dana, yelling, 
"Give it back to me!"   And I crying over the toy 
she'd just broken for my benefit.  I've asked my 
mother, and her impressions were the same.  Dana 
tortured me on a regular basis.  It was more than 
inspired by the understandable jealousy aroused 
in the first born against the new little sibling. 
It was the way she was born.  She was born 
shrieking and kicking, hitting and taking other 
people apart.  I just got in the way of her 
trajectory.  Dana remembers it differently.  We 
were all grown up and living our adult lives when 
she insisted that I had been the aggressor.  It 
was arresting news, and unexpected, too.  I stood 
there with my mouth hanging open, not knowing 
what to say.  "I was not!" would have been 
puerile, and probably would have started a 
pointless argument.  So I just shut up and tried 
to keep my eyes from rolling out of their 
sockets.  But since I learned as a child to doubt 
my perceptions of reality, I took the issue again 
to my mother.  I told her what Dana had asserted. 
Her mouth flew open, too.  So there you have it: 
I was right, and she was wrong.

	To keep us off of each other during the 
summer, we were enrolled at Webster-Neal day 
camp.  We showed up at 9:00 in the morning and 
were let out, exhausted, at 3:00.  They had all 
sorts of activities for us.  The grounds of the 
camp exceeded the scope of my vision.  There were 
grassy rolling hills, shade trees, a building in 
which the indoor events took place, an indoor 
swimming pool, and a big meeting hall where the 
entire camp came together to sing and carry on 
joint activities.  We were organized into age 
clusters.  Each cluster had a name.  I think mine 
was called The Owls.  My sister's was The Eagles. 
The girls got bird names and the boys got 
mammals.  We sat cross legged on the floor and 
were allowed to suggest the names of songs to 
sing.  My sister was among the big kids.  Two 
years means a whole lot at that age.

	I looked up at Marjory Webster, one of 
the directors, as she stood on the raised 
platform and told us all what was going to happen 
each day.  Marjory Webster was a densely packed 
woman with a figure like a rain barrel.  She had 
two massive breasts mounted on her chest and they 
cast a shadow over her thick waist.  Her hair was 
chopped short.  Her voice was deep and booming. 
She wore men's slacks, and button down shirts, 
socks and clodhopper shoes.  We did not know that 
she was a lesbian.  We had no such concept.  The 
other half of the equation, Miss Neal, hung 
around in Marjory Webster's umbra, a thin, 
delicate woman, even bony, with a cute short 
hairdo and big, imploring eyes.  We didn't know 
that Marjory Webster and Miss Neal were lovers. 
We didn't even know what lovers were.  I thought 
of Webster as a bull, and Neal as a bird.

	My favourite counselor was a woman whose 
name was Butch.  She had a flat top hair cut and 
was good at all sports.  She was funny and 
outgoing.  I admired her.  I adored her.  I 
invited her home for dinner.  She came one night 
dressed up in a black knee length tight skirt, a 
white starched shirt without sleeves, and two 
pearl earrings decorating her ears.  She stood on 
medium high heels and wore dark nylon stockings. 
There is a photograph of Butch sitting at the 
edge of the couch in the living room, her elbow 
bent, resting on the arm of the sofa, in her 
hand, a smoking cigarette.  She looked so 
sophisticated.  As far as I could tell, she was 
near perfect.

	In those days, there were no uncloseted 
lesbians and homosexuals, except maybe for 
Quentin Crisp who blazed that flaming trail for 
the rest of the tribe.  Butch was trying to pass 
for being accepted by the standard issue women 
with their bouffant hairdos, made up faces, high 
heels, painted nails and goals to serve a 
husband.  I knew there was something different 
about Butch, different than the mommies I was 
used to, but I didn't know what that was, other 
than her being better, more focussed, more 
independent, a stronger woman, an inspiration to 
me.  I wanted to be just like Butch when I grew 
up.  But it turned out I'm not.  I'm my own 
unique mix of he and she and in between.  We are 
all scattered over the spectrum.  We sparkle in 
the lights.

                         dddddddddddddddddddddd

                          ßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßß
-- 

Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net