Mitchell Lipensky…
...though very good looking had also always been extremely shy; a combination that might make a girl think he was aloof and conceited.
When he was younger, many girls, not wanting to be seen with a boy better looking than themselves, or more conceited then themselves, would very often steer away from Mitchell.
Knowing he was—not as conceit, but as a fact—good looking, and considering himself to be what he considered a “good guy,” this confused him. And girls—and as he grew older, women—had always been a mystery to him and he had always had a hard, if not impossible time “reading them,” understanding their subtle, and sometimes not too subtle moves—their body language.
Marsha, being quick of mind, had often felt impatience and occasional anger because of Mitchell’s inability, at times, to pick up on her moods, be they humor, anger, or—if he only knew—desire.
Being forced by a neighbourhood bully to watch a sexual act between two adults when he was seven years old became the catalyst, two years later, for an early preoccupation with sex, leaving Mitchell to think that he’d spent his life with a “boner.”
Often aroused by nothing more than a thought, and always by the mere touch of the opposite sex, was his reason—or maybe his excuse—at near age twenty two, for being barely able to dance.
And though he’d tried, Good God how he had tried, but for reasons, usually because the girl said “no”… But yet there had been three girls, that he knew of, that he could have “gone all the way” with, but in each instance a…? circumstance developed and he never did.
Even after he was married “in the eyes of God,” and Marsha’s period had ended, when there was nothing to stop him but his own mind, which, of course, did stop his body—his penis—from functioning properly, and though he’d thought it before, it was at that time that Mitchell Lipensky thought, seriously thought, that, God is against me ever getting fucked!
Seagate, New York
June 21, 1956
A light breeze coming from the double windows behind the sofa bed, still dark outside, there was not a hint of morning light.
His mental alarm sounding minutes before the Baby Ben on his end table, reaching to his right, slapping the plunger atop the clock, he shut off the alarm.
Marsha, as had become her habit, slept on her right side, with her back to him.
Shoving and locking his early morning erection—which for Mitchell had always been the hardest of the day no matter what the circumstances—between his thighs, thinking—just as he’d thought almost every morning since he was nine years old and had first learned about “boners” and, though repugnant to him at the time, what they were really meant to be used for—What a great boner! And, as always, wished he could wake Marsha and not waste it, but instead, nuzzling his nude body into her arched backside, he luxuriated in the fuzzy warmth of Marsha, the sweet scent of her hair and the coziness of their bed… for just the few seconds it took till the comfort overtook him and he felt his eyes close, then, forcing himself off the bed, going to the range he turned a medium sized flame on beneath the prefilled percolator, and went into the bathroom.
5:33 a.m.
Because he didn’t have to be there until eight, and Marsha didn’t have to be at work until nine, she would sleep at least another hour.
Leaving the bathroom, lowering the flame on the now simmering pot of coffee, he put two slices of “Silvercup” into the toaster. Back in the bathroom, Mitchell shaved, brushed his hair, then, leaving the light on and the door open, going back to the kitchen, he buttered the toast, spread a gloppy layer of strawberry jam on both slices and, because it was comfortably warm in the one room apartment, sat naked at the table eating breakfast. As she slept facing the kitchen, looking at Marsha’s face, exposed shoulder and arm, he hoped she would change positions so he would be able to see her breasts… but she didn’t.
Finished eating within minutes, going to the dresser, he put on Jockey shorts and a T-shirt. At the long closet that covered the entire west wall of the apartment, taking a pair of sharply pressed white slacks off a hanger, he stepped into them. Removing a matching white tunic from another hanger, pulling it over his head, he then fit a long, black, folded neckerchief under the wide, back flap of the tunic. Back in the bathroom, centering the large knot just above the “V” of the tunic, Mitchell tied the neckerchief.
Speaking softly, “Honey.” Kneeling alongside the bed, speaking a bit louder, “Marcie.”
Opening her eyes, closing them, “Oh.” Opening them again, “Hi, sailor. You ready to shove off?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Knowing he would not be home on this night, always hating to leave in the morning. “See you tomorrow, huh?” Lowering his head—smelling the slightest hint of her perfume, White Shoulders—nuzzling the warmth of Marsha’s neck a moment, “I love you.” Kissing her nose, “Bye-bye.”
