Erotica Artist Ch. 02: Romance and Renun

But was she pissed off because I took so long to ask her name, or because I had the gall to ask her name when she already had a boyfriend? But how was I to know she had a boyfriend, given her behavior for the past couple of months? And if all this time she's been going steady, just what was she doing acting interested and available? How could I have misread a situation so completely? It seemed I knew absolutely nothing about real women. They are a complete mystery to me. Yes, they were an alien species. ("I don't even know you!") Yes, they were the enemy.

I thought suddenly of Nick and how effortless were his dealings with women. But it's all beyond me. All I really know is that I won't be going out on a first date with the Nordic goddess that evening after all.

And for the next few classes I sit as far away from her as possible. I just can't face her. I don't want to have to look at her. After class I bolt from the room and rush back to residence rather than have to see her. Or I wait and wait in my seat till I'm sure she's gone.

Except that a classmate from my History course who's in the same Psyche section has taken to sitting beside me in the old area of the auditorium. Robert and I have struck up a modest friendship and from time to time we exchange notes if either of us has missed a class.

By the middle of the second week I venture back and sit beside Robert. I find myself in the row behind Kirsten, one seat over. And somehow she knows. She slowly, deliberately turns in her seat to face me without self-consciousness, without embarrassment.

But I can't look at her. A lovely girl turns to stare at me, in search of a look, a smile, a hello, a response of some kind. And I can't even meet her eyes. Almost twenty years old and I can't even muster a smile for a beautiful co-ed who obviously wants just to get to know me. A smile that would have made all the difference in the world to my life, and to hers too, perhaps.

Not too much to ask, that, is it? A smile, a look of some kind? But I can't do it. So serious, so frightened, so repressed. I stare down at my notes, a demure damsel in no small distress.

This happens on one or two more occasions when I'm sitting nearby in back of her: the deliberate turnaround to search my face, and my demure, downcast eyes.

Then there's nothing for maybe a week, and I wonder if she's given up on this hopeless case. She seems subdued, thoughtful. Till one day I enter class to find her already turned around in her seat, her eyes searching my face. I'm reminded of the challenge in her look the first time our eyes met: Are you man enough to approach me? I imagined her thinking.

Now what's going through her mind? Are you man enough to make a play for me even though I have a steady boyfriend and I've snubbed you once already and you're going to have to make one-sided conversation till Christ knows when?

No, I sense no such thing. She's puzzled and pensive, if anything. But my response is just the same. I avert my eyes in panic. I don't think deliberately about this and conclude I will no longer look at her, no longer talk to her. There is no volition involved. I'm simply too frightened and too disheartened to function. I try to act spontaneously and this is the result.

I wondered sometimes why I was the one acting in an embarrassed and shamefaced manner. Why wasn't it the other way round? I wasn't the one making eyes at a stranger behind the back of a girlfriend. Yet Kirsten seemed completely at ease with herself.

She never tries to speak to me. When she leaves class before me and I follow at a distance, she never stops and waits, never shows any desire to offer a word of explanation or comfort or outrage. She seems simply to want to establish eye contact, to smile perhaps.

But I don't feel like smiling. It's the last thing I want to do. I'm confused and humiliated. I'm disappointed, discouraged. I'm ashamed of myself for my blunder, and of her for her insensitivity.

In no small way I'm shocked. There's an innocence still intact in me, in that romantic heart of hearts that's completely separate from my sexuality. I can't conceive of anyone committing to "go steady" with someone and then encouraging someone else, however innocent that encouragement might be. And is it ever really innocent? Does anyone in their teenage years seriously encourage someone of the opposite sex just so they can be friends?

Maybe Nick thought so, but as far as I could see, there could only be one reason someone nineteen years old encourages anyone, and it had very little to do with friendship.

I kept thinking of the boyfriend. I couldn't help it. Did the poor son of a bitch have any idea what his girlfriend was up to? Such a moralist I am in spite of my sex-obsessed imagination. So empathetic. I hate so see some guy I don't even know betrayed.

