Jewish Girls Don't

Jackie Goldschneider, during an episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, stated: "Jewish girls don't give blow jobs..." Then, during a reunion show, those same housewives in the show proudly declared whether they "spit or swallow." It was a titillating discussion for many viewers I am sure, but I watched expressionless and far from gobsmacked. The topic was low level and snore worthy. 

Jackie's conclusion may or may not be true. I tend to think many Jewish girlfriends and wives do engage in fellatio and they have Jewish boyfriends and husbands who worship the goddesses to whom they are attached. 

I am also sure those same women are excellent cooks. I always believed you needed two talents in life to find and keep a man: the ability to cook and suck, and I can tell my readers straight out I severely lack both skills. I have never engaged in that popular oral activity involving male genitalia and I will never indulge in what for many women either comes naturally and is enjoyable or maybe becomes an acquired taste and then is performed nightly to please a man as a prelude to lights out. Plus, I cannot even scramble an egg.

Maybe men's penises are like compasses with magnets and they are drawn to the women who they instinctively know will willingly and eagerly indulge in sucking with no encouragement... they gravitate to and find women who inherently love it. Yum yum. No doubt, the "deep throats" rise to the top of men's most desired and wanted lists. While those women got free rides, I took rides for fun on the Staten Island ferry. 

There are some men who reply: "Well then don't expect it done to you." Who said I think I am part of some equal opportunity sexual smorgasbord? I level all playing fields and get the rules of the game. I am no dummy dick... not even a Dumb Dora.

I am happy I have my own money and dislike attachment so my shortcomings, fails, and limitations never determined my fate or made me a victim of my preferences. It was what it was and it is what it is... ver veyst. 

I realize that in general, a woman's total value by men is measured by her willingness to sexually gratify and if she is reluctant on any level she is pushed into a corner and all other parts of her that may have worth just fall away. 

No I am not a lesbian. I am a straight woman. But honestly, if Christopher Hitchens is right and "the G-spot and other fantasies have dissipated, (and) the iconic U.S. Prime blowjob is still on a throne" I suppose I sit high up alone in a peanut gallery called "the nosebleed section" where the air is thin and I need oxygen... so Jeeves, pass the smelling salts. 

To this day, in old age, I still ponder if my solitude and single status was a lifestyle which I grew to love because of my choices or: if I was a cocksucker, would I still have chosen to be alone at the end of every day? This is a bizarre mystery in terms of correct personal historical sequencing and an individualized life map. 

The weight of a man, though desired, has always been a long wait perhaps because of the fact that I have always been trapped by my obstacles. In a way, obstacles did determine my life. I am my obstacles. 

It seems now set in stone somehow that I follow the pattern of living a quiet internal life. I understand perfectly why I chose so many roads less traveled and adjusted even more particularly and firmly into a lifestyle and then as the days grew shorter I settled into the same old same old: perhaps considered a red lighted life. These were not road blocks or boundaries I chose to set up, my intrinsic features defined me as clearly as any other personality characteristics but presented as barriers so now as I write this I do believe I accommodated my life to live in a comfort zone into which I was pushed. The life I carved out became the only way I could live because an unwilling indulgence in blowjobs determined my life's trajectory and course. Nothing else mattered or matters: not the ability to care, not loyalty or devotion within friendship, not emotional involvement, and not even love that could grow to deeper and more meaningful love. Nothing. 

Anyway: along life's way, I collected "crushes" like Nicole Kidman collects coins. There was Bobby, Pete, Bob, Paul, Richie, Buddy, Paul number two, John, Andy, Jake, and Jack... the list goes on and on.  

Richie was a severe crush at C.W.Post College... a guy who looked like Paul Newman but a guy who never gave me a side glance. I longed for him within the most intense limerence I ever experienced. I can still smell the Yardley perfume I wore to the Strathmore Bar in Manhasset where I knew he would be one cold snowy night in December.  

