Erotica Artist Ch. 04: Frigid Alcoholic

I could live alone for months, for years at a time without growing overly sentimental about it, but it seemed that along with my sexual fantasy obsessions I still retained a romantic streak several fathoms deep. I would have loved simply to get laid, to be able to go out to clubs like most men my age and pick up women and go to bed with a different partner every week, if not every night. But I couldn't do this to save my life. I didn't have the looks or the charm, the banter, the confidence. I didn't have the money. As with teaching, I didn't have the calling.

And I still thought I needed more, some depth in my dealings with women. Some emotional engagement. Some romance. And so what did I do? Whom did I end up wasting my time with for the better part of a year?

Her name was Dawn Webb and she was a woman so confused, so messed up, so deranged, as to be the antithesis of all things romantic. That I got involved with her at all was testament to my bottomless ability to overcompensate after the Kirsten fiasco.

For years after that particular non-affair I would wonder at this propensity in myself. Sure I had messed up with Kirsten. She was not exactly blameless herself, maybe, but I felt deep down I was the one who had fucked up. My shyness, my passivity, my low self-esteem and lack of experience had made me a truly pathetic suitor. And my later unshakeable frigid smugness I now considered unforgiveable.

But I had been barely out of my teens at the time, drained and inert from teenage years as barren as if I'd been behind bars. Was there no statute of limitations on the guilt you had to feel over youthful folly?

Apparently not. For I allowed myself to get involved with Dawn Webb. The danger signs flashed neon from the word go, and yet I plunged ahead, as if to punish myself for what I had neglected to do with Kirsten all those years before.

Her unsuitability for me, her out-and-out weirdness, was apparent from the first evening Connie introduced her to me at the Ritz bar. On the one hand her shyness, her reserve, beguiled me, but then she answered my questions with monosyllables, if she answered them at all, and she seemed incapable of looking me in the eye. Kind of like me with Kirsten, I suppose.

Already I could hear a warning voice in my head chanting neurotic, neurotic, neurotic.

"You don't have to talk to me, you know," she said at one point, shocking me by stringing more than two words together.

"I want to," I lied.

"You'll be disappointed, I guarantee."

"Let me worry about that," I smiled. But my heart was sinking. Less than twenty minutes conversation, and already she was depressing me.

And as we walked up the block to Connie's car afterwards she pranced on ahead of us and acted like a little girl on an outing with adults. She actually paused ten feet in front of us and performed a pirouette before skipping into the deserted street to twirl two or three times more. Pirouettes in the street. And I didn't write her off right then and there.

Okay, she's just a bit tipsy and she's having fun showing off, I thought. But I couldn't help but feel also that she was as phony as she was sexy. We'd just met. We'd had a few drinks and the semblance of a conversation. Yet her childish little act gave me a real chill.

I wouldn't have given her another thought, but she became an after-work friend of Connie's and I was drawn into her company over a series of late evenings in the bar that fall and winter.

Connie had met her in one of the offices she visited on her truck route and had felt an empathy for her right away.

"She's a bit of a lost soul, I think," she explained. "Something's spooked her somewhere down the line and I suspect she needs a little tender loving care."

"You don't have me in mind for the job?" I wondered.

"Only if you feel up to a challenge. It would be work, I have a feeling. And I'm not sure it would be worth it. But she's in need of something, someone, that's for sure. She's your type physically at least. She's built like a boy."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"She has long legs, a tiny rear-end, and no tits. And she wears glasses, which you also have a fetish for, I believe. However, I'm not sure you should be basing a relationship on the fact that a woman has a terrific ass."

"Many men do."

"I think she's unstable and maybe has a drinking problem to boot."

And in truth I did not feel up to the challenge. I sensed trouble, trouble, and more trouble. But then there was that old weakness of mine, the lure that would lead me astray again and again: the sheer physical appeal of the woman. Connie had pretty much pegged it.

She was not conventionally pretty. She was angular and extremely flat-chested. But she wore her blonde hair pulled back or put up most of the time and she did indeed wear glasses, and the combination gave her a prim-but-sexy librarian appeal. Add to this a slender long-leggedness and trim behind and I early on found my resistance slipping.