For that was part of the reservation here too. I couldn't bear the thought of betrayal, even when it might be to my own advantage. Such a romantic: I'm shocked at disloyalty. And this is also partly why I can't respond to her any longer in even the simplest way. I don't trust her with my delicate feelings. I don't trust her judgement in anything at all. And in my intense need for self-defense, I withdraw from her and retreat into my mute and passive state once more.

And it's easy to do. She isn't the least aggressive. She glances at me from time to time, she continues to use the same lonely exit from the Psyche Building. But she never, ever approaches me or tries to talk to me. She remains as passive as I.

I sense her growing maybe more pensive by the day. My heart goes out to her. My heart aches. But still I can't respond. I have nothing to say.

"How about hello?" I think, much, much later. "Would it have killed you to mouth a simple hello?" But no, it isn't happening.

The psychologists call this behavior passive-aggressive, I learn from my Psyche text book. Well, fuck the psychologists. I'm not about to let my precious feelings become any more deeply engaged with someone I don't trust.

What's really odd about all this though is that I'm still besotted with her. I can't stop thinking about her and my heart pounds every time I'm near her. I yearn for her and long to blurt out "I'm nuts about you! I love you!" Yet I remain mute. I can't speak to her to save my life, and this could be what's at stake here.

So many questions. So much to consider. Suddenly I'm Hamlet. Why should I care what her motives are? Why should I care about the boyfriend? Why can't I just jump in there and talk to the girl?

Imagination. Fearful imagination. I imagine betrayal, hurt, danger. Why can't I just accept what's obvious, that a lovely girl is interested, wants to know me. But I have to analyze, imagine the worst. Is this still my father's legacy, his negativity, or just my own perfervid imagination? Are they the same thing?

Whatever it is, I'm frozen, though I know in a matter of weeks I may never see her again. My phone call to her was my first act of volition with a real live girl after years of hopeless passivity. It took every last ounce of will-power. It was for me a monumental act. I was so sure I was on solid ground at last. This time I would succeed and get the girl.

But once I hung up that phone I was out of juice. Empty. Deflated. In shock maybe. Yet what do I do, neurotic that I am? I watch her from a distance, when I'm sure she's unaware of me. I plant myself near the bookstore window when I know she'll be passing along the street below on her way back from lunch. I haunt secluded corners, my lifelong habit, where I can glimpse her unobserved. And worst of all, most pathetic of all, I drive over to West Vancouver, far, far across the Lion's Gate Bridge, simply to cruise by her house and see where she lives.

This I'm most ashamed of, and I do it at the deadest hours of the night, when I know I won't encounter her. I just want to feel her presence, be near her somehow, since I can't do it in any normal, healthy way. And so at three or four o'clock in the morning I'm cruising the lane in back of her house, yards from where she is sleeping, just as I did years ago in Beaver Falls with poor Martina.

This is growing creepy and I know it. I think of Thomas Mann's Aschenbach in the story I've just read, skulking about the pestilent alleys of Venice in pursuit of his beautiful Tadzio without ever speaking. But this isn't the death of an aging aesthete pining for his Adonis in old Europe. This is life and youth and health and longing in a fresh and beautiful city of the New World.

Well, health of a sort: I'm fully aware of my own neuroticism. But I keep it up until after classes are over and the examinations are upon us. Then one Saturday night on a strange whim I drive over to West Van. yet again, this time to catch a movie at the Park Royal Twin Theaters. I sit in the back row to the right of the entrance and almost immediately, as if I had willed it, she steps in with her boyfriend. I watch them stroll two thirds the way down the crowded theater, my heart galloping. I'm unsure she's seen me. I hope not. I feel caught out. Embarrassed beyond measure. I'm dateless and solitary in her neighborhood on a Saturday night. I don't need the humiliation of being spotted.

Two minutes after she's settled in her seat, though, she comes back up the aisle, alone, and heads out to the lobby. She doesn't look in my direction, but somehow I'm sure she knows I'm there. She's gone maybe five minutes, ample time for me to follow her, accost her, say something to her, finally, before the year is over.

I don't move. And she reappears and takes her seat next to her boyfriend, whom, I suddenly realize, I haven't paid the slightest attention to. It's impossible to concentrate on any movie now, of course, and as soon as it begins I leave the theater.

