Time Marching On: (TMO) 6

Westlake Village, California

May 14, 2021

2:34 AM

Unable to sleep. Turning from my side— and the comforting warmth of Marsha’s body, onto my back.

The slits of my half closed eyes upon the ceiling seeing wavering shadows caused by the moons reflection on the slightly rippling water of Westlake Lake through the glass of the sliding patio door leading to the redwood deck.

Fragments of yesterday morning’s conversation with Ron at Dennys as scattering wisps of memories within my thoughts coming and going as quickly as kernels of popping corn in hot oil.

The remembrance of the love and loving times spent with Lita and Barbara… And, haven’t thought of Lizzy for a while now; maybe that’s because I’d bumped into her a couple of years back — and the sad loss of Lita and Barbara… and Lizzy that to this distant day… Well, maybe not Lizzy, but concerning Lita and Barbara, I’ve always considered our parting as circumstances far beyond, and of which I had not the slightest control over: Racial prejudice; a black woman, a white man?

With Barbara? Her continual physical and mental obligation? For how long? Our twenty-four year age difference? Certainly nothing I could have done about that. Her husband? Her and me three thousand miles distant?

How are these personal, and in both cases life changing conditions to be overcome?

Oh, if one were younger, say forty years younger…?

Well, maybe not the prejudice thing, but the other, though, the one with Barbara?

I suppose I could have moved from my beautiful home here on Westlake Lake and my best friend right next door to do… What? Move from the ‘usually’ wonderful climate of Southern California back to freezing winters? To do what?

Feeling movement.

Feeling my wife turn from her left to her right side.

Shhh!

Don’t want to wake Marsha. I think it’s still warm enough, so why don’t we take this conversation outside.

Getting out of bed with as little movement as possible. Putting a light robe on, but no house-slippers. Quietly opening the slider, going out and sitting on one of the padded outdoor recliners facing the water.

Well, okay.

So I don’t get too confused… Remember, I’m an old guy and confusion comes with the territory, so let me remind you, and myself, that Marsha and I were divorced from nineteen eighty-six until twenty-ten: for twenty-four years and Lita and Barbara— for the few days they both lasted, were the only two consequential women in my life within that twenty-four year period.

Thinking about it, it wasn’t cheating for me with either Lita or Barbara. As for Lita, however; she had once told me she had a husband that acted like he couldn’t stand looking at her— as beautiful as she was— because she wasn’t black enough to be a black woman, or white enough to be a white woman…

Anyway, Marsha had already fled from our life as husband and wife and we were well into the divorced procedure when…

Shit! It only took one day— when away from our time together at Elysium, Lita discovered that she could not live in my all white world and we both knew that I sure as hell could not live in her black world and there was nothing I could do about that if we wanted to make a life together. So…

Hold on, feel like a drink.

I have a habit of never measuring, so it might be two or maybe a third shot of scotch with four or five ice cubes.

Back outside onto the padded recliner

Any way… Where was I? Oh, yeah! Years later, as for Barbara, should I have forced myself to live back east to have an affair with a married woman for how many years of…

Hell, at that time I was seventy-four and Barbara fifty so — for however many years were left in my life— we could have had a lifelong affair for ‘whenever’ Barbara could talk her other sister into watching their mother and ‘Downs Syndrome’ sister?

No! After I got over that last Email, and really, it didn’t take too long, I realized Barbara was right to break it off when and as she had.

Taking a hearty sip of scotch.

Okay, I’ve confused myself and have to go way back in time to, uh... nineteen-sixty-one and Elizabeth Herzon.

And, yes, I was married at that time, and in truth Elizabeth had been the only affair I’d ever had while married.

Remembering: Marsha and I had recently pulled our marriage together after — at least for me, a terrible three month long separation when I had quit working as a salesman for my parents at their commercial photography studio.

Other than my job at the studio that I hated because of the continual tension between my wife and mother that carried over to the Studio, I quit and ‘Transco’ was the first real job I’d had since being discharged from the U.S. Coast Guard in November of ‘fifty-six.

Remembering!

10/58:

We were sitting on opposite side of head-to-head placed desks.

Why’s she got to be so damned beautiful? I remember thinking every time I looked at Elizabeth Herzon and remember getting this... longing sensation in the lower — the far lower region of my stomach.

Clinking the ice cubes, then taking another sip.

At this time, now, it doesn’t matter because there’s just about as many female as male salespeople, but back in ‘fifty-eight she’d been hired as Transco Envelope Company’s first female salesman—saleswoman?— and was considered as an experiment.

Oh, my God!

Remembering. Visualizing…

I believe, and Susan Friedman is a great example; but I’ll get to Susan later.

Any way, I believe— other than a minds eye description, that you can’t truly visualize what you cannot or have never seen.

Yeah, I know that I sure did some visualizing when Barbara and me were having telephone sex.

Amazing, isn’t it, what a guy might be able to imagine while holding his dick jerking-off.

Any way, because I’d actually seen her… Taking another sip, then closing my eyes...

She’d told me later… When we’d finally gotten together five years later. In, oh, I’d guess, February or March of ‘sixty-three, that she was twenty-one when Transco hired her.

Wiping the moisture on my hand, from the frosty glass, onto my bathrobe.

Visualizing:

She had long, dark blonde, honey colored streaked hair, a beautiful, round face with large, green eyes and a crooked smile that warmed everyone it came in contact with.

