Erotica Artist Ch. 02: Romance and Renun
I was in a big city at last and was no longer self-conscious about my every move. I could come and go as I pleased and be totally lost in the crowd. I was anonymous. I was liberated. I loved the sheer size of the place and the variety it afforded. I could browse record stores and bookshops by the dozen. My choice of movies was multiplied a hundredfold and I now had a chance to see in concert artists I'd only heard on record. James Brown and Aretha Franklin and the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Yet at the same time my awareness of my isolation increased. In movie houses and concert halls I was surrounded by couples on dates or groups of friends. I was dateless and friendless. My physical confinement was over but my solitude was not. I lived on the fourth floor of a red brick residence on the tip of Point Grey, surrounded by Commerce and Engineering students. And here at least my solitude was broken by a room-mate, a tall, bespectacled, acne-blasted Engineer named Ron Pilkington, who ...