Erotica Artist Ch. 07: Sex Goddess

I'm at the foot of the stairs, just about to turn into the hallway, when I see a door open and Dana steps out, laughing softly and intimately as she does so. With a glance up the deserted hallway she turns to offer Philip a quick kiss. I back quietly up the stairs and out into the air before I'm seen.

Next afternoon, when I've finally convinced myself that it isn't the tattooed lout she's having relations with but Professor Philip, I arrive at Bloomer's office just in time to see her climbing out of Vince's Corvette, and pecking him on the cheek.

For the second time in twenty four hours I find myself shrinking back in avoidance of the scene and instead of hailing her and proceeding into the office I duck into the alley and head back to my car. I don't want to talk to her, I don't want to see her, and most of all I don't want to witness any more scenes like these last two, where she is clearly saying goodbye to men she is on pretty intimate terms with. The role of voyeur, I am learning, is not half so thrilling in real life as it is in the world of pornography.

And as if the point were not already hammered home, that evening I am compelled, by some weird driving need, to witness more than I ever wished to of Dana's private love life.

Al phones and at short notice asks me to cover a Ricochet Room concert that Templeton has backed out of at the last minute. I decide not to complain about getting Rick's leavings and accept, though I know the chances of seeing Dana are excellent.

Though not until I ease toward the exit during the encore do I catch sight of her at a table on the upper level. She is not, of course, alone. She's smiling and joking with several people but the only one I notice is the tattooed lout.

I pause there in the crowd for several minutes and am rewarded finally with the sight of the lout leaning over to kiss her. For some reason I shrink deeper into the crowd and move behind a pillar. Part of me wants to continue on my way to the exit but I don't move.

I stand behind the pillar like the perpetual voyeur I've become and watch her every move, no longer paying any attention to the band on stage, which is wrapping up its set to a great swell of applause. I wait and wait, and when Dana leaves with her new friend I follow, unable to help myself.

What I'm seeing causes me pain, and I'm sure if I continue this my hurt will increase, yet I can't stop myself. I trail a block behind them as they stroll back to Dana's apartment.

I know what's coming. Do I really need to have it enacted before my eyes? Apparently so. For twenty minutes later, when the door closes behind them and they disappear upstairs, I sneak into the back lane and gaze up at her softly lit bedroom window.

And then without a second thought I'm climbing up the rotting fence and onto the garage roof. In seconds I'm onto the deck outside her window, where I can stand in the shadows and peer shamelessly through a four-inch-wide gap in her curtains.

And stand there I do, through the brief, laughing preliminaries and on into the teasing disrobement, through the sweat-slick coupling to the groaning climax.

So, I ask myself, how does it feel to be a real voyeur, hotshot? For years now I've been writing voyeuristic fantasy fiction like it was so much fun. How does it really feel to be out in the cold watching your real-life fantasy heart-throb make it with another man?

I'm still there on the deck minutes later, when food is being shared and the music throbs from her speakers. I have no memory of climbing down from my perch and stumbling home. But at last I know the truth. I have hard, visual evidence of what I've suspected all along.

I determine not to see her again. As of this moment I'll cut her from my life as I've cut all the malignant presences time and again. I'm expert at this by now. I've had lots of practice. And in fact it's not difficult, for several days, to believe I've succeeded already, in spite of the leaden weight I carry around from morning till night. The ache inside really does take on a physical presence, so heavy and all-pervading is it. And I know from past experience that there is no end in sight, that the feeling will persist for weeks and months, see her or not.

I'm into my fourth day of blinding misery, barely able to go to work each day but thankful nonetheless for that mindless routine, when I return home to find her in my kitchen, preparing an omelet, of all things.

My insides quiver and for one wild moment I expect her to fall at my feet and beg forgiveness, to burst into tears and tell me she's so sorry, that she's made a terrible mistake in being unfaithful but she'll never stray again, and I'm the only one she loves, and she can't bear the thought of losing me. Instead she grins and tells me she's starved.

"I hope you don't mind me making free with your place and helping myself like this but you did give me a key. Are you hungry?"

I drag myself into the living room and sink into the couch in shattered silence. Two minutes back I was so sure I never wanted to see her again. My solitary course was set. Yet here I am after one quick glimpse of her, realizing that this is the first moment in the better part of a week that I've felt even half alive. The dead weight is gone and instead my insides are churning. I want nothing more than to clutch her to me, cling to her for hours.

