Chameleon On a Kaleidoscope (The Oxygen Thief Diaries)

by AnonYMous

  “I’m lying on my couch in just a t-shirt and socks….”she paused while I downloaded this mental jpg, “…and I should warn you that I have very visible veins I’m not proud of.“

  “Oh I don’t know, veins can be useful” I said “All roads lead to Rome and all that.”

  She giggled delightedly, “…and when in Rome.” I purred.

  “Now stop that, I just don’t want you to be disappointed when you see the real thing.”

  When.

  She continued describing herself she might have been reading a letter I’d written to a Sexual Santa; “I have a very nice bottom. I’m always getting compliments for my bottom. My breasts aren’t large but they’re well proportioned, or at least I think they are, and my nipples stick out a lot, I have to wear padded bras because they poke out through my clothing and I have pubic hair. I work for a magazine that doesn’t believe in it but I have pubic hair. I’ve been with men who really like it bald but it grows back you see…”

  As I got up to leave I had to hide my hard-on from the waiting woman and her accusing eyes. I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to meet Prudence at the Henry Street Ale House and she turned out to be a lot smaller and prettier than I‘d expected. She still had no idea I had written a book and so for every moment I withheld this information I felt like a liar. She was literary and tasty. Nice ass too. Lovely kissable lips and she was keen. Amazingly keen. She was all touchy and from the moment we met she couldn’t keep her hands to herself.

  “There’s a book.”

  She seemed to accept this information quickly and nodded like it was inevitable. It was as if I had just told her I was married with three children.

  “Oh there’s a book is there?”

  I was about to explain that I had no idea who she worked for when we first emailed but I knew it would sound hollow. We walked down to the promenade and sat on a bench facing the famous Manhattan skyline. The setting couldn’t have been more romantic but when I leaned over to kiss her she stopped me.

  “Be careful darling, you might cut yourself.”

  I was sure she was referring to my attempt to get published but seeing the confusion in my eyes she added; “..on my earrings, they’re very pointy.”

  “Fortifications against unwanted advances?.”

  I was trying to impress her. She smiled weakly and looked across the river as if trying to decide what to do with me. We had certainly touched a lot for a first date. Up to that point she had seemed in a hurry to have me fall in love with her. I think what had impressed her most about me was the fact that I worked in advertising. Now it was beiginning to look like I was just another penniless writer. Pushing her breasts out she mentioned something about her shoulders being tight and so I dutifully offered to massage her compact little back. She was tight and muscular but not unpleasantly so. Her mother was a functioning alcoholic she said without ceremony. Maybe this was what was bothering her. That I didn’t drink.

  “She only drinks wine…” and here she left a space for me to say; “Oh well that’s ok then” but I just nodded behind her on the bench. As she continued talking I began to feel genuinely sorry for her. Her job sounded terrible. Here she was, pretty, intelligent, literary-minded and funny, working for a high-end porn magazine. She took on the faraway look again when she spoke of a novel she’d written that had almost been published by Python.

  “They wanted revisions and more revisions until in the end, well...they didn’t want anything.”

  “I’d like to read it.” I lied.

  Then she answered an accusation I hadn’t the courage to make.

  “I can expose writers to much larger audiences.”

  She reeled off an effortless list of surnames and then fell conspicuously silent the better to reap my amazement.

  “That’s some list.” I said, only because I knew it was expected of me. I hadn’t heard of even one of them.

  “And John Banville has contributed more than one piece, you have heard of him.”

  “Of course I’ve heard of him”

  “Thank God for that.”

  She was only half-joking. How would she introduce someone so literally feral to her friends? She was so small and tightly wound I said I’d help her uncoil but she thought this was not the most attractive of images. I said she took my meaning to be more serpentine than spring-based. I wanted to refer to my penis in this way but I thought it was too soon and then there was always the question of over-claim. For a penis to uncoil it would need to be a lot longer than anything I could muster. Mine was more likely to depant than uncoil. She giggled wickedly and as I continued to massage her crackling back. I tried to sustain an effortless demeanour in an attempt at disguising my nervousness born out of the belief that I was being interviewed for the position of Writer.

