Erotica Artist Ch. 06: Blue Detour

While my imagination was liberating me and saving my life in the most basic of areas, it was also setting me up for incarceration in another. In spite of Kirsten, in spite of Dawn Webb, in spite of my sacred litmus test, I must still have retained some absurd belief in the great romantic deception. Deep down I must have still hoped that devotion to one person could transform a life. Why else did I commit this next monumental blunder?

When a real live woman attracted me enough - and this was a decidedly rare occurrence - it seemed I could not help but make an effort, no matter how hopeless the prognostication. The more hopeless the prognostication, in this case, the more strenuous my efforts. It was as if, all these years after Kirsten, I was still compensating for my lack of action in that first and last great teenage non-romance. And it was as though the Webb disaster had never occurred. Though in setting my sights on Varina Hicks I thought I had found someone as unlike Dawn as possible.

Here was someone older, more mature and stable and serious in every way. And as I began to piece together my fragile first impressions of her, almost as if I was sketching her into a Jamesian story, words like modest, and demure, and even pristine came to mind. And most crucial of all in this post-Dawn phase of my life, sober, in all its implications.

She didn't have Dawn's trim little ass, I noticed, veering once again from James to Miller mode, but she didn't have the flat chest either. Her hair was long and slightly unkempt, and her rather plain face, totally free of make-up, had something tense and worn about it. So much for the contrast with Dawn. But there were similarities I should never, ever have ignored.

First off, she was glacially cool. She never offered me so much as a hint of encouragement. She never looked me in the eye or even said hello, at least to begin with. How could I overlook such fundamentals after my year-long enthrall to a frigid alcoholic? And did I really expect someone so aloof to be interested in a hardcore pornographer, should she ever consent to give me the time of day? Where was my foolproof litmus test during this whole lead-up to disaster? For some reason I didn't use it with her. She seemed too sensitive. What a mistake.

So I allowed myself to grow interested in Varina and what glaring gaps there were in her encouragement I let my imagination fill. She was just shy and lonely, I told myself, and all she needed was the warmth and tenderness of a fine fellow such as myself in order to open up like a Spring blossom.

A month or so earlier she'd started working in the front office of the warehouse and I would see her in the labyrinth of hallways connecting the administration area to the loading dock. Or I'd come across her reading all alone in the lunchroom. What attracted me initially was her reserve and what I sensed was her vulnerability, but most of all her mystery. She was so secretive. I could learn virtually nothing about her from co-workers or from Connie.

"She's unattached, that's all I know," Connie told me. "Why, do you want me to tell her you're interested?"

"Please no. I don't want to upset her."

"Maybe she needs upsetting. Maybe she needs shaking up."

"I don't want to shake her up Connie."

All I wanted, at this stage, was to find out more about her. To solve some of the mystery of the woman. Why was she so aloof? Why was she still unattached? Was she just overly shy or overly fussy? Was she too sensitive? Too vulnerable? I wondered about the men she must have known. Had someone really hurt her?

It was an immature, teenage kind of interest and I knew it. But I couldn't help myself. It had been a long time since my tender emotions had been aroused.

I was keeping a regular journal again now and writing a mixture of egocentric delusion, understatement, and, it turned out, chillingly accurate speculation:

"She seems fearful of involvement, and I may have to do all the work myself. It's going to take a huge effort, with not much in return. To reach her I'm going to have to be patient and resourceful. And I've no idea if any of this will be worth it. It's like the start of the Dawn Webb fiasco, in a way. I wonder if I'm setting myself up for another horror show."

No kidding! What on earth was I thinking? Had I learned nothing? I look back on notes like these as if I'm eavesdropping on a fourteen-year-old.

"Send her some flowers," Connie suggested. "I never met a woman yet who doesn't love to get flowers."

"From someone she doesn't even know?"

"She'll get to know you if you send her flowers. It'll work like a charm."

But of course it didn't work like a charm. Against my better judgement, like some hapless teenager yet again, though not without a quiver of anticipation after the long weeks of being ignored, I did indeed send her flowers. I signed my name, told her where I worked, and added, simply, that I would like to get to know her.

