“Marty’s balls?” Looking at Mitchell, Marsha shrugged her shoulders. “What about Marty’s, uh, balls?”
“Last night, after you guys left, we’d decided we were going to let everything else go until morning, so we got undressed and, uh…” laughing again, hesitating until she brought herself under control. “We thought that we’d, uh, you know, kind of welcome in the new year. Anyway, while he was waiting for me to get out of toilet, Marty thought he’d put the folding chairs away. He was closing them, uh, naked, and…” cracking up again, “Marty slammed a chair closed on his balls and we had to rush him to the emergency room…” barely able to get the words out, “for a ballectomy.”
“His balls?” Marsha asked. “Is he okay? How’s he today?”
“Okay,” Rosalie said. “We never got to welcome in the new year, though.”
“Yeah,” Marsha said, “us, too.”
________________________________________________
Chicago, Illinois
January 22, 1958
It took forty minutes for the rectangle of light from around the bathroom door to go off.
The door opened quietly. Wearing what she usually wore to bed in winter—a pair of flannel pajamas—Marsha, as quietly as possible, tiptoed to bed.
Lying naked, he’d used his imagination to remain awake, and to maintain an erection.
Watching the shadow of his wife as she approached the bed, turning onto his side, propping his head within the palm of his hand, “Hi.”
“Hi.” Though said softly, the simple, one syllable word seemed to resound throughout the room.
“Hi.” For Mitchell, the word transmitted hopeful expectancy.
For Marsha, the word was perceived as a demand for sex that she was neither in a physical nor mental mood to comply with.
“Mitchell,” squirming beneath the blanket, “if you really want to screw, I’ll do it. But I do want you to know,”—she lied—“that I’ve such a headache!”
“You’ve a headache, huh?” Turning onto his back, “Know what, Marsha? You really ought to talk to Doc Schaffer about all the headaches you’ve been getting lately.”
“You don’t believe me,” she said without anger, “do you?”
Turning onto his side again, again propping his head in his hand, Mitchell thought a long moment before answering. “I don’t want to argue with you, Marsha,” speaking softly, without anger, “but, yeah, sometimes I don’t believe you’re as sick as you always say you are.” Hesitating, he added, “And I think you’re really looking for an excuse not to make love to me and…” hesitating again, “I really think you don’t love me anymore, Marsha. As a matter of fact,”—truly believing this—“I think you hate me.”
Turning onto her side also, she was unable to see his features, but did feel his closeness and the warm touch of his breath on her face. “No, Mitchell, I don’t hate you. But I’d like you to, if only once in a while,”—equating her emotions, a woman’s emotions and motivations to his, a man’s emotions and motivations—“if only once in a while you’d let me know that you care about me! Really care about me and just touch me!”
“Marcie, I do care about you!” Confused, “And I always touch you!”
“You say you care about me, but you don’t really! And the way you always touch me is not the way I always want to be touched! That’s not what I mean by touching me! Whenever you touch me it’s like you’re telling me that you want to be fucked.”
Wincing at the word, Mitchell wondered why she always referred to their lovemaking as screwing or fucking—never as making love!
“You never just touch me! You’re always grabbing my tits, or my behind, or my crotch!”
Amazed at this. Amazed at Marsha’s perception that that’s the way she thought he treated her.
“That’s not true , Marsha!” Hurt! Actually insulted that she’d even think he didn’t care about her. Care about her? he thought. Hell! That she’d even think I don’t love her! That she’d say he only touched her in those places when he knew he didn’t—not only in those places! “I don’t only touch your tits or your behind or your crotch, Marsha!” he said emphatically, though still speaking softly, thinking, That’s not how I treat her! But rationalizing: If I do, then maybe it’s because I’m a man and that’s how a man’s supposed to be?
