Dede
An anti-romance short story.
Ben met Dede at a company-wide townhall meeting. She smiled at him from across the room and introduced herself during a bio-break.
My name is Deirdre but everyone calls me Dede. She had just come onboard, she said.
Several weeks later at a joint-team function she settled into the seat next to Ben and between presentations picked his brain about the corporate culture.
She was attractive and smart but her personality was flat and dark so Ben avoided her whenever possible.
One day in the cafeteria, Dede sat down across from him, leaned in, and asked for his help.
I just had my six-month review, she said. It was good. But I’m not getting promoted, even though I was promised a promotion after six months. They said I wasn’t ready. You’ve been here long enough to know what to do. Any advice?
Ben was not exactly sure what kind of advice she wanted, but he had been at the company long enough to know not to get involved in anything political, especially anything concerning a colleague whose career path had suddenly turned into a dead end.
I don’t know how to be helpful, he said. Generally, I only give bad advice.
She then asked for counsel on a personal issue she was having with a colleague on her team that she said needed an immediate solution before it got out of hand. Ben obliged her.
A few weeks later Ben received a message from Dede on Slack: I’m resigning. Today is my last day. Let’s stay in touch. Ben didn’t respond to her as he had no desire to stay in touch. Which he hoped by his silence she would understand. A month later Dede messaged him through LinkedIn. She thanked him for the counsel he had given her even though things hadn’t worked out. Anyway, she had landed a dream job with a great future. She wanted to buy him dinner.
He ignored her first invitation but the following one was for dinner at a trendy downtown Italian restaurant that Ben was interested in trying. Immediately after he accepted her invite, she sent him a text: Looking forward to seeing you. On the day of their date, she texted him: excited for tonight.
Seated at their table, sipping their drinks, Dede showed no signs of excitement. She gazed abstractly into space. Her body language was stiff and constrained, her gestures lacking grace. Conversation was brittle, starting and breaking off for no discernible reason. They did not seem to have many mutual interests aside from industry-related gossip. However, after a martini, Dede loosened a little and began to talk about her upbringing, about her brother and sister. After two martinis she became giddy and charming and flirty and asked about his relationship situation. He had forgotten how attractive she was. He wondered if she looked as good naked as she did with her clothes on while he listened to her range over the kind of banal subjects listed in self-description inventories on dating websites. Her family was important to her. She liked shopping. She tried to keep herself fit by working out three times a week. She enjoyed fine food and good wine. Sometimes she read the newspaper. Arts and culture were a part of her life. Her friends were cherished. She liked to travel. She admitted she was boring though she thought her admission made it untrue.
Ben remained reticent throughout the meal. It was not his habit to divulge much about himself, especially on a first date. He didn’t share facts about his life, or recount anecdotes that revealed a pleasing personality trait to win a woman’s affection. He was aware, however, that once you were in a relationship everything in your life became fair game, and one day or another you would end up telling yourself. Confession was a fundamental force of the personality.
Over dessert, Dede inquired whether he was into coke and ketamine like so many fintech bros.
Alcohol and oxycodone are my vices, Ben said.
She thought he was joking.
Good, she said. I’m not into self-destructive behavior.
He walked her to her apartment. She invited him to come up and see the view from her living room.
The view at night is stunning, she said, sidling up next to him. She took his hand and placed it on her hip. They stood and admired the lights spread out across lower Manhattan like a shimmering blanket, and then had sex on her couch with the drapes wide open.
I’m actually pretty trad and don’t have casual sex, she said, as he was getting dressed in the morning. I mean, in case you were wondering.
It never occurred to me.
Ben’s relationship record was pretty poor. There were always issues. Why he had stayed with his last girlfriend for as long as he did remained a mystery. He knew there was no future for the two of them from the first date. He knew the same about Dede. But not having had sex in some time, he found his appetite for it whetted and he wanted more. Dede apparently felt the same way, so they began seeing each other regularly.
While Dede appeared to take pleasure in their love making, she rarely achieved orgasm. Nor could he determine if the orgasms she said she achieved were fake. I’m not hung up about it, she said, and you shouldn’t be either. It’s the voyage that’s important to me, she claimed, not the arrival. She said sex was the only thing that made her feel good about herself.
Ben didn’t know whether to believe her. That first night when they had drunkenly thrown themselves on her couch, Dede had taken an active role in their lovemaking. This turned out to be the exception rather than the rule governing their erotic life. If Dede was not drunk — and she only drank on the weekends — she needed time to prepare for sex. Kissing passionately, no sooner did they begin to undress each other than she would break free of his embrace. She wanted to be fresh. Locking herself in the bathroom, she took long, hot showers. When she came to bed, wrapped in a towel, smelling of oils and perfumes and her skin slick and silky, she quickly slipped under the sheets, pulled Ben on top of her — and they were off. She called out for him to do whatever he wanted to do to her, cried out for him to go faster or harder or just like that, just like that. Right there, right there, there …
One night she confessed that she was not used to being with someone as physically fit as he was, and this made her feel insecure and inhibited her ability to let herself go and fully enjoy herself during sex. This made no sense since Ben could hardly be said to be in good physical condition. At thirty-five years of age he still had good musculature, even though he did not work out very often, and when he did, he did not put much effort into it. Years of drug and alcohol abuse and lack of a proper diet had taken a toll on his rangy physique. It was a miracle that his body had maintained even the semblance of fitness. He had been told by one former girlfriend that he had a sexy dad bod, even though he was not a dad. But there was no way he could be considered fit. That could not be the reason for Dede’s insecurity.
