7
18 Sept 88
Daniel
is seventeen today. A man at last.
Every Sunday
afternoon, since coming back from New York, he has been seeing a woman, someone
he met on the train coming back from New York. Shes a nurse at MCH, meaning
another older woman. They have been going to museums and galleries, he said.
Yeah, sure, as Betty would say. Today is no exception. But this evening there
will be a little party at home with his closest friends.
I am glad that
Daniel is getting his first experiences with women who are older and presumably
experienced. I could never be grateful enough to M. Daigle. I seduced him, its
true, but he responded. It was a big risk for him. Legally it was all right (I
was almost 16, and in Canada the age of consent is still 14) but he was my
teacher. And married. It was the first year of secular education in Québec, and
if the bigots of the Union Nationale (like my parents) had found out it might
have been a weapon in their war to bring back religious schools. Fortunately it
happened on our class trip to Montréal, at the end of the school year. Once we
were back in Rimouski I tried to keep it going but he resisted firmly. I
grudgingly admired him for it. I was not in love with him. But if Etienne
Palombe had been my first I would have been a different woman.
Once D has had
his experiences with older women he will probably begin to date girls at NAA. Lucky
girls, whether they know it or not. Etienne did not know at first how lucky he
was that I had been initiated by M. Daigle. (I always called him M. Daigle,
never René, even in bed.) He realized it only when we were in college (we were
in the first prom graduating class of the cégep de Rimouski!) and began
to go with other girls without my experience.
In my adult
life, since 20 or so, I have generally preferred older men, from Jean-Marc and
then Miki to GK, except SZ and WP.
Wayne
Phillips. I havent thought about him for a while, except for a flash or
memory, almost subconscious, each time I listen to an opera. A memory In the
flesh more than in the mind, of making love, when I had a free afternoon, while
listening to one of his many, many opera LPs. It was Wayne who got me to love
opera
George Kenner.
There have been more calls from him. He proposed a weekend away. This time I am
holding firm. But I cannot help admiring his persistence. It is a big ego boost
for me, knowing that he could have any number of other women. Tina (who slept
with him a long time ago) says that he probably does, but I dont care.
So why am I
resisting, my journal?
Here I go
again, asking you questions. You are doing your job of reflecting them back to
me. So I have to answer myself. Let me indulge myself in a bit of autopsych
self-analysis.
There were
times, when I was between liai relationships, when I resisted in order
to prove to myself that that I could function just fine without a man. I
believe that I have overcome that need.
No, my
journal, this time it is specific to GK. He is so dominant, so self-assured, so
alpha, that I need to demonstrate that he cannot dominate me. To demon
prove it to myself, not necessarily to him. That I am mine own woman, well at
ease.
Aptitude
Angie and Daniel continued to meet for museum or gallery
visits every Sunday afternoon. Their third Sunday happened to be his
seventeenth birthday, and when he informed her of that she said, It so happens
I have a present for you. Not to give you but to show you. She went to the
bathroom and came out with a pill dispenser, like one that Gen had shown him,
from which two pills were missing. We dont need to use a rubber any more.
From
that point on sex with Angie became even more enjoyable for Daniel than it had
been with Gen. It may have been because Angie seemed to enjoy it more. Shy as
she was, she had evidently not experienced it as much as the outgoing Gen, who,
despite the lack of obvious physical allure, seemed to have no difficulty in
attracting men, and even had a sort of boyfriend, as she put it, a Puerto
Rican merchant seaman who would come to New York every few months and stay
around for a few weeks of what she said was like one long fuck. Daniel
surmised that Angie got her scant dose of sex when and where she could,
probably as he imagined on the basis of medical gossip he had heard from his
mother with older married doctors (the likes of George Kenner) or with
overworked residents at the hospital. She let Daniel know in no uncertain terms
that a young, handsome, ardent lover like him was a treat for her.
Daniel
would have liked to see Angie more than once a week, but the demands of school
took precedence. Since he had committed himself to early decision at Columbia,
the application, the school transcript and the letters of recommendation had to
be submitted as soon as possible. He also had to take the examination that was
called Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, at the earliest possible occasion, on
the second Saturday in October.
