Diary of an Oxygen Thief (The Oxygen Thief Diaries)

by AnonYMous

  This was a grave error. I wasn't conscious of wanting to shag her. I still believed her to be too young, but I thought I'd ask her to dinner as a treat. She was, after all, virtually related, and what would her uncle think if he learned of our meeting and I hadn't even offered to take her to dinner? She gave me her number, and out of sheer lack of knowledge, I booked a booth at the same restaurant Tomkinsin had taken me to as his sociable statement a few nights before. Actually, I'd gone there with Telma too.

  Who was Telma? Telma Way was a gorgeous girl who worked at the New York office and invited herself to dinner with me when she saw me hanging around there. I never really thought there was ever any chance of getting involved with her on any romantic level. She was a great character and very beautiful and very tough.

  Aisling, that was the Irish girl's name.

  Yeah, I liked it, too. Gaelic for dream. It's haunted me since. So Aisling left a message on my hotel answering machine saying,

  “See you there.”

  3.

  She was about a half hour late, but she looked fucking lovely. Black V-neck sweater, black pants, black shoes. Very Prada. Long hazel hair billowing behind her as she came through the door. She looked familiar, like I'd known her before. Like some sister I used to have and lost.

  So clean, young and adult at the same time. From the moment she walked through the door, my biggest challenge was to hide from her how strongly she affected me. She came towards me with, I think, the intention of leaning to my left for what I was to learn was the obligatory New York peck on the cheek. Never heard tell of such a thing in St Lacroix.

  Those eyes.

  This is going to sound awful, but I don't care. I'm way past embarrassment.

  You can't hurt a man with a pinprick when he's already got a spear in his chest. I swear to you that she looked just like the pictures of the Virgin Mary in Irish Catholic homes.

  I kid you not.

  The Virgin Fuckin' Mary.

  “You look great,” I said, motioning towards the hostess-stand.

  “Thanks, so do you.”

  That was her first lie. We strode into the arena. All brown leather and tea-stained tiles. This was Friday night. I was to fly back to you-know-where the next morning. It was quite busy so we didn't get the booth. But we got a nice enough table. She was not stupid. That much was very clear, very quickly.

  This was no twenty-two, twenty-three or even twenty-four-year-old inexperienced bimbo. She talked older than she looked. I really was thrown by that. I was expecting to spend the evening deflecting compliments of such enormity that I would find myself hating her for her lack of subtlety. Instead, I ended up kicking myself for mine. And it was too late. I couldn't suddenly wake up and say, “Oh, I didn't realize you were intelligent. I thought you were a stupid fawning child unworthy of my best game.”

  She must have seen everything she needed to see in the first fifteen minutes of my unbelievably self-centered diatribe. Slowly, almost considerately, she let me know how much I'd shown myself up. She’d already attended exhibitions I’d only begun to read about. Films I’d heard about were already memories to her. And I would never have realised that I’d mispronounced the names of foreign artists until she pronounced them.

  Her superiority was graceful, though sympathetic even. Talk about being wrong-footed. Of course, I've since attributed every little nuance in that evening's conversation to her devilish manipulative skills, but the truth is that when someone outshines me, I hide my anger by putting them on a pedestal. This makes me seem generous so that when I want to put the knife in I’ll be trusted. Yes, sometimes I even scare myself.

  Anyway, she went on to tell me that she was from Killiney in Dublin. I found out much later that this is an extremely well-off area. And that her brother worked in London and her sister was married in Spain and that she herself had been in New York over a year. She'd been assisting photographers on a freelance basis because it afforded her more time to devote to her own work between assignments. Forgive me, but I've always translated that to mean: “I can't get a full-time job.” All the while she was talking, I was falling totally and irrevocably in love. The long hands, the direct look, the head-flicks commanding the soft tumbling hair, the clear skin on her neck, the gentle slope of her small breasts.

  Stop.

