PIT #22: ‘Nate’
Points In Time
Elysium Fields
Topanga Canyon, California
Sunday, May 25, 1986
12:08 p.m.
Backed against the chain link fence, “We got a good place here!” Punching Clyde hard on the chest with the heel of his fist, “And it’s fuckers like you two that give it a bad name, so get your crap and get the hell out’a here! And we’re going to follow you down to Topanga to make sure you’re gone.”
The second monitor dragging Tina from the pool area by her arm, “Get your goddamned shit out’a here, ‘now’!”
Staying out of the way. Still in the pool watching as Clyde and Tina were hustled towards their blanket.
“Marcie, honey, I hope those two assholes don’t change your mind about…” motioning with both hands “... being here.”
“‘Here’? Elysium, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Nah, Mitchie. I love it here and I love you, and I love you even more for finding this place and talking me into coming.”.”
“Thanks’, Marcie. I was afraid you wouldn’t want to come back
after what just happened with those two assholes.”
“That’s kind of what I thought this place would be like.”
Heading up the three steps.
Knowing my wife, I knew that she… Or most probably ‘any’ wife would
have some sort of preconceived negative opinion of a place where all kinds of people went around naked.
Taking my wife’s hand. “How’s that?”
“A lot of overaged…” tightening her fingers about her husband’s hand “...dirty hippie like people getting their kicks out of running around naked and doing a lot of ‘swapping.”
Knowing she had an attraction to Morgan. The thought had crossed my mind… What if?
I knew Marsha wasn’t ‘always’ attracted to me… Passing it off as thirty-one years of — actually a more often than not unhappy marriage, and in a perverse way… Don’t know why or even if I wouldn’t do all in my power to stop it, but the thought of Marsha fucking Morgan kind of excited me.
“You know, I never cared that much for Evie in school, but I’m really happy we, uh, swam into each other.”
“Yeah…” walking alongside my wife onto the field “...me, too.”
“Tell you the truth, Mitchie, I really thought I’d hate it here and agreed to come only because you seemed to like it so much.” Hesitating a moment. “And I know I’ve been ‘really’ bitchie lately, so figured ‘what the hell’.”
An apology from Marsha, especially to her husband a ‘very’
rare and unusual circumstance.
An apology? I thought, Wow, Marsha’s apologizing to me! “Yeah...” putting my arm about her waist, drawing her closer to my side “...but you said you wanted to see naked men.”
“Yes, I did. But guess what?”
“What?”
“After seeing the naked guys here, you’re almost the only naked guy that’s even come close to turning me on.”
“ ‘Almost’! Old Clive has a pretty big dick. He didn’t turn you on?”
Putting two fingers into her mouth, making a, ‘Yaghtt’ gagging sound.
“What a disgusting creep!”
“Look…” approaching our blanket “...Ken, Sandy and Morgan are here.”
“ ‘Hi’!!”
“Morgan…” making a short wave “...Ken, Sandy. Hi!”
Morgan wearing his… Although, I thought, It’s probably been washed since last week.
Morgan wore the same holey, battery acid spotted, ti-died T-shirt with the Viet Nam, ‘sixties’ era peace sign that came to below his hips.”
Looking at his watch. “Twelve-thirty, you guys.” Opening the large ice chest he’d been sitting on and pulling the gallon bottle of cheap white wine from it’s blanket of cracked ice. “Wine?” he asked.
“Yeah. Sure. Why not!” Sandy said reaching into Morgans shopping bag and removing the six plastic coffee cups.
“Where’ Evie?” Marsha asked.
“You know, we’re not ‘really’ tied at the hip, you know.”
“You an’ Eve?” I asked “You’re not…”
“We’re friends like…” Motioning to Ken and Sandy.
“Like Sandy and me: ‘Friends with benefits’.”
“Guess that’s the best kind of friends to have.”
“ ‘Really’?”
“No, baby…” I said “...only joking. You know that I’ve ‘always’ thought of you as my ‘best friend.”
“Except when…”
Marsha’s anger and temper had been, comparatively speaking, in the freezer the past two weeks, and I didn’t want to do or say ‘anything’ to keep it from defrosting. Completely changing the subject… “Where did that come from?”
“What do you mean?”
“Marcie, you called Clive a ‘perverted son of a bitch’.”
“So?”
“Yeah…” questioned Sandy “...why’d you call whoever the hell this ‘Clive’ is a ‘perverted son of a bitch’?”
“Mitchie and me were just ‘propositioned’ in the pool to a… D’know, a wife swapping party in Reseda next week.”
“You turned him down?”