  She said she had smoked some dope the previous night after her dad went back to his hotel and I suddenly saw her for what she was. Not so much coy as I had first thought but conservative. She was capable of breaking hearts because her apparent openess would clam shut and leave the suitor standing outside and alone. Being a writer herself she knew I’d do anything to move my precious book forward, like a mother with a newly-born. So she can’t have been in any doubt as to whether I was interested in her.

  “You don’t smoke?”

  “No”

  “And you don’t drink?

  “No.”

  “You don’t do drugs at all”

  “No.”

  “You’re like a monk”

  “My middle name is Camillus, my dad actually wanted me to become a Monk”

  “But Monks are allowed to have sex right?”

  “Of course, you read the papers, we get more sex than most.”

  Her tight little laugh rippled throughout her back.

  “It’s just as well you’re impoverished darling, because with all that charm you’d be unstoppable.” This no doubt referred to my admission that I no longer wanted to work in advertising.

  “And all the more impressive when you realise my penury is self-imposed, I’m merely being of service to humanity.”

  She wanted to see my bare head before I got on my bike so I took off my woolen skullcap and she ran her open palm over its surface.

  “It’s a nice shape.” she said.

  Maybe her dad was blue-eyed and bald too?

  “It’s because I’m a Caesarian; no forceps; untimely ripp’d doncha know, like McDuff.” I felt fortunate to be able to harness my head-shape to Shakespeare; “In fact, I was as reluctant to enter Ireland as he was.“

  “McDuff?

  “No, Caesar.”

  This referred to Caesar’s hesitation in conquering a country he dubbed Hibernia

  (Land of EternalWinter).If she didn’t get the reference she didn’t show it.

  “Send me your book” she said stepping back and regarding me like an art exhibit Something had happened. Something important. It had suddenly become about my book. A major decision had been made. She made me promise to ‘write her’ when I got home safely. It was like something a mother might say. We had already hugged a few times and it had felt nice and natural and now that we were parting she seemed to want something more. It hadn’t occurred to me to kiss her so I hugged her again this time for longer.

  “I’m sorry. I’m being quite huggy and touchy-feely.”

  “It’s ok I‘m not stopping you, I’m ok with it”

  Not exactly gushing but it would do. .

  “Never mind the book I’m just glad you like my head”

  “I’ll show it to our fiction editor.” and then added with her weak smile; “If I like it.”

  This was my big chance. I was sure she’d like it. I felt like it was the most important meeting I’d ever had. An excerpt in Prowess and I was made. A week later she emailed me in her official capacity as Literary Editor.

  “We have a policy at Prowess never to print any material that is demeaning to women.” I never heard from her again.

  MARIAN


  I logged onto datemedotcom

  0 messages.

  I was sick of this. Where would it end? All this rummaging around in girls looking for what? Even as I emptied myself into one I was already looking for another. A life dictated by the gargoyle in my midriff. It had made sense up to that point since I had been so nomadic, but now I had a rent controlled apartment in the east village. To a woman in New York this was the equivalent of beer goggles. I looked longingly at the face of a beautiful dark-haired blue-eyed girl smiling at me from a profile called sculptorgrl82. It was time to unleash the most devious tactic of all.

  Honesty.

  sorry but I hate this fucking site...please save me from the indignity of having to sell myself in this Meatmarket...we'll tell our friends we met in a bookshop...you need to know that you're far too beautiful and smart to be on this thing...meet me in the real world and I'll read to you in my Irish accent in my rent-controlled apartment while I massage your feet...anything you say...

  Hi, yes I hate this site too, but I like the idea of meeting in a bookshop.

