Erotica Artist Ch. 08: Crack-up

And Dawn? If something hadn't died inside her, it was so pickled in alcohol as to be beyond hope. Was I passive with Dawn? Probably. My self-preservation instinct was on high alert from the beginning. But if I was guilty of anything with her it was stupidity in getting involved in the first place, and blindness, in accommodating her as long as I did. I was guilty of being overly polite and considerate, overly sensitive to her feelings.

Same with Varina. Overly polite, overly considerate, overly nice, with someone who told me to my face I didn't have enough confidence for her particular tastes, didn't have the arrogance necessary to abuse her the way she wanted. Yet aggression with her would have gotten me arrested for assault.

No one could have been successful with these women, not the best looking, most charming, most confident of men. The one a sad-sack neurotic, the other a frigid alcoholic. How could I have let myself become enmeshed with them? There lay my passivity, more than anywhere. In my inability to scream: Fuck you, bitches! Out of my life! Begone! Leave me alone to my pornographic fantasies!

Yet my romantic delusions were still alive and well, were they not, even after these two disastrous non-affairs? It was romantic delusion that had led me into the emotional imprisonment and physical deprivation experienced at the hands of these two, just as it had been romantic delusion that led me to reject an innocent eighteen-year-old way back at the beginning of my catastrophic adult love-life.

And it was romantic delusion still, wasn't it, that caused this final hideous showdown with the sex-goddess from hell, the enchanting, enchaining Dana?

I may have been repressed, I may have been passive to a point of near catatonia (and was it any fucking wonder!), when encountering Cyclone Dana, but this wasn't the crux of the matter, was it, all this wasn't the reason for the ultimate debacle?

I fell in love with the woman, that was my crime. She flattered my vanity, lured me with literature, and, true romantic that I still was, I fell in love and wanted some kind of commitment from her. Instead of taking Vince's advice and simply enjoying what I had, I let my romantic fantasies screw me up again.

I'd dared to suggest a limit to her freedom, a limit on the number of men she had relations with. What was I doing! I must have known, deep down, that she would never have done this for me, that she would never have done this for anyone! Wasn't promiscuity at the very core of my fascination, my obsession with pornography? I of all people should have known this. Hadn't my own life, apart from the deluded attempts to connect with the likes of Dawn Webb or Varina Hicks, been one long struggle for freedom? Hadn't I wanted nothing more than to escape the prisons of my upbringing, my environment, education and religious training, the personal and professional expectations of adult life? What did I want with commitment to one person? It was just one more form of entrapment, of imprisonment. Deep down I knew this, surely, and yet in my passive-aggressive (that term again!) way I required it of Dana. She was just the ultimate in a line of romantic delusions for me, her overpowering sexual appeal notwithstanding. Sex for sex' sake apparently was so rarely possible for me in real life, only in my fantasies.

And Dana was correct here too, wasn't she? I might argue with the term sublimation: I wasn't in any way elevating my sexuality to a higher level or giving it more subtle expression. It was there on the printed page as it was. My fantasies and secret desires were fictionalized but they were still sexual, erotic, still pornographic. I was no Henry James.

Yes, I did live out my sex life almost exclusively in fantasy and masturbation and yes there wasn't much else to balance this. Romance I had tried, and what kind of balance had this ended up providing? A millstone of such weight that it had sunk me into this pit of despond.

Was this then my 'fucked-up sexuality?' I agreed that I was sex obsessed and had been for as long as I could remember. But look who was talking! Had I ever come across a woman as sex obsessed as Dana? Hadn't she pleaded guilty to this particular shortcoming, if indeed that's what it was, pretty early on in our acquaintanceship? And wasn't it what had attracted her to me in the first place, and largely what had kept us together these few short months? What else was it? Oh yes, the literature, don't forget the literature. Some people used alcohol, some used drugs, Dana and myself, we used sex and literature. If this was a 'fucked-up sexuality' she was just as guilty as I was.

My fantasies had kept me from going crazy during my life-long sentence in the prisons of deprivation. This was my therapy: fantasy sex totally divorced from romance, totally divorced from real life. I could indulge in it without pain and still achieve blessed relief.