Though all in all I thought her whole appearance too studied, as if she were posing for a photographer much of the time. Her look reminded me of the models I'd glimpsed in fashion magazines: one part arrogance, one part belligerence, one part catatonia.

Still, Connie said Dawn was the first new friend she'd made in some time and I had no intention of butting in. And as the weeks passed I began to see sides of Dawn that confirmed my initial impression of her.

She seemed unable to have a conversation about anything without growing petulant. She would express naive or foolish opinions and then grow sullen and irritable whenever someone disagreed with her. She would add inconsistency to irrelevance and dig herself an even deeper hole.

Feminism, close to Connie's heart at all times, was a special bugbear for Dawn. What was wrong with wanting to stay home and bake bread while your man went out to work? she wished to know. What was wrong with not wanting a career of your own?

You couldn't have light-hearted conversation with Dawn. She took everything so seriously and was quick to take offence. One of her girlfriends was seeing some Marxist-Leninist guy and for several evenings radical politics was Dawn's favorite topic of conversation. She knew very little about the subject, of course, and there was an air of desperation about her insistence on discussing it, as if this was her only way to contribute to the talk.

Of course others at the table shot her down or told her outright she was full of crap, and she grew peevish and withdrawn.

All this enough, surely, for me to avoid her at all costs. But what do I do instead? I start going out with her.

Actually, to give myself some credit, I did not make the first move. I remained as passive as ever. She phoned me out of the blue one Friday at midnight. She and her girlfriend were stuck with some creeps at the bar and they were in dire need of some intelligent conversation. She actually said this. Would I come down and rescue them?

I declined, but I did invite them to my place in the west end for a nightcap. And for once Dawn was pleasant and apparently relaxed. I only realized later just why she was that way, as I saw her bump into the door jamb on her way to the bathroom. But then who wasn't allowed to get a little drunk on a Friday night after a dull week in a suburban trucking office?

And so, for the better part of two hours I was compelled to entertain a distinctly tipsy Dawn and her squat and squalid friend Wendy, who on first glimpsing my extensive book shelves, before she'd offered a word of greeting, demanded to know where all the Russians were.

I showed her some Gogol and Turgenev, but it was not literature that interested this soulless little dervish, but politics. Where was Lenin? Where were Trotsky and Marx among all these books? Pointless of course to express disinterest in political writing in general and these authors in particular. The conversational theme was set for the evening. Especially since Dawn herself spoke very little and spent most of her visit going through my music collection and asking to hear various dance anthems.

She danced all by herself in the middle of the room, leaving me, when I wasn't listening to Wendy's witless Marxist-Leninist tirade, and often when I was, to gaze raptly at her cute gyrating ass.

It was a work of wonder, I had to admit. Maybe Connie was wrong: maybe a fellow could base a relationship with a woman purely on the fact that she had a stunning rear-end. The following week, lonesome to a point of desperation, I invited her to a concert at the Ricochet Ballroom.

The evening was a preview of the roller-coaster ride that would be my relationship with this confused and pathetic young woman for the better part of a year. She was totally aloof for the course of the concert, again answering me in monosyllables or not at all. Not until she'd downed three or four vodkas did she begin to loosen up. By then, at Dawn's urging, we had moved on to a crammed disco she knew about and a strange metamorphosis had occurred.

She'd rushed headlong from the concert with me trailing her by nearly half a block, as if she didn't want to be seen with me, much less talk to me. At one point I was about to abandon her, turn left on one of the side streets and stroll back to the tranquility of my bachelor apartment, leaving her to her fate. But for some reason I didn't. And on returning from the disco washroom she had undergone a transformation: gone was the prim librarian look and in its place was a femme fatale, all cascading blonde hair about a mouth pouting and scarlet, the eyes shadowed and heavy-lidded. The catatonic model look.

She gyrated in her skin-tight jeans under the throbbing speakers, turning often to let me see her cute little ass. I was mesmerized, and for the first time I forgot my foreboding and tried to enjoy myself. Until the walk home afterwards, that is. She was drunk enough by this time at least to stay beside me as we strolled down Robson Street into the west end. But as we paused at her request to stare into a softly lit store window, she sank suddenly onto her pretty ass on the sidewalk. She was so drunk she could not stand still and upright at the same time.