"Anything wrong?" she asks, standing in the doorway with a spatula in one hand. "You had a rough day?"

"I've had a rough four days, since you ask," I tell her, trying to ignore the fact that she's wearing shorts and her long brown legs are gleaming.

"How come? Nothing I've done, I hope?" She backs into the kitchen and I hear the clink of plates and the scrape of the spatula.

"I looked for you the other night at the concert," I groan. "I couldn't find you for the longest time. Then I saw you."

"Oh?"

There's a moment or two of silence then she enters the room with a tray. Along with the neatly divided omelet there's a bottle of white wine and two glasses. She begins to eat.

"Why should that upset you?"

"I saw you with your friend, Dana. I saw you leave together. I followed you."

I can barely believe I'm admitting this. Have I no shame? It would appear not. Not any more.

"I followed you all the way home. And that's not all...."

For a moment I pause. My throat is dry. I can't speak. She swallows one more fork-full of omelet and wipes a napkin across her mouth. She sips her wine and regards me levelly.

"You followed me all the way home and then what?" Her voice is neutral and so is her gaze. She takes another sip of wine.

"I climbed onto the deck outside your bedroom. The curtains weren't completely closed. I saw you there with your friend. I watched the two of you."

She sits calmly watching me.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing, Dana. And what's worse, I couldn't believe how I could stay and watch."

She says something I don't catch and I ask her to repeat it. She actually begins laughing.

"I said you're a fucking pervert, Mason. You climbed up onto my balcony and you watched while I had sex with someone. You're a peeping Tom, on top of everything else!"

She continues to grin at me.

"It was creepy, I realize that. But I was out of my mind with jealousy and I couldn't help myself. I was hurting, Dana. I still am. That's all I can say."

"You had no right to spy on me. I go home with whomever I like. I fuck whomever I like. I can't believe you did that."

"And I can't believe you fucked some tattooed lout behind my back. I may be creepy and twisted, but I don't cheat on people."

I grab my jacket and head to the door.

"Where are you going Mason? Stay here and discuss this like a man!"

She's still grinning.

"I don't want to talk to you anymore, Dana. I don't want to see you anymore. Please leave the key behind you when you leave. You're not going to need it again."

"Stay Mason. You can't spend your whole life running away. Stay. I'm not finished with you yet."

But I'm finished with you, I tell myself. And I really believe it. I find myself running the streets alone at night again, forced out of my own home by a sex-goddess turned grinning accuser. My only relief comes in movement and I run and walk for miles, trying to empty my head of all I've seen and heard over the last few days.

Of course it's impossible. What I've seen and heard recently will be pulsing through my head and heart for a long time. But I keep moving. If I stop, even to bolster myself with a drink or three or four, I'm sure I'll crumple into a whimpering heap and be unable to move again for days. It's over, I tell myself. It's finished. And all I have to do now is put Dana out of my life forever.

But when I drag myself home two hour later she's still on the premises. Instead of walking into a dark and peaceful house I find the lights ablaze and Dana topless in my bedroom. Wearing nothing but her underpants she sits cross-legged on my bed beside an open cardboard box. Copies of my lurid-covered pornographic paperbacks are strewn across the coverlet in front of her. She holds one in her hand and waves it at me as I enter.

"I've been studying your masterpieces," she leers. "You're quite the artiste, Mason."

"That box was sealed. You had no right to open it. In fact you have no right to be here at all."

"Since you have no respect for my privacy, I thought I'd show similar insensitivity. And you know what? This stuff is damn good. I knew you were talented Mason, but I'd no idea you were this good."

I step forward and reach for the book she's brandishing, but she draws away from me and holds out one arm to ward me off. She begins to read. Her tone is exaggerated, with a leering emphasis on the four-letter words. I crawl about on the bed collecting the scattered paperbacks and jamming them roughly back in their box.

"This stuff was never meant to be read by anyone I know," I mumble, as much to block out the sound of her voice as to make any lucid point. "I wrote it a long time ago."

Why am I explaining anything to this woman? Why the tone of apology? To what lows can one poor, deluded male sink?

She continues to read out loud. And now she is gasping between sentences and curling her tongue over her lips. For some minutes she's been fondling her nude breast with her free hand, but now she slides the hand down her belly and into her underpants. She begins to masturbate.

"Oh yes," she moans, pausing now to close her eyes and roll back her head. "This guy is really something, Mason. Why don't you come do this to me? I guess that's what's called sublimation, hey? Having one of your fictional studs do what you don't want to do yourself?"

