Erotica Artist Ch. 04: Frigid Alcoholic

Of course I didn't. I reluctantly strolled down to join Dawn for the silent walk back to her house for the promised supper. She at least stayed beside me on this particular ramble, but I didn't lose the sense of impending freedom that old friend and that bus represented. I knew I'd be taking a bus, or something, away from Dawn soon enough.

She'd actually gone to some trouble to prepare a pleasant supper for the two of us and the house was softly lit and quiet. Vivaldi played in the background. I chatted with her in the kitchen while she made some last preparations, aware mostly of how she still refused to look me in the eye, even when addressing me directly. And I felt a sudden spasm of pity for her. I was the first to admit that I had serious problems of my own, but wasn't I struggling in my own inept way to overcome them or at least gain some control of them?

Dawn's emotional hang-ups were so severe and her lack of acknowledgement so complete, that I grew fearful for her. She was such a lovely young woman, blonde and slender as a willow, with a trim little behind many women would kill for, and yet she had nothing at all. A few hours, if not minutes in her company, and both men and women would drop her.

I imagined a possible pattern of her life repeating itself over and over, till the cigarettes turned her lungs to cinder and the alcohol destroyed other organs and she was all alone in some rooming house in a sleazy section of a big city somewhere.

I knew for sure I was going to stop seeing her. Not only did I have no hope of getting laid with Dawn, I had no hope of the meanest affection. I had no hope of ever being touched, or of being looked squarely in the eye. I wouldn't be the first to drop her, and I definitely wouldn't be the last. But why wasn't she learning anything from these experiences? Why wasn't she asking herself any questions?

After our supper, myself on the couch and she on the floor halfway across the room, she did begin to talk, for the first time in my presence, about her past and her family life, as if offering me a hint that yes indeed, she had done some thinking and she did know she had major problems.

Of course by now she was into her third or fourth glass of wine and her words were flowing more freely. Though she still seemed unable to look me in the eye. Turns out it's all her mother's fault. She barely mentions her father. Her mother married when she became pregnant with Dawn's older sister, and she, the mother, always wondered if the father would have married her had she not been pregnant.

She, the mother, comes to resent the older sister as a result, and when Dawn, her second child arrives she sees in her a new beginning. Dawn can do no wrong, is doted upon, while the older sister can't do anything right. She, the mother, cautions Dawn about men and what they can do to a woman. She warns Dawn not to get involved with the wrong man.

"Was there ever a right man, as far as your mother was concerned?" I ask.

But Dawn doesn't hear, or chooses to ignore me. She's telling how her mother wants her to be the woman she never was herself. She over-protects her when Dawn is painfully shy to begin with. Dawn admits this has caused her problems, and she's never had a satisfying relationship with a man, and she's lonely and depressed much of the time. The closest she came to a regular boyfriend was some fellow named Ray back in Ontario, and her older sister, the black sheep of the family, stole him away from her.

I watched her sitting there in her misery halfway across the room. I felt like a character in a Henry James novel, a shy hero visiting the prim but doomed young heroine in her aunt's drawing room.

After a few quiet moments I moved over to join her on the floor, abandoning the Henry James mode in favor of a Henry Miller model. I began tenderly stroking her, trying to comfort her but also to let her know there was nothing to fear. She was drunk enough, as she continued her sad monologue, to let me touch her tiny breasts through her clothes. And so at last, after months and months, after countless celibate nights with her sleeping over at my apartment, like a teenage virgin on one of his first dates, I get to first base with Dawn.

Nearly thirty years old, and I'm trying not to scare a woman out of her wits as I touch her through her clothes!

Until I reach the bare flesh of her midriff and she freezes. The pathetic little high-school grope is over almost as soon as it has begun. If I went on seeing her for another miserable year, I might get as far as holding hands, or touching her, through her clothes of course, between her legs. Another year after that, maybe she'd let me slip off her bra.

I soon made my excuses and left. She seemed reluctant to let me go, but I was tired of her talk, tired of her teasing.

"This evening makes me want to write you a letter," she tells me as I move to the door.

Perfect. Just what I need. The Henry James touch yet again. I was about to turn away into the night when she asked me if we could have dinner together soon. She'd enrolled in a pre-school-care course at a college on Vancouver Island and would be leaving town at the end of the month.

So, I mused, she knew it was over even before I did.

