Erotica Artist 00: Prologue

I'm quietly fuming but manage to keep a lid on things for a few hours at least. Until the next morning when she thinks I've already left for work and through the bedroom door I hear the tail-end of a phone call.

"Bye baby, I love you!" is all I catch, but it's enough to push me over the edge.

"No need to guess who you were talking to," I yell, bursting through the door.

"Oh hon," she moans, opening her arms to me.

I'm in no mood for hugs. I stay in the doorway, my heart racing.

"What's he up to, old Charisma-boy? Still counting the hours till your next visit?"

She stares at me. Says nothing.

"I see your next trip is planned for four weeks after your last one. Were you going to tell me about this any time soon? Because this isn't what we agreed. And I tell you what: if this happens again, I'll blow this whole thing open. It won't be our dirty little secret anymore. Make sure you tell Charisma-boy that, will you, next time he's making the arrangements?"

I'm not sure what I mean by blowing this up, but lucid thought is no longer part of the equation. I'm in rave mode.

"Oh Mason, please don't threaten me. Don't I have a right to be happy?"

"You'd be happy if you left me to be with Foyle. Why don't you do it? Why are you forcing me to tolerate an intolerable situation?"

"You know why. I can't upset the girls like that. I can't turn their world upside down."

"And will you be thinking of the girls when you get on that plane next week? Will you be thinking of them when you're on your way to Foyle's bed? Stella's already asking questions about your sleeping arrangements. She's only eleven, but she's smart enough to know something's going on."

"I know. I know."

"You're not thinking of your family when you get on that plane. You're thinking of yourself. Yourself and your lover."

Tears are rolling down her face now.

"Doesn't he want it? Doesn't he want you to pack up and move down to him?"

"He doesn't want to break up a family. Not while the girls are this age. He's not an asshole."

"Just how much does he know about us anyway? It drives me crazy that he gets to hear all the intimate details of our lives."

"I don't tell him everything."

"I don't want him knowing anything! I don't want him anywhere near my kids! I don't want him introduced to them as your fucking boyfriend! I want my life to be Foyle-free! He's like a fucking malignancy in my life and I want him cut away!"

"And me too I suppose?"

"You too. You say you have to move on, that I have to let you go, but you haven't moved on, you haven't gone anywhere! You're still here! You think I'm denying you happiness, but you get angry when I offer to let you go with the kids. You want it every which way. You want a family, a boyfriend on the side, you want it all!"

"I'm sorry, Mason. I'm sorry I've made you hate me so much. I thought we had an amicable agreement. I thought you wanted out of this marriage as much as I did."

And of course she's right. I did agree to this arrangement and I too thought it would be amicable. I sensed freedom. And in a way not just from marriage, but from family life. As much as I loved my daughters there were times, especially in the long summer vacations when I had six weeks or more of caring for them by myself, of finding things for them to do and having to be there for them every waking minute, when I grew so depressed I could barely function.

After our agreement, I felt as if the trap of our marriage had been sprung at last, and even during the agonizing weeks that followed there were moments when it still felt to be the best thing that could have happened. Our marriage was dead, and the whole painful process felt like a cleansing, a purging, a way to something new and exhilarating. It was absolutely necessary, even if it was a leap into nothingness.

So why all the fuss? How can I backtrack like this? Is it because I really am in love with Kelly after all? Or if I never was in love, have I finally fallen at this late stage, when I'm fearful of losing her for good? Timing, I have to confess, has never been my strong point.

But then in all honesty I also have to acknowledge that I may need Kelly more than love her, that it's perhaps the fear of losing my family that is making me act the way I do. I'm feeling intensely vulnerable and abandoned and I need her love and support, particularly now, when I'm also still mourning the loss of my mother and a dear old friend.

Is this the essence of the renewed sexual passion, I wonder, this and the old territorial imperative? And I have to ask myself the question here, how long will this desire last if old Len disappears? It lay dormant for so long, is its renewal really perhaps just 'break-up sex?'

Kelly's long-term plan is still to go live with the guy, once the girls are grown, but will she be able to do it? It will still mean the break-up of her family and that's not something she would ever undertake lightly.

We both calm down. We have more sex. And the day of her next visit to Foyle approaches. I drive her to the airport. And as we hug goodbye she sobs into my shoulder.

"Don't leave me. Not yet. I'm not ready."

"Hey, that's my line," I quip as she walks away.

As I drive home alone I think what if she doesn't come back, what if she decides to stay with old Len? I'll really be free, my agony behind me. I'll be able to move forward on my own. To do what?

Earl the counsellor told me in one of our sessions to get myself a girlfriend. And that indeed would be a solution. But I know the chances of finding anyone compatible at my age are negligible. And, more to the point, would I really be interested in another so-called relationship at this stage? I don't think so.

Kelly herself said once she'd have no objection if I sought solace from a professional, but I still don't have the nerve for that, do I? Why not? This is my big chance for liberation. Why don't I take it?

When I mentioned this to our family doctor he said it would probably do no good, and he was right on other major issues. However, am I never to escape from my introversion, my passivity, my fear?

I have never, ever, been afraid of solitude. Most of my life, until well into my forties, I lived alone and liked it. A few casual friends were all I needed. That, and my reading, my writing, my rich interior life. My obsessions. I spent years as an introvert, isolated. I had deep inner resources. I was free.

Could I do that again? I know I could. A life lived in the imagination is not a life wasted. Limiting, in its way, but liberating also. And that has always been the goal, surely. Liberation. Release from the strictures, the deprivations of life. Freedom to indulge passions.

And passions, obsessions, are surely what make life worth living. The struggle to indulge them, with some sense of balance, one of the greatest challenges. They are the great antidote to life's discomforts, life's boredom, life's pain.

My life may have been a series of failures up to now, marital, professional, you name it, and for as long as I can remember I've struggled with a sense of limitation, deprivation, confinement, though I've certainly been comfortable, for the most part, with robust health and a solid optimism. And I have been able, at times, to indulge passion. But maybe it's time to be free of the strictures of marriage. Maybe it's time for the ultimate break-out, maybe it's time to let go and take a leap from a lifetime of quiet acquiescence and passivity into the unknown.