Indignantly spoken: “ ‘Of course’!”
“Ken, these were the two slimiest people you’d ever want to meet.”
“d’know about that. We…” motioning to Sandy “...Sandy and me have been propositioned by some pretty slimy people.”
“Here?” Marsha questioned incredulously. “Here at Elysium?”
“Yeah. Well you know sometimes a rat gets past the trap.”
“Well, these two rats sure did!”
“What happened?”
I thought my wife was about to slug the fucker. She had him pressed against the pol wall, screaming in his face when a couple ‘monitors’ heard and ran in and pulled this Clive out of the pool by his hair.”
“By his hair?” Morgan questioned.
“Yeah. He had a long pony tail and the monitor actually pulled him out of the water and over the coping by his hair.”
“Ouch!”
“ ‘Asshole, ‘bastard’, ‘son of a bitch’ those are your swear words, but ‘perverted’?”
Quiet again… Then, “Mitchie, you remember that letter I… Michael and I sent to you from Lakeside when we, you know, went away.”
Thinking. Then hesitating before speaking. “When you had all our stuff packed and moved out and you ran away to Lakeside and told ‘everyone’ not to let me know where you and my son were and I didn’t hear from or see you or my baby for ‘three months’?”
Like a very thin fish-bone that had been swallowed and lodged and seemed impossible to get out of my throat. After thirty years I was not able to completely cough up this particular fish-bone.
Knowing, even after all these years, that he had the right to his anger, giving Mitchell a pass on his tone of voice.
“Marsha… You ‘really’ did that!”
Hesitating, “Yes…” looking from Sandy and back to her husband “...I did and the whole thing’s sat on my stomach all these years.”
“Mine, too, Marsha.”
“Mitchie, there’s something I never told you, but a really terrible thing happened to me on that day…”.
Morgan, myself, Ken and Sandy said nothing, waiting for Marsha to go
Lakeside, Michigan
June 16, 1958
Leaving the stroller on the side of the road beneath a tree, slipping the strap of the diaper bag over her shoulder, with Michael in one arm, the blanket and towels under the other—long since giving up on the steep, narrow, weed choked path she’d used as a child—she walked down the incline of the Public Beach access to the place Marsha had designated as ‘her place’ when she was nine years old…
Letting the diaper bag slip from her shoulder, dropping a towel onto the sand and sitting Michael on the towel, she spread and smoothed the blanket.
The man watched as she walked to where she went each day: to within six or seven yards of the water’s edge, where she lowered her baby onto a towel, spread the blanket, then put the baby in its middle.
Topanga Canyon
May 25, 1986
12:34 p.m.
“You never saw this guy, Marcie?”
“Ken, he was just an old man at the beach sitting by himself… But ‘yes’ I saw him, but he was just an old man.”Why the hell would I care?”
Lakeside, Michigan
June 16, 1958
“There we go, Mikey.” Unzipping the bag, Marsha removed her book and a lightweight summer blanket meant more for keeping the sun off her baby than for warmth.
Remaining in the bag were a fresh diaper, a light pullover shirt for Michael, a jar of cereal with bananas for him, a pack of Twinkies for her, an empty nipple bottle and a thermos of apple juice for them both. Also in the bag, at the bottom was Marsha’s wallet, the key to the cottage and a Kodak camera.
“Come here, you!” Familiar with the on shore breeze, well aware it pushed warmer, surface water inward, Marsha removed Michael’s diaper. “Okay...” and lifted him to his feet. “...let’s go!”
Holding his hands, the naked baby toddle across the soft, warm sand.
At water’s edge, holding both hands stretched above his head, swinging the giggling baby over the calm water, she allowed his feet to touch. Sucking in his breath, the baby tried lifting his feet, but within moments, his flesh becoming accustomed to the tepid water, held safe in his mother’s hands, laughing his baby’s laugh, kicking, Michael splashed water as, “Ollie,” lifting him so only his feet touched, “ollie,” dipping his feet, “ooops!” Marsha put him in the few inches of water. Michael again held his breath, then, laughing, he splashed with both hands until, lifting him, cradling him in both arms, Marsha walked to where the water reached her navel. “Ollie,” stooping, “ollie, ooops!” she wet her baby to his neck and herself to her shoulders and, “Ollie, ollie, ooops!” again, and again.
Carrying Michael so sand wouldn’t cling to his feet, the mother and baby went back to their blanket where she rubbed him dry with a towel and re-diapered him.
Sitting between her thighs, “Okay, Mikey,” the mother and son looked outward, to the west, to Chicago.