Several years ago, I grew bold and tracked down Richie who was living in a suburb of San Diego. There was no specific purpose in my call, except perhaps to just let him know what I was too shy to tell him decades ago. It was sort of my present older self living within some bizarre time travel moment attempting to go back to the past to try to do a reveal and then in the present bring a memory to closure. So... we had a nice conversation on the phone in which I confessed my infatuation with him from decades ago and he seemed to enjoy the light banter. He told me he would soon be in New York City and added that he would call and we could meet. I looked forward to a nice night. 

Roses are red and violets are blueish, 

When will Marjorie stop being so foolish? 

In any event, a few weeks later he arrived in New York City and called. After about ten minutes on the phone he said: "So how about if I come over and you cook me a nice meal and for dessert you can finally give me that blow job?" 

© Marjorie J. Levine March 22, 2023

Paradise in Shades of Green and Orange

I awakened with a start and wanted to see paradise:

I thought eyeballing a different view would be nice.

I knew where to go, I knew what I wanted to see

These days it does not take much to create a happy me. 

So I gazed at a town that resembled Willougby to me

And as I looked and looked I saw what I needed to see.

I saw a brick road covered in orange leaves after months of green

And when I saw a magical street light I knew this was my scene!

I packed my bags and waved bye to neighbors and locked up my place 

And soon I settled in to a quiet new town that I called my space.

Now this poem should not be considered sad… 

So do not be mad.

I wanted to create a happy poem for my readers and friends

After all, I am Yetta… and everything I do has to have laughing ends.

CODA:

I went to the doctor today

And she did not have much to say.

She diagnosed me with Limerence and suggested help

“What? And cure myself of magical thinking and end with a welp?”

Marjorie J. Levine © March 21, 2023

Arthur Garfunkel and me at CAPRI

 

In the 1950s, the best place to spend the summers were the Long Island beach clubs built along the shores stretching from Atlantic Beach to Lido Beach. There was El Patio, the Colony, the Sands, and Malibu and .... Capri. My family rented a cabana at Capri with two other families for several summers until we moved to a few fancier beach clubs further east. 

I adored those lazy carefree summers of long ago. My mother would sit all day and play mah jong or canasta... and there she is in the black bathing suit on the right of the photo above. 

There were three huge swimming pools which everybody used as toilets. I know that to be a fact because nobody even knew where the rest rooms were. There was a snack bar which at 2 PM all the kids stormed to get ice creams and other sweet delights. There was a theater which presented plays featuring famous actors. And there were "teen clubs" (for the over eleven year olds) where we could go to dance the lindy and flirt with the cute boys. I actually preferred to fantasize about the cabana boys, and when one summer in late June I left Long Island for 2 months to attend a performing arts summer camp up on Martha's Vineyard... I can tell you I missed Dave the cabana boy more than my own parents.

Anyway, for two summers at Capri we shared that cabana with the Lowensteins and the Garfunkels. At that time, I was addicted to American Bandstand, so when my Dick Clark Yearbook arrived, I would lay on one of the chaise lounges and read it over and over and over, avidly consuming everything I could about Justine and Bob or Arlene and Kenny. 

I paid no attention to the teenager on the other chaise lounge right next to me. He was aways falling asleep on it and he was not very talkative and seemed to prefer the sound of silence. What a bore that Arthur Garfunkel was. 

Those summers of so long ago have fallen away and so much is gone. I sometimes think of this beautiful young dark haired girl, who was mischievous back in those days, and she told a group of us to follow her to the back part of the cabanas. She had a black marker in her hand and she scrawled in script on a plain and empty wall: "Mary Bard was here." And she was. So were we all.

A SIDE GLANCE

HAIKU

Yesterday is still

Inside me like a new view

I hold on tightly

1976

from ROAD TRIPS, poems

KIDDIE RIDES

I awakened and longed with desperation

To return to Brooklyn.

I wanted to ride until dawn on a creaky

Ferris wheel left behind by a carnival and

To visit the still standing luminous

Chartreuse home of my grandmother.

Memories behind stained glass windows

Beckoned like some naked amnesiac

Who struggles to reach home.

In the air, I could still smell the full bodied scent

Of burnt potato pancakes that wafted through that

House and I often glimpsed the ghosts of ancestors

Lurking and sucking juice from the backyard peach tree.

I longed with desperation to return to old Brooklyn.

