PIT3/3: Cathartic Two

Points In Time

Westlake Village, California

March 15, 2010

7:49 AM (Pacific Standard Time)

Chicago, Illinois

9:49 AM (Central Standard Time)

“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, Mitch, it’s good to hear …”

Not meaning to sound overly casual about it — but what else could she do. Besides, for the first time in years, sensing a possible brightening to her future Marsha Lipensky imagined (?) a slick moistening within her vagina.

“...but there’s more ‘really’ bad shit I’ve got to tell you!”

The momentary sense of sexual remembrance now a distraction. Bracing for more, for worse…

December 16, 1955

“The evening before the wedding… Don’t know if you remember, Mitch, but your mom and dad were at ‘Palmer House’ getting ready for the ‘rehearsal’ and …” still after all these years “...’daddy’ drove me to the airport to pick you up, and when you landed you asked ‘daddy’ where I was, and he told you, ‘She got sick and had to go to the toilet’.”

“Yeah, I remember thinking it kind of weird that each time I flew into Chicago you became so sick you had to run to a toilet.”

“I was in the toilet puking.”

“No doubt…” sarcastically “...because you were so happy to see me!”

“Oh, my God! How I hated having to see you, and hated  what was going to happen the next day.”

“Yous still could have… ‘No’ we were married already! Guess there was nothing you could do about it.”

“And ‘mother’ had spent thousands on my gown and we had a hundred people coming…”

“To say nothing of that two and a half caret, pear shaped diamond ring she bought you.”

“Always thought that was the only good thing that came out of our wedding, and to top it off, my ‘period’ came on early that morning.”

“Yeah, that stopped us for a while.”

“ ‘Mother’ ‘had’ to tell your mother…”

“Who you ‘hated’!”

“Oh, yeah, I did— almost as much as I hated my mother, who told me ‘ it was ‘anticipation’ that brought in on two weeks early’. But I knew it was because I was doing something I ‘hated’, with someone I ‘hated’.”

Sighing.  Marsha was right, this was some ‘really’ bad shit. Sipp ing my no longer hot coffee.“There’s more?” I asked.

“That night, after our folks were through counting the money we’d made and they ‘finally’ left, I knew I’d have to sleep with you and didn’t even want you to touch me, so I stalled in the toilet because I knew you were bloated and ‘had’ to get in there.”

“I ‘really’ needed to get in there, and you were stalling?”

Still in a flannel nightgown and bathrobe, vacantly gazing out the window, at a dreary, rainy early spring, Chicago morning.

“Yes, I was stalling, and knew in a way I was torturing you, but knew I had to come out eventually.”

Remembering the bloating and gas pains and the struggle not to let ‘it’ go.

“That was the first night of our lives together and I did ‘not’ want to start it with you hearing me fart…”

“Oh, boy…” she said “...that was the first time I laughed all day. Did you ‘ever’ fart, and when you came out of there you stunk up the whole room.”

Now, feeling embarrassed for our wedding night fifty-five years in the past. “ ‘I’m sorry’.”

“It was a long time ago, Mitchell.”

Thinking, Then why bring it up? “I’d guess then, that you could say our marriage got off to a pretty stinky start, huh?”

“The stinky start to our marriage was far from your trip to the toilet that night. When we got to New York… I. Mitchell, I must tell you, I ‘loved’ it! That little, one room apartment was ‘beautiful’.”

“Thank God for small things.” I said quietly.

“I decided I wanted to get pregnant as soon as possible, and then, when my period ended, you couldn’t get a  hard-on.”

“That was one of the worst times of my life, Marsha! Still a virgin almost two weeks after marrying a beautiful, nineteen year old woman that I loved — loved with all my heart and couldn’t keep a boner long enough to get it in.”

“Every day I hated you more and was ready to leave and go back to Chicago.”

“You know, Marsha…” I said angrily “...it wasn’t completely my fault because you had those ugly brown splotches all over your chest and back. I never wanted to hurt your feelings so took all the blame, you know, for not being able to keep a hard-on — though, really, I suppose the way you thought, if there’s tits and a cunt, a ‘real’ man would want to fuck it!”

“I never had a skin problem, even as a kid my skin was always just fine, hardly ever even had a pimple. But I was so nervous, having to live with you — don’t know where they came from, but suddenly I had those splotches. And what made that time even worse for me, the more you wouldn’t fuck me, the more I wanted you to fuck me.”

“It’s not that I ‘wouldn’t’ fuck you, because, ‘trust me’, Marsha I ‘couldn’t’ fuck you! You gave a clitoris lesson, now let me give you a cock… at least my cock lesson. I always thought my dick had a mind of it’s own, coming and going as it pleased and the more I wanted to fuck you,and ‘believe’ me, Marsha, I wanted nothing else than to feel myself in you. And the more I wanted to, thee more my dick thought maybe I wouldn’t be able to and I was so afraid that I ‘couldn’t, it didn’t.”

December, 24, 1955

“Until that bottle of ink.” Marsha said.

“Still can’t see a bottle of ‘Carter’s Ink’ without remembering.”

“But then, once you could…”

“And ‘did’ , and never wanted to stop!”

“Then the more ‘you’ wanted fuck, the less I wanted to.”

“Those long bathroom stays, huh?”

“Yeah. Want to know what I was doing in there.”