Further considering: But what if Marsha was right in her estimation of how she was thought of and treated by him? And if she was, the thought that he might truly be that way—even if it was the “manly” way to be—saddened him. But no! He knew himself, so he said, “That’s just not true , Marsha! I do love you! I tell you I love you all the time! I always say I love you, and don’t understand how in the hell you can say I don’t care about you! I do care! But even if I am the way you say I am, at least I tell you I love you, because lately you don’t even do that, Marsha! Lately it’s like you don’t want me to touch you, or,” he added sadly, “to even want me to be near you!”
“You tell me you love me when you want sex, Mitchell!”
“I tell you I love you all the time!”
“Yeah, and you want sex all the time.” Softening her tone, “Yes, you do tell me you love me, but you don’t ever show it,” she said wearily. “You’ll never just say, ‘I love you’ and touch my shoulder or hand. You always grab me and make me feel like you want me to get undressed or something.”
My God! Amazed at this. “Marcie, I don’t!” Amazed that her perception was so different than his.
“Sometimes,” Marsha said, “I feel very lonely for you and just want to be held by you. But whenever I open myself to you, you always take it as a sign that I’m asking for sex and then you touch my tits or ass and before you know it I’m fighting you off. Or trying to pretend that I’m enjoying it, and…”
“Fighting me off?” he said. “Pretend? You…” stopping, digesting, “pretend.”
A man may know, or think he knows, whether the woman he is with is, or is not enjoying what he does to her. Yeah, okay, Mitchell knew he had a premature ejaculation problem brought on by what he considered very infrequent sex that caused him to build up head of steam that blew pretty easily and rather quickly. But before actually entering Marsha, he would always spend as much time as she would allow with foreplay… Hell, Mitchell Lipensky loved foreplay!
If the man is any type of a conscientious individual he never, never wants to know that the woman he’s with—especially if he loves that woman—is pretending, because if she’s pretending about that then it’s open to, maybe, never enjoying anything the man might do! Thinking, Maybe I never do anything right! Maybe I’m not man enough to satisfy her! Hell, “pretend” even opens it to the possibility that… Maybe she’d be happier with a guy with a bigger dick! Also, when he did his best to excite her, Marsha uttered not a sound, not even a sharp intake of breath. When Marsha laid with her legs spread, with not even the slightest movement, is this also pretending? If so, why?
There are any number of things Mitchell Lipensky might or might not be, but he was highly conscious and conscientious of other peoples’ feelings. Especially his wife’s. Especially regarding sex.
When faced with “pretend,” thoughts hurtled through the mind of Mitchell Lipensky, and the effect was, to say the least, shattering.
“Fighting me off?” he said. “Pretend? You really don’t like doing it with me, do you, Marsha?”
Maybe, Marsha thought, I made a bit of a mistake telling him I pretend. Even so, Really, she further thought, I don’t give a damn! Sighing, “No, Mitch,” she said, “that’s not altogether true . That’s not always the way it is. Sometimes I do like making love to you.”
“Sometimes? You mean every now and then, occasionally, you like making love to me?”
“Yes, sometimes it is that way. I hate just having sex with you because when it’s just sex it seems like it’s only for you.”
“I don’t quite follow you. What do you mean by ‘just sex’?”
“Without love, Mitchell. Without love.”
Without love?
Intercourse was still a spiritual experience for Mitchell. Maybe, because he’d only had completed intercourse with Marsha, he could not and did not make a distinction between love and sex because in his mind they were one and the same, except, at times the mental and physical aspects were stronger and so much sweeter than at other times.
“Marsha, believe me, I never want it to be just for me! You know I always take as much time as you’ll let me before we do it because I always want you to enjoy it!”
Loving to perform oral sex on Marsha, he would do so until she’d say, in, so he thought, a rather disinterested tone, “Fuck me, Mitchie.” And by then—not knowing if she were wet with her fluid or his saliva—his head of steam near bursting, he would enter her.
“You name it! I’ll do anything for you to enjoy it! But whenever I ask what you’d like, what you want me to do, you always say, ‘I don’t want to talk about it’! You never tell me what I can do to make it better for you! And when we do do it, you never show emotion! You never make a sound!”