Yawning, “Yeah, sweetie, me too.” Turning over, muttering a muffled, “Bye-bye.” she buried her face in the pillow.
Mitchell looked at the back of her head a moment, then, walking from the bed, he turned the light in the bathroom off. Opening the front door, stepping into the pushily carpeted hallway, pulling the door shut, he tested to be sure it was locked.
A few months earlier he’d driven partway to the terminal before realizing he had left his cap at home. Not allowed outside in uniform without a cap, turning around, rushing back to Seagate, he got the Damned cap and, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the cop had been a swabbie during Korea, he would have gotten a speeding ticket on his way back, too.
Just to be on the safe side, whenever on liberty, when he got off the ferry and into the car, the cap always got tossed onto the back seat.
Even though the car had to be left overnight in the Staten Island Ferry Terminal parking lot, Mitchell, instead of Marsha, drove the car because, one: Seagate was just a short bus and subway ride to Bensonhurst, where she worked at Lord & Taylor as a corsetiere; two: the Staten Island Ferry was much further away and much harder to get to; and three: simply put, although he was teaching her, Marsha did not yet know how to drive a car.
Having been in the U.S. Coast Guard for slightly more than three years, Mitchell had a bit less than one year left of his four year enlistment.
Retrospective:
Evanston, Skokie and Chicago, Illinois
Mitchell and Susan, 1951/52
Of all the wonders in the world, certainly one of the most wondrous, and frightening, is that at any moment a step in one direction or the other, or a cup of coffee, might change your life forever.
On December 8, 1951, for the very first time in his teenage life, Mitchell Lipensky had gone Christmas shopping with his parents, Walter and Myra, in the Northwestern College town of Evanston.
Walter had wanted a cup of coffee and Mitchell suggested the Walgreens drug store across the street because, “They got a great soda fountain.”
A few minutes later, sitting at the Lshaped counter, Mitchell’s rapt attention was drawn from his hot fudge sundae to the woman and young woman that had taken stools kitty corner from them.
The woman was beautiful… but the girl! Oh, God! he’d thought, She looks just like—the only young movie star that he’d ever had a crush on—Elizabeth Taylor, in her new movie, “A Place In The Sun.”
With his dripping spoon paused midway between the sundae and his mouth, he’d immediately fallen in love, and summoning every drop of courage he had, plus a lot he didn’t know he had, Mitchell walked around the counter, awkwardly introduced himself, and—wonder of wonders—met Susan Friedman and her mother.
He didn’t find out until later that night that Susan thought he looked much like young John Derek in the movie “Knock On Any Door” and—double wonder of wonders—it was “love at first sight” for her also.
Driving from Skokie to their north side apartment in a snowstorm, that evening he met Mister Friedman and, undergoing the Friedman’s version of the Spanish Inquisition, Mitchell discovered that wealth, success and status were all important to the Friedmans. According to Mr. and Mrs. Friedman, the key to that wealth, success and status—unless one was lucky enough to be born into the wealth and status—was a good college education, at a good college, and that Mister and Mrs. Friedman shared most Jewish American parents’ dream of their daughter marrying a doctor, a lawyer or—at the very least—a CPA.
Unfortunately, none of these categories fit Mitchell Lipensky.
But because his parents appeared to be wealthy and successful—to Mrs. Friedman, who’d appraised Walter and Myra from across the Walgreens counter—and because the Friedmans equated good looks to brains and ambition, and because Mitchell was so good looking and had such impeccably, if not fawningly, good manners, they thought of him as a stereotypical—in their dreams—Jewish boy and liked him…
But outside of incessant horniness, anything about Mitchell Lipensky being what one might term as “a stereotypical Jewish boy” was purely coincidental.
But he did tell Mr. and Mrs. Friedman that he did have the right averages in high school, and it was because of this…
This impression of wealth and success and learning was due to a façade constructed of slight exaggerations, half truths, and, oh, yes, downright lies perpetrated by Mitchell to impress the girl’s parents and yes, of course, also the girl.
In all actuality, though not stupid, Mitchell was, to say the least, a rather lazy sort of young man who had wasted his time throughout eight years of grammar school and the previous threeandahalf years of high school, but of course he did not tell that to the parents, or to the girl, so…
The Friedmans lowered their standards and allowed their one and only daughter to see and, in a short time—one week to be exact—to even “go steady” with a young man whose aspirations for the future were as mundane as his father’s business: commercial photography. A young man whose university of choice was R.I.T.: Rochester Institute of Technology.
