Eliza or Till Death Do Us Part, page 3
Academically, my life, at least at first, was certainly not as successful as it was socially. My freshman year was actually a real disaster and it became abundantly clear to me that first year that I was completely out of place at RISD and that I had no talent whatsoever for drawing, painting or sculpting. I received acceptable grades in art history and in English, but did terribly in life drawing, two-and three-dimensional design and in all my optional courses which, because I had hoped to have the possibility of working with nude models, were studio courses. At the end of my freshman year, I received a letter from the RISD administration nicely explaining that my work was not satisfying enough for me to keep my exceptionally generous scholarship, but that I was welcome to stay at the school if I was able to come up with the tuition money. Normally, such a letter is a kiss of death for students, the great majority of whom can’t afford to stay in a school as expensive as RISD after losing their scholarships, but it didn’t bother me. Obviously, I could pay the tuition for the next three years if I chose to remain that long, which I did eventually.
Against all expectations, my next three years at the school turned out pretty successful academically. I didn’t become an artist suddenly and overall, even if my work improved markedly, I kept on obtaining rather poor grades, but I was no longer a disaster. It was because I followed the recommendation of my academic advisor and took as many non-art courses as I was allowed to, most of them in the English department of Brown University, and turned away from pure art courses, such as painting and drawing, to concentrate on other disciplines, like architecture and photography. Indeed, I realized that no special talent was needed to be reasonably successful in these subjects and that it just took some work to pass them. I eventually specialized in photography because I knew it could allow me to work with nude models. That decision proved to be fatal for me since, had I not become a photographer, I would never have met Eliza and thus wouldn’t be where I am now, but I don’t regret it. Nothing, not even the rest of my life in this cell, will make me sorry to have met her.
After I graduated, I decided to move back to St. Louis. Although I knew it was not the best place to be if I wanted to land a job at Playboy and although I had absolutely nobody there, I chose my hometown, I guess, partly for lack of imagination and partly because I had my roots there. At least, St. Louis was a reasonably big city where I would feel at home immediately and where I could have a brisk business. However, since I now considered myself an artist, I would no longer live and certainly wouldn’t practice my trade in the predominantly blue-collar south part of the city where I had grown up, but in the artsy and bohemian Central West End where I felt I belonged.
At first, I enjoyed being back in St. Louis. I bought (and paid cash for) a nice big condominium in the heart of the Central West End where I moved in November 1981. I spent the winter transforming the biggest room into a studio, buying some very expensive photographic equipment, and heavily advertising in the local press. In a nutshell, I, a well-known artist having recently relocated in the Midwest after various stints on the East Coast and in South America, was putting together portfolios for aspiring models or actresses and was also looking for attractive young women willing to participate in a project involving nude or semi-nude sessions. Just in case, I had installed a bed in the room next to the studio. I was all set to start.
Unfortunately, my business didn’t exactly become successful overnight. I realized that it had just opened and that it would take some time before it got known; I also knew that most people in St. Louis were rather conservative and not artistically inclined, but, as I was spending my first weeks in business waiting in vain for customers, I started getting worried. I had quite a lot of money left and I could have lived without working for several years, but I wanted to settle down and make a living to prepare for the future. After a while and hundreds of dollars spent on newspaper and even radio ads, I did see a few clients, mainly young women who were intrigued by my business and who came to check the place out, but they were reluctant to pay for my services. Most of those who wanted portfolios were shocked to learn what they would cost and backed down. In my first three months of work, I must have put together no more than five of them, for prospective models who were too modest to undress for my camera. Needless to say, I didn’t think of trying to seduce them, especially since most came with somebody, a boyfriend, a sister or a friend (one even came with her mother). I was really getting depressed. As for the artistic project involving nude or semi-nude sessions, it was even less successful. The few women interested didn’t have bodies worth photographing and anyway changed their minds when they realized that they, not I, had to pay for the pictures.
It became so bad that, in order to see people in my studio and especially naked girls, I changed my strategy and offered fifty dollars per hour for “female models willing to participate in an artistic project involving nude sessions.” It did work to the extent that it brought some pretty women to my place but that’s about all it did. When I started to fondle one of them, she became hysterical and left in a big hurry, threatening to go to the police and have my business closed down. She didn’t do it, but I became so scared that I decided to act more professionally and to make a move only if the girl was clearly interested, which never happened. Nevertheless, I became quite busy and saw dozens of “clients,” but the busier I was, the more money I was losing, and after a few weeks, although I was enjoying the sessions quite a lot, I had to stop the offer. It would have been cheaper to go back to my suite in Rio.
At that point, I was quite disillusioned with my work and St. Louis. Not only had my venture turned out financially disastrous but it had failed to bring one single woman into the neatly prepared bed next to my studio. For a few weeks, I pondered the possibility of starting a completely different business, but I rejected it on the grounds that I was really enjoying photography and that it was my only chance to be in professional contact with scantily clad women. I was afraid that if I entered a different business, it would considerably increase my odds of keeping my virginity. I spent several weeks vegetating in my studio, occasionally putting together a few more portfolios but not enough to make my business profitable or even to recoup the money wasted on ads. The situation, however, allowed me to have a great deal of free time, which I essentially spent reading all sorts of novels, writing in my diary, going to dirty movies, and watching and following girls who had caught my fancy. I was back to square one.