“You’re not ‘that’ big a lady, and even if you ‘were’ taking a long shower? And you never used makeup when you came to bed! And in that one room apartment I could hear you pee, and could hear when you stopped, so knew...The only thing I could think was that you were stalling, hoping I’d be asleep when you came out.”

“That’s pretty much the truth, and it became really boring killing all that time in there…”

This pretty much the way we’d spent the years of our lives. “Oh, you poor thing!” I said as sarcastically as possible.

Catching the sarcasm, going on… “But then there were the times… Most of the time I’d imagine that Stan was waiting for me on the other side of of the door and I’d masturbate.”

‘Cleansing her soul’ apparently having no limits. Not knowing what to say. This something I ‘never’ imagined.

Remembering all those, possibly thousands of nights I forced myself to stay awake.

“With me…” I asked “... a real live person waiting for you on just the other side of the door, ‘waiting for you, Marsha’?”

“Mitch — ashamed to tell you now, but back then I would rather have the imagination of Stan than real live you.”

“Why? His cock bigger than mine?”

“No. Actually not at all, but that didn’t matter because I loved him and hated you.”

Sitting back now, turning my coffee mug in tight circles on the imitation wood-grain table-top. Do I get angry at this? Should I tell her if she loved doing it so much by herself back then. Then she should ‘go fuck herself’ now. ‘Back then’! It was a long time ago. It was a lifetime ago.

Why the hell is she telling me all this now?

Although she was not cold, tightening the robe about her upper body.“And all those times…” Marsha went on “... all those times you might say something that I would use as an excuse not speak to you, just because I didn't want to speak to you And then carry my pretend anger to the extreme.”

A slight chuckle “Not because ‘then’ I wouldn’t have to talk to you, but sometimes you did or said something to really make me angry…” pausing “...but ‘never’ to the length I carried my phony anger.

“I realize that as a husband… As ‘your’ husband I very often did have ‘foot in mouth’ disease.”

“How are you feeling?” Changing the subject. “I asked before and you didn’t answer, but are you okay?”

“Yes, For a seventy-five year old, non-weight lifting guy…” compelled to put that in “... I’m feeling pretty good.”

“That’s great, glad to hear it.”

“Well, I had ankle surgery a couple of years ago and didn’t give it the time it needed to mend properly, so I walk with a bit of a limp, but other than that, I still have my hair, at least the hair that’s on the top of my head.”

Knowing what I meant…

“Me also, getting near naked down there. The hair on my head? Dyed it from black to red, and a few years later went back to black, but now it’s pretty much white.”

Finding it hard to visualize Marsha with white hair.

The telephone silent… All words spoken? The telephone silent.

Until...

“I know you’re wondering why I called after all this time. ‘First off’, I really did have to tell you.. to apologize for all that shit I’d forced on you when we were married. I ‘had’ to get it off my chest! I’m still not religious, but if I were, I know God would want me to confess to you and to beg your forgiveness for fucking up our lives so badly.”

Do I tell Marsha, I forgive her? After all she just told me, I don’t think I can.

“Mitchell, I had a head to toe and everything between examination last week.”

What he ‘didn’t’ know!

Marsha was out of his life from the time she’d rushed away from him at the airport those twenty-four years ago .

Marsha was out of his life and what he did not know did not matter to him.

But now...

‘Cancer’! Always the first thought.

“You okay, Marsha?”

My heart skipping a beat…

“You okay, Marsha?” Sincerely asked.

All those miserable years that I’d wish she’d just die. And now… “You okay, Marsha?”

“Yes, Mitchell. There’s ‘nothing’. No cancer. High blood pressure and my diabetes and then, other than normal shit that might happen to a seventy-three year old female body, ‘nothing’ to worry about.”

Relived. Not knowing why I felt so relieved for this woman that, up until this morning, had been out of my life for the past twenty-four years…

And yet, possibly I felt more than merely relief for the general health of this woman that came back into my life not much more than an hour ago.

“Mitchell, this is ‘really’ why I called this morning. After getting the results of my emanation I feel that God had given me a chance to make up for all those bad years. I know so many people, younger than me… My cousin — Max and me are, but for two days, exactly the same age, and she died of cancer seven years ago. And here I am. Healthy, thank God.”

And here I am… I thought ...healthy, thank God.

“Mitch, when I decided that I ‘had’ to speak to you, to ‘tell’ you... Like I said, I did find you an the internet, but it gave no way to reach you so taking a chance, not even knowing if you were alive, praying that you were alive, I called Country Club’ and was surprised that, after all these years, you were still with them and was able to wrangle your number from operator.”

“I pay thirty-five bucks a month to hang my license in ‘Country Club’ as a ‘semi-retired Associate’.”

“You ‘still’ selling real estate, then?”

“Over the years, I’ve had lots of clients that still call me when they want to sell to go live nearer their kids… Wherever they might be. So I’ll usually end up with three or four sales a year which is just fine with me.”

“ If you want me...Marsha said “...if you’ll let me, I want to make up for all those terrible years. I love you Mitchell, and hope to spend whatever time God gives us together.

And so you won’t think I’ll be coming empty-handed. Someone that you think you’ll have to support— absolutely ‘not’ meant as a bribe! Just to let you know, between the cash Marty paid to buy me out, and what I’ll make on the sale of this duplex, that’s completely paid for, I’ll be coming to you with near a hundred, seventy ‘grand’.”

Next PIT3/4: The decision