  When she did appear impressed by something I'd said ( I was now realizing I'd need to dust off my china, so to speak) she’d seem to notice me, like you would a small boy “Oh really, gosh that's great.” or “They must think a lot of you.” and “I wish I had your problems.” By these remarks, I realized that I must have come off as if I was trying to impress her. I felt tricked into it. I wanted to start the whole evening all over again.

  And I couldn't help thinking she was bored but acting. She had a Bacardi and Coke during dinner. A big one. I had the pork chops. I still have the bill. I do. I got it back on expenses, but I kept the bill. You see, that night changed my life. If it hadn’t been for that night, I wouldn't be sitting here in the East Village in New York City, writing this fucking thing. She said I’d like the East Village.

  She was right.

  But there you go. I fell totally in love with her. How could I not? My dead dad's gift to me and I was going to say no? No. We chatted easily about advertising and I generally tried to dazzle her as best I could. She was reserved, but mannerly, very mannerly. Old school. I'd never been allowed near that before. She even poured mineral water into my glass and twisted the bottle abruptly like you do with Champagne.

  I got off on that.

  She was very attentive. That was it. She knew how to handle a guy. She made you feel like it was okay to be a guy. To be yourself. This, it seems to me, is the most devastating weapon of all in a woman's arsenal. If you can encourage the man to be himself, to give you his character, his ways, then you know how to navigate him, and therefore, he will never be able to hide from you.

  I already knew this.

  I've managed to stay in the advertising business for ten years.This is one business that isn't known for its charity and even I, Mr. Jaundice himself, entered through her velvet drapes and signed the waiver. Mind you, I was ready, I hadn't touched a woman in five years, for fuck’s sake.

  So, she did her well-behaved Irish aristocrat act and I did mine. Irish lost-boy-with-two-big-eyes-borrowed-from-a-cow. She glided across the floor and led me back onto Broadway and into Bleecker Street, which in my ignorance and to my everlasting shame, I asked her to show me because I heard it was quite cool.

  She took me to a gay bar. I hadn't even been in a bar let alone gay bar for years. It took me about an hour to figure it out. There were a lot of, what appeared to be, very happy middle-aged men with dyed hair, singing around an upright piano.

  Delighted they were. Not drunk, just happy. Cherubic. She went to the toilet and left me on my own for longer than what I would have thought necessary. For all I know, she might have popped across the street for a leisurely drink and come back just in time to find a burly man with the whitest teeth I'd ever seen leaning against me. I was relieved to see her and told her so. She liked that. Of course she did.

  We moved on to another bar. Bit more cramped. On barstools clumped together, she told me through her hands, she seemed to have picked up the American habit of using her hands to shape the words coming out of her mouth, how she'd won a Green Card in the Irish lottery and she'd worked in New Orleans for about a year before coming to New York. She became quite animated when she talked about Mardi Gras and, more specifically, the dancing that accompanied it. She seemed far away when she talked about this experience. It was the only time she unclutched herself...yes, even when we were fucking or, should I say, when she was fucking me, I remember thinking how beautiful she looked, but that there

  was something else there, something unnerving, not quite hatred, maybe self-hatred. Yes.

  More like self-hatred. Whatever it was, it was internal. She'd deal with it. I would never

  get that
chance.

  That privilege.

  So from there to a coffee bar, which I still can't find today. Must have been somewhere off Bleecker. There were mice under the seats. While I'd have been more than happy to leave it at that, she seemed so insistent that we stay out longer. She seemed to want to hang on for more. So I ended up saying I'd really enjoyed talking to her. More than I'd expected. She said she thought the same thing, with the hands again, this time reaching as if to say - Hold my hand - I reached forward and before I knew what was happening, we were kissing gently.

  Nothing too graceful.

  I was half-standing and leaning across a table with mice circling our feet.

  But it was nice.

  I felt all the cobwebs billow, then blow away in a warm flush of Summer air that seemed to close around me. Fuck knows what she felt, but I was in the bag right there. I would have been quite content to keep pecking her lips for another few hours. No problem.

