GON #4: The Arraignment
‘Getting Old Now’
Westlake Village, California
July 25, 1998
3:32 PM
“Hey,Mitch!”
Answering, “Yeah?” as I headed outside.
“Looks like a great evening…” Milt said from his side of our joint barrier wall “… wanna take a boat out?”
Hoping to hear from Barbara, “No…” I called back “...I’m waiting for a call, so I’ll pass now.”
“Okay, if later you decide to, give a yell.”
“Okay, well do.”
3:34
Checking my computer, there was an Email from Barbara.
beachbaby.global.com
Hi, honey. Something pretty good has happened today. I’m going to be in and out, so let me know when you’re home and I’ll write right back, if I’m home.
*** Thinking, ‘Honey’ ….
Lippy1.fatboy.net
Hi, baby. Got in a few minutes ago and just got your message. I’m glad that something goo happened to you today, you deserve it. So tell me!
beachbaby.global.com
You remember ‘Writers Place’ publishing that article about the national poetry contest in Chicago?
Lippy1.fatboy.net
Of course! Don’t tell me you’ve been…
***Barbara’s message coming back before I could finish
beachbaby.global.com
“Yes! I’m one of our finalists and have already talked to Chuck and asked my sister if she’d watch mom for the three days…
Lippy1.fatboy.net
And?
beachbaby.global.com
I’m all set and wondered if you’d like to...
Commentary
Three months ago, when ‘writersplace.net’, our authors web site had begun to look for the three most popular, most widely followed commercially unpublished poets, apparently Barbara Lomgford’s name came up and the three are invited to a poetry competition in Chicago to each read, depending on length, two or three of their favorite poems, the prize being the hard back publishing of the winners first book of poetry along with a guaranteed placement in at least one major book marketing chain.
***
I am an older, sixty-four year old man and Barbara is forty-four; twenty years my junior.
To me Barbara is young woman.
A woman that – As for me, as for a guy who never cared for or even attempted to try to understand poetry, Barbara had opened a new world of beauty for me and, to be honest, I irrationally fell in love with her through her writing and our – as she lives in Long Island, New York and I about forty-five miles outside of Los Angeles – Don’t really know why, possibly it’s because I like the feeling and the sense of being in love. And maybe, even after ten years I still miss Lita, I irratioonaly fell in love with Barbara due to her poetry and our long distance computer generated Email conversations, and, so I gathered from Barbara’s words and the slant of some of her poems that I know were written for and to me, I was rather sure and, irrationally, hoped her feelings were mutual…
And this morning!
Never expecting our imaginations to take us to where our long distance masturbatory sexual fantasy would – Three thousand miles separating us, Barbara and I made love…
Barbara and I had hand held, hand generated vicarious sex with each other.
Three thousand miles distance one from the other, Barbara Langford and Mitchell Lipensky ‘had’ fucked… in a semi-personal way.
The remembrance of Barbara's description of her tits and nipples causing a stirring within my shorts along with the remembrance of the mild , dull acne in my balls that only ‘rarely’ comes after a long, hard, ‘extremely’ pleasurably sexual experience…
But three thousand mines away!
Always knowing, thinking, hoping that there would be some way for us to finally meet. Some way for us to finally ‘break bread’ together. Some way for us to sit across a table, finally able to look into the eyes of the other and then...?
Okay, I know! Seeing as Barbara is – though I think very unhappily – Barbara is married and lives 3,000 miles from me and has a mother that she takes care of to say nothing of our twenty year difference, I know that ‘whatever’ might happen on that weekend would, most probably, end when we say goodbye on Sunday afternoon. Still…
Still… What the hell does she look like?
If she wants no one at ‘writers place’ to know what she looks like, okay! Don’t understand ‘why’, but why not post a picture directly to me through an Email?
Ugly as hell? Fat as hell? Hell, she may even have two heads.
“Maybe she’s a felon on the run…” speaking aloud to myself “...and can’t show her face.”
Guess I’ll find out.
3:38
Lippy1.fatboy.net
Congratulations, Barb!”
*** Crossing my fingers, I asked,
Lippy1.fatboy.net
“Is your husband going to Chicago with you?”
beachbaby.global.com
No. Chuck has absolutely no interest in my writing, or anything I do.