How much more in thrall to romantic delusion could I have been? Flowers! Little notes! To someone I hadn't exchanged a word with! To someone who could not have shown a more total disinterest!

I was about to approach her and introduce myself next day when I spied her all alone in the lunch room, but as I moved toward her she rose quickly and left. Not a good sign.

I let several days pass, unsure what to do next. When it was simply sex that interested me, as with Nicole, I had no trouble. Allow romance into the equation and I was baffled. I felt like some teenage clodhopper in the presence of a refined older woman, though she was probably a year or two younger than me. Her reserve and maturity intrigued me even while my frustration mounted.

For the coolness continued. If anything it increased. Up to now I had sometimes gotten a mumbled response to my hellos on the rare occasions I passed her in the hallways or out on the loading dock. Now she ignored me completely and I felt real misgivings.

"Whatever is bothering this woman," I wrote, "it's bigger than both of us."

Yet on the same page I could write: "She's not beautiful, and there's an austerity or a purity or something about her that forces people to keep their distance. It's a huge part of her appeal. I think we would bring out the best in each other."

Austerity and purity! This from a guy whose last connection with a female had him masturbating onto her face! Still, I had to acknowledge that all the signs were bad, and Connie agreed.

"No response to the flowers, huh?" she said. "You're going to have to talk to the woman. I know you don't want to upset her, but at least find out what the score is here. You're way too sensitive to other people's feelings sometimes, you know?"

"I thought that's what women wanted. Sensitivity."

"Some rare birds, maybe. Most women I know seem to go for aggressive, take-charge types."

"Insensitive assholes, you mean."

"Yes. Like my ex-husband Jerry. Listen to me. I'm recommending you be more like my ex. What am I doing? At least find out if she knows you're the one sent her the damn flowers. If she does, and she's acting cooler than ever, maybe it's time to pack it in."

I could no longer take the tension anyway. Better to risk an abrupt rejection. Then at least I could forget her and move on.

Friday evenings she always worked late and since I had the night off I drove down to the warehouse and waited for her out front, my insides churning. As I watched her leave the building alone I again felt like some lone stalker of the night. I recalled watching Kirsten from a distance on campus, unable to say a word to her. I remembered skulking past Martina's house in Beaver Falls at five in the morning, knowing there was no chance of seeing her, much less speaking to her.

Well, I was determined to speak this time. I stepped from the car while she was still thirty yards away and waited. And she actually continued to approach once she caught sight of me. To my immense relief she even smiled and spoke first.

"Are you Mason?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer: "Thank you. That was very nice of you."

It takes me a moment to realize she's referring to the flowers I'd sent days earlier.

"Yes, I wondered about that," I mutter.

"Because I didn't say anything?"

"Because you made it hard for me to say anything."

Silence. Then like a teenager asking for his first date I stumble on.

"Will you come have a drink with me?"

There's the inevitable delay, the expected hesitation, then some barely audible mumbling.

"I'd like to talk," she admits, "but I don't want to complicate your mind."

Complicate my mind? How could she possibly complicate my mind any more than it's complicated already? My mind, my emotions, are so complicated already I need her to un-complicate them.

"Let me worry about that," I offer gallantly. "Come for a drink and explain to me how you could possibly complicate my mind."

"You know what I mean," she says, offering me another dazzling smile.

Such warmth, such friendliness, after weeks of sullen reserve. Is this another Dawn Webb-like transformation? Say it isn't, please, I silently plead. Though I'm suddenly so chilled with premonition that all I see are the buttons on her raincoat.

"I'm not sure that I do," I murmur.

The smile fades.

"I'm not interested in romance," she states, her gaze frank and unwavering.

For one wild second I think of yelling "Me either, baby, me either!" But this was no Nicole I was dealing with.

I pause. There's a moment's silence while everything hangs in the balance and I realize that this is a perfect chance to back out and let the whole thing go. But I seem to have come so far already. I hesitate for only a second.

"I just want to know you better," I declare.