I drive by her house one last time, lunatic that I am, and then head back over the Lion's Gate, telling myself with every mile that it has to be over now. I've seen her with her boyfriend, though I couldn't recall a single feature of the guy, couldn't even tell you if he was short or tall. I have seen her as part of a couple. What more do I need? Do I want to be accused of stalking her? This has to be the end.

But of course it isn't. The term is over, the exams are finished. I ache with loneliness and longing. And I'm sure I'll never see her again. And yet - and this is one of the weirdest occurrences of my life - one lunch hour I'm alone in my room when I feel some kind of subtle vibration. That's the only way I can describe it.

I leave the residence and walk the three hundred yards or so to the Psychology Building. I feel something magnetic pulling me. I start toward the main entrance to the massive glass and concrete structure and as I move up the steps I spy a figure in the foyer, standing beside a pillar.

There are other people around, sitting on benches, waiting for friends, but she's the only one I see. And as our eyes meet it's in apparent slow-motion that I veer ever so slightly in a new direction. I don't enter the building after all but angle beside it now, along the concrete apron outside.

Through the glass we stare at each other as if we are total strangers, which of course we are. There are no smiles, just two neutral stares. I don't know it at the time, but these blank looks are the last we will ever exchange. This was our goodbye.

And in what seems like an hour, but is only a few seconds, I'm on my way back to my lonely room, wondering if there is any hope for me at all in this life.

And so I complete the biggest blunder of my lost teenage years, the climactic mistake of my wasted youth: I distance myself from a lovely young woman who simply wanted to get to know me. I turn down an invitation that would have made all the difference in my empty life, if only I'd had the guts to accept it.

And after such a promising beginning. My prep. work had been superb. My aloof and indifferent act had worked better than I ever could have imagined. Not only had I succeeded in making a stunning young beauty notice me, I'd gotten her to give me the greenest of green lights.

And I'd lost my nerve. The shock of the boyfriend set me reeling. Though even then she was primed, ready and willing, it seemed, to try something new, if only I'd chosen to act. And I couldn't do it. Though I sensed my coldness was making her unhappy. One word from her, one word, and I would have melted. But I couldn't offer her a word, a smile, a concession of any kind, no not though I was going through the miseries of hell myself and would continue to do so.

What was this grotesque renunciation all about? My feelings of inferiority, unworthiness, guilt, bequeathed me from day one by my old dad? I don't deserve this girl? I don't merit such happiness? No one so beautiful could ever be seriously interested in me? Probably.

Some weird form of sadism perhaps, a desire to inflict pain on someone I felt had behaved badly? Possibly. Did it have much to do with my intense romanticism, and the notion that loss and despair are more interesting, more appealing, than consummation? Surely not.

Was pride part of the problem? Sure. Stubbornness? Of course. Shock and resentment? Most definitely. But mostly just fear itself. Sheer terror and lack of guts. Simply having no idea what to say, what to do, and so doing nothing.

A gorgeous young woman giving me the eye every time I came near her, and I look away! What a hopeless, prim little ass! So what if there was a steady boyfriend? She didn't seem to give a fuck, why should I? Where was my daring, my sense of adventure? Wasn't this the opportunity I'd worked for and longed for? The girl was throwing all restraint, all decorum overboard. She was acting on pure heart. Why couldn't I do the same?

Instead my one act is one of renunciation. I will not be the first to speak! It has to be her! I'm too outraged. She has to make the next move, and it has to be more than a coy look!

To throw such a gift away at such an age. Not to realize you'd regret it for the rest of your life. The profligacy of youth indeed. It didn't even matter that there was a huge gulf between us, that she was young and beautiful beyond measure and she was from the well-off family living on a tree-lined street a few hundred yards from the ocean in one of the richest suburbs of the country, in one of the loveliest cities in the world, with a boyfriend from the same neighborhood with perhaps a career all mapped out, while I had no future plans and nothing but an inferiority complex big enough to bury me.