*** Fortifying my sense of her marital unhappiness... Letting my breath out.
Lippy1.fatboy.net
Tell you what, as your greatest rooter, would you mind if I joined you in Chicago?
*** From three thousand miles and the other end of the country came an immediate answer.
beachbaby.global.com
That’s what I wanted to ask you, Mitchell. I would ‘love’ to have you join me in Chicago!
*** Well, guess I’ll find out .
Lippy1.fatboy.net
“I’d love it, too! Thank you! Where are you staying?
*** Emails going quickly back and forth:
beachbaby.global.com
They’ve reserved rooms for us for the nineteenth and twentieth of October at the ‘Allertom’ on Michigan Avenue.
Lippy1.fatboy.net
The nineteenth and twentieth of October. October is the best time to be in Chicago.
beachbaby.global.com
The competition starts at 9:00 am Saturday, so I’ll be there sometime Friday afternoon.
Lippy1.fatboy.net
Have you made plane reservations yet?
beachbaby.global.com
No. I figure I have three whole months, so thought I’d wait a while.
Lippy1.fatboy.net
If we make reservations now, maybe we can coordinate our flights so we might be able to land pretty near the same time .
beachbaby.global.com
Good idea, Mitch. If we do meet up at the airport, then we can take a cab together to the hotel. Are you planning on making a room reservation for yourself at the Allerton for the two days?
***‘A room reservation for myself’? Thinking: Is this an invitation ‘to’, or ‘not’ to make a reservation for myself for the two days, ‘and’ two nights… then, ‘Uh-oh’ What do I do? Does she except me, or even ‘want’ me to spend the nights with her, sleeping with her.
Another old ‘Confusions say saying’ ? ‘ When first you practice to decisive, oh what a tangled web you weave.’
‘Shit’! Maybe after I see Barbara — am I ‘that’ shallow? Maybe after I see her, ‘I’ won’t want to sleep with her, or maybe even be seen with her.
*** Coming up with an idea.
Lippy1.fatboy.net
Yes, Barb, think it best to make my own reservation because…
*** giving her the idea that I ‘would’ — and, depending, ‘really’ if I would want to spend the days, and nights with her...— but being cautious.
Yes, Barb, I think it best to make my own reservation because your reservation was probably made for one person. Unless they thought your husband was coming along.
beachbaby.global.com
Chuck going with my? No, they didn’t ask and I didn’t say, but like I told you, my husband has absolutely no interest in anything I do. But I guess it would be best if you did made your own reservation.
*** Talking face to face along with hand gesturing, one usually gets the idea what the other is really trying to say. But, ‘best to make my own reservations?’ Causing me to think: Barbara thinks that I might not want to spend the days, and nights with her because, after all, she knows what I look like but I have ‘no’ idea what she looks like.
Lippy1.fatboy.net
I think that’s what I’ll do, honey. But I’m going to make the plane reservations first, then I’ll get back to you with my flight time.. Who are you planning on flying with?
beachbaby.global.com
Doesn’t matter; United, I guess.
Lippy1.fatboy.net
Okay, me, too, then. Get back to you in a few minutes.
beachbaby.global.com
If I’m not here when you write, leave your information then I’ll get back to you after I talk to United.
Lippy1.fatboy.net
Talk to you later and Barb, I’m ‘really ‘looking forward to meeting you… All of you!
beachbaby.global.com
“Oh, yeah, , Mitchie, I’m looking forward to meeting all of you also. ..Bye.
4:05
Lippy1.fatboy.net
Barbara, you there?”
beachbaby.global.com
Yeah, Mitch. Been waiting for you.
Lippy1.fatboy.net
I’m set at the Allerton and made a reservation with United for October nineteen leaving LAX at 8:45 AM that’ll get me into O'Hare at 2:10 Chicago time. See how close we can coordinate.
beachbaby.global.com
“Thanks, Mitch. I’ll call right now.”
*** 4:25 : “You have mail!”
Lippy1.fatboy.net
Hi, baby!
beachbaby.global.com
I have a United flight out of Kennedy landing at O'Hara at 1:40 CST, so I’ll wait for you, and if for some reason I haven’t landed, you wait for me, okay?
Lippy1.fatboy.net
“Yeah, Barb, but I don’t know what you look like.”
beachbaby.global.com
“It’s okay, Mitchie, I know what you look like.”
Next GON #5: The Meeting