It turned out Dede was ashamed of her body. I have body dysmorphia, she confessed. She hated to see herself naked, hated for anyone to see her naked. As slickly silken as she made herself before sex, she never felt comfortable in her own skin. I can’t help it, she said.
Throughout the months they were dating Ben only saw her naked fleetingly. She liked expensive lingerie but didn’t like him to see her in it. It’s not for you, it’s for me, she said. She immediately covered herself after undressing. While they were having sex, he would catch a glimpse of her nakedness, but the lights were always low and she managed to elude his gaze in the shadows, and concealed herself as soon as they were done.
I don’t like feeling vulnerable, she said.
You have a beautiful body, he told her.
I’ve been told that. But I don’t think so, she said. And it’s my body.
Ben might have talked himself out of his growing indifference toward her if her self-consciousness about her body was her only problem. But there were other issues. They could have the kind of fast and furious sex that she liked, which exhausted them both, and then, afterwards, little by little, drift from innocuous post-coital chit-chat into an argument, which, no matter his efforts to avoid it, in no time flared in fervor and ferocity and became every bit as intense as the sex they had just concluded. She seemed to take pleasure in slapping him with insults. He was insecure, she told him. He was lazy. He was forgetful. Selfish. He drank too much. He did drugs. He had no ambition. Which was why, she said, his career had stalled and he was still at the same company in the same position while she had moved on to a different company and a better position.
Ben didn’t like to fight and he didn’t he care enough to deny her accusations or launch a counterattack, which made her even angrier.
You’re not even man enough to fight back, she said. But then she’d feel sorry for him and apologize and say that she didn’t know what had gotten into her and they would make up. She didn’t mean to hurt him, she was only trying to help.
Many of the things Dede said about him were true. Ben was aware of his faults and his failure to live up to his so-called potential. Perhaps he had more imperfections and bad habits than other people. Dede seemed to think so. That’s why she wanted him to change. For the better. For her. She never said how he should accomplish this. She did not ask him probing, personal questions, or suggest possible paths he could follow to improve himself, she only screamed out his weaknesses. Her principal interest in him appeared to be discovering new defects she could harp on, which seemed to give her pleasure.
His knowledge of Dede began and ended with her behavior. He did not like her enough to try to know more about her. Indifference to his lovers’ lives was one of his failings. You don’t even know who I am was an accusation with which he was not unfamiliar.
Despite his indifference toward her, and her abusive behavior toward him, they remained together. They settled into a routine that satisfied them both, meeting up during the week for a dinner or a movie or shopping. When they had sex she performed her role with enthusiasm, allowing him to do what he wished to her without complaint.
I like to let you have your way with me, it’s less work for me, she said.
It was hard to walk away from the pleasure that dominating her gave him. He appreciated her complaisance and was generous in return. He spoiled her with gifts, for which she was grateful, but his generosity did not stop her from tormenting him.
Eventually, the carnal pleasure he took in her began to wear thin. He was pretty much over her, and thinking about how to break up with her, which she must have sensed since she suggested they get away, leave the city, do something together as a couple. Why don’t we go skiing? We can work on our relationship, she said.
They went to Canada and stayed in the Fairmont Hotel in Banff. They stayed in a suite in one of the towers. The bedroom was up the type of steep spiral stairs that you dream of falling down and dying. It was no more than a platform that boasted a skylight above, and, with floor-to-ceiling windows making up the walls, the room provided a spectacular view of the sky and the mountains. It felt as if you were floating in the air. An incredibly romantic setting, but there was no romance.
Dede did not ski. She had told him she skied, but what she meant was she had been skiing once, in Vermont, and she was not good at it. She did not want lessons. Anyway, it was much colder here than it had been in Vermont. She would rather spend time in the spa.
The spa was being renovated and was closed.
Dede had nothing to do, and he was going to go skiing.
You’re going to leave me here, alone?
We came to ski. One of us has to.
The town is so small, she complained. There’s no decent shopping.
The tension boiled over into arguments that ended with her sleeping on the couch downstairs in front of the fire. Upstairs on his back on the bed by himself he could see the stars shining in the black night as he fantasized about different women while he masturbated and then fell asleep.
Ben was as patient with her as he could be given the situation. He sacrificed skiing one afternoon to stay with her. He suggested they go swimming in the heated outdoor pool. Dede did not know how to swim. She could soak in the hot tub. She did not want to expose herself in her bathing suit. She could sit outside under the heat lamps and read and watch him do laps and get some fresh mountain air. She would rather read inside the lodge by the roaring fire.
What was he to do?
He crushed a fifteen mg oxycodone on his molars and washed it down with a shot of scotch and waded into the pool. A squall came ripping over the ridge. It began to snow. Big heavy flakes fell from the sky. A row of pine trees bordered the patio. Their boughs bent back and forth in unison in the gusts of wind, sweeping the snow over the pool. When the wind relented, the snow fell faster, filtering its way through the green needles of the trees, accumulating on the ground and the tables and chaise lounges. He waded farther into the pool raising his arms above his head and tilting his face skyward. The snow settled on his face and across his chest like a cold caress. His body began to melt, becoming one with the water as the oxycodone kicked in and he floated away to another world. One without Dede.
In the plane on the way home they didn’t talk. In the cab on the way to the city Dede said that when she had gone to the bathroom on the plane a man had pulled her aside and asked her what she was doing with a loser like him.
He gave me his card.
She showed it to Ben to prove it.
Call him, he told her.