Chameleon On a Kaleidoscope (The Oxygen Thief Diaries)

by AnonYMous

  I tried to explain that I hadn’t been looking for girls so much as customers for my book. She thought about this for a moment. She was trying to be fair. Why not give me the benefit of the doubt? Maybe I wasn’t so bad, I had some good points. But how could I do such a thing? Didn’t I realise how much I’d hurt her? She was forcing herself to try on my ill-fitting skin. To look at the world though my eyes.

  “If that’s true, then why don’t you use me to sell your book?”

  Was she was trying to smoke me out? Call my bluff? If I really was just selling books then I didn’t need to be online at all and especially since the book was supposed to be written anonymously. I imagined what it would be like to click on Marian’s pictures in a datemedotcom profile.

  FRANCOISE

  “Likes literature, cinema and sex. Maybe even all at the same time.”

  This was the headline for a new profile featuring some of the sexier pictures I’d taken of Marian. Her face was either cropped out or in shadow so that there was no chance of her being recognised and I was careful to ensure there were no reflections on any surfaces where her face might show. There were one or two pictures I’d taken of her standing in front of a glass doorway in the West Village where she was gently back-lit and in her boots and shorts she looked gorgeous. In fact, I flattered myself that the four shots I selected for this new fictitious profile were of a sufficiently high standard that the photographer who took them might at least be considered semi-professional.

  USERNAME

  Beautifullylit

  BODYTYPE

  Thin/Petite (I get most of my clothes from the children’s section of Old Navy)

  LANGUAGES

  French/English/Italian

  OCCUPATION

  Photographer-Assistant-Model-Writer

  LAST GREAT BOOK I READ

  Diary Of An Oxygen Thief by Anonymous it's a little scary but brilliant too!!

  I highly recommend it.

  WHICH SUPERPOWER I WOULD MOST LIKE TO POSSESS

  To read minds.

  MOST HUMBLING MOMENT

  I’ll tell you later…it involves farm machinery.

  CELEBRITY I RESEMBLE MOST

  After being told I looked like Jane Birkin so many times I looked her up, and it

  turns out we have the same measurements, so maybe there’s something to it.

  MORE ABOUT ME

  Ok, the farm machinery thing. I realise it might be misleading so I want to make

  it clear. I wasn't disfigured in any way...my summer dress was sucked right off me

  by a potato grader...not as humbling in France as it would have been here

  (the workers hardly even noticed) but embarrassing all the same.

  FAVORITE ONSCREEN SEX SCENE

  The best sex takes place on the cutting room floor

  No messages. A twenty-three year-old purportedly French photographer-assistant-model-writer with a gorgeous ass didn’t get even one reply? Was it was because her face was hidden? Maybe they thought she was disfigured. Even after adding the disclaimer about the farm machinery she was still getting no responses.

  If, as I told Marian, I’d only been using datemedotcom to sell books I was now being asked to prove it. Reporting back to her with a result of zero messages and therefore zero sales seemed to confirm I’d been lying. Hotlisting was a way of showing interest without actually sending a message. It was also a great way to ensure Francoise’s profile was visited by those eager to see who had hotlisted them. I selected every male I could find in the New York area. All were eligible; from the hipsters with clever headlines, (“This is your caption speaking”), to the old farts who didn’t even fill out the questionnaire because they knew they wouldn’t get a reply, (Just looking).

  But still no messages. It didn’t make sense. If I was hotlisted by a twenty-three-year-old French girl with the body of a supermodel, in varying degrees of undress, I’d feel duty-bound to reply just in case there was even an outside chance of fucking her. I studied the profiles more carefully. I began tailoring emails to specific profiles; “If you liked Trainspotting, you’ll love Diary of An 0xygen Thief.”

