Chapter 11 - Part Five.
By 2001 or so, the Unitarian Church of Vancouver no longer filled my needs. I tired of the services, except for Harold Brown's playing of the piano, the choir's music and some of the sermons. The endless quarrels in the church also turned me off. People came and went from the church, as if they were moving through a revolving door. "The church is a half way house," now retired scientist Merva Cottle said. "People come here to solve their problems. Once they solve them or if they can't solve them, they leave."
"What's the largest congregation in Vancouver?" one jokester told me. "The congregation that went to the Unitarian Church and then left it."
In 1999, the church's main minister Sydney Morris resigned her job. Members forced her out and this small, lively but sometimes disruptive woman returned to the American Midwest. Five years later inn 2004, Anne Buckmaster, a tall minister from Seattle, resigned her job. She too had been told to leave after some disagreements. By then we had a new minister. Steven Epperson was a bearded intellectual person from Salt Lake City. He gave the church the stability it had once had under Philip Hewett.
In the midst of these problems I started problems in the church. My fetishism which I've mentioned before, started to fade. Yet as this occurred I started to stare obsessively at well-dressed women. This was something I'd done during most of my adult life. Yet as I aged, this obsession became much stronger.
Any dark or brown haired woman who was well-dressed turned me on and I would start to stare at her continuously. Amanda came to the church in about 2000. She was a thirty something woman who sang in the choir. All I wanted to do was look at her. (Amanda is not her real name). I used to walk near her house long before she moved into her west side home. Yet I kept doing this after she moved in to the area. One day she saw me as I walked past her house. She saw me in the street and then a few months later left the church and her house.
"She left this area and the church because she was scared of you," a church member told me later. "And she thinks you're a creep. You just look at her and never talk to her."
I wrote a letter of apology to Amanda, but this caused more problems in the church as one woman got very angry at me for doing this. Finally I left the church in 2005 after not giving a sermon I was supposed to give. I was glad to leave but I realized that I needed to go into therapy to cure my problem. I found one therapist and then started to do self therapy after I left her.
Amanda returned to the church after I left and told people what I'd done. When I wanted to return to the church just once to hear one of Steven Epperson's sermons, my friend Jennifer Wade told me, "Dave this wouldn't be a good idea." By then I had written an honest account of my journey in and out of the Unitarian Church, and mailed out over two dozen copies. The book was as one man said, was full of "too much information." It was without doubt one of the worst things I'd ever written.
Yet my experience with Amanda didn't end there. After I left the church, she started to walk past my co-op but wouldn't talk to me. She was giving me the same treatment I'd given her. This tall elegant art curator was no fool. She must have walked near my home about seven or eight times and then vanished from my life. I realized that once again I had caused a woman problems and vowed not to hurt women again. I hope I kept this resolution. Time which I'm running out of, will tell.
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