Chameleon On a Kaleidoscope (The Oxygen Thief Diaries)

by AnonYMous

  Someone was going to fuck her so why not be that guy? Jerome Feerce, the award winning Creative Director of PDB and well-known author of sci-fi books, wanted to be that guy. A fifty-seven-year-old Swede, sniffing around the beautiful ass of my thirty-six-year-old American girlfriend, posing as a twenty-three-old French girl. I looked him up and yes he was married with three kids. Well so what? He was a bestseller wasn’t he? He’d made it to the top hadn’t he? This was Manhattan wasn’t it?In reality, we were just two old ad-guys trading copy.

  Meanwhile I’d look at Marian when she turned up to meet me and I’d have to pinch myself. It was as if I was going out with a model. A moody model. She was even more beautiful now that I was losing her. I was that one guy amongst thousands lucky enough to be with her and she could hardly bear it when I touched her. She visibly flinched before I even made contact. I had caused this in her? She said it was a relief to talk to her doctor about a neck-ache because at least he didn’t roll his eyes waiting for her to finish. This was a dig at me and I blushed in acknowledgement.

  But I had never really been able to follow her thread when she spoke because she jumped around from point to point without warning and when I asked for clarification she became irritated because in her mind she had already supplied this information and if I was asking such a question it meant I hadn’t listened the first time round and if I hadn’t been listening then it had to mean I didn’t care about her and if I didn’t care about her why was I trying to touch her?

  I decided to pretend harder.

  But pretend to be what? I couldn’t trust my perceptions any more. Did I only want to be with her because she was such a great sales tool or did I love her for who she was? Would she leave me in disgust as soon as she realised what I was doing? I couldn’t even trust the enthusiastic responses to the book emanating as they did from libidinous men who would say anything to get into the pants of the girl who had made the recommendation.

  The was only one irrefutable truth. The sales.

  And yea they were plentiful. I kept two pages open on my computer screen; one showing Francoise’s profile with its constant supply of eager supplicants and another adjacent page showing the corresponding sales on Amazon. The main profile picture of Marian in her thigh-high stockings was like something by the French photographer Guy Bourdin and so I claimed it was a self-portrait paying homage to him. My book was now inseparably associated with two of France’s most enduring style icons. Jame Birkin and Guy Bourdain. And all three were Googled accordingly.

  In the meantime being with Marian was becoming impossible. There were too many subjects that couldn’t be talked about. The silences grew longer and more impenetrable until they overlapped. We lied to each other by omission. The strange thing is that I got the impression we could have gone on like this for years. After all I didn’t want anyone else. To me she was the perfect woman. Yes of course, I saw attractive women everywhere but compared to Marian they were just unknown accumulations of organs and limbs. They would never represent the bitter-sweet unknowable concoction that only she had about her; that exquisite confusion. Being touched by her had been a triumphant luxurious sensation. It was so flattering that she should even want to cause me to feel pleasure that somehow my guilt dissolved into gratitude under her touch. And there was that bottomless lust I felt for her, a spiritual longing that no mere physical exchange could extinguish.

  But even as the sales soared and the reviews enthused I knew we had to make a clean break of it. No contact. It was the only way. We’d be friends, yes of course, but just not yet. It was too soon for that. For two days the relief was euphoric until suddenly an entire civilization seemed to burn down inside me.

  Devastation.

  In her cavernous absence I replayed and blinked away the awful moment she confronted me about the email. This would be my punishment. As the weeks turned into months we never got the chance to discuss anything because we were too busy I suppose, recovering from each other. In fact, this book is the closest I’ve come to letting her know what actually happened and why.

  The previous year when things were still good we’d had a lovely day wandering around Williamsburg. It was one of those weekends where her roommate visited her parents and we’d had the entire apartment to ourselves.We had just had fabulous sex, or least I had, and Marian looked so effortlessly beautiful it seemed like we had stepped onto the hundred-acre set of a commercial for jeans or sneakers or maybe even a romantic comedy with an edge. The Williamsburg Bridge poked into every picture I took of her and we laughed knowingly at the very idea that even here so deep behind the Irony Curtain it was possible to be “in love”.