At 5 P.M. I slipped into my car

And drove south through Manhattan.

The pink sun soon sizzled on the Hudson River

And set, to my right, in bright blazing Technicolor.

In the distance, one kittiwake

Seemed to have found the way.

I headed for the elixir of the spinning

Teacups: the kiddie rides at intoxicating

Coney Island... in the most haunted and

Haunting of places: Brooklyn.

Marjorie J. Levine © 1991

photos courtesy of Frederick Piccarello

LIMERENCE 1

Why am I feeling all this great emotion?

Perhaps I am thinking of poor Mary, 

Moving away after so long living

In a quietly familiar and convenient place. 

Mary, audibly rocking and rocking in the 

Same chair above me as she aged into invisibility…

And soon I too will leave this same place.

For how long did I live with illusions, 

Locking away all transitory possibilities 

And realities and choosing instead to 

Dwell inside mercurial fantasies and 

Interior delusions and then grounding a still life?

Now the fading obstacles hardly matter.

The grey heavy details carved and set in stones 

Have been kicked away by newer shades 

Of sharp pastels that do not even belong 

To me in my particular smallness.

Fog is moving in from the Hudson River,

Passing over yesterday and all the 

Layered stories and everything 

That came… before.

Marjorie J. Levine © March 18, 2023

TWO POEMS FROM ROAD TRIPS

from ROAD TRIPS, poems

SHIPWRECKED

I remembered the silence within the 

One turn… the turn at the corner that I 

Believed would flatter my possibilities

And point me in a different direction.

But at the end of each day, I crossed the 

Finish line at no particular extraordinary 

Place: I was suspended in space where a 

Past hardly mattered, where on new days 

I bent to the bricks on roads that struggled 

To keep me going. 

 

All avenues had narrow lanes

With no wiggle room and allowed for 

No deep different dives.

So I went this way, went that way

Many times knitting elixirs 

In grey attics so I could

Navigate bridges

Drive through a tunnel

Take a train passing a river

Live in solitary confinement 

Or get lost at sea and not feel abandoned.

When I reached the end, I finally 

Understood nothing mattered:

Not my angers, not the songs I sang 

Or my spoken words, or my written words 

Scrawled like graffiti on the toilet wall. 

It was only the distant sound of 

A lover’s heart still beating

That always should have 

Brought me home. 

Marjorie J. Levine © 2020

THE WAY HE LOOKED AT HER

I have lived my entire life

Within my own head, consumed 

With possibilities but never catching 

That brass ring.

I went close to so many rocky borders

But never took chances 

Or crossed any dangerous lines. 

I danced with strangers at sock hops

And later passed through 

Usual stages:

I dated this guy, went out with that guy,

Picked up guys at bars,

Wore boyfriend shirts,

And as the decades rolled by

I clung to unusual stages:

Developing crushes on men 

Who did not even give me a side glance.

I rolled along this way or that way

And let time pass quickly under

No remarkable relationship umbrella. 

It was just the way it was:

Some just fall through 

The romance cracks. 

But as I aged, my pages

Were showing sharper glimpses of 

What eluded me. 

The strong wind knocked something

Over and when I looked through the 

Window and saw under a street light

The way he was looking at her, 

I realized life had passed me by. 

Marjorie J. Levine © 2020

STORM

Wednesday: 

It was a perfect storm

On a particular almost desolate highway.

The curves in the grounded road were often 

Filled with traffic but on stormy days, 

Sometimes not.

There was a sudden present on one day

One hard rainy day when water filled the air

In moments that gathered and pushed to

A new present with water and visible 

Angled lightning that passed in the rear view.

One life, that on most stripped down days

Barely mattered to many or oddly even any,

Turned and that dusk was carved into memory. 

On that day, it was a blurry remarkable 

Occurrence that happened in almost

Darkness, when the grey ripples 

Of thunder in the air parted and 

Forced her to listen to nothing. 

But she remembered,

She remembered… to slow down. 

And then with no warning,

A rapid appearance startled. 

And right, moving to left, 

From one side to the other side

Two old bent strangers with 

No umbrellas, but holding hands… 

Crossed the road.

© Marjorie J. Levine 2021

FAN ART