He
wondered what this scholastic aptitude might be. He remembered learning about
scolastique in Secondary II: it was a rigid, pedantic way of learning
practiced by medieval theologians. Was that what Columbia expected of him? He looked up scholastic in his new
Merriam-Webster, and learned that one of the meanings coincided with the French
one, but that it also meant simply of or relating to high school or secondary
school. He felt relieved.
After
regular school hours Ms. Casey conducted an SAT preparation workshop for those
who would go to university (or college, as she taught them to say) in the
States, and so his weekday afternoons were full. It was just as well that the
band was no more, and he had to forgo playing soccer as well. He physical exercise
was limited to regular gym classes.
During
his previous years at school Daniel had occasionally overheard boys, especially
seniors, talking about their sexual exploits, real or fictitious, but he did
not pay much attention to such locker-room talk. This time he felt that
perhaps, being now a sexually active senior himself, he ought to participate in
such talk. But he was put off by the overweening style of the conversation. The
other guys emphasis was almost exclusively on the hotness of the chicks they had
banged or made out with, not the pleasure they might have experienced, let
alone given. It seemed to him that some of the teachings Gen had given him
such as As long as she comes first, whatever comes afterward, you will have a
happy girl! would be quite foreign to them, not to mention such other maxims
as Stay away from drugs or drink if you want good sex. She conceded that this
one was specifically aimed at teenagers, not adults.
Among
the ten or so kids in the SAT workshop was a very pretty girl named Vivian
Alvarez, whom Daniel remembered from tenth-grade English when he first started
at North Am. She was one of those who called the school Northam, and when
Harvey questioned her about it one day at lunch, she justified the
pronunciation by saying that when you say North American at a normal
pace, the first two syllables sound like Northam. It doesnt work like
that, Harvey argued. Since Lockerbie weve been hearing about Pan American
Flight One O Three, or Pan Am Flight One O Three. Has anyone
heard of Panam?
The rest of them laughed, and Vivian chuckled grudgingly.
In
Grade 10 several of the guys told Daniel at the time that Vivian was a stuck-up
little bitch who even as a ninth-grader had dated only senior boys. On occasion
Vivian would smile pleasantly at Daniel, as if to signal that once he was a
senior she might be interested. And this was what seemed to be happening: she
was now definitely interested in him. He was not sure what that entailed, since
he had not dated a high-school girl before. But she was, with her movie-starlet
looks, just the kind of girl that guys bragged about in the locker room.
Daniel
had to admit to himself he was not as indifferent to those looks as he had
thought, given his predisposition. True, he had had pleasurable sex with two
women who were decidedly not pretty, but the prospect of doing it with a nubile
beauty brought an altogether different kind of excitement. He could not deny
that the lust for beautiful women was a universal of the human male since time
immemorial, and he did not want to deny himself a share in that experience.
On the Friday before the SAT the participants in the
workshop discussed what they might want to do as a release after the tests.
Looking at Daniel directly, Vivian said that there was a new movie that she
wanted to see, a horror comedy titled Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. He
was intrigued, and after the workshop it was the final session he
approached Vivian and asked her if she would like to see it with him. Sure,
she said, as if she had fully expected him to ask her. Since the test would be
at McGill, they agreed that when it was over they would just hang out downtown
and have something to eat before seeing the movie.
That
evening he began to wonder if he was being, somehow, disloyal to Angie. She was
not his girlfriend, of course. Their relationship consisted only of meeting on
Sunday afternoons to spend an hour or two looking at art and then another hour
or two in her bed. What either of them did outside these hours was, in principle,
of no concern to the other, unless it involved Gens teachings were still on
his mind risky sexual behavior. Since Vivian gave the appearance of
promiscuity, he would have to be careful.
Having
women on his mind miraculously dissipated any anxiety that Daniel might have
felt on the eve of the SAT. He slept well, had a hearty breakfast, and took the
metro to McGill thinking more about his date with Vivian than the examination.
Being in a relaxed frame of mind, he breezed through all the tests, at times
marveling at how ridiculously simple the questions were.
Vivian,
who was applying to several American universities including Stanford and Duke,
did not seem nearly so sanguine about her performance. Through most of the
afternoon her manner was pouty.
