PIT3/2: Cathartic
Points In Time
March 15, 2010
Westlake Village, California’’
7:40 AM (Pacific Standard Time)
Chicago, Illinois
9:40 AM (Central Standard Time)
“ ‘Marcie’s Manicures’ ?”
“If that’s what you call it, yeah!”
“Mitchell, we did fantastic! Even more repeat and new business than Max’s place that had been in a much better location.
“Knowing how you like to talk, did figure you’d do good working in a manicure shop. Still there?”
“No. We didn’t own the building, only rented the storefront and it’s… ‘my’ reputation, and Marty thought his mother had given me too much ‘say-so’ in the place and wanted to put his wife in, so bought me out… and the place flopped in six months.”
“Hold on. Coffee’s perking, so I’ll pick up the phone In the kitchen.”
Forgetting, I guess out of habit, I hung the phone up breaking the connection.
7:49 AM
Realizing I’d broken the connection — whatever that connection might have been between Marsha and myself and wondering whether I even wanted to continue our conversation, and even If I did, I did not have her phone number.
8:02 AM
Putting two slices of Jewish rye into the toaster and taking creme-cheese and strawberry jam from the refrigerator a thought coming to me — paying a small monthly fee to keep my real estate associate license at...
“ ‘Country Club Realtor’s’. ”
“Good morning, Eva, It’s Mitch Lipensky.”
“ ‘Morning, Mitch. Haven’t talked to you in a while.”
“You know how it is with us ‘kind of retired guys’ … Did a call happen to come in early this morning?”
“Hold on, just got last night’s calls.” Looking through her notations of incoming call that had been forwarded by the nighttime answering service.
“Yes. This morning at 6:53.”
“She leave a number?”
“Shelldrake 3-707- 2986.”
Thank you, Eva… Bye.”
“Bye, Mitch.”
Remembering and recognizing the ‘Shelldrake’ exchange as a far north side,Chicago number.
The toasted bread popping upward, Okay... thinking… so now I know her number, what do I want to do about it? Putting the toast onto a plate, bringing it to the table, I was pouring a cup of coffee when the phone rang.
My feelings absolutely mixed— wanting it to be her? Not wanting it yo be her?
‘Two’… ‘three’...on the fourth ring...
“Hello.”
“It’s me.”
‘It’s me’ . Glad?Not glad!?
“Didn’t know if you cut me off on purpose, but I got some things I want to tell you, and then? It’ll be up to you.”
“ ‘Up to me’? What do you mean, ‘it’ll be up me’? What the hell do you want, Marsha!”
As notations on a yellow, lined pad Marsha Lipensky had mentally listed all that she wanted to say to Mitchell, all that she wanted to confess to Mitchell, from times even before their marriage — ‘Cathartic’!
At age seventy-three , Marsha Lipensky was fifty-three years beyond loosing her ‘bad boy’ desires. At age seventy-three Marsha Lipensky wanted the ‘genital’ man she , in both cases knew her ex husband to be.
At age seventy-three all Marsha Lipensky wanted...
“ ‘Up to me’? What do you mean, ‘it’ll be up me’? What the hell do you want, Marsha!”
Unable to hold back, Marsha Lipensky’s words coming between sobs...
“ ‘Up to me’? What do you mean, ‘it’ll be up me’? What the hell do you want, Marsha!”
Marsha Lipensky’s words coming between sobs… “I want to come home.”
The tears in her voice…
One of those people that often would be brought to tears by one other’s tears, and now was no exception...
“Marsha, you are home.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“No, Mitchell, my home is with you. I’m not home without you.”
Silence… silent…
“Marsha…” not knowing what to say, afraid one wrong, or right word could commit him to “...I don’t know what to say.”
“Mitch, don’t say anything, just let me talk… Please!”
Not saying what he said in jest, simply stating a fact. “There’s so much ‘bad stuff’, how far back are you going to go.
“Mitchell, when you and me met for the first time, oh, my God, I thought you were the most beautiful boy that I’d ever met…”
“Till I found out you were only twelve.” (8/5/49)
3/15/2010 … Bringing a cup of coffee to the table, I sat.
“Yeah, but you weren’t even fifteen yet. And then when you called me a baby and hurt my feelings…”
“You ran away.”
(3/20/54) “I did, and I never forgot you and then when we accidental ran into each other at the ‘J’ , I would have waited a couple of minutes when your friend called you over, but Stanley and I were going back to his room…”
“To fuck!”
“Yeah. But I really wanted spend some time with you.”
“To fuck?” I asked.
“If you wanted to.”
“My God, Marsha! I ‘always’ thought, you were a virgin.”
“That was your perception, Mitchell, and I never corrected it.
Anyway I left with Stan and you and me didn’t meet up again until that night at Askanaz …”
“I was on leave, and we spent every possible minute together.” (6/15 to 7/2/55)
“Mitchell, I wanted to fuck you so badly, but you were a perfect gentleman.”
“God, Marsha, you wouldn’t even let me ‘feel you up’.”
“Maybe you should have tried harder.”
“Marsha, I never pushed myself on a girl, or a woman. To me ‘no’, means ‘no’.”
“Stan and I had broken up about a week before we met again, and you were making me so fucking horny those two weeks, I even ‘made up’ with him.””