Dinner with Dawn, even a final, farewell dinner, was the last thing I wanted, but I didn't turn her down outright. She was leaving town soon. I could almost taste my freedom. I promised to phone her and make the arrangements.

And there were frustrations for me even here, as our pathetic little non-affair died its quiet little death. I couldn't get a hold of her all the next week. Whenever I called she was out. And though I felt some relief, and rather hoped I wouldn't have to see her again at all, her neglect again rankled. She had asked me for a final dinner date and she didn't have the courtesy to return my calls.

Maybe she was busy with preparations for her departure, but such was the weird potency of my imagination, such was the depth of my insecurity, that I envisioned her out on the town with other men, with the Marxist-Leninist crowd, or with the guys from the baseball team she'd begun hanging out with during the summer.

Why should this bother me? I had to wonder yet again why I had put up with her as long as I had. Why did I wait endless minutes for her on wind-blasted street corners? Why did I stand alone in smoke-filled hell-holes watching her dance with strangers? Was I really so lonely, was I really so desperate?

Probably. Why else take her home after these hellish evenings to have her curl up in her fetal ball and feign sleep? For months I tell myself I don't want to pressure her. She's a highly-strung, delicate creature and I want to give her all the time she needs. But the woman was hopeless. She was going to be the first female I would cut out of my life forever without regret.

But of course I wasn't going to get off that easily. Dawn had one more special evening in store for me.

She contacted me at last, and arrangements were made. She was forty five minutes late and arrived in an ill-fitting, shapeless black sack of a dress that I had to pretend to like. Her usual pattern of monosyllabic response dampened most of the dinner, until she had consumed her requisite amounts of alcohol. Then the topic of conversation was Dawn and her glorious future as a day-care instructor, seasoned with pointed enquiries as to my own dubious outlook: why didn't I want to return to school? Wasn't there something I'd rather be doing than working in a warehouse and writing reviews that didn't pay me anything?

It was almost a relief to repair to the pounding disco where I didn't have to listen to her. Except that here she found other ways to make me miserable. The usual physical transformation took place, from prim librarian to writhing, painted sexpot. And whenever I returned from the washroom, or from buying drinks, she was invariably dancing with other men or deep in conversation with strangers.

I knew that this would be the last time ever that I would have to endure this, but as if to drive home the point she seemed to exaggerate even her usual rudeness and insensitivity. At one point I sat there while across the table she stayed in deep conversation with some young buck on the make, and I had to watch while she reached up to caress this fellow's cheek. Never had she performed such a spontaneous and tender gesture with me, ever, and here I was having to witness this on our farewell dinner date, when I'd chosen the restaurant with such care and tried so hard to give her a special evening.

Without disturbing her involved conversation I calmly stood up and left the throbbing inferno. I strode west gulping the fresh morning air, the ache in my belly already dissipating in favor of a deep sense of freedom. But I had only gone a block or two when I heard the clack of her heels and she was beside me. I had a sudden urge to sprint ahead of her and keep my distance, the way she often did, but I didn't have the energy.

She didn't say a word, and nor did I, till we were outside my building in the west end.

"Can I come up?" she whispered.

"Dawn, maybe we should just end this now, don't you think?"

"Can I come up?" she repeated.

I let her up, but I went silently about my business, showering and preparing for bed as if she wasn't even present. When I stepped out of the bathroom I found her lying on her back in my bed with the sheets pulled up over her breasts. She wasn't in the fetal position this time. It was the first time, the only time, that she was not in the fetal position when I went to bed. She lay with her arms spread out on either side of her, as if she were being crucified. Poor Dawn. The defenseless, blameless sacrificial lamb to the slaughter.

"Dawn, don't do this," I said simply.

"Do what?" she whispered.

"Cock-tease. Don't cock-tease anymore. I've had enough."

Now she did squirm onto her side and assume the fetal position. I stayed in the middle of the room, far away from her.

"Dawn are you an alcoholic?" I asked.

She was silent for so long I thought she hadn't heard or had fallen asleep.

"Almost," she whispered at last.

"Because that's the only way I can explain your behavior, tonight or on so many other godawful nights. I say to myself 'She's an alcoholic, or she's emotionally unbalanced, or both, and that's why she's so obnoxious.' I make excuses for you like that because it's the only way I can stand to see you again."

Sniffles from the fetal ball over by the wall.

