About Helen

Opinions expressed in this truthful account are the result of my association with Helen over a total of about three years during the late 1970s, and between September 1992 and February or March 1993. My final encounter with her was a brief chance meeting in 1995. Photos of Helen and the author are displayed above. Readers should not attribute any of the following account to any unrelated person with the same name.

Helen was an intelligent woman who was respected and well liked by her colleagues and associates, many of whom I knew personally. My opinions refer only to specific aspects of her personal life and our interaction. Some of my opinions may appear to be contradictory due to the complexity of human nature. Please do not think badly of Helen in response to anything I have written. None of us are perfect. None of this was written out of hositility or ill-will. Hopefully, readers will be motivated to treat those they profess to love with greater respect, kindness and consideration.

To me Helen was a fickle, self-indulgent, emotional parasite who used me for a good time, then dumped me after she had recovered from a failed marriage. That was after I’d moved interstate for her. She spent one last memorable weekend onboard the Olive Pearl with me most likely because she needed a good fuck. I was happy to oblige. In perfect weather we anchored behind the wrecks at Tangalooma just up from the resort where visitors feed fish to wild dolphins. Next day we sailed back across Moreton Bay to Brisbane.

I kept her letters to remind myself to avoid any similar trap. Those were the days before text messages when letters were often written by hand. I had forgotten about the photos. I tossed those out decades ago. The negatives turned up in an old shoe box recently.

Ironically, for a clever, intelligent woman Helen could be easily led. Some of her decisions were truly awful. I’ll never forget the way she described her ex-husband, Barry.
“He’s an emotional cripple with a small dick,” she told me. So why the hell did she marry him? An emotional parasite married “an emotional cripple with a small dick.” That was not a recipe for success. Barry had the gift of the gab, but his glib malarkey could not save their marriage. The sun did not shine out of his arse, nor did it shine out of his dick.

None of this happened in a vacuum. She was a gorgeous young woman who had just turned twenty around the time we first met. We dated on and off occasionally. Discreet privacy could be difficult to arrange after she moved into a Brisbane communal share house. A cheap motel was a vulgar, inappropriate option, and the communal house had no air conditioning. That place was stifling in the middle of summer. I had to take a short break one evening when we were left alone.

The house I lived in was the most comfortable place to spend a quiet afternoon. Those were far too infrequent. There were nights when we went out busking. She had a very sweet voice and I played guitar. Soon we had enough money to pay for dinner at an inner city restaurant. With favourable exchange rates near the end of the 1970s overseas travel was a bonus. We arranged to hook up in L.A. during one trip. One Saturday afternoon when I was visiting the communal house a sanctimonious clown called Malcolm started ranting about lust and anarchy. I thought he was hilarious. The look on his face was priceless when I started laughing. Life was generally good although I know she went through some difficult times.

Then she met Barry. To get into Helen’s pants, Barry would have danced nude around a statue of a giant turd mounted on a velvet cushion. Luckily for him that wasn’t necessary. He was quite a bit older and had the ability to manipulate her. Unfortunately, Barry’s capacity for real affection was smaller than his dick.

Twelve years went by without news or contact, but when Helen left him she knew how to find me. I was surprised it had taken her so long. We spent five or six days together, then she planned a holiday for us on Coochiemudlo Island. A road trip to Canberra, the Blue Mountains, and the NSW central coast was next on the agenda. Then came New Year onboard the Olive Pearl on Sydney harbour. She had escaped the housewife cage.

She glows in almost every photo I have of her from that time. Her happiness was palpable. She was a lovely bird of paradise transformed into a human sponge absorbing all of the warmth and affection I could give her as she spread her wings into the dawn of a new life. With a wind shift from the South I sailed North to be with her.

The following short excerpt is from a letter Helen wrote before spending New Year with me onboard the Olive Pearl. I’ve included this not to embarrass her, but to dispel any doubts that some readers might have about the nature of our relationship and the veracity of my account.

“My Dear Darling Geoff,
I was just sitting down…after spending the night by myself watching the box when I started to miss you and long for your arms around me for the umpteenth time today. I just want to be around you so I can caress you and hug you and tell you how much I appreciate you. I find you to be a wonderful, caring, sensitive man. I love holding you. I love your body. I love you and I want to make love with you…”

After reading that, what healthy, single, unattached, man wouldn’t move interstate for her?

I should have known better. I demanded nothing from her so why did she end the relationship so suddenly without warning, and why was she so callous in the way she went about it? Why was she suddenly so weird, acting as though I’d run over her cat? Was she intermittently bipolar? I didn’t ask. If I had, she would have interpreted that as a sign of weakness. We had been down that road before she met Barry. At that time I asked her why she was breaking it off. “I was deluded,” she replied.
She must have enjoyed being deluded. She made a habit of it.

There was a hole being ripped open inside me, but I kept a lid on it pretending to be unaffected. I refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing the result of her sudden ‘angry pills’ performance. In defiance of emotional turmoil I kept hold of my humanity one breath at a time as I dropped her off in front of her house and drove away. A week or so later I made the mistake of phoning her.

She was well into the first semester of a university degree. Encouragement from me was of no real value: I could not offer stability or financial security. Maybe she saw me as an impediment who lacked future prospects. If so, she was wrong. Later that year thanks to her influence I applied to enrol at uni. I was quietly freaking out when my first assignment came back with a large red ‘D’ on the cover. Then it dawned on me that ‘D’ stood for distinction. Three years later I embarked on a new career, and later, a successful business.