  Her name was Marian and after a hurried meeting in the design section of The Strand Bookshop and a half-drunk cup of coffee in a nearby café she indicated a desire to see the final-we-really-mean-it-this-time director’s cut of Blade Runner. I’d get the tickets if she got the treats. Perrier and pistachios. I couldn’t be sure if she was looking for a friend or whether there really was some romantic interest there but I liked her immediately.

  It was unusually hot for October and as she approached me in the crimson foyer of The Zeitfield Theatre she removed her grey cardigan and stuffed it in her bag. She wore a pair of short scuffed black boots with long black textured socks that stopped abruptly above her knees and silhouetted her beautiful slender shapely legs as she walked.With

  the cardigan gone I tried not to gape at all that clean skin racing up and down and around her arms, neck and shoulders and the outline of her small upturned breasts were easily discernible under the black sleeveless t-shirt.

  “I neglected to get us treats.” she said.

  She couldn’t pop into a deli and get a bag of nuts and bottle of seltzer on the way? I had already queued for an hour to ensure we got decent seats and now I was being told I was to go treatless for three hours in a pair of jeans that were too tight for me. I must have made some sort of face because after disappearing for a while she returned with one bag of popcorn and one bottle of Perrier and handed them both to me. Now I had treats but she had nothing. I felt like a selfish complaining bastard. But this was the moment she first exposed me to a smile that seemed to gather every molecule of my being around it like scouts around a campfire. Even the people in the queue seemed to shuffle closer. Now I felt like a lucky, selfish, complaining bastard.

  She seemed to like me but I couldn’t be sure if it was romantic. It had to be. Otherwise wouldn’t she have to say something? Wouldn’t she? But being newly arrived from Iowa she might not know the rules of engagement. Would I be referred to as a friend in her next carefully worded email? Instead of trying to kiss her after the movie which in its uncut state was three fucking hours long I was invited to touch a weird thumb ring that looked like an Egyptian clockface and after I made some comment about time standing still she said; “I haven’t heard that one before.” and I couldn’t tell if she

  was being facetious or just making conversation.

  It became important to understand what I was dealing with. Was she just looking for a friend? If so, I would need to be careful because this girl would be far too easy to fall in love with. In the subway seat beside me as we hurtled downtown I was treated to retina-scorching glimpses of her clean-skinned thighs as she rearranged herself according to the shift and shove of the carriage. It was like a dance. Did she know I was enjoying this so much? I had an urge to lift her straight up out of her seat and position her on my lap. The train’s vibration would do the rest. She didn’t ask one question about me all night. Not one. I even checked my reflection in the subway window to make sure I was visible. This beautiful uninterested girl unnerved me. And it wasn’t just me. Other guys on the subway looked at her too. Long lingering wistful looks. They wasted no time looking jealously at me. I watched to see if she checked herself out in the subway windows. Did she derive any satisfaction from her image? I wanted to dismiss her as conceited. But she seemed not to notice. It simply wasn’t her fault she was beautiful. In fact, if anything, she was careful where she looked. Maybe because she was so accustomed to being looked at she had learned to limit her options. It certainly didn’t appear to be something she enjoyed. Male lust and female jealousy.

  I looked like an idiot that night because I hadn’t worn my favourite jeans. I had washed them specially but they hadn’t been dry in time. And why had it been so hot in October? I began sweating when we had to scramble around in the subway station looking for the six train in the airlessness and at one point I saw her incredulous look as those cool blue-grey eyes registered the dark sweat stains seeping through my shirt like bullet-wounds. She was beautiful, calm and aloof. I was sweating. And as if to confirm this I heard nothing more from her after saying goodbye that night. Was that it? It was so rude. It was as if she had decided not to bother with me. It seemed so wasteful so Punk Rock. Gothic even. Had it really been my choice of clothing? For seven days and seven nights I ignored all sorts of primal and spiritual urges to contact her. If she had told me to fuck off and die I would have welcomed the clarity with hysterical laughter but hearing nothing at all was torture.