And what particular theme had I returned to again and again in my erotic writing? It was the flip-side of romance: betrayal. I explored my fascination, okay my obsession, with the beautiful young women who had the power, who had the wherewithal, to hurt and betray, and not just with one man, but with several, sometimes at the same time. I never thought I'd ever meet such a woman in real life, of course, and yet I had.

Was my obsession with sex and my rich erotic fantasy life just another prison, as Dana said? If so, wasn't it infinitely preferable to the torture chamber she had led me into? Wasn't it a velvet chamber of sensuality and rapture, with an escape hatch always available?

And if I ever did want out, and who the hell would, it would not be along the primrose pathway that Dana, hardly an expert on romance, had suggested, surely. How had she put it? A reciprocal, long-term loving sexual relationship. Sure, Dana, you know best. You're the authority on such matters all right.

And why had I written nothing else, beyond some unpaid music criticism, except hard-core pornography? Why couldn't I write about a trip to the corner grocery store without turning it into a sex scene?

I was too exhausted, too drained, too much in a state of shock still, to analyze it further.

The pain in my head is still agonizing as I stagger through my door at last. I trip and tumble to the floor as I cross the living room, but one glance into my bedroom and I know I can't rest quite yet.

I begin to strip down the damp, sex-rumpled bed as I listen to a phone message. But I have to pause. Dana's voice seems to grow louder and louder by the second.

"Pick up the phone, Mason, you son of a bitch! I know you're there! How dare you destroy my clothes this way! How fucking dare you! Answer me! And my notebook! You read my personal notebook! You're in a lot of trouble, Mason! You've gone too far! You broke into my place, destroyed my property. I could charge you and get you into deep trouble, you fucker! I can't believe you've done this. You fucking pervert! Pick up the phone! Jerk-off Artist! Answer me!"

The phone goes dead. Whatever happened to 'Erotica Artist?' I wonder vaguely, though I acknowledge that 'Jerk-off Artist' is probably more appropriate.

I suddenly notice my pornographic masterpieces strewn everywhere around the room. I freeze, glaring off into space for several seconds. Then I gather up the books and stuff them into their box.

I stumble to the closet and haul out a large carton of manuscripts, the longhand and type-written drafts of all my early books, written before I became so proficient that I could compose the finished product in one draft in typescript.

I lug the boxes to the fireplace and begin tearing the yellow longhand and white typescript pages into shreds. When the grate is full I set a match to them and watch them burn, all the time tearing more sheets and adding to the flames. There are pounds and pounds of paper, for I've never before thrown out a single sheet of anything I've written, no matter how mediocre. But I don't care how long this will take. I'm determined to destroy every last word. What I need tonight is another act of renunciation, and not just of Dana, but of a whole way of life.

When the flames have been high for some time and my face is flushed with heat, I grab the first of my forty-odd books. One quick glance at the lurid cover and I tear it down the spine and toss it into the fire. I add more loose manuscript sheets and then split another book in half, pitch it deep into the flames.

I squat before the huge fire, mesmerized, my face and hands tingling with heat as I continue stoking, feeding my life's work into the flames. Book after book vanishes, along with whole wads of raw manuscript that I no longer bother to shred. Everything is devoured and the flames leap higher in the grate.

The phone rings again but I remain hunched over the flames. The answering machine activates and once again I'm listening to Dana's screeching. I'm vaguely aware that this is her second call in less than an hour, yet in my recent heart-sickness I had to wait days, weeks between calls.

"Pick up the fucking phone, Mason! You can't spend your whole life running and hiding from women! Answer me! Face things like a man for once in your miserable, fucked-up life! Do it, Mason! Pick up the fucking phone! Oh you're in trouble! Answer me, you weakling son of a bitch! Answer me, Jerk-off Artist! Answer me!"

The heat increases my dizziness and smoke brings tears to my eyes. I'm still madly stoking, squatting so close to the flames my damp sweatpants are steaming. I heave another handful of my collected works into the inferno. A flame licks up my arm and I scent burning hair.

I recoil, and my balance is lost. I heave forward into the flames with both hands while in my ears Dana's shrieking still rings.

"Jerk-off Artist! Coward! Jerk-off Artist!"