I have the books stashed back in the box now, all but the one she's reading, and I haul them over to the closet. Sweat pastes my shirt to my skin and I'm having a hard time breathing.

"I'm getting unbelievably hot, Mason, reading your stuff," she continues, her knuckles denting the fabric of her underpants. "You really know what you're doing, on the printed page."

"Of course I know what I'm doing. I've had years of practice, all alone in my room. It sure as hell was nice living in that fantasy world, now I know what real life with a sex goddess is like."

"You just can't handle an independent woman."

"Maybe I prefer my fantasy girls. After a couple of months with you, who wouldn't?"

I crawl across the bed and reach for her book, my book, a second time. She squirms away from me and stands up on the bed, swatting me with the book in the process. Her underpants are stretched low across her left hip.

"Dana for fuck's sake let's end this now," I groan, gripping her thigh with one hand and clawing for my book with the other. I'm on my knees in front of her, my face level with her crotch. "I've had enough. We've both had enough. Let's..."

Her knee hits me suddenly full in the face and I'm stunned, blinded for a moment or two. It takes me several seconds more to realize that the hot fluid pouring over my mouth is blood from my punctured nose.

I rear back on the bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling. Then I see she's standing over me still, her legs apart, her breasts heaving. For a second I think there's a flash of concern in her face but I must be imagining it.

"Don't manhandle me Mason!" she yells. "Nobody touches me unless I want them to!"

Dazed and helpless there beneath her, I think I'm beyond shock, when she slithers from her underpants and tosses them in my face.

"Clean yourself up. You're one hell of a fucking mess."

Clutching her damp panties to my nose and mouth I stumble from the room. And I'm in the bathroom for what feels like hours, staunching the blood, rinsing my mouth, soaking in the tub. I listen for the slam of the door that signals her departure but it doesn't come. Instead I hear her laughter as she talks on the phone. Will this humiliation never end? I wonder if I'm ever to be free of this demonic woman.

I soak for half an hour more, and when I emerge at last there's silence in the bedroom. Or near silence. I step over the threshold determined to throw her out the door with every last ounce of strength I possess, should she still be writhing on my bed. But what I see stops me cold.

She's no longer masturbating. There's no need for that. She's on her knees, as naked as when I left her, while behind her, on his knees also, and naked but for his tattoos, is the lout I'd watched her screwing earlier that week. He's gripping her haunches and pumping mightily, his face flushed and his torso streaming. Dana has the gall to grin at me as she's jerked back and forth. And wouldn't you know it: she still has my book in one hand.

"Is this what you wanted to see the other night, Mason, when you peeked at us through the curtains like a weirdo voyeur? Well here it is! Enjoy! This is a show just for you, no charge! Are you happy now?"

I grip the door-jamb till my head stops reeling, then I head for the hall, grabbing items of clothing and sneakers as I stumble about. I can't escape her voice till I'm back in the dark streets, and even here it seems to follow me.

"Stick around Mason! Why are you always running away? Stick around for a threesome, or at least take some notes for your next book! This is life imitating art, Mr. Erotica Artist! Mr. Jerk-off Artist!"

So much for the sweet-natured, soft-spoken creature who lured me with her literacy! So much for her sensitivity! And so much for my dignity. I thought myself so mature, so in control of my life, so beyond the hurts and humiliations of love and sex. And now here I was, wandering the streets in the rain, exiled from my home and at the mercy of a crazy woman. Had I learned nothing over the years about sex? Had my obsession with the subject taught me nothing at all? Was I still a callow boy after all? Helpless? Hopeless?

All the signs were there. All those men sniffing around all the time: Vince the stripper manager, Glen the anorexic musician with the coke-snorter sniffle. What did I think they were, her literary circle? Other delicate devotees of James and Proust? Okay, maybe Professor Phil was part of her literary circle, but still....

She might as well have announced at the outset "I may read Edel on James but I am an insensitive, superficial bimbo at heart and you'll trust me with your feelings at your peril, asshole! So what if she had brains and actually read books? So what if she was beautiful beyond reckoning? So what if she was the most erotically alluring woman I'd come across in half a lifetime? What did any of this matter, when the woman had no heart?

And so I run and stumble the wet streets all night, raging, unable to sleep even if I had a bed to go to that wasn't occupied by a heartless raving bitch and her mutant superstud?