“What am I supposed to do,” she said sarcastically, “become a screamer?”
Hey, he thought, if you’re pretending, why not pretend that, too. But, “No,” he said, “you don’t have to become a screamer! But once in a while I’d like to know that you enjoy making love to me! Occasionally a deep breath would be nice. Shit, Marsha, sometimes I don’t even know if you’re awake!”
A man, Marsha thought, a real man is supposed to know all that stuff! A man wouldn’t have to be told how to make a woman happy!
“Okay, yeah, I know sometimes I come fast, but that’s the reason I like to take as much time as I can doing other stuff, like, uh, eating you. And you know I try real hard not to come too fast.”
“Yeah,” she quipped, “like reciting the Gettysburg Address.”
The mood lightened somewhat, “Yeah!” Smiling in the darkness, he remembered once, during intercourse, when he had attempted to last longer by trying to take his mind off of what he was doing and where he was, when thinking that he was only thinking, began saying: “Four score and seven years ago…” But he wasn’t only thinking and Marsha had heard him… And both laughed about it when through.
This remembrance was thought of in a jocular vein for Mitchell and, so he thought, for his wife also.
To Marsha, though, the Gettysburg Address was but one of a growing list of reasons for her rationalization of the way she then felt towards Mitchell and, for her lack of emotion, passion, enjoyment and any communication regarding their sex life.
“The problem is, Mitchell, you don’t understand how I feel! You won’t even try to understand how I feel!”
“Bullshit! I do want to understand! Tell me.” Said sincerely, “Please!”
“Okay, I will. But this isn’t meant to start a fight!”
“I want to know. I really want to know! And if there’s anything I can do to change things,”—anything to live what he considered to be a normal life—“I promise you, Marsha, I’ll try!”
Hesitating a number of seconds, then, her floodgate of antagonism open, her words tinged with anger, “First off—and I’m just mentioning it because I want to get it off my chest—you know how I feel about you not looking for a part time job!”
Sighing, “I thought this was supposed to be about our sex life? Besides, you know things are getting better!”
“Yeah, looks like you’ll be making a little more money soon, but now we’re still barely getting by! And no, this conversation is not just about our sex life! This conversation is about everything that’s bothering me…”
Thinking, Oh, God. “Okay,” he said, “so tell me everything that’s bothering you.”
Hesitating a number of long seconds, “I think you’re a coward!” Marsha said.
“Huh?” This, coming from someplace way out in left field, the words initially shocking more than hurting him. “I’m a coward?”
“Yeah, Mitchell,” she said vehemently, “a coward! I really think that if we were out somewhere and if I were attacked you’d run away rather than stay and fight to protect me!”
“Jesus, Marsha! How can you say this? How can you even…”
He remembered only two instances in his adult life when he’d been physically threatened: On his first evening in boot camp he’d been confronted by an anti Semitic bully and, far from backing down, he’d actually bettered the man—leastways till his new, ill fitting government issue skivvies slipped from his hips and fell to his feet leaving him standing before the men of the barracks bare assed. Then there was the episode in the ship’s office on the Halfmoon when Don Wilson had learned of his transfer to District Headquarters, and he sure as hell hadn’t backed down then either. But it is true that all of his life he would go out of his way to avoid a verbal or physical confrontation. But even if he were a coward—which, disregarding the two occurrences in the Coast Guard, Mitchell truly believed he might be—to his knowledge he’d never given Marsha any indication that he would ever leave her in any sort of a dangerous situation, so why should she…
Extremely upset over this, “Jesus, Marsha! How can you say that? How can you even think that?”
“For one thing, Ruby.”
“Ruby?” He thought a moment. “You think I should have gone to Little Rock with Ruby?”
“He’s your friend and he asked you to go.”
“Marsha, I’ve a family to support! You think I should have just taken off?”
“Yeah, Mitchell! In that case I did!”
“And if I’d have gotten hurt or arrested? Were you ready to go to work to bring some money in?”
Evading the question, “I think you should have gone! But okay, I’ve other reasons to think you’re a coward.”