  I was about to send this message to an inoffensive-looking guy who most certainly didn’t look like he was accustomed to being approached by beautiful girls when I noticed under the option to; “Send Him A Message” there was a subheading; “He Sent You An Email Three Days Ago” This was infuriating because when I clicked on Beautifullylit’s inbox it still showed, “0 Messages” Maybe he had been disqualified for including his phone number and contact details. The site forbade people from exchanging such details because naturally enough this would put them out of business. But then below the inbox I noticed another option entitled “Preferences.” I clicked on it and there, slithering over each other like newly netted fish were hundreds and hundreds of glistening emails; seven hundred and sixty three to be exact. I hadn’t filled out the “Preferences” section because I had no preferences. The site was designed to allow only your ideal matches through and because I was looking for emails from anyone capable of buying a book I had no need of it. There were so many messages I couldn’t quite grasp the significance of what was happening. My glee peaked and dissolved into fear.

  Would I be the perpetrator of my own undoing? It was flattering that all these men wanted my girlfriend but would this be how I lost her? I was struck by their good manners and etiquette. I was being given an insight into what it was like to be a beautiful girl in a world of salivating men. Hugely flattering but mostly frightening. I began to see Marian’s position. Why she sometimes tried to make herself uglier. It was degrading to be sought after purely because of the physical shape of your face, body, hips and tits. But such ideas evaporated when I thought of the books I could sell. It was the digital equivalent of striking oil. I decided there was no need to tell her how many messages she had received. Not yet. I couldn’t risk the possibility that she might put a stop to it. And it wasn’t as if I was doing it behind her back. It had been her idea. In the end, I told her there were seventeen messages. This was flattering without being overwhelming. Would she be curious to see if there was someone she liked? I know I would be. But then the profile represented a twenty-three year-old French photographer/writer not a thirty-six year old sculptor from Poland Springs. Mind you I suspected most guys probably wouldn’t give a shit once they actually laid eyes on her but it would definitely be a hurdle. And the more hurdles I could arrange around her the more fenced in she’d be and the safer I‘d feel.

  The book was already mentioned under the heading “Last Great Book I Read” but nobody was going to buy it just because it was mentioned. They needed more incentive. Maybe I needed to flirt with them. I tried to remember which emails had sustained my interest up to this point. I seemed to like the hot and cold ambiguity of the replies. The way they’d first agree to meet and then cancel I’m soooo sorry and take the sting out of it by adding the word baby. Could I pull this off? I strove to emulate this delicate paradoxical tone for my first customer whose headline announced a fondness for the work of Honore De Balzac.

  “I have a friend who refers to him as Ballsack… if you like his writing you might like Diary Of An Oxygen Thief”

  Ballsack? Was I out of my fucking mind? A French girl would never say that. No girl would say that. I had been too obvious. When Stanley Kubrick created new characters he invented childhood memories for them; the school they attended, their first kiss, where they holidayed, their parents relationship, a knee injury. I should have waited until the third email before blurting out the title of the book.

  “Hahahaha ballsack??? that’s hilarious, I haven’t heard of that book but it sounds interesting, I‘ll totally check it out.”

  He was thrilled to receive any sort of reply from a beautiful twenty three-year-old French girl. It was becoming clear that another foolproof method for creating convincing life-like characters was ensure they had a world-class ass. After a few more attempts I settled on an approach
that presented the book as a personality test, the reward for which would be access to Francoise, as I now began to call her.

  “Have you read Diary Of An Oxygen Thief? I find I can tell a lot about a guy from his reaction to it. Are you game?” One guy asked me to elaborate on the farm machinery thing; you were in france? is that your home? j’adore la france. The fact that he ignored the salacious image I had inserted in his head just confirmed how dishonest these exchanges were. Any normal guy would be forgiven for at least referring to the idea of a semi-naked girl in a field full of French workers. The omission was so conspicuous it was like complimenting a stripper on her nail varnish.

  “I’ll pick up a copy of oxygen thief on my way home.”

  Laughter delicious.

  The older guys were so thrilled they didn’t care if it was real or not.