  Except she deftly raised the stakes with a little stiff flick of her tongue. It was amazing. Like the pilot light came on in the flue of my dick. You know that sound.

  Thuem or is it Pfftum.

  Suddenly, I was looking at this sweet teenage innocent as if she were a cum-soaked whore. And I liked it. More importantly, so did she. I was supposed to be leaving the next day. But it was already the next day. I was probably not going to see her again until Christmas and that wasn't even for sure. We both intended going home to Ireland for the holidays. There was nothing else for it.

  “Want to come back to the hotel room?”

  Epic stuff for me. Already, I'd packed about fifteen years of half-experienced adolescence into two hours, and now here was a semi-materialized thirty-five-year-old making the pitch of his life. She muttered something about it being a bit fast or something. And I retreated gratefully. Relieved. So we walked down the street, slowly, hand-in-hand looking-but-not-too-hard for a cab. In the end, she turned to me and said, “We can go back to the hotel room as long as we take it easy.” With that, we were walking quicker. She hailed a cab. We kissed a little bit in the back. How wonderful New York City looked to me through the shimmering strands of golden hair that fell over my face between kisses.

  Allow me a moment here.

  Thanks.

  Before long we arrived at 31st and Madison and the doorman of my hotel moved in slow-mo towards us. I have a great fear of these doorman creatures, because I knew one in St Lacroix and all he ever seemed to do was complain about how little he was tipped. I didn't tip them at all. For what? Standing there? So my young girlfriend and I slid past his smiling, in my mind, envious face and strolled to the elevator. I was very nervous in that mirrored humming container. Why were they always mirrored? There is nothing more frightening

  to me then the image of my own image from two or three different angles. So I stared

  at the floor.

  Room 901 meant nine floors.

  I prayed the key would work. I also prayed she was over eighteen. In this country, one does not want to be associated, even jokingly, with paedophilia. And this girl did look young. I satisfied myself that she was at least in her twenties, but I still couldn't get it out of my mind that the police were going to kick in the door at any second. At one point, she turned to me, we were on the bed at this stage, and blinked innocently at me.

  “Tell me a story,” she said.

  I must have gone white. She could have been fourteen. I told her a story about a woman who brought back a rat from India because she thought it was a dog. We kissed and caressed, and I ended up going down on her.

  Now I don't want to get too graphic here, but I have to say it because it is true, and in my experience, rare. Her womanhood tasted better than her mouth. I could have stayed down there all night.

  No problem.

  I only came up to see if she was as pretty as I'd suspected. She was. This went on until it began to get light. She said we should take it easy, so easy is what we took. I was adamant that we not go the whole way.

  Memories of being with Pen, body memories began surfacing in me. I remember looking at Aisling while she slept and thinking, she’s back. I’ve got Penny back. I used to look at Penny when she was asleep. It was nice to just let my eyes wander unchecked around the smooth skin. A living breathing picture. Strange to be touching a naked body again after so long. I was so petrified that she wouldn’t find me attractive I didn’t even take all my clothes off. Secretly I was glad we were taking it easy since it meant I didn’t have to get into any performance issues. What if I came too quickly or couldn’t get it up?

  I used an AA maxim, which helped.

  When in doubt be of service.

  So, I concentrated on giving her as much pleasure as I could. Pen had trained me to go down on her and now I was glad. Aisling’s sleeping face wore a gentle smile. She

  seemed happy enough.

  The next morning, I said that we should go for breakfast. I got my bags together and checked out. Soon we were in another taxi on our way to a café near her place. And soon after that I was in yet another cab and on my way back to That Place. She didn’t look around after I got in the cab and was whisked away.

  I know this, because I did.

