Novel pokes fun at dating at both ends of life

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PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Is Dave Williamson waiting outside Stella�s for a date, or just relaxing with a coffee and a good book?

When Bob Jenkins was dating his future wife in early-1950s Winnipeg, the rules of courtship were reasonably clear.

Nice girls saved themselves for marriage. Couples would engage in prolonged necking sessions in a seated position. Guys considered it a make-out milestone if they managed to slip a hand inside a girl's armour-like underwear.

Kissing and fondling weren't foreplay. They were all the gratification young sweethearts were supposed to enjoy during the long lead-up to the wedding night.

Jenkins, who looks back on the hand-holding, petting and slow-dancing encounters of his youth in Dave Williamson's new comic novel Dating, is a character of exactly the same vintage as the author.

Jenkins is a retired Winnipeg educator in his 70s. After a happy marriage of nearly five decades, he has been widowed for a couple of years.

That echoes the life of the 77-year-old author, who spent most of his career as an instructor and dean at Red River College, lost his wife of nearly 50 years in 2006, and has been dating recently. (He hasn't tried Internet dating, and neither does Jenkins in the book.)

Finding himself back in the romantic pool is not something Williamson, a father of four and grandfather of three, ever imagined, especially since his late wife was a few years younger.

"You don't ever think, 'I'm going to be the one who's left.' It never occurs to you," says the author, who has written four previous comic novels, is a past-president of the Manitoba Writers' Guild and contributes book reviews to the Free Press.

His first-person novel (Turnstone Press, $19) has its launch tonight at 8 at McNally Robinson's Prairie Ink Restaurant.

As Jenkins begins to take women out in the novel, he anxiously enters a confusing new game. He wonders if he has the sexual prowess to satisfy any woman, let alone a younger one. And how can he gracefully get his support stockings off before getting it on?

Dating is packed with local flavour, from the 1950 flood and cottage life at Victoria Beach to a University of Manitoba "grads' farewell" at the Marlborough Hotel. The author did disguise some names, substituting "Radisson's" department store for the Bay and calling his real-life high school "Yarwood" instead of Glenlawn.

Though it may read much like a memoir -- Jenkins even grows up on Vivian Avenue, the same St. Vital street as Williamson -- he says it's a blend of reality and fiction.

"There's some experiences right from my own life, some that are totally fabricated, and everything in between," he says. "I try to do comedy where people recognize themselves, or the situation."

The novel alternates between memory scenes and Jenkins' awkward forays into contemporary dating. "I've always been interested in relationships, and what people go through in the name of relationships," Williamson says. "Attached to that, of course, is sex."

The first short story he ever published in 1974 was called Courting in 1957. "I haven't really progressed very far!" he says with a laugh.

The author has done some research on bereaved men. A scholarly study called By Himself: The Older Man's Experience of Widowhood confirmed his impression that widowers typically revert to seeing themselves as eligible young bachelors. They tend to approach dating with the same mindset they had decades earlier.

"Men see themselves as young guys again. (That's why) they're not so crazy about women their own age."

Williamson says it's inevitable that his friends and neighbours will think they recognize people and situations in Dating. He's also prepared for a few of them to be scandalized by the frank sex scenes.

An avid fiction reader, Williamson says he finds many of today's authors leave intimate details out, even when the couple's relationship makes the reader wonder, "How does this play out in bed?"

Maybe it's the literary pendulum swinging back after a post-censorship period of graphic sex scenes, he says. But ordinary people's sexual experiences are part of the story he wants to tell.

"I wanted to explore that," he says. "I think nobody writes enough about that. . . . There's things about that that show character."

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 12, 2012 C3