  I mentioned in passing that I played piano, that I had taught myself to play on a crappy old upright we had at home in Ireland an the fact that she thought I was joking seemed to indicate she hoped it was true. We found a music store but there was a sign saying no live music which still seems fucking stupid to me today but they probably

  had so many people jamming in there they had to ban it. With great ceremony I invited her to step into a pair of headphones. Bowing her head she stepped forward into the coronation. I plugged the lead into a digital piano and I began to play. All I could hear were the keys fumbling and clicking as my fingers stumbled and drummed across them. I had no way of knowing if she was enjoying what she heard or if indeed she could hear anything at all but I kept playing anyway. Wary of missing a key I darted look at her.

  The effect on her face was magical.

  She had transformed into an amazed little girl. Her mouth had fallen slightly open and her eyes were wide in wonder. All the self-consciousness had peeled away leaving an innocence so pure it made me want to dance. I felt like I had at last found a way to communicate with her. As I sit her typing this I am reminded of that day.

  I’d like to speak to the person who put this profile together.

  It was from a forty-five year old entrepreneur who had posted pictures of himself relaxing on what looked like a yacht in what could have been the Mediterranean. He was onto me. Some guys might be very pissed off if they knew that their romantic attentions were in fact being pitched not at hot French twenty-three-year-old with an ass to match but a bald middle aged Mick in his underpants. Actually, I didn’t even wear underpants most of the time.

  As I see it there are four possibilities:

  1. You are the French girlfriend of the author mentioned at the end of the book and you are using your skills to help him sell the book. In this case using datemedotcom as a social media platform to generate an audience which is really impressive. You are beautiful and I'm sure it's working very well. You certainly got me. I would love to hear from you and meet you both.

  2. I'm wrong. You really are Francoise a stunningly beautiful and sexy photographer who happens to be a fan of this book. I am not like the author, I've had different issues in my life which I would be happy to talk about. I would love to hear from you and I would very much like to meet you.

  3. You wrote the book. If that's the case you are a talent of unmitigated genius. You see, I too am the Creative Director and partner of an ad agency-production-company-internet hybrid, we have worked on similar if not the same accounts. The ad world is represented perfectly. My career parallels the timeframe in the book, I'm certain I would know your work and it's quite possible that we met. I thank you for exposing the book to me and for this exchange. It has been very engaging.

  4. You are the creation of the author entirely. FUCKING GENIUS! I am apoplectic. I can't tell you how impressed I am with the book but surrounding that content with this hook which brought me into it! Awesome. And the experience of engaging with you in this way via this character, spectacular. With the utmost respect, and if necessary - discretion, I would love to shake your hand and see if we might work together.

  I hadn’t thought about using this technique for anything other than selling my own book but it suddenly occurred to me that in the same way an ad agency could advertise any product as long
as the approach was well conceived so could I with this more subtle method of infiltration, sell anything to anyone. Would it work?

  You tell me.

  THE END

  *****

  francoise, just picked up the book this evening. looks like an easy read. I'll get back to you with my thoughts soon….so yeah, I guess i‘m game….k

  *****

  listen, I would have written before but - uh - your profile says you're looking for a woman....which sort of threw me off because now you're all flirting with me. i'm sooooo

  *****

  francoise…so, I'm also a big fan of films and sex. .and I design books for a living, which makes me an automatic fan (speaking of which. . .I just tried to order diary of an oxygen thief andit says they’re sold out !!. .and I hate ordering things from Amazon).anywho, i'm intrigued, how is your tuesday so far? best vince

  *****

  hello francoise…. well I’ve been spending quite a bit of time on google this morning looking up guy bourdin and that book you mentioned, as, no I haven't read it and hadn't even heard of it. I see what you mean though, looks pretty heavy and intense (alcoholism, abuse, photographers assistant etc). Unfortunately it appears to be out of stock, so I may need to do a bit of digging around to get a copy.

  *****

  uhmmm..I'm a little confused. You sort of asked me the same thing last week. Did you get my response ?