I quickly helped her to her feet and we proceeded west, but not before a group of young men had paused to stare, then step around her and move on, snickering, into the night.

"I hope I didn't embarrass you," she muttered as they walked away.

I wasn't embarrassed. I was stunned. I had never before been with anyone who had fallen down drunk in the street. That Dawn was young and attractive made it all the more surprising. What a strange one she was. Immature, irritable, not really very interesting, and on top of all this she had a drinking problem. Why was I seeing this woman? It had to be more than her golden hair and provocative ass, didn't it?

We stopped for a bite to eat at some overpriced bistro and then, without either of us suggesting it, proceeded back to my apartment. I was exhausted and a little concerned at my ability to rise to the occasion at four o'clock in the morning, but I needn't have worried. Dawn lay on the couch almost as soon as we were in the door. She turned her back to me, curled up in the fetal position, and promptly fell asleep, fully clothed.

It was a pattern that was to be repeated with minor variations in subsequent weeks, and after the sad non-affair was over, months later, I was to look back on this very first date and wonder at my lack of insight, my lack of resistance.

Though it was perhaps less faulty perception than a lack of experience and that old residual burden of guilt over Kirsten that I still labored under that allowed me to go on seeing this poor pathetic woman. For the signs were all there glaring me in the face on the very first date: Dawn was a drunk and Dawn was frigid. But of course she wasn't the only pathetic one: I was to go on seeing her for the better part of a year before breaking free.

Though this particular evening and the morning after did give me pause. She didn't want to wait for breakfast, simply used the bathroom, made her excuses, and left. So I let the weeks go by without phoning her. Did I really need a girlfriend who had to have half a dozen stiff ones before she could talk to me, much less touch me? Did I really need a girlfriend who at age twenty three could get so drunk she could fall on her ass in the street?

There was no one else in my life: that was the problem. I had no other prospects. And while I subscribed to the notion that no relationship at all was better than one that disturbed or frustrated or depressed you, I no longer found it easy to go for weeks on end without seeing anyone. And I saw Dawn if for no other reason than she was the friend of a friend, for better or worse. I would run into her at gatherings at the bar whether I wanted to or not. But the sense of unease never left me.

One evening at the bar she asked me about my plans for the future. Did I intend to go back to school? Would I ever consider teaching again? My potential as a future partner seemed to be under consideration by a frigid alcoholic.

I tried to set her mind at rest. I had no plans to return to school, I told her, and nothing under the sun would induce me to become a teacher. What I didn't say was that I wasn't interested in becoming the helpmeet and supporter of someone as profoundly unstable as herself.

And yet I continued to see her rather than be alone. And the same old pattern kept repeating itself. She was as cool and aloof as a complete stranger until she'd downed several drinks. Even then she was defensive and irritable whenever her opinions were questioned. And she continued drinking steadily, relentlessly, throughout an evening until the point where, as the old saying goes, she was feeling no pain. At which time she would begin to behave thoughtlessly, or would simply fall down in the street. I would return to our table with drinks in some disco inferno only to see her out on the dance floor with some stranger, laughing with some stranger, maybe touching some stranger.

What use her golden hair and pretty ass, I would wonder, if she never lets me touch her, if she never touches me? She may be a fragile person, desperately insecure and unhappy, and I didn't want to pressure her, but there were limits. Even I, over-compensator supreme that I was, had my limits.

We would stagger back to my apartment in the wee hours and she would promptly curl up in the fetal position on the couch, with her back to me, and fall asleep. I once managed to keep her awake long enough to hold her tenderly and kiss her. It was like kissing stone. She immediately feigned sleep and that was the end of it.

And this after an evening in which she had the gall to tell me what an "oral person" she was, another night when she'd walked half a block ahead of me, danced with other men while I was in the washroom, and later returned from the bathroom herself with her blonde hair down and her pouty little mouth painted a wet scarlet.

Sure, Dawn, you're so oral. The ice-queen is so fucking oral. I could tell by that kiss.