  Back in St Lacroix, it still hadn't snowed. I still hadn't sold the fucking house. I was already out of my mind with paranoia, thinking my company was instigating a block on the sale of my house. I thought they were slipping some money to the realtor to restrain his enthusiasm in closing a deal. I was under tremendous pressure with a big campaign I was doing for a charity that supplied Summer vacations for kids with AIDS.

  Big project. Big deal.

  Every ad agency likes to have a charity on their books for which they'll pull all sorts of outlandish favors. There are attractive incentives for this, though. One, the agency can usually do great dramatic work for a charity, more dramatic than what you'll be allowed to do for baked beans. And two, there are tax concessions and write-offs. But it’s important which charity you affiliate yourself with.

  Especially in the United States.

  For instance, a fundraising group that wants to help addicts off heroin isn't nearly as reliable, or photogenic, or even pitiable, as a kid with AIDS. Adults with AIDS are no good. It could be their own fault. No, kids are good. Kids with AIDS, are better. Sorry, but it's true. It's not the fault of the ad agencies. It’s actually your fault.

  The Public.

  And if this never gets published it’s your fault too because it means that this kind of story was deemed uninteresting to you.

  You bastards.

  You just won’t accept a heroin addict asking for money to kick his habit. Maybe you’re right. Who knows? But that’s it. Charities are as competitive as commercial companies and nowadays need to think like them.

  After all, they’re chasing the same dollars.

  Then you've got the networks. They have a finite amount of airtime available annually for donation to charity. Which ones to give the time to? Each network has standards to maintain and are wary of letting the tone of their channels slip. It comes down to which commercial is going to make them look best. Again, you're safe with kids. So the ad agency is clever enough to pick a charity with lots of kids in it, because they know from the outset, the networks will have more time for them, in this case, airtime.

  Anyway, let me tell you my Summer camp kids story. We were shooting the commercial on location at the Camp Northern Minnesota. We were sleeping in bunk beds at the camp. I didn't even know what Summer camp was until I had it explained to me. Still seemed like something only middle class kids would ever do. But there is no middle class in the United States. Yeah right.

  After a fitful sleep, it was so quiet I made my way to the communal bathroom (euphemism for toilet) for a shit and a shave. It occurred to me that with two hundred kids running around here during the Summer, some of their contagions might rub off on the basins. It occurred to me just before I shaved.

  I thought about all the
skin pores being opened up to all that diseased air. Christ. I went ahead and shaved, of course. And after a few appreciative glances at myself, I was satisfied that while I hadn't slept well, I didn't look as if I hadn't slept well.

  I was careful not to smile at myself. I want never to be caught smiling at myself in a mirror. It's okay in private. Out for breakfast I went. The crew and the director were already assembled around steaming plates. They looked rough and unshaven.

  This pleased me.

  I sat down and dug into eggs and toast or whatever was on offer. Cwaffee. Then, the Camp Boss and general all-around hero of the day came in all bubbly, wringing his hands and lowering his eyes with excess humility. He ran the camp and was the founder of the whole thing. I noticed he, too, was unshaven. This was very uncharacteristic of him since he was always very particular about the way he looked. In fact, apart from being unshaven, he seemed his normal well-dressed self, but in country wools and tweeds. My veins began to curdle. He risked a humble look around the table. He was looking only for information. Who was at the table? Who did he need to be nicest to and in what order?

  He stopped at me:

  “You didn't shave, did you?”

  I must've gone white.

  “Yes. I did. I…”

  “Aw c’mon, I'm very disappointed.”

  I was about to ask him how he thought I felt.

  “We don't shave here at camp. It's meant to be informal, but I suppose since, strictly speaking, you're still at work, we'll let it go this time.”

  I laughed a genuine laugh. I would live. And more importantly I wouldn’t need an HIV test before meeting my beloved again. Being in that camp with birds singing and children everywhere being so cute and nice to each other had awoken something familial

  in me. I saw Aisling and I living somewhere wooded like this. Light dappling our happiness, laughter echoing around trees before we shushed each other lest we wake the baby.