All that mattered was that she was flashing that green light! She was offering something. And I, smug little prat that I was, so proud, so immature, so repressed, so fucked up, and about to lose something so precious, something I would regret the loss of to my dying day, couldn't even say hello.

And I would pay the price for this renunciation. Yes indeed. Years later, browsing in the downtown library I would find myself poring for hours over city directories and phone books, searching in vain for her name, an indication she was still alive. Not to get in touch, of course, just to feel some connection. Or jogging around the university in the eighties I would pass the Psychology Building, gaze into the glass paneled foyer and feel still a raw pang of regret.

Kirsten would be the last woman for years to reciprocate a real interest in me. Such a chance would not be repeated. For years to come my so-called love life would be beset by a series of pathetic neurotics and would lead through hell-holes so dire, so overflowing with misery, that I would yearn for Kirsten all the more.

There would be more blunders to come, many of them, steps in the wrong direction that many a callow youth could have avoided. But none to compare with this, as I looked back on it so many years later. None to compare with this.

I would have a lifetime in which to go over what might have been: the sweetness of the few quiet conciliatory words I never offered, the warmth of a smile, a touch, a kiss. What might have been, at age nineteen or twenty, has an almost unbearable poignancy, I was to find, at age forty five or sixty. As does the notion that you caused someone pain.

And I would learn more about the limitations, the entrapment, of romantic fantasy. At age twenty I was in thrall to such delusions. It would be the struggle of my life to break free of them, and the pangs of guilt and remorse that went with them.

Decades later, of course, it's easy to see such youthful experiences in clear perspective. She was a nineteen-year-old shopping for her life's partner. Going steady, as the phrase is, yes, but not engaged, not totally committed, not married. And suddenly curious about a new option.

And myself, a year older, after a teenage-hood of utter deprivation, staggering under an inferiority complex of anvil-like weight? What did I have to offer, compared to a high-school sweetheart from her wealthy neighborhood? What career plans did I have beyond a vague desire to write? Economics. Does it all come down to economics?

Maybe economics and courage. Kirsten didn't seem to be overly serious about her steady boyfriend. She was still shopping. But it would maybe take someone confident or aggressive to pay her court. And I was none of those things.

I later wondered why I never talked over any of this with Nick, man of the world. But I guess I knew what he would say. He would talk about friendship, and getting to know someone before anything romantic or sexual could develop. He would stress how most attractive people are already attached to someone, and if you wanted to get anywhere you had to come to know them first. All eminently practical and sensible. None of which would help me, because I didn't want to be friends with Kirsten. I couldn't bear the thought of trying to get to know her while she was going with someone else. I would have been deaf to practical advice. I was in love. Or thought I was.

What I needed was someone to yell at me "You're going to regret this for the rest of your days, asshole! Don't let her disappear from your life forever! Do something!"

But the closest I came to hearing this in those dark days was a word or two from dear old dad, of all people. Obtuse in matters of emotion to an almost religious degree, my father nonetheless was able to read between the lines of a series of unhappy letters I wrote home and say simply: "Talk to her. Speak to the girl." It was the only decent advice I could recall ever receiving from dear old dad. But while I was being oh-so-true to my father's legacy of guilt, blaming myself for my silence and the total breakdown of a potential dream relationship, I was unable to heed this simple paternal advice.

Instead I begin a journal, full of sad little aphorisms I pick up in my reading: "Remorse poisons the existence," and "Suffering is the origin of true consciousness," and "Life begins on the other side of despair." I wonder if an entire life could be changed by one little detail like not speaking to someone because you're scared out of your wits. I hope not, but I suspect so.

Would I have availed myself of any guidance had it been available? No. I was too much the secretive, repressed loner. And my Psychology course had obviously taught me nothing to help deal with any of this.

Decades later I was to come across an article in Scientific American, of all things, while in a dentist's waiting room, all about the teenage brain, and how the limbic system which drives emotions intensifies at puberty, but the prefrontal cortex, which controls impulses, does not mature until the twenties. As young people mature cognitively certain functions make them more likely to choose larger, longer-term rewards over smaller, shorter-term ones. So much wisdom, so many years too late.