GON 1: The Writer & Poet

‘Getting Old Now’

Westlake Village, California

July 25, 1998

Getting caught up:

Where to start?

June 16, 1986: The last of Marsha:

Standing at the curb as the ‘Red Cap’ wheeled way.“We’ve still better than an hour before you take off. Give me a couple of minutes to park the car and I’ll wait with you.”

“No…” she said “...no reason to prolong it, I’d just as soon say ‘goodbye’ here, now.”

“Okay, Marsha…” feeling a profound sadness at this “...if this is the way you want it.”

“Yes, I do, Mitchell. ‘Bye!’ ” Without a further word, turning away, Marsha rushed to catch up with the ‘Red Cap’.

June 17, 1986

As the lifting or lowering of window-shade changes the mood of night or day, the thoroughly non-caring attitude of my wife of thirty-one years the day before had changed my mood from night to day, opening the thought of a possible life with Lita… And, of course, on this night, for the first time alone, Lita and I would sleep together in my new home.

Marsha: Not a word from or about Marsha from the time she said ‘Bye!’. And ‘really’ I don’t give a damn.

The group, from June 22, 1986:

Apparently Elysium had been the catalyst that held us together as ‘only’ Morgan and I had met for dinner three times in the past twelve years.

Janice Kim, our beautiful Euro/Asian woman, sadly, had purposely consumed a drug overdose on June 25, 1986 after learning that cancer would be taking her other breast also.

Morgan, sadly, Morgan passed away a year ago from an undisclosed — so Evie had told me that ‘she suspected Morgan had passed away from a long hidden symptom of ‘Agent Orange’…

By the way, I never had an interest in Evie and — other than the news about Morgan, have not seen or spoken to her since the morning we’d discovered the closing of Elysium.

Lita: Now twelve years since our tearful,‘Goodbye’, racially mixed couples are seen and — so far as I can tell, accepted, and a day does not pass without my thinking of our time together, yet Lita and myself have had absolutely no contact.

In 1987, Ken and Sandy had had enough of their very long lasting ‘friendship with benefits’ and, Ken moving on, had separated.

Occasionally, I became the ‘occasional’ benefactor of Sandy’s ‘benefits’.

In my early days at Elysium I loved looking at Sandy’s comparatively big tits and hairy pussy, but had never fucked her… Well, I did fuck her ‘once’ in Janice's’ ‘black room’ and that was before Lita became one of the group.

Yet I did lose all interest in Sandy rather quickly once I became the occasional benefactor of her ‘benefits’ because I’m one of those strange guys that must feel more than ‘just’ passion while fucking and without love, or at least a ‘warm’ feeling, intercourse with Sandy became a rather senseless endeavour.

Work: My ‘associate licence’ still hangs at Country Club Realtor’s and I still pay for the benefit of being in a ‘one-hundred percent office’. However at this time I work only with repeat clients and whatever referrals they pass my way which so far, financially, has worked out pretty well, especially having no one but myself to support.

Close of Escrow: The close of escrow and transfer of title on the Woodland Hills property to the ‘Brenner's’ occurred on July 14, 1986, to the day, one month from the opening of Escrow.

Marsha’s check of — My calculation off by two hundred dollars, Marsha’s check of ‘fifty-nine thousand-seven hundred dollars and seventeen cents’ ($59,700.17) transferred directly to her new bank account, wherever that is.

My check in hand, I went directly to ‘Global Savings and Loan’ and opened a new account depositing the entire Escrow check, then filled out loan documents for my new home with a thirty percent down payment— minus the five thousand I had already paid as ‘security’. The loan docs were to be held for sixty days, when I was pretty sure our divorce would be final… As it turned out, because there was no ‘contesting’, it was.

Food/Eating:

Hell, within the first week I discovered that with a microwave, an electric frying pan and wok, cooking a decent meal was a snap. And having close by McDonald's, Chinese and Italian restaurants along with a major super market, and a large freezer compartment in the refrigerator, eating exactly what I wanted was absolutely no problem.

The dishwasher was ‘never’ turned on as all I ‘ever’ used was a dinner plate, a soup bowl and a desert plate, and a fork...a stainless steel fork, butter and/or steak knives and a glass and a coffee cup, that were all washed by hand and put into the plastic dish rack that I had purchased on my second day of living alone.