“You were fucking him between saying ‘no’ to me?”
Softly stated. “I was.”
“Then the day after you flew back to New York and sent me that dumb dime store ring asking me to marry you, I was ‘so’ tired of Stan’s games, and he’d begun to get rough with me, and I wanted to get away from my bitch of a mother, so I said, ‘yes.”
“Yous said you’d marry me, not because you loved me, but because your ‘muscle guy’ was giving you a ‘rough’ time and you hated you mother…” sensing the tightening in my throat that tells me tears were on their way “...that’s why you said, ‘yes’?”
Hearing the catch in my voice, forcing her shame down. Forcing herself to go on.
“Mitchell, what’s happened up to then was the simple stuff…”
“ ‘Simple stuff’? My God, Marsha, what the ‘hell’ could be worse than that?”
“Oh, my baby…” said affectionately “it gets much worse. I’m not telling you to hurt you, I telling you — you may think this corny, but I’m telling you this to ‘cleanse my soul’. I’m telling you this because I want you... I ‘need’ you to want me back and I need to tell this so you know that I am not the bitch you married and spent thirty-one fucking rotten years with. Please, baby, let me get it all out.”
If Marsha were sitting across from me, I think I’d… I don’t know what I would do.
“Okay.”
(October 14, 1955, to October 18, 1955)
“You remember that when the plane landed I wasn’t there with your folks to meet you because I was in the toilet throwing up. We made a joke about it, but the reason I was puking was because I did ‘not’ want to see you. I hated the thought of seeing you and for the reason you’d come home.”
“For blood tests and our first marriage.”
“Yeah.”
“So why didn’t you call it off?”
“Because I thought I was pregnant…”
“Stan?”
“Yes. I knew we’d be married by a Justice of Peace as soon as the blood tests cleared in five days…”
“So the baby that wasn’t mine, would be mine if you ‘were’ knocked up.”
“I told you it’s going to get worse.”
“It’s going to get worse than that ?”
Taking a deep breath. “I’m afraid so, Mitch. Because ‘mother’… Still, after all these years I ‘still’ can not figure why she insisted that we also get married — ‘in the eyes of God’ by a rabbi …”
“Two months after our ‘real’ marriage.”
“And she insisted we hold off sex until after The ‘Eyes of God’ wedding…. Again, because my mother was a prostitute, I’ve never been able to figure that out either.”
“Then why did you make us hold off?”
Maybe to tease myself…”
“Or me.”
“Or actually I really did not want to have sex with you.”
“We found a way to do some stuff anyway.”
“Yeah, when after the ‘Justice of the Peace’ marriage, you drove to the ‘Shedd Aquarium’ because it’s closed on Mondays and parked way at the far end of the empty parking lot; it was really cute how you tried to show your ‘virgin’ wife your cock and talk her into letting you see her tits… Shit, we were married and all — and even if we weren’t, all you had to do was ask.”
Remembering that rainy, gray day and seeing the beauty of my ‘just’ nineteen year old wife’s tits for the first time, I sensed a tightening in the crotch of my slacks.
“Then that night, after giving your mother an ultimatum and she gave us permission to sleep together on the sofa-bed in her living room where she could hear every sound we made.
“Mitch, we were naked together for the first time and being with a ‘strange’ guy….”
“ ‘Strange guy’? Marsha, we were married.”
“...I wanted to fuck you ‘so much’…”
“But she made some noise in the next room, so we didn’t.”
“Going along with your ‘virgin’ idea. Thinking you’d have to know that you’d broken my hymen…”
“I never even knew what a ‘hymen’ was.”
“...I lied to you then, telling you that I’d broken my hymen while horseback riding.”
“Years later I remembered what you’d said that night and asked a lady I know that’s always been into horseback riding and she told me that a female breaking her hymen while riding a horse’ is absolutely impossible. Besides, you didn’t have to tell me that bullshit story because I’d never have thought about it.”
That was one of my major reasons for disliking you as I did, you were so stupid when it came to sex, I even had to show you where my clitoris is.”
Becoming defensive. “You knew I was virgin when we married. How the hell would I know anything about what it is or especially where to find a woman’s clitoris? It’s not like I went to a ‘clitoral’ class! all I ever had was pornographic pictures and my imagination….”
A bit of a giggle… “And your hand.” Marsha said.
A bit of a giggle… “Yeah, lots of that!”
“And even after I showed you where it’s at, mote often than not you went in the wrong direction.”
“Well, Marsha…” attempting to continue the lightened vein of conversation “...unless it’s changed in the last twenty-four years, your ‘clit’ isn’t that much of a stand up, ‘hey, here I am’ kind of a thing. Besides…” inadvertently arousing myself “… that’s why I always loved eating your pussy so much.”
This dreaded, long delayed cathartic conversation going easier than she’d thought, but there’s still...
“Hey, Marsha…” his tone still friendlier than she’d expected “... remember that question you asked me before?”
“What question?”
“If I had a boner.”
“Yes.”
“Well I do.”
“At your age, good to hear it…”
Not meaning to sound overly casual about it — but what else could she do. Besides, for the first time in years, Marsha Lipensky sensed a slick moistening within her vagina.
“...but there’s more ‘really’ bad shit I got to tell you!”
Next PIT3/3: Cathartic Two