Lost within her thoughts, Marsha wondered of Mitchell: Where’s he now? What’s he doing now? Is he thinking of me now?
Topanga Canyon
May 25, 1986
12:39 p.m.
“Was I thinking of you and Mikey? Marsha…” said harshly “...only every minute of every day!”
Holding his silver flask forward. “You were in Chicago, then?”
“Yeah…” taking the flask and a bit more of Morgan’s moonshine than I had intended “...and I hated you for what you had done to me.”
“I knew it…” Marsha’s eyes downcast.”...and couldn’t blame you.”
Not wanting to force a long dead issue, I said nothing.
Lakeside, Michigan
June 16, 1958
Forcing his eyes from the young woman. Looking to the water. Concentrating, he waited for his erection to subside… When it did, before standing, looking about to see if any of the now, three other people on the two blankets were looking in his direction. But too far away in any case, probing with his finger, lifting the sewn in bathing suit supporter, the man
adjusted his now flaccid penis.
Softly said, “Hello.”
Public school in session for another four days, it was too early in the season for old familiar faces, and other than a few curt nods from a couple of women that had seen Marsha here, weather permitting, day after day, no one had spoken to her and she was not too sure that anyone was speaking to her now.
The sun at her back, the shadow was cast across the blanket.
“Hi, there!” Gordon tried again, going to the other side of the blanket.
Looking up, “Oh…” By Marsha’s reckoning the man was at least as old as her father and, other than being exceptionally thin, in a small way reminded her of Eli.
The man had a kind, gentle face and, as her father, a prominent nose. Unlike her father, the man has dark eyes and black streaked grey hair. His chest and legs were covered with fine, sun bleached, near white hair. His spindly legs, almost comically, poked from his loosely fitting bathing trunks.
“Oh, ssorry. I didn’t realise you were talking to me.”
“No, no, it’s okay! No need to be sorry.” Close up, he thought her even prettier than from a distance. Standing above as he was, he was able to see the crevice and upper swell of her moderately sized breasts. Which, of course did not matter, but the fact the she was pretty certainly added icing to the cake.
“I’ve seen you here, at the beach, and you always seem so lonely that I thought I’d just come on over and say hello.” Before she could respond, he added, “You seem so young. Is this your baby?”
“Oh, yes! This is Mikey… Mikey, say hello to the man.”
Looking up, smiling, Michael gurgled his rendition of ‘Hello’.
Standing at the fringe of the blanket, smiling at Michael’s smile, “Hi, Mikey! Squatting, Gordon Nathason gently squeezed the baby’s chin. “Your baby’s beautiful. I’ve two of my own, you know; grown now.”
“Thank you… Boys?”
“Huh?”
Your children; are they both boys?”
“Oh, no. One of each. Hal, uh, he’s almost twenty-four and Marge is, uh… Oh, God! How time flies! My daughter’s thirty. They’re both on their own now, you know.” A frown replacing his smile, Gordon became reflective. “Hal lives in New York and Marge is… uh, someplace else.”
“We used to live in New York, too, Mister, uh…?”
“Nathan. My Name’s Nathan, but you if like, you can call me ‘Nate’.””
“Hi, Nate! I’m Marsha… Here,” patting the blanket, “why don’t you sit down.” Edging sideways, bringing Michael with her, moving to the centre of the blanket she made room for the man.
“Thank you, Marsha, don’t mind if I do.”
Sitting more on sand than blanket, he crossed his legs.
Facing Nate, the sun at her back, “Mitchie and me—he’s my husband—we used to live in New York when we were first married, in a place called Seagate, off Conley Island. You ever been there, uh, New York City, I mean.”
“New York City? Yes, many years ago. Your husband…” supporting himself with his arms spread outward and backward, leaning back, making no pretence, the man obviously looking downward “... haven’t seen him on the beach with you and Mikey.”
As Gordon knew she would.
Following his eyes…
Quickly moving her eyes upward, It’s by accident, Marsha thought. He doesn’t know it’s out. Because her inbred respect for elders forbidding her to say anything rude or embarrassing... Pretending she does not, did not see it.
“My husband and I…” But whether it was or was not by accident, whether
Gordon did or did not know,…
Marsha’s instincts taking over. “He’s a salesman and hasn’t been able to get away till now, and he’ll be here later...” Adding “...this morning.”
Topanga Canyon
May 25, 1986
12:45 p.m.
“Baby, I never knew! That had to scare the shit out of you!”
“Oh, yeah, Mitchie. Once I realised, it did.”
“How old were you then.”
“Three months short of twenty-one, Sandy.
But it was a different time and certainly a different place and maybe it wouldn’t have been so scary…” motioning about the field “...here.”