  “You’re young enough to be my daughter but I’m ok with that”

  If a beautiful sexy girl recommended a book because it was a good barometer of character I’d assume she was just protecting her interests. Online dating was a treacherous conniving world where men would do anything to get into the pants of a girl like this. She was merely filtering the bad ones. It was a simple test to see if they were worth meeting. They would never suspect it was a guy posing as a fictional character suggesting they read a true story purporting to be a novel.

  I was getting a glimpse of what it was like to be intelligent and female in a world of drooling men. Guys who had ticked financial or medical felt comfortable offering tips on how to improve my photography. Why did they assume they knew better than a student of photography? Because they were men and I was just some little bitch. One idiot suggested I boost the levels as if the shot was mistakenly shadowy. Then another guy pretended he’d read the book when it was obvious he’d only read an online review. I knew this because I had written it under an alias. When he offered to pose for me I asked him to send some pictures and he sent three pictures of himself naked with a huge frightening pole of flesh sticking out of his midriff.

  “So what do you need me for? You could fuck yourself with that.” I demurred before blocking him. It was fun being female and beautiful. To actually be the object of desire. A living breathing potential possession.

  One young guy volunteered to fly me to Mexico to see the Mayan villages while we got high on shrooms. Another guy older but well-kept, offered private boxes at the opera and dinner at Le Cirque, yet another, a businessman with not a suit in sight wanted to know my preference in hotels and my shoe-size so he could lay out some options for when I arrived. Young couples invited me for drinks no strings attached. Out-of-town husbands were careful to mention their expense-accounts. Filmmakers gave me two thumbs up. Architects wanted to know my plans. Journalists promised to report back. Chefs said I sizzled. Applicants all.

  On the other end of the scale there were the less confident respondents. These were guys who knew they didn’t have a chance but felt they better send something because hey you never know, she might have a thing for bald short fat older guys. I had the power to lift these unsunned and gnarly gnomes aloft. To absolve them. And grateful to find themselves within spurting distance of my mighty vagina they wobbled away to buy my book.

  I wasn’t sure how much of this was legal. I didn’t want to get into any real trouble. Mischief was one thing but crime was another. It was as if I’d broken into some forbidden never-before-seen Pharoah’s Tomb containing treasures untold. I felt an eerie sense of responsibility. Mustn’t knock anything over. Just take what you need. I reasoned that if I just confined myself to selling books I couldn’t be accused of desecration and would therefore be spared the wrath of the curse. It would be seen as artistic experimentation. “Your Honor, I was researching a book.”

  But it couldn’t last. Marian would have to be told before it went too far. And when that happened I knew she’d want me to stop, which I really didn’t want to do. What I wanted to do was select each state and systematically hotlist every guy I could find and recommend the book ceaselessly until I exhausted the cities, towns and backwaters of this wonderful country. After all, Barnes and Noble had stores in every major city in the US and I had access to datemedotcom’s members in all of them. And if I could sell that many actual books there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t do even better as an ebook. Of course I’d tell her. Just not right away.

  I didn’t overtly need to say Francoise was French in her profile, I merely included French in her languages spoken section, and being female, there was no need to send out initial messages since the men were expected to make the first move. Each email was subtle and polite on the surface but trace it back to its source and there was a stiffening dick. It was fascinating to watch these guys wrestle the same subject I myself had spent so many hours trying to perfect. They approached gently as if nearing a retarded lamb and even though my headline was fairly bold; Likes art culture and sex, maybe even all at the same time, very few actually made any overt reference to it. There I was in my thigh-high stockings, virtually waving my ass in their faces but these mealy-mouthed modern males had been so consistently conditioned to conceal their true desires under courteous cloaks they made a girl feel dirty standing there in her underwear. In response to my beautiful jaw-dropping ass all they could say was I find you intrigueing? No mention of what they’d like to do to it or me? One guy, after going on and on for paragraphs about some excruciating pseudo-intellectual treatise on photography broke down and got to the point; by the way, do you like to be tied up? By the way? Surely this what he wanted to know in the first place. I responded; no, do you like to be gagged? Delete. Block.

