A BAD RELATIONSHIP is a more explorative and intentionally more realistic version of the same basic story as told in Menge’s earlier work, LA BELLE DAME. In general, the mystical musings from LA BELLE DAME are diminished while sociological and psychological factors are expanded,
The main characters are the same: cabbie aspiring artist Judd Gersham and bartender single mother Sarah Kerwin. Also the same are secondary characters “cabbie poet” Sol Weinstein, Sarah’s daughter Aicha, and Sarah’s live-in gay housekeeper, Scott Paulson.
Sarah’s family background is explored more thoroughly in A BAD RELATIONSHIP than in LA BELLE DAME as Sarah returns with her daughter to her Ohio hometown. There Sarah reunites with her mother, visits her childhood places, and learns more about her “good-timing” father and the long relationship that continued after her parents’ separation.
A BAD RELATIONSHIP also follows Sarah closely as she struggles to break out of her loneliness (after one of her breakups with Steward) and tries to find a path to the academic career that she dreams of. The San Francisco urban scene is faithfully portrayed for what it was after the Hippie era was over in the Haight while “longhairs” were still present in neighborhoods where the old counter-culture persisted, though with less sense of a brave new future awaiting. Sol’s communal situation with his two female room-mates and the two children of one of the women is also described.
Steward is followed more deeply in this novel (as compared to LA BELLE DAME) in his self-doubts, intellectual ambitions, and philosophical musings, as well as in his experiences with grass, –both negative and positive, — as for artistic purposes he tries to become “more feminine” in being more receptive in attitude though not sexually (as he defines his goal).
In the midst of all this, as Judd and Sarah fall back repeatedly into their romantic entanglements, it becomes quite clear that they are very much in love, but cannot fight their way through all of the complicating factors to make a true commitment to one another. As In LA BELLE DAME, their efforts come to an end when Sarah becomes pregnant and proceeds to have an abortion without Judds involvement.
When Gersham does find out about that, he accepts that it is too late to respond in any helpful way, and he merely walks away after listening for Sarah to call him back. But in this final meeting she does not.