The situation was all the more similar to that of my young years in St. Louis as, once again, I had absolutely no friends. However, if it didn’t bother me when I was younger, it now added considerably to my depression and disillusionment. I had just spent four wonderful years surrounded by all kinds of people and I couldn’t easily adjust to my new solitude. I had naively thought that the bohemian Central West End would welcome me with open arms as RISD had done, but I was wrong. My new neighborhood was not a college environment and didn’t provide the same opportunities to meet and be in constant proximity with people. For months, I tried to make friends in the various bars and restaurants of the area, treating dozens of people, but in vain. Although I was the same person who had been very popular in Providence, I was now a freak whom nobody seemed to want to know. When I addressed people, they generally answered but always found an excuse to go away from me. I even considered myself lucky if they accepted my drinks without making fun of me. Was it St. Louis? My looks? The fact that, because of my father’s example, I wasn’t drinking liquor?
I knew that it’s considerably harder to make friends when you are past college age and when you work alone, but I was not prepared for the cold reception I was given in my new neighborhood. Even the people living next door to me, who may have been offended by my ads and my kind of business, didn’t want to have anything to do with me. As for women, they looked annoyed when I had the nerve to look at them. I met a few through personal ads in a local paper (“Well-known artist, 22, having just moved from the East Coast, would like to meet attractive women, 18-30"), but they never called back after the first meeting. Then I tried dancing places, hoping to be luckier, but after dozens of hours there, I still had to find one girl who would agree to dance with me. No wonder I had to return to my old ways and be content secretly watching and following unattainable beauties.
Things, however, looked up in the summer when I reluctantly decided to diversify. Since I wanted to stay in the photography business in St. Louis, I had no choice: if I wanted to make money, I had to resign myself to shooting people other than half-naked young women and, thanks to my heavy advertising, I soon had a booming business. I did everything that a photographer can do: individual and family portraits, passport photos, and, of course, weddings. After I realized I could make several hundreds of dollars for a few hours of work, I managed to do a lot of weddings by advertising much more and charging slightly less than my competitors. I didn’t really like shooting weddings, not only because it’s hard work but also because I invariably fell in love with the bride and because, on each occasion, I couldn’t help doubting I would ever get married myself. However, it also gave me a chance to be among lots of people enjoying themselves and to earn so much that I no longer had to use the insurance money and could even afford to start again paying aspiring models for posing for me in the name of vague artistic projects.
Needless to say, once I was married, I completely stopped advertising for models, restricting myself essentially to passport photos, individual and family portraits, weddings, and various artistic projects that usually didn’t involve nude photography. In fact, I had removed the bed next to my studio and had no intention or desire to use my occupation to cheat on Eliza. Although she and I didn’t make love as often as I would have wished, I was perfectly happy with her and had stopped lusting after other women.
Around five o’clock, I would return upstairs, to the kitchen where I would cook our dinner. The experience in cooking I had acquired while I was living with my father proved to be extremely useful because Eliza didn’t have any time to spend in the kitchen and, besides, couldn’t stand it. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t mind cooking at all. I found it to be the perfect way to relax after a day of work and I did it lovingly, always preparing dishes that Eliza liked or, when I was in an adventurous mood, fixing something new that would surprise her and that I had found in my good old Betty Crocker’s Good and Easy Cookbook and, later, in more sophisticated books. I was especially good at doing desserts and, after fixing the main and the side dishes, I usually would spend most of the hour devoted to cooking preparing some delicious treat that was not recommended for my diet but that would, I knew, bring a grateful smile to my wife’s face.
At six o’clock sharp, while I was setting the table with an eye on the television news, Eliza would come home. She would go straight to the bedroom, without a word to me, to change clothes. A few minutes later, she would be sitting by my side at the table, eating what I had so fondly fixed and absentmindedly watching television. Right after school, she was always tense and in a bad mood and didn’t like to talk. I usually respected her silence and pretended to follow the news while in reality I was watching her eat and trying to guess by her expression whether or not she liked my cooking. She usually did although she wasn’t the type to give compliments. I didn’t mind, however, as I was looking forward to the moment when I would bring my dessert to the table, which would inevitably relax her and finally make her talk to me, mainly about her day on campus.