“ ‘Don’t you bet on it’!” Morgan said “One peep out of you and one’a the monitors would come running and grab that slimy fucker by his cock and drag him out of here by it.”
Lakeside, Michigan
June 16, 1958
Marsha’s instincts taking over. “He’s a salesman and hasn’t been able to get away till now, and he’ll be here later...” Adding “...this morning.”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
Intently watching Marsha’s face, Gordon had noticed what he considered to be a ‘lingering’ look—the downward and rapid up shift of her eyes along with the change in the tone of her voice. She’s seen ‘me’! he thought excitedly. And the thought that this so young, so beautiful woman had seen ‘it’ and was so shocked aroused him even further, and he engorged even further.
“I’ll bet...” Nate said matter-of-factually “...you can’t wait to see…?”
Moving his extended arms further backward. Leaning back the gap in the thighs of his trunks widened. “What did you say your husband’s name is?”
“Uh, Mitchell.” Not sure that what was happening was ‘really’ happening, and not wanting to look in any case, but wanting — ‘having’ to prove this was ‘not’ happening, Marsha’s eyes once again were drawn downward, where...
A moment ago it was only the glans and an inch or two of his penis that Marsha had seen. Now, about six inches of extended, obscenely pink flesh was exposed and…
“Oh, my God!” Marsha said aloud as—spasmodically jerking upward, attempting to free itself from the restraint of the seam of his trunks—before her eyes it grew till it lay extended to near Nate’s knee.
Knowing Marsha was openly staring, “Your husband…” Gordon said, glancing about once again to be sure none of the now nine people on the beach were looking in their direction. But only yards from the water, there was no one behind and, sitting directly in front of Marsha, unintentionally she was hiding what he was displaying. “…what’s he sell?” Continuing the conversation as though nothing was happening while slowly inching the leg of his trunks back. “Everything is so expensive nowadays...” his entire penis and scrotum fully exposed and, “...it’s got to be pretty hard to support a wife and baby nowadays.” the man said in an—to Marsha—infuriatingly matter-of-fact voice.
Shaking her head, closing and opening her eyes to be sure this was really happening: A man—who was old enough to be her father, who in a small way even resembled her father—was sitting directly in front of her, smiling, making everyday conversation, asking everyday questions about herself and her family as all the while he was so nonchalantly exposing himself.
The unbelievable, surrealistic scene before her eyes suddenly becoming real. The lump of anger in her throat having the taste of vomit. Making no pretence of her abhorrence of him and repugnance at what he was doing… And in some hypnotic way forcing her to see. Compelling her eyes to shift from the man’s loathsome penis to his bland appearing face. The expression on Marsha’s face changing from incredulous shock to utter abomination…
Which ‘of course’ was the same look Gordon Nathanson had seen on the faces of the hundreds of women and girls he’d molested in somewhat this same manner.
Which ‘of course’ was exactly what Gordon Nathanson wanted, because Marsha’s look of revulsion, far from abrading, further stimulating him. Lifting it, holding it from beneath, pointing it at Marsha. “You want to touch my cock, don’t you, Marsha!”
“ ‘Touch it’?” she said incredulously. “No! ‘God’, no! You’re disgusting!” Standing, scooping her baby from the blanket. “We’re getting out of here!”
Having no way of knowing how many women, girls and Detroit Police officers agreed with her,.
“You sick, perverted, nauseating, bastard!” Marsha snarled. “They ought to lock you up!” Her voice rising. “They ought to put you in a god-damned loony bin and throw away the god-damned key!”
As he was only sitting on part of the blanket, using her adrenaline pumped strength, Marsha was able to yank it from beneath him. Shoving her arm through the strap of the diaper bag, spitting out, “You perverted son-of-a-bitch!” Not bothering to fold the blanket or towels, bunching them under her arm, her son in her other arm, Marsha Lipensky stormed off the beach.
Topanga Canyon
May 25, 1986
12:49 p.m.
“No one heard you, Marcie? No one there came to see what you were screaming about?”
“The whole thing happened so fast, Mitchie, maybe only a minute, but while it was happening everything seemed to slow down…” thinking “... almost like we were going in slow motion. But really…”
Lakeside, Michigan
June 16, 1958
The few people sitting about had heard the young woman’s rising voice, however, all wanting privacy on this sparsely populated beach had spaced their blankets far from their closest neighbour. And between the babble of some of their children, the lapping of water and the rustling of wind in the tall grass of the embankment, unable to make out the words or understand what she was saying, those on the closest blankets sat up and watched as Marsha jumped to her feet, gathered her belongings and baby and rushed from the beach.