I voiced none of these thoughts as yet. I was on the surface so good-natured and tolerant of her coolness, her irritability, her frigidity, her alcoholism. Just how lonely, how desperate for company I must have been, I thought later, to put up with her as long as I did?

Then one evening, at the bar with Connie and my co-workers, after I'd been listening politely, I thought, to one of her endless, stupid ramblings on the joys of Marxist-Leninism, she slammed down her glass and stood up.

"Don't smirk!" she snapped, and she moved to another part of the long communal table to sit with an old friend of Connie's named Gordon, who had joined us for the first time that evening.

Connie gave me a pained, sympathetic look and moved over to keep me company. But I'm kind of frozen inside, watching Dawn smile and touch Gordon more than she's smiled or touched me in all the weeks I've known her.

I have the good sense, that particular evening, to excuse myself when Dawn, oblivious as always to any offense she may have given, suggests everyone go dancing. Not tonight, sweetie, I muse, sensing a flicker of freedom, of heart's ease, as I stroll home alone to the west end. Maybe never again, you sad, confused, deluded bitch.

For even with my huge capacity for over-compensation, I know there's something terribly wrong here. I begin to acknowledge that maybe I shouldn't be feeling this bad after each encounter with this strange, strange young woman. I should not be feeling drained, frustrated, depressed, bruised, after every date. I acknowledge that this sad non-affair must end soon, if it hasn't ended this evening. For the moment I can't foresee contacting her again. Just how many negative signs do I need, to abandon this project, I ask myself. How desperate do I have to be? I decide to stay away from the places I may run into her.

My resolve is bolstered by Connie, who continued to see her in our favorite bar during my absence. In the midst of some innocuous discussion Dawn had apparently grown defensive and irritable to the point of obnoxiousness.

"Mason, it was like being with a petulant child," Connie said. "The woman is seriously unstable, I think. Mentally and emotionally."

"It's good to hear someone else say these things," I replied. "I thought maybe it was just me."

"Mason, the woman is a basket case. And her drinking problem is acute. She needs professional help. Not that she'll get it, of course. She first has to admit she has a problem, and I suspect she hasn't even begun that process."

As if to confirm this lack of self-awareness, Dawn called me the following weekend and invited me out. And as if to confirm my own depthless ability to make allowances for insensitivity and self-absorption, I actually accepted.

I resisted for a while. I really did not want to see her, especially since she did not even mention her repellent behavior at our last meeting, much less apologize for it. But she had somehow gotten tickets to one of the Vancouver Film Festival movies I was desperate to see: Lina Wertmuller's "Love and Anarchy." Irony yet again, of course, in this particular title. And she did touch a tender spot in me, for maybe the first and possibly the last time, by shyly and hesitatingly inviting me over to the house she was living in for "a little light supper" afterwards. The suburban theater was only three or four blocks from the place.

How bad could the evening be? I asked myself. It's a movie and a quiet bite to eat in the privacy of her home. No bar. No disco hell-hole. No other men around. We would have the house to ourselves, she added. Her landlady was away for the weekend.

It turned out to be the only evening I ever spent with Dawn in which resentment, frustration, defeat and despair took a backseat to tenderness and sympathy. At least for part of the time.

She kept me waiting for nearly half an hour in front of the theater, but I met up with my old classmate Robert, from university, who stayed to talk with me until she appeared.

She arrived without a word of apology and the three of us stumbled in the dark to the last seats in the house, way down front, twenty feet from the screen. The movie was powerful and absorbing enough to make me forget my frustration, and I was no longer even upset when as the credits rolled Dawn bolted up the aisle rather than having to talk with me and Robert.

"What's the matter with her?" he wondered good-naturedly as the two of us shuffled out of the packed theater.

"I wouldn't know where to begin," I sighed.

I shook hands and parted with Robert under the garish marquee lights and looked around for my date, who was way off down the block, smoking a cigarette under a tree. And I paused for a moment, watching her through the dispersing crowd and wondering, as I caught sight of Robert running for a downtown bus, if maybe I shouldn't run along with my old acquaintance, abandon the blonde bimbo to her cigarettes and her alcohol and her sad neurosis and grab that bus for an evening of amiable male chit-chat over a couple of beers.