  Your method of letting me know you’re not interested (ie totally ignoring me) is uncalled for. If after reading the excerpt from my book, you got frightened, I guess I have to accept that, but it’s a novel after all …would you be afraid to meet the writer of a murder mystery? If you’re not interested, period, then of course that’s fine too but don’t you think one short email is in order? You seemed quite down to earth to me, and I’m amazed at myself to be writing this email but I couldn’t have you think I was ok with just being ignored….good luck.

  My screen shuddered as I clicked send and when it readjusted there was an email from her. I thought it was one of those I’m-out of-the-office-replies but no, it was her response to the email I’d sent the previous week thanking her for a nice evening at the movies.

  chiselling away on my latest piece. i think it's likely i will be standing here at this same spot solidly for the next 3 days.i will let you know if there's a break in the clouds.literally as well as figuratively, it seems. m

  Her friendly email arrived just as my pissy, self-centred bile-filled epistle went out. Had I’d received it ten seconds earlier she would never have known. Encouraged by I asked if she’d like to visit the Met Museum during the week and her response was so half-hearted I suggested we do it some other time and her response felt like I had freed her from a disgusting obligation.

  “Thank you for being so understanding”

  It stung that was grateful for the opportunity not to meet me. But such rebuttals made me want her even more. My biggest fear was that she saw me as a friend. That I was entering the Eunuchery. That I would fall totally in love with her while she sat there innocent of all charges. But that smile tranquilised me. What did it matter if I was only her friend? It was nice being with her wasn’t it? We had a nice time together didn’t we? I was enjoying myself wasn’t I? The logic would rear up against the anaesthetic only to succumb to a pleasant complacency.Why did I need to fuck her? What was wrong with me? The act of having sex with her would protect me from being emotionally bruised. It would act as my deposit, my safety net. My safety-pin. And then during an impromptu meeting in a coffee shop initiated by a text from her saying she’d unexpectedly found a parking space near my apartment, she let her hair down for the first time. She was beautiful. I had to actively wrench my eyes away to prevent intoxication. I could only afford to take little sips. She blushed noticeably and tilted her head in a way that gave me the impression she fe
lt something too. Either that or she could see I was smitten and sympathised.

  Yea bewareth, step ye not so gleefully into the abyss

  I’d had plenty of time to prepare my defences against the paralysing effects of that evil smile and the hypnotism conjured by those vicious blue/grey eyes, so soothing and exciting at the same time, but now flanked by curtains of dark shining hair something inside me quaked. I was transported to my earliest memories of female beauty. Those pale tolerant understanding Irish girls modelling itchy-looking cardigans in my mother’s knitting catalogues. Marian had the kind of face I could look at for hours and I used every conversational trick I had to do exactly that. She seemed aware of this beauty but determined to hide it. Or hide from it.

  From time to time she’d twist her face into an ugly expression to save me from the full brunt of her seduction. As if embarrassed by her wealth she needed to play it down. And the more self-effacing she appeared the more perplexed I became.Was she only interested in me because there were two more apartments vacant in my building? Would she suffer untold indignities to get into one of them? Was she merely waiting to confirm that I had money stashed in Amsterdam? After three hours walking around downtown Manhattan there was still nothing I could confidently point at that indicated I should make a move on her. Meanwhile her body language mumbled all manner of half-heard obscenities. She pushed out those lovely pert breasts and twirled a finger in her heavy dark hair. She held my gaze in hers and refreshed her lip-gloss not just once but twice and when we stopped for a coffee she drew my attention to her boots turning them sideways to point at the frayed soles caused by our long walks and in doing so crossed and re-crossed those clean lean legs showing me far more than was necessary. Was she just teasing me? Was this something she got off on? I could plainly see other guys out of her periphery vision looking at her unhindered by any need to be polite. I looked for opportunities to move things forward I was still wary of being cast as the friend of this beautiful scruffy girl. When she made even the slightest effort she was stunning. And yes that smile was celestial.