Unfortunately, our dinner conversations never lasted very long as, once she was finished with dinner, she had to go immediately do her homework in the living room. She would spend the rest of the evening studying, until ten, eleven or midnight, depending on her assignments. During that time, after clearing the table and doing the dishes, I would usually first do some housework, laundry or cleaning, or go shopping. If I didn’t care much for the former, I enjoyed going to the supermarket, no longer because it was an occasion to do some girl watching but because it was another chance to relax and to find new ways, through the selection of unusual food items, to please Eliza the following evening. It also gave me the opportunity to buy her some candy or some other treat that I would bring to her later, thus giving me an excuse to interrupt her studying and steal a kiss, which, otherwise, I wasn’t allowed to do. Afterwards I would go see a movie by myself or watch some television and finish the evening with a good novel or a long entry in my diary, usually dealing with the wonders of married life. My reading or my writing were briefly interrupted when I realized that Eliza was about to leave the bathroom and thus to undress and go to bed. Then I would invariably manage to enter the bedroom, on the pretext of kissing her good night, at the very moment when she was standing stark naked in the middle of the room. After watching the scene long enough to be able to remember it during the rest of the night in case I wouldn’t sleep well, I would hug her and put her to bed. After a short kiss, she would turn her back to me, remove my hand from her breasts or her thighs and ask me to leave her alone as she needed her sleep. Even though I was, at that very moment, dying to make love with her, I had to leave the room. When I turned off the light switch, she would already be falling asleep. Then, after fixing her breakfast, usually some cereal with fruit, that she would find ready in the morning, as well as the lunch bag she would take to school, I would go back to my novel or my diary and try to drive away the picture of her naked body from my mind in order to be able to concentrate on my reading or my writing.
When I went to bed, between midnight and one, Eliza would be fast asleep. I would undress in the dark, silently slip between the sheets and snuggle against her warm back. Although I had to let her rest and was not allowed to kiss, touch or caress her once she was asleep, I immensely enjoyed those precious minutes when I was still awake against her naked or half-naked unconscious body. It was during that time that I was the most aware of my blessings. Even after a year of marriage, I still couldn’t believe that somebody like me was married to an intelligent and pretty girl like Eliza. In those days, because I had to cook every night while, when I was single, I ate very irregularly, I was fatter than ever. In the fall of 1984, my weight almost reached 300 pounds. In addition, despite my being only 24, I was practically bald. By then, to compensate for my hair loss, I had started to grow a beard that did add some hair to my face but made me look even worse. As for my vision, it had steadily deteriorated, which forced me to wear incredibly thick glasses. To complete the picture, I had become so addicted to smoking that I had to buy four to five packs of cigarettes a day and that even a bath in the morning and one in the evening couldn’t remove the tobacco stench from my body. In short, I hardly looked or smelled like Prince Charming and yet I was sharing my bed with a beautiful woman who didn’t seem to mind my looks or my bad habits.
Although Eliza had to study practically seven days a week, our weekends were different and definitely more enjoyable than regular days. For one thing, she would spend more time with me in bed. On Saturdays, she would get up one hour later than usual, around seven. Then, after letting her work for about two hours, I would call her, pretending to be half-asleep. She knew perfectly well what I wanted and would come back to bed to spend a few minutes with me for our sacred Saturday morning rite of lovemaking. She would arrive in her nightgown and remove it right before entering the bed, which normally was enough to turn me on. Since she didn’t like to waste time on preliminaries, she would just then check with her cold hand that I was in working order, would quickly and skillfully slip the condom, which doubled my excitation, briefly kiss me, spread her legs, and offer her body to my concupiscence. I would then climb on top of her and come almost immediately. Next, although I would have liked to stay on her body a few minutes more, I had to return to my place in the bed as she rightly complained about my being heavy. At first, it bothered me to climax so quickly, especially since she had no time to enjoy it, and I offered to repeat my performance one hour or so later or the following night or day, knowing that if I had sex twice in a row, the second time would last much longer and would be nicer for both of us, but she assured me that it was perfectly fine the way it was and that she needed to go back to her books.
During our marriage, we never really discussed the possibility of having children. As long as she was a law student, it was obviously out of the question, as it was when she started to work, when she was so busy. She once told me she wanted children, but not before she was twenty-nine or thirty, which was still a few years away. As far as I was concerned, I must admit that I was not really interested in becoming a father. Because my experience with children, when I was a child myself, had been rather negative as they had often acted mean with me, I was not looking forward to having some around me. I knew too well how cruel they could be and couldn’t help associating children and meanness. In addition, I was afraid that, because of their father, my children would be fat and, if they were not mean themselves, would probably be bullied and suffer from other children’s cruelty. Finally, I didn’t want anybody to come between Eliza and me, especially since, soon, she would have a regular job and thus more time to devote to me and our marriage.
After getting up, I would fix breakfast for the two of us while Eliza was taking a shower and getting ready. Again, although we had just made love, as soon as I heard her turn off the water, I would interrupt the preparation of the breakfast and rush to the bathroom to watch her get out of the tub. I never got enough of her naked body. She would then nicely send me back to fixing the toasts and cereal. A few minutes later, with her hair wrapped in a towel, she would join me at the table for one of my favorite memories of our weekends: our breakfasts together. It was a particularly enjoyable time because, for once, we would really take our time to eat and talk. We would discuss everything: our work, the weather, the plans for the rest of the weekend or for the next vacation, our families, our past, our future... Eliza couldn’t wait to graduate and become a lawyer.