And this only because R.I.T. was the only thing Mitchell could think of while undergoing the Friedmans’ inquisition.
At that moment, though, Mitchell’s intentions and prevarications were all justifiable because he really loved Susan. Because he knew that if he really, really buckled down for the last four months of high school, if he really got to work and really “worked his ass off”…
And he did! He did work his ass off!
And as all things seemed possible to good, red blooded Jewish American boys he knew, especially with the sanction of God, he just knew that he would pass the entrance exam to R.I.T. and in four years graduate and then Susan and he would marry and go off together in the sweet sunset of Jewish American success.
Before meeting Susan, Mitchell considered love and lust as one equation: whatever girl he was with he’d lusted after, and the more he’d lusted the more he loved… he thought.
After meeting Susan, Mitchell truly believed that their chance meeting and instantaneous, mutual love was God ordained, and love and lust became two totally separate entities, and…
Mitchell’s love of Susan became holy.
As a “thank you” for bringing them together—because he’d always felt guilty about it anyway—he pledged to God, that if He would, indeed, help him through his R.I.T. entrance exam, that he would make the supreme sacrifice and give up masturbation… Which he did.
Thus, because of the mores of the times and their “God given” love for each other, not yet eighteen Mitchell Lipensky and not yet seventeen Susan Friedman began a heretofore unknown, definitely loving, albeit chaste relationship… A chaste relationship where their passionate, tongue dancing, soul touching kisses would last for five or ten minutes at a time. A chaste relationship where their straining, but wholly clothed bodies would press onto the others until both would silently, inwardly cry for a more intimate pressing of their bodies.
But yet, as hard as it was mentally and physically, Mitchell…
Outside of cramming for his rapidly approaching R.I.T exam, and keeping it secret from Susan, nothing in his life had ever been harder, mentally or physically, than being in this lovingly intimate, but altogether chaste relationship with Susan, and yet…
Outside of a thankfully occasional nocturnal emission that he had no control over, true to his word to God, Mitchell did not masturbate and the relationship between he and Susan did remain chaste, until…
Actually it was Susan, during one of their long, very long, very ardent kisses, that discovered a way to become even more intimate, even more loving without actually touching each other… with their hands. A way for each to relieve the pent up dam of the other’s passion without…
Well, she’d rationalized to herself afterwards once she had caught her breath and overcome the results of her first orgasm brought on by… well, something other than her own hand, something that, at least for that first time Mitchell did not initiate, but did, oh, yeah, join in as soon as he realized what she was doing. Something that left her vagina throbbing and even wetter, if possible, than it had been seconds before, something that left her loving him even more, even if he… even if they…
Well, she’d rationalized, we didn’t really touch each other… at least not with our hands.
As for Mitchell, he loved it… once he overcame the embarrassment of Susan seeing the results of the eruption of his “pent-up dam” that immediately soaked through the inner thigh of his faded Levi’s, because with the twisting and straining he’d pushed through the elastic band of his Jockey shorts so he didn’t have—however ineffectual that may have been—the blotter like effect of his cotton underpants. But, Oh, yes! he did see the possibilities of this hands off breakthrough. Of course, being inventive and using “good old fashioned Yankee ingenuity,” Mitchell soon envisioned a way to keep the results of many, many future eruptions—Though, he thought, it’s going to be sticky as hell—from spreading to the outside of his pants where the stain of his semen could be seen.
With this sexual breakthrough that she’d invented and that she enjoyed at least as much as he, Susan soon allowed another breakthrough and permitted him to fondle her breasts… over all her clothing.
But before that breakthrough had an opportunity to progress to the next…
Mitchell took the train to Rochester, New York, to take his entrance exam…
That he did not pass. Then…
As a house of cards blows away in a wind.
As a castle built of sand dissolves in a wave.
The pyramid of lies constricted by Mitchell on that first evening at the home of the Friedmans deteriorated…
And Susan’s parents, because they knew she loved him too much to do it herself, forced her to break it off with him, and…
Loving her as much as he did, unable to visualize life without Susan made it impossible for Mitchell to remain in that close a proximity and not be allowed to see her… So, in essence, Mitchell ran away by enlisting in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Turn a corner, cross a street, and your life can change forever!