  *****

  francoise …no, i dont know that book, looked it up though and it sounds sizzling. is it still anonymous, or did the author come out? have you been in nyc long? where are you living? you can email me for real if you like,

  *****

  yeah, I'm game….Just picked up the book this evening. Looks like an easy read. I'll get back to you with my thoughts soon. hope you're well..

  *****

  i will seek out the oxygen thief book at once, though it seems a difficult tome to locate. i do love a challenge. your guy bourdain tribute is striking ..are you a fan of baudelaire?

  *****

  hi your profile is definitely intriguing but hard to see whether you have only one eye or not (then again one eye might be sexy ummm). Vous etes francaise? Je suis quebecois mais d'origine italienne allors je parle francais comme une vache espagnole. Let's talk oh mysterious stranger.

  *****

  Hey I'm studying to be a pilates instructor and was thinking if you needed to practice your photography it would be cool to take some shots of me doing my stretches.

  *****

  wow, devoured the book it in two big, greedy gulps, it's dark, smooth and jagged edged.like a fresh piece of broken glass that you want to touch even though you know you shouldn't.

  *****

  How come you didn’t answer any of my emails if your going to hotlist me again? I don’t mind playing around on here but its more fun if there is a dialogue.

  *****

  francoise, glad you still have all your limbs.Not that paraplegics can't be sexy too. taking any good portraits these days? intense book, do you really recommend that?

  *****

  you're not very good at this, are you..? I see that you're looking for a girl, not a guy..So, what's the attraction...? just a playmate/friend? someone to borrow cool lenses from? (you'd have to have a canon..) someone to make your current girlfriend jealous.?what's the story...? might I say that your pictures are amazing and I bet you are too? what's your name? I’m allan …when are you free? today. lunch! 1pm...my place..?

  *****

  you got "woman" in your "Looking for" section but your copy says you're looking for a guy. I'm above your age range but you "looked" so I thought I'd wave and just point out the gender issue. nice pictures.

  *****

  now that you posted pictures, I think I can fairly speak for all lesbians when I say that they'd be more than happy to have you playing on their team, if you ever chose to I‘ll check out that book you mentioned.

  *****

  Eff…funny you should mention that book -- someone I met at a party recently suggested I read it. I'm going to look for it today and will let you know my reactions. Then you can tell me what it says about me. It will be a good exercise for both of us.

  *****

  hi there miss francoise, did you hotlist me by accident? Jim (aged 60)

  *****

  hi beautifullylit, thanks for adding me to your hotlist. and thanks for recommending the book ..it looks very interesting you're smashingly cute, though I wish your face were... um... beautifully lit rather than semi-obscured. Is being a professional portrait photographer as cool as it sounds?hope you're having a fun weekend,

  *****

  the minimalist profile. it leaves more to ones imagination, a lost art really. you've clearly mastered the art of seduction through photos as well. i have no idea what you look like and my mind will wander endlessly until i do. nicely done, au bientot

  *****

  how's it going? I'm also a fan of art, culture and sex although not necessarily in that order and have kind of made a career out of two of the three. have you seen anything cool recently? your photos are very intriguing. do you have more? look forward to hearing more about you, p

  *****

  yes I read it….enjoyed it…in about a day and a half. liked the nyc parts i recognized, and really felt for guy when he just wanted her to say "yeah, let's get lunch" but "no, sorry, busy, parents, blah..." ouch. among other excruciating parts. he certainly did get his, a lot of wincing on my part...good tour of the inside of his head…

  *****

  For more from the same author; http;//www.02thief.com

  While suggested by actual events this book is in its entirety a work of fiction.

  All character names have been invented, all characters have been composited or

  invented and all incidents have been fictionalised.

   Copyright V Publishing, New York, 2012.

  Special Thanks.

  Virginia Bechtold,, Olivier Bertinn, Erica Buckley. Denise Graeff, Cathy Joseph, and Ken Schaefle.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means

  (graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or information storage,and retrieval systems)

  without permission from the copyright holders.

  For more information about Alcoholism and/or Sex Addiction go to; www.aa.org and/or www.slaafws.org

  All rights reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means (graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or information storage and retrieval systems) without permission from the copyright holders. V Publishing 20012 New York 

  All characters are fictional. Any similarity with persons living or dead is entirely conincidental.