Still unbelieving, “My God!” Marsha muttered as she trudged through sand and up the incline of the beach access. “Oh, my God!”
Catching her breath only after placing Michael in his stroller, Marsha realised—as old world explorers eventually brought plague to the natives of virgin lands, that Nate had become the despoiler of Marsha Goldman’s paradise, and Marsha Lipensky knew that the paradise of her youth now existed only in mind and memory. Be it the loss of her utopia, or the encounter with Gordon Nathanson in her utopia, the realisation caused more than merely anger…
The realisation caused an insurmountable sadness and Marsha Goldman Lipensky cried.
Topanga Canyon
May 25, 1986
1:04 p.m.
Remembering the time. Recalling her unbearable sadness. “Mitchie, what that prick…” sighing “… ‘really’ and ‘figuratively’, what that prick did to me was to take a dream away...This was my… Don’t want to sound corny, but Lakeside was paradise to me as a kid and he took that from me and it was then — I didn’t think of it I that way at the time but it was then that I no longer thought of myself as a child but as an adult and I remember two things hitting me in the head…”
Speaking directly to her husband, but loud enough for the other three to hear.
“I no longer thought of myself as a child but as an adult and I remember two things hitting me in the head: the terrible, child like thing I did to you, leaving you as I had and that..” rubbing his cheek as though assure herself that she was speaking directly to her husband “...I loved you so fucking much and didn’t know how to get you back… ‘If’ I could get you back.”
Sensing the emotion, envious of Marsha’s love for Mitchell. “So…” Shelly asked “you call the cops on Nate?”
Lakeside, Michigan
June 16, 1958
“Dotty!”
“Marsha?” Seeing the dismayed, highly distraught look on her face, the older woman hurried from behind the counter. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, God! The most horrible thing just happened to me!”
“Come here!” Taking the stroller, wheeling it into the little store, Dorothy led Marsha to a chair. “Sit! Now tell me! What’s the matter?”
“Some disgusting man—an older man—on the beach, he, uh, he showed himself, it…” pointing to her crotch “..to me!”
“Oh, God! Not again!”
Shocked, Marsha looked at the older woman. “ ‘Again’? Dotty, what do you mean, ‘not again’?”
“About two years ago, before Red; ‘may his soul rest in peace’, passed away, a girl came in the store hysterical, and she told Red and me that a man… that he — the same thing that happened to you.”
“Did she call the police? Did they ever find out who he is? Who the man is?”
“Yes! I mean, ‘yes’ we did call the police, but the closest police department is in New Buffalo, and because we’re not incorporated here, they told us to call the State Police, and we did, and they came and the girl made out a report. But after that, so far as I know, nothing ever happened… You want me to call the police for you, Marcie?”
“Yes! Please, Dotty, get them on the phone for me.”
Dialing ‘O’, Dorothy asked the operator to connect her with the state police in New Buffalo.
Topanga Canyon
May 25, 1986
1:10 p.m.
“So? You talk to the cops?”
“Anything happen?”
Glancing from Morgan to Ken. “Yeah, I did! I did talk to the cops and they took a report over the phone and asked for my phone number. But at that time I didn’t know if I even had a home let alone a phone number, so I gave the ‘Red Dot’ — the store’s number in Lakeside.”
Lakeside, Michigan
June 16, 1958
Stubborn pride aside, Marsha Lipensky came to a decision.
“Dotty..” reaching into her beach bag, ruminating a moment, coming up with the camera “I want to send Mitchie some pictures of Mikey.” Handing the camera to Dorthy.
“And you, too, Marsha?”
“Yeah…” knowing her husband “...something sexy.” Thinking a moment. “Hold on a second, Dotty.”
Reaching beneath and behind the loose fitting top she wears to the beach. Unclasping the bra top to her two piece bathing suit and dropping it into the beach bag.
Taking Michael from the stroller, holding him uptight by both hands standing between her long, lean legs, leaning forward the deep valley formed by her hanging breasts ‘clearly’ visible beneath the loose fitting top.
Snapping the picture. “I think this picture will do ‘just fine’!”
Dorthy said.
Topanga Canyon
May 25, 1986
1:13 p.m.
“That picture did ‘just fine’!” Mitchell said.
Lying on her stomach. “I knew it would, Mitchie.”
Looking about the field, Marsha’s eyes lingered at the all but vacated blanket where ‘Janice’, the young lady with the ‘mastectomy’ now sat by herself.
Making a decision. Standing. “I’m going to ask her to join us.”
Next PPIT #23: Morgan & Janice