You can make your own luck. My wife and I met, we started a family, and we are still together. We live comfortably. Good fortune has gifted us a beautiful, highly intelligent daughter. Conversations with her are icing on the cake of existence. Life has been good to us.

Two years after Helen dumped me I met her again by chance at Brisbane’s Edward Street Ferry Terminal. I had been living onboard the Olive Pearl which was moored at an idyllic spot on the edge of Brisbane’s CBD. That brief encounter was not inspiring. “Who’s been getting at her this time around?” I thought to myself as she strutted off to catch the ferry with her nose in the air and her snooty attitude. I was far better off without her fickle weirdness in my life, but that did nothing to fix the sense of loss I felt at that moment. Had she changed in any way that I could see? The glow and the carefree joie de vivre had evaporated. That much was obvious.

Sometimes I wonder how she ended up. With her monumental lack of good judgement anything is possible. I tried a google search. There must have been hundreds of women with the same name, and nothing related to her academic interests. Is she alive or dead? Did history repeat itself? How many men did she latch onto only to suffer disappointment? How long did it take before she could see through the cracks in their facade? Has her life been rewarding and worthwhile? Is she surviving in a sub-standard dump or has she retired into opulent comfort?

My recollection, my opinions and my experience with Helen are recounted here accurately and honestly. Others who know her may hold different opinions. Believe whatever you like, but be careful who you trust. There are people - as described here - who can write that they love you and want you, then shaft you without warning and treat you like dog shit on a shoe.

So far, I have described only one facet of a seriously flawed gem. She had a beautiful heart. I could see that clearly when we first met. At the core of her being she was good, kind and well-intentioned. That was another facet. She had a quality that shines out of those old photos. How did she lose it? She did not set out to be an impulsive, emotionally abusive, snooty, inconsiderate bitch. What brought that on?

And how did she lose the plot so completely during her time at uni? I asked myself that question the last time I saw her as the ferry pulled away from the Edward Street terminal.
I'll take a guess: After (before?) dumping me I suspect she may have had some ‘help’ from someone who led her down a dark garden path, and probably fucked her along the way. Am I right? Who knows?

That and the other issues aside, I have always been convinced that Helen was a good, decent human being at heart. The bizarre stunt she pulled when she gave me the flick was totally out of character - or was it? With that stab in the back Helen turned betrayal into an art form. Now as I look back on everything that happened I think having her as a girlfriend and holiday partner was akin to keeping a funnel web spider as a house pet and hoping I wouldn’t get bitten.

She owes me an explanation and a very belated apology. Both would be welcome.

N.B.
1. Barry’s clever conversation combined with psychological manipulation outperformed anything I could produce. He had Helen for the better part of twelve years. The best I could manage was about six months at a stint.
2. Helen emerged from a broken marriage with two little kids in tow. They came with us during the Coochiemudlo Island holiday and a day sail on Moreton Bay soon after I arrived in Brisbane. At other times she left them with Barry or with her grandmother, a lovely old lady who seemed to understand Helen’s need for male company. Helen was a wonderful mum. Her kids were bright, happy and well behaved. They were a credit to her parenting skills. Moreover, judging by their happy demeanour I think Barry must have been an excellent dad. In the short time the kids spent with us they began to trigger my paternal and protective instincts. That was a first for me, but the full impact of paternity did not arrive until some years later with the birth of my daughter.
3. I can imagine Barry’s reaction when his kids came back saying, “We went sailing on a yacht with mum and Geoff.”
A friend suggested that he could have pressured Helen over the custody of the kids and / or concocted some kind of story about me. Whether or not he instigated Helen’s meltdown the old bugger had the last laugh.

A Theory

Feelings and emotions tend to change over time, but not that quickly, not so dramatically, and not for no apparent reason. Helen lapped up everything I could give her after years of being starved of affection by her emotional cripple of a husband. She knew that I was in love with her, and had been since I first dated her. Over time, as the heat of her emotions began to cool I think she began to see my emotional attachment as a weekness. I once saw a similar dynamic play out between two people I used to know. He idolised her. She treated him like a used condom. She had no respect for him.

For someone like Helen, what would it take to make a long term relationship viable? Her partner would need to be intelligent and good natured with a dominant edge to his personality that she would respect. He would be able to listen and demonstrate empathy. Success in business or his chosen profession would impress her. Money and a stable income would be essential. Romantic holidays and date nights spiced with interesting conversation would be high on the agenda. He would need to be well equiped for a horizontal dance. If my theory is correct he would be fond of her, but not in love with her; able to drip feed enough affection to keep her coming back for more, but not so much that she would see it as a weakness. He would be emotionally strong enough to leave her without too much drama if necessary. To avoid losing him she would most likely respond proactively with enough effort to keep the relationship functioning.

I am not an expert on interpersonal relations. I can only report what I have seen and experienced, and draw conclusions from that.

Could this metaphoric thought bubble be relevant?
If you were given a potentially life changing present would you toss out the box and wrapping paper and keep the present, or would you toss out the lot including the present? A hoarder eventually understood that she had a house full of junk that had to go. Amongst the junk was a valuable heirloom. Her new friend / partner did not understand the value of the heirloom, but being an opinionated prick he convinced the reformed hoarder to toss out the heirloom along with the junk. Shit happens!

Published 1-July-2025

Copyright 2025 ~ G.A.S.~ All rights reserved.