And this I proceed to do, in spite of my misgivings and flashes of premonition. At least she's honest. At least she's frank, I tell myself. Unlike Webb, who teased and led me on for months without giving me anything but misery and frustration. I feel a strong sense of relief that we've at least gotten this far, when there were times I doubted we ever would.

We go for drinks. We go for dinner. And early on I learn that her father died when she was very young and her relationship with her mother is strained and distant. She, Varina, not the mother, pan-handled on the streets of Paris in the sixties after having some kind of breakdown, the cause of which she doesn't go into. Though there is mention also of an old flame from the same period: a French fellow who had a book published before he was twenty and had lived with an older woman for two years. He made her feel like a child, she tells me, and already I sense the sands shifting beneath my feet.

Here I am in my thirties and I'm working part-time at a menial job in a food warehouse. All I've had published are music reviews and pornography. And I've never had a single successful relationship with a woman. How can I compete with such a ghost from the past?

And this isn't all. She confirms my early premonition by telling me she has a "secret."

Already I'm overwhelmed and exhausted by tales of her past and she's barely begun. What am I getting into here?

But again I tell myself she's just being honest with me. She's just being frank. She doesn't want me to be laboring under any misconceptions, which is exactly what Webb did have me laboring under. I admire her courage in being able to talk so openly about painful occurrences in her past. She must trust me to some extent already, I tell myself, to reveal so much so soon. Though she concludes with the comment: "I'm a very frightened person."

Then just as we're getting to know each other she leaves for Europe with her mother for six weeks. Why she's doing this with someone she has strained and distant relations with I don't bother to ask.

She quits her job in the warehouse office rather than negotiate a leave of absence. On the eve of her departure she asks me if I think she should look up her old flame "just as a friend." He's married now and living in London. I don't know what to tell her. Already I feel out of my depth. Again. I've led such a sheltered life, largely by choice. Every woman I come to know has had more experience than I have, even Webb in her way. I wish her well and wonder if I'll ever see her again.

While she's gone I accept an offer from my co-worker Reed who wants to share expenses on a drive to San Francisco. The trip is not a success. I think of Varina the whole time, whether I'm attending a Tubes concert or browsing porno emporiums in search of magazines and eight millimeter movies. For I still need this most viable of outlets more than ever. I at present have no hope of a sexual affair with Varina, much as I want it. I tell myself I must be ultra-patient in this area especially, and not be too demanding of her.

She returns after six weeks and tells me her trip has not been successful either. She and her mother are more estranged than ever. The tourist attractions of London and Paris had no appeal for her anymore. And when she screwed up the courage to phone her old flame he wanted her to meet his wife, and she found she couldn't do it.

"You know that old term 'going home?'" she explains. "I once thought it meant finding the right man and settling down. But not anymore."

She says she'll never marry. She's quite content to remain alone for the rest of her life.

"I'm too possessive and jealous. I love too hard," she tells me.

And all this self-revelation, I know, is by way of forestalling what she sees as the inevitable result of seeing me: romance and sex and maybe more, none of which she wants from me.

"You're very nice, Mason," she says, "but I'm not in love with you and I never will be."

"Varina, we've known each other a matter of weeks."

"I just don't want to hurt you. If I met someone who really interested me, I would leave you without hesitation."

Okay, so this does give me pause. A warning couldn't be much more clear or honest: don't get emotionally involved or you'll live to regret it. Ninety nine percent of all men would head for the hills at this point, if they hadn't already, I realize. For basically there is no hope for romance or sex or anything beyond companionship here. And this with a profoundly melancholy woman.

But what do I do? I forge right ahead. Though I ache for her, physically and emotionally, with each passing week, I proceed with the charade.

"Maybe I'll grow on you," I say weakly.

"You already have," she concedes.

But it's small comfort. I could tell myself over and over that Varina wasn't an immature teenager like Kirsten, and she wasn't a drunk and a cock-teaser like Dawn, and yes, it was a relief to go out with someone without worrying whether she'd still be able to stand up by eleven o'clock. Yes, Varina was so much more mature, so much more steady and reliable. Unfortunately though, if she had only a hazy idea of what she wanted in life, she was pretty certain what she didn't want, and this was myself.