Her
mood changed completely once they saw the movie, which was very funny in a Saturday
Night Live sort of way. On their way back to the metro she took his hand
and, as they were walking, began to quote some of Elviras lines, beginning
with innocuous ones (Revenge is better than Christmas!) and going on to ones
that were risqué (My names Elvira but you can call me tonight!) and even
salacious (Grab a tool and start banging!).
Her
stop was three stations before his, and before she got off the train she gave
him a good-bye kiss on the lips.
When
they saw each other at school, they made another movie date for the following
Saturday. What this meant was that Daniel was now, in high-school terminology,
dating Vivian Alvarez, though he knew that when two adults were reported in
the media as dating as, for example, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, or
Pierre Trudeau and Liona Boyd something different was meant.
But with each successive date the adult
definition was being almost asymptotically approached. When they kissed
good night on the second date she slipped her tongue between his lips. On the
third they were in his car she took his hand and ran it over her clothed
breasts, and on the fourth inside her blouse, with her front-snapping bra opened.
As he was caressing her classically perfect breasts he remembered thinking,
when he first saw Angies bosom shaped like two small stub-topped mounds
that it was so unlike Gens twin balloons that it might as well have belonged
to a female of a different species, and also feeling that the one didnt excite
him any more or any less than the other. He had the same feeling with
Vivian.
Daniel
didnt mind embarking on his sexual liaison with Vivian slowly, stage by stage,
since on the following Sunday he could always release his pent-up energy with
Angie Accorso. But when he was with Vivian he always had a condom with him,
just in case.
With the end of October the weather turned frosty. On the
first Sunday of November the pile of his clothes next to Angies bed was twice
as high as the week before, and the lengthy undressing as well as the tactile
memory of Vivians thigh, and the demesnes that thereadjacent lie, the evening
before made their first bout of intercourse more frantic than ever. As they
were lying side by side afterwards, it occurred to him that this was their
tenth consecutive Sunday together. It then struck him that since the first time
Angie had never, as far as he knew, had a period. Trying not to sound worried,
he asked her about it.
Angie
chuckled and stroked his chest. Dont worry, she said, Im going to have one
tomorrow.
Are
you sure? How do you know?
You
see, she said, with the pill a woman regulates her period so its exactly
four weeks, and I fixed mine so it runs from Monday to Friday and doesnt
interfere with our Sundays.
Thats
nice, he said, relieved. He wondered why Gen hadnt informed him of this
detail. Or maybe she had, and he hadnt paid attention. He thought of asking
his mother to confirm it, but then he told himself that Angie was a nurse,
after all, and ought to know these things.
The
following Saturday, in the backseat of Daniels car, it finally happened. To
put it in locker-room language, he banged a hot chick his age. And it was,
like, a total fuckin letdown.
Later
in the next week Pierre-Joseph Bouchard died. His death was a relief in several
ways his own from the pain of his illness, Mireilles from the discomfort of
being unable to speak with him, Daniels from that hostile presence that rejected
his flesh and blood. The funeral was on Saturday, and Mireille and Betty went
reluctantly, especially Betty to Rimouski. Daniel took advantage of their
absence by inviting Vivian to the house. It was too cold to go out, so they
watched television. And then, on his bed, they did it again. And while it was
more comfortable this time, it was no better.
The
simple fact was that Vivian, though she had wanted it, gave no indication of
enjoying it in the way that Gen and Angie did. Gens She comes first dictum
did not work with her. She seemed to have no interest in orgasms or her own
pleasure; sex, to her, was just a means of control. No wonder that her liaisons
did not last, though it always seemed as if she was the one to break it up.
In
Daniels case, the absence of her enjoyment precluded his, and he quickly lost
all interest in dating her. He began acting surly with her, half-intentionally
provoking her into a confrontation. By the end of November she decided to break
up with him, and almost immediately took up with Harvey Berman. Harvey, of all
people, Daniel thought. But Vivians intention had obviously been to spite
Daniel.
He
now began to have midweek after-school meetings with Angie, about once a week,
on those days when she had the afternoon free. Her shifts were quite variable,
but she always knew on Sunday which day that would be a Tuesday, a Wednesday
or a Thursday. And her place was a brisk fifteen-minute walk from North Am.
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