Chameleon On a Kaleidoscope (The Oxygen Thief Diaries) Read online

  Chameleon On A Kaleidoscope

  Anonymous

  Copyright 2012 by V Publishing

  Smashwords Edition

  CHAMELEON ON A KALEIDOSCOPE

  ANONYMOUS

  1

  I didn’t