And yet I proceed, asking myself how much more of a merry dance could she possibly lead me on? I determine to remain patient, kind, considerate and charming. I still want to make no demands on her, but maybe melt that awesome reserve and find out what had made her so sad.

To the point where one night I thought I'd discovered her secret at last. We had by this time established a very pleasant routine. We attended concerts, and the occasional play, we played tennis and came back to my place to use the pool and sauna, order pizza and listen to music. She admitted she hadn't enjoyed herself this way in a very long time.

And after one pleasant evening, without me probing at all, she told me why her father's death when she was small resonated so deeply in her later life. He committed suicide by jumping off a bridge.

It's not hard to figure out, she says, why as an adult she has fallen deeply only for men who were unattainable in some way: men who weren't interested in her to begin with, or who made it clear they would leave her at some point, men who were basically gone from the outset.

I thought fondly of Nicole, who had also lost her father early in life but whose lifelong search for an authority figure showed itself in an interest in spanking during sex. If she had any deeper neuroses, she hadn't let them take over her whole life. Varina, on the other hand....

Anyway, this has to be it, I thought. Varina's big secret. The source of her mystery. This was the real reason for her coolness. She could never respond to someone who would stay around to care about her. She would be attracted always to men she knew, in advance, would treat her badly and leave her.

"I've never had devotion from a man until you," she tells me one evening. "And now that I have it, I'm not really interested. Something inside me has dried up, Mason. It can never be revived, even by someone as well-meaning as you."

What more should I need to call it quits? Why pursue an affair I know is hopeless? This poor woman is beyond redemption. And yet I persist. Still I do not give up. As though a part of me still believed that over a long period, in spite of her protests, I could revive her deadened feelings. Mason the Healer, expert in gentle, patient therapy.

"Mason, oh Mason," Connie sighs. "You are patient and tolerant to a fault."

"I'm stupid, to a fault, you mean."

"As I've told you before, I think you're just too considerate for the women you get involved with."

"Too considerate? How can anyone be too considerate in this world?"

"When it comes to sexual attraction, niceness is the last thing some women want. They need something mysterious or even sinister. They need an element of danger, or meanness, or treachery in their men. Not all women, you understand. Just the types you fall for: the good-looking, sexy ones."

"I'm not sure how good-looking or sexy Varina is, but she sure as hell is looking for treachery. You're right."

"And you don't have it in you, do you? You have too much empathy. Your feminine side is too strong."

Well, I'd been pretty treacherous in my dealings with Nicole and Kane, hadn't I? And there were other sides to me that came out in my writing. Maybe there was a trait of feminine empathy, call it any number of things, that allowed me to write pretty convincingly from the female point of view. But it was still, all in all, more of a male fantasy of how I'd wish the women around me to behave.

And I could, and sometimes did, write in my erotic fiction about mean guys, arrogant guys, mysterious, sinister, dangerous guys making it with beautiful women on my behalf.

I also wrote of shy, passive, inept men getting lucky with these beauties too. None of this was helping me very much in the real world with Varina though. And so we continue playing tennis, and swimming, and spending quiet evenings in my apartment. The first time she stepped out onto my rooftop deck she told me she didn't like to spend too much time in the sun. And of course I couldn't help but again think back to Nicole stripping off for me there after half a dozen conversations.

Varina never sleeps over, and we never so much as kiss.

"Are you going to stay tonight?" I ask her as we turn off the music one night at two o'clock.

"No," she replies. "I'm going to go home and get up and have a normal day. She pauses and then adds: "Don't feel so bad. I'm lonely too."

"Then stay with me, goddammit," I growl good-naturedly.

"I wouldn't mind staying, but I don't want the sex. It's too complicated." Another pause. "I know this isn't fair. I really would like to give you sex at least. But I just can't."

And so this is the progress I've made in two years, I muse. I've gone from a woman who stayed over with me regularly and cock-teased the night away without once commenting on the unfairness of the situation, to one who refuses to stay over, or cock-tease, but is more than willing to apologize till she's blue in the face. Only the oasis of Nicole in this desert. At this rate, maybe I'll get to neck with someone before I'm forty.