  The guy behind the counter at St Mark’s Bookstore was pleasantly suspicious

  “I know you’re doing something, I just don’t know what”

  “It’s crazy isn’t it?” I said innocently.

  “Well whatever it is we’re burning through the copies.”

  If he asked any of these eager customers where they’d heard about this little literary oddity they were not going to say a hot french girl with a gorgeous ass from an online dating site wanted me to read it as a prerequisite to fucking her. No. They were going to say a friend recommended it. This would translate to the booksellers as that most coveted of sales phenomenon.Word of mouth.

  It was becoming obvious that men would do or say anything to get into the pants of a twenty three year French girl, and it didn’t stop at age fifty or even sixty. There were no exceptions, only variations. One guy, a Brit, tried to play on my insecurity when he accused me of oozing entitlement He had guessed correctly that amongst the flurry offawning emails such an approach would stand out. It was interesting that a Brit should be the one to take this approach; his first contact with the object of his desire was to attempt to instil in her a feeling of inferiority.

  I had become that most dangerous of propositions; a beautiful girl with the mind of a man. Actress and Agent, Ho and Pimp. And as such I conformed effortlessly to men’s stereotype of women; All women are basically sluts who barter their bodies to get what they want. No wonder I met with such universal approval. One guy sent email after email after email. What did he think? That I hadn’t received the others? That he’d catch me at a weak moment and I’d let him fuck me? Far from being flattering, so many uninvited emails were frightening. It was as if he was trying out lines on himself. Finally I deigned him worthy of reply; “The book is about an older guy who becomes obsessed with a young photographer’s assistant, you might pick up some tips.”

  “Ok…” he replied, ”I’ll get it today…I need some new fiction.”

  He was already taking part in some.

  Another guy wrote three weeks after he’d bought the book.

  “I’m still interested in getting to know you, what do I have to do?”

  He was a sad-looking little guy. Bald of course. Probably wanking off over pictures of my lovely girlfriend’s ass. Of course he wanted to fuck her. So did I. He’d have to get in line. One guy was on t
he right track with call me paranoid, but are you the author? I thought he was onto me until he began to unspool a vertiginous scenario where he suggested Francoise was the French girlfriend mentioned at the end of the book and that she had written it anonymously pretending to be the oxygen thief. I sidestepped; “So you think I wrote the book? I wish.” Two days later he sent a glowing review. I think he enjoyed it all the more for having been introduced to it in such an unusual way. It certainly helped that the book talked about sex, dating and booze. Hardly a difficult sell on a dating site. In fact I was very often thanked for recommending it even when they knew they would never get inside my pants. A pretty girl hinting that a guy should buy something was seen as normal. The guy expects the girl to make him pay for something. To prove he’s a good provider. Not only is he expected to pay he wants to. It’s understood that the woman requires a token gift in return for her company. Tickets to the opera, or a concert, or a movie, cab-fares, dinner, flowers. All she is expected to do in return is look fabulous, nod a lot and smile as if she’s enjoying herself.

  These men were professional well-spoken highly cultured men, occupying some of New York’s top positions in the arts and media. They were what we referred to in advertising as opinion-formers. These guys were even more sought-after than the target audience because these were the people the target audience listened to when they wanted to know what was cool. You can feed a dog organic vegetables and over time he’ll adapt, but put a steak in front of him and his true nature will show. These cosmopolitan journalists, artists, architects, web-producers, lawyers, copywriters, designers, artists and entrepeneurs were salivating at the prospect of a superior piece of French ass. But even though the photos plainly showed a half-naked girl with a beautiful body they had learned through years of conditioning that they needed to feign indifference to her sexuality and compliment her photographic technique instead. What would a photographer’s assistant want to hear? She’d obviously want to hear how well her photos were composed. They were supremely confident they could dupe this inexperienced little fawn. At only twenty-three years of age she was obviously confused about how much flesh she should show, she was probably some rich French guy’s daughter who had no idea how to behave.