Standing a bit above 5' 5", weighing approximately one hundred twenty-five pounds, with vital statistics of 38–28–38, Elizabeth had the kind of figure that turned men’s heads, especially the head of ‘me’, the young man that sat directly across from her.

Authors Notation:

Unknown to all but her family and a few remaining friends, Elizabeth had always been….

“Oy, ‘such a punnum’! Such a ‘beautiful’ face!”

Her mother and father and aunts and uncles would say. “Such a shame she’s ‘so’… Fat!”

Elizabeth’s job as a sales woman was meant as yet another challenge to herself because, ‘after all’, if only after fifteen months of pain! Of fifteen months of unbearable sacrifice and stubborn determination, she could lose a bit more than seventy pounds, then…

Okay, Elizabeth had thought, so he’s married! But who knew about the shy, handsome young man that sat across from her that she—unconsciously?—smiled at seductively. The young man that she—accidentally?—brushed against whenever they would find themselves passing in the tight corridor between the rows of filing cabinets…

Looking across the desks, Why’s he got to be married?

Smiling at Mitchell, sensing a warming within her groin —Pretty near the same warming Mitchell felt within his groin… actually his penis — forcing her eyes from the young man that sat across from her.

Taking a larger swallow. Leaning back on the recliner considering what I want I want to say, and how much to say.

Know what? I’m just not going to go into all the details because, if I do, knowing my self— yeah! Even at my age blood will start pumping down there and what the hell am I going to do with boner at this time of night, or morning.

So I’ll just give some brief details… Do I even know how to be brief?

Okay, so back to Transco Envelope Company.

Once my time as a trainee was finished, I was offered my choice of two permanent territories.

The thought of Buffalo, New York repugnant to both Marsha and myself, we chose Peoria, Illinois.

Transco Christmas Dinner

December 20, 1958

Seeing only her front-side as Elizabeth approached the table, of course noticing her figure, however concentrating more on her face, hair and eyes than the rest of her body; now seeing her back side, her thirty-eight-inch hips—seeing Elizabeth through the eyes of a perpetually thin, more than slightly jealous woman, She’s got a big ass! Marsha thought.

Notation: In order for the company to keep an eye on their female experiment...

Remembering: Once discovering that Elizabeth had been given a section of a choice downtown Chicago territory while we were being shipped to — so Marsha thought, rinky-dink Peoria, the catty back and forth undertone of the two women, became more than a bit uncomfortable for me.

Later: In the Rolodex of Marsha Lipensky’s mind there would remain the inkling of a thought that there here was beautiful woman that possibly may have intentions towards her husband and, since meeting Elizabeth Herzon, Marsha was glad that they would be relocating to Peoria.

Peoria, Illinois

January 3, 1959 through Summer, 1961

“Hi, baby.” The Chamber of Commerce dinner through, I was calling Marsha to say, “Hey, I met an old acquaintance of yours.”

“Yeah? Who’s that?”

“Name’s Jay Shapiro.”

Thinking… Remembering. “Jay! Yeah, sure! He’s living here in Peoria? What’s he do?”

“He’s a disk jockey at WHIP. Goes by the name ‘Jay Stanley’.”

“Jay Stanley? The Jay Bird! I listen to him all the time. I can’t believe he’s ‘that’ Jay!”

“Yeah, that’s him! Thought I’d check with you to see if it’s okay to invite him for dinner.”

“Yes, sure! He have a wife or girlfriend?”

“No; he says he’s a very happy bachelor.”

January 9, 1959

Dinner finished. Over coffee and home made chocolate cake.

“Think you might be open to something else?”

“Something else?”

“Yeah. They’re looking for a ‘time’ salesman at the station.”

January 13, 1959

So far, rather impressed with the young man sitting on the opposite side of his desk, “How long have you been with…” glancing at the notes he’d been making, “Transco?”

“Two years last month, sir.”

“And before that?” The station manager asked.

You know… Considering draining the mouth-full of remaining scotch; thinking better of it, I spilled the scotch along with the slivers of three ice cubes into a nearby potted plant.

You know it was a snap getting that job. And oh, how I loved selling time.

Come to think about it…

Hearing the purr of the electric motor of a lone boat passing by, my mind hitting on the night Marsha and I got banned.

...I think that I’d never been happier in my life than those years we’d lived in Peoria.

8/24/ 61

 Then, on the evening of my twenty-seventh birthday…

 Answering the phone, after a few moments of light conversation, “Mitchie,” Marsha said, “It’s Gene.”

 “ ‘Gene’? ‘Tarnowski’?”

 “Yes.” Holding her hand over the mouthpiece. “He wants to talk to you.”

 Taking the phone from Marsha, “Gene, hi!”

 “Mitchell! Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

 “No. It’s okay, Gene. How are you?”

 “Fine, just fine… Mitch, I’ve been wanting to talk to you and thought that so long as today’s your birthday…”

 “ ‘My birthday’?” Looking at Marsha.. “You remembered,” I asked incredulously, “that ‘today’s’ my birthday?”

 “Not exactly. Your birthday’s kind of coincidental.” He laughed. “To tell the truth, I’ve got your job application in front of me and…

Thinking aboutt that phone call all those years ago, and how my life would be different if …

Next: Time Marching on #7