And, as I had told Lita, I did eat off a folding snack table in the smaller room alongside the kitchen. Also, as I had told Lita, I did close the air vent and door in the large bedroom to conserve cooled or heated air and, having no reason to, never went into that room.

All in all, living alone without the ongoing tension of a forever angry wife was really kind of nice… No, life without Marsha was wonderful!

However…

I guess it had to be in January or February of the next year (1987) that I began to ‘really’ miss — not that I had ever stopped missing Lita, and was glad that I didn’t have her phone number or know Howard’s — Lita’s husbands last name, giving me absolutely no way to contact her… Which, I guess, was a good thing because I didn’t know how she would react or how she would respond to my calling…

Also I began to have the inkling of a story and the more I thought of it, the  more characters and incidents filled and flooded my mind, until…

Digging through a bunch of my old stuff that I had not contributed to the Salvation Army, I came across my father’s old Royal Typewriter and so began…

First off, let me say ‘thank God’ for ‘White Out’ because — passing ‘Typing One’, yet still being a rather shitty typeset, I used ‘White Out’ by the gallon.

But, I think it ‘was’ February, 1987 when began to write a ‘fictional’ story about a group of ‘fictional’ people meeting in — of all places, a nudest park, and of a ‘fictional’ middle aged white man by the name of…? ‘Murphy’ (Murf) and a ‘fictional’ middle aged black woman by the name of…?

As she was an extremely light complected black woman, when given a bath as a baby by her mother or father, her parents thought their beautiful baby girl looked like a shiny new...

‘Penny’ and ‘Murf’ fell in love and, within the park — because nudists by their very nature are accepting, broad-minded people, and because many of these nudists were ‘sixties, throw backs, the light complected black woman and the white man were accepted.

But the two could not spend their entire lifes living in the nudist park and outside the park, because of prejudice and the times Penny and Murf were forced to part…

In 1990, after finishing the rewriting and self-editing, I began the task of finding an agent or a publisher for ‘My Naked Friend’ and ‘The Writer’s Market’ became my bible.

After hundreds upon hundreds of queries, each including a ‘SASE’, a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and after receiving hundreds upon hundreds of rejections, I discovered the ‘Catch-22’ of the publishing industry: agents will not look at a new writer unless he/she has been published, and publishers will not look at a new writer unless he/she has an agent.

In this time, however, I discovered that writing had become a very enjoyable and important part of my life. So as I continued to look for an agent or a publisher for ‘My Naked Friend’ I began writing my. second novel, then…

Lo and behold, after nine years of trying, ‘My Naked Friend’ was published in early 1996.

Then, later in the same year (1996) to my utter amazement, and ‘complete’ joy, a one year ‘option agreement’ was drawn and signed between a Burbank, California production company and myself.

However, a year later, when the option came up for renewal it was — much to my complete and utter sorrow, rejected by the production company because, #1: They could not find a group of male and female actors wiling to remain fully naked throughout what would be, at best, months of filming… Also, #2: The black woman and white mans open love affair was too controversial for the times.

The loss of the ‘My Naked Friend’ option — I know, a hack-kneed expression...

The loss of the ‘My Naked Friend’ option ‘breaking my heart’ but needing an outlet for any future writing, my publisher— who was a pretty nice guy, suggested that I join a ‘writers group’ and gave me the computer address of... ‘wriutersplace,net’

So back to July, 1998 and…

‘Before’

Never thinking I would… Never expecting to, I found that I did enjoy certain types of poetry…

Though I had never tried writing poetry myself…

Yet...

We’d been conversing with each other through our author’s web site, via the internet, for threemonths and, after the first month of proper poet, author, friendly enough but fairly formal back and forth mostly positive criticism of each other’s work, the tone of our Emails changed from, what one might refer to as, well… friendly/formal, to what one might refer to as, minimally, flirtatious and soon went beyond ‘minimally’ as in some of our written conversations, I know that I did, and I think she had a hard time skirting the word ‘honey’.

Getting old now.

At my age, sixty-four now, possibly a bit lonely or possibly… More than a bit possibly wanting to feel a sense of connection to a woman again, even if I did not physically know the woman… Or even what she looks like.

In a short time, more than a few times the word “love” slipped into our conversations, which could have been deleted...

But wasn’t.

Next ‘GON’ 2: Cyber Romance