"You're the coldest person I've ever known. You never touch me, unless you're so drunk you can't stand up, and even then you never touch me with half the warmth you touched that asshole stranger with half an hour ago."

"I just didn't want to lose you," she muttered.

"Lose me? By showing me a little warmth? By having sex with me? Dawn, by not doing those things you've lost me for sure. During the last few months, sex was the only thing that could have saved us."

Dawn in tears now, sobbing into the wall.

"You're just like all the others. You're sex-obsessed!" she cries.

"Sex-obsessed? Because I'd like to get laid once or twice a month? Christ, I'd settle for once or twice a fucking year! And you have the gall to ask me my plans for the future, as if we might have a future together. You want to know what prospects I have, Dawn? I couldn't really say. Am I not good enough for you the way I am? Just what exactly is it you have to offer? Let's see, there's self-absorption, breath-taking insensitivity, frigidity, and chronic alcoholism. Have I left anything out?"

I stopped. Why was I doing this at such a late stage? Maybe it was the crucifixion pose that set me off. Dawn offering herself at this point as some kind of virgin sacrifice.

Well, it was time for another renunciation, this one not fraught with agony, as it had been with Kirsten, but with sweet relief. No, I'd spare her the sex. I'd spare myself the prospect of sex with a frigid alcoholic, even though I was owed, big time, for what I'd been through with her the past few months. She couldn't begin to pay off what she owed me with some ice-cold offering on the night of our big farewell. In my present mood I figured the balance could not be redressed if I got a blowjob a day for the upcoming year, plus a fuck three times a week and anal sex on weekends.

She lay there very still, curled up in a ball with her back to me. I returned to the bathroom and stayed there for some time. I eventually heard the apartment door close and the distant clank of the elevator. I made no move to go after her.

I slept well and spent a lazy afternoon browsing my favorite used book and magazine shops. I brought home a fresh array of erotic material and enjoyed myself greatly.

Through all the months of wasted effort, of depression and frustration and despair, pornography had again been my therapy, my salvation. Without it I may well have gone mad. Such sweet release with no turmoil, no emotional agony. The world of print: word and picture. Where would I be without it?

Connie was sympathetic: " I don't know how you stood her as long as you did. You're way too nice. What a sad, pathetic, confused young woman. I feel so bad that I introduced you."

"It wasn't your fault. The warning signs were there from the start."

"Well don't blame yourself. You do too much of that, I think. You keep on about how passive you can be with women, but you're a person with deep inner resources, Mason. You don't need other people that much. You could live your life completely independently of others, I'm convinced of it. You could live in solitary confinement, as long as you had access to reading material."

"I have lived most of my life in solitary confinement, Connie. Once in a while I'd like a taste of something else."

Well, it was all over now, thank Christ, and my sense of relief was immense. I let Dawn go without a qualm. No more smoky bars, no more pounding discos. I could breathe again, spend my evenings alone with my music reviews, my books and my girlie magazines. Three evenings a week I relaxed in the university pool and steam room after my jog around the deserted campus. And on weekend afternoons, if I wasn't on the tennis courts by the Stanley Park Lagoon with Reed from the warehouse, who for a drug abuser was a pretty fair serve and volley man, I was out by the university playing fields, reading and writing under a tree, the only sound the click of distant cricket balls. Here I was at peace, free at last from emotional upheaval. I loved the solitude. It was as close to heaven as I could come.

But then there was also an added bonus of moving from my ninth floor studio apartment to a cool, one bedroom penthouse with a private rooftop deck. I'd gotten to know the elderly, eccentric caretaker of the building by doing the odd errand for her, and one day she let me know a top floor suite was to be vacated. The rent was surprisingly reasonable, so up I went. Instead of the stifling sweat-box of my studio I had a spacious living area with separate bedroom and fresh cross breezes from the door opening onto the deck.

I had a spectacular view of English Bay and the west side from the front windows, and a panorama of downtown and the east end from the deck. And it was all affordable on my part-time salary, since my other living expenses were so meagre. All in all that goofy little job at the warehouse was a life-saver

It was my chief connection with the real world. I enjoyed the physical therapy it provided and it did pay the bills. But I had to admit that there were times when I wondered if I was destined to spend my life shuttling flats of canned goods from place to place. Was this the limit of my professional life? Was the warehouse going to become yet another prison?