“Tell me, please!”
“You want me to tell you?”—he didn’t, really—“Okay! How’s about when we were parked at Montrose and that damned cop took you away and you left me alone?”
“Marsha, what could I do? He was a cop and he had a club and a gun. What was I supposed to do?”
“Something! You should have done something! And then, when he left you with his partner and you knew he was coming back to me…”
“I was locked in a squad car! There was no way for me to get out!”
Having discussed the incident, knowing what Mitchell said was true but not giving up, “Okay,” she said dubiously, “if you say so! But I still think you’d run away rather than stay to protect me if there was ever a problem.”
“Why? Why would you think that?”
“Why do I think you’d run away? You’d run away for two reasons: One, because you are a coward! And two, you’d do it because you don’t really care about me!”
The words coming from the mouth of his wife were so unreal that to be sure this was not a bad dream, turning to his other side, he turned the light on. Sitting up, he blinked his eyes in the unaccustomed light. “My God, it’s not true , Marsha! I can’t believe that you’d really think that about me! You don’t have any reason to say that to me, Marsha!”
“Oh, but I do! If you loved me… If you weren’t such a coward you’d stand up to them and defend me to your parents!”
Fighting to keep his voice and temper down, “Oh, shit! That’s what this is about, huh?”
“No, that’s just part of it. But it’s true , Mitchell: you never defend me! I’m your wife and you never tell them that maybe, just maybe, I’m right and they’re wrong!”
Knowing Marsha was right about this, however, if she was allowed to say whatever she felt to hurt him, why shouldn’t he? “I’m sorry, Marsha, but most of the time I think you are wrong, and that some of the things you do I just can’t logically defend.”
The degree of her disgust showing in the tone of her voice: “You are so wrong! I am your wife! Nobody should ever be allowed to say anything bad about me in front of you! And if you let them—for any reason—it tells me that you’re a coward and don’t care enough about me to defend me!”
“Oh? And you? You always defend me to your mother?”
“Yes, Mitchell, I do!”
This was true . After they’d pulled their marriage together last June, Marsha had told Rhea that she refused to hear a bad word about her husband and that if she had anything negative to say about Mitchell she’d better keep it to herself.
Mitchell, of course, had no way of knowing this, and not wanting to admit that Marsha had the nerve to do what he hadn’t, “Yeah, I’m sure you defend me!” he said facetiously, then, “Okay,” ticking Marsha’s complaints off on his fingers, “so I can’t provide a decent living! I’m a lousy lover! I hate you and I’m a fuckin’ coward! Tell you what, Marsha,” his anger apparent, “next time someone looks at you cross eyed, to prove I love you I’ll kick the shit out of them, or die trying! Okay? Anything else, Marsha?”
“I don’t want you to kick the shit out of anyone, Mitchell!”—although she’d love to see physical proof of his love for her, and if it called for him to get into a fight, even if he did get hurt… well… “And I certainly don’t want to you to die trying! I just want you to defend me!
“And, yeah, there is something else: Friends! In case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t have any!”
“Huh?” Here was another one from someplace way out in left field. “Friends? We’ve got friends!”
“Oh, yeah, sure! Rosalie and Marty, and my cousin and maybe her husband. But before we were married I had dozens of friends! How come I don’t see any of them now?”
Thinking somehow this was going to be his fault, too, “I don’t know, Marsha,” he said tiredly. “How come you don’t see any of them now?”
“How come? You! I’d have to say it’s because of you!”
“Me? Outside of introducing me to a couple of your friends in Askanaz, or when we’d run into them on the street, I’ve only met a few. How in the hell could your lack of friends be because of me?”
“Remember that time we had Shelly and Marshall over? You can’t convince me you didn’t know you were being rude!”
Thinking a moment, smiling, “Yeah,” he said, “that’s true . I was rude to Marshall. But he’s a jerk! You said so yourself, and that you couldn’t wait till the two’a them left.”
“I said I couldn’t wait till he left! But that didn’t give you the right to make a hangman’s knot out of that piece of rope and dangle it in front of his face all evening.” Recalling the incident, which they’d both laughed about after Shelly and Marshall had finally taken the hint and left, Marsha suppressed a smile.
“All my friends think you’re a conceited jerk.”
“All your friends, huh? I thought you just said you never see any of your friends!”
“Well, those friends that I… Whatever friends we have think you’re a conceited jerk.”
“Really? They told you that, huh?”
“Well,” remembering that just a minute ago she’d told him that she defended him, “not in so many words,” she admitted.
After reflecting a few moments, “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “But you know I’ve always had a problem with everyone thinking because I look like I do, I’ve got to have a personality to match. You know when I’ve something to say I’m talkative and other times I’m not.”
Always shy, since marrying Marsha he had felt overshadowed by her quick wit and, when in the company of others, sometimes felt smothered by her quirky personality, too. When this happened, quite often he would withdraw into a shell of silence and, try hard as he might, words would not come to him. At those times Mitchell felt as though in a vacuum where he was able to hear but was unable to speak. His silence—in the past often taken for conceit—could now possibly be taken as…? Indifference to those around him.
Knowing she did have, okay, not all, but a few valid issues, and as Marsha always had a way of saying things that caused him to doubt himself—more than he usually doubted himself—and as this was certainly one of those times and, as it was late and as he knew this conversation was going no place for him… Also, if it went on much longer it may well develop into an argument—amazed it hadn’t already—turning the light off, “You’re right.” he conceded. “I’m sorry. From now on I’ll work on being nicer to your friends.”
“Our friends!”
“Yeah.” Shaking his head, he rolled his eyes, “From now on I’ll work on being nicer to our friends. And from now on, I promise,”—though it was a promise he wasn’t too sure he’d be able to keep—“I’ll stand up for you with my folks. And because business is picking up,”—though he was rather sure it’ll do him no good—“I’ll ask for another five bucks a week. And if don’t get a raise,”—though he hated the thought of it—“maybe I’ll think about looking for another part time job.” Trying not to sound too sarcastic, “Anything else?”
“Yes.” Most of her words spoken, the weight of her thoughts off her mind, having but one more complaint, Marsha returned to the start of this conversation. “Like I said before, whenever you’re near me, you’re always touching my boobs, crotch or ass! And whenever you touch me I feel like it’s only because you want to screw me.”
“Okay,” he said tiredly, “from now on I promise not to touch your boobs, crotch or ass,” emphatically, “ever again!”
Smiling, moving closer, “Mitchie, I don’t mean I don’t want you to ever touch ’em. Only now and then let me know that you like me for…”
Feeling her breath on his face, one arm beneath his pillow, the other now over her waist, “Marcie, I do love you!”
“Okay, then! Once in a while let me know that you love me just for me and not only when you want to screw.”
“Tell you what! How’s ’bout when I want you to know that I don’t want you only for sex, I’ll, uh, touch your thigh.”
“No, sometimes thighs are off limits, too.”
“Let me understand. I’m not allowed to touch your crotch, thighs, boobs or ass! Hardly makes it worthwhile loving the little that’s left, does it?”
“Yeah, maybe so, Mitch.” Becoming serious again, “But it’ll make me feel better about the way you treat me.”
“Okay. I’ll try to do whatever you want, honey. But I still don’t think that I always touch you the way you say that I touch you.” Not believing it for a moment, “But if I do…”
“You do, Mitchell! Believe me, you really do!”
Becoming very tired of this conversation, knowing Marsha will have the last word no matter what he’d say, “So, okay! Then I promise to try not to always think of you only for sex! And if I always touch you the way you say I always touch you, then I promise I’ll try not to touch you that way anymore… Uh, forever!”
Tightening his arms about her, feeling the soft warmth of his wife’s breasts against his chest….
“Mitchell!”
“Marcie, it did it all by itself! I didn’t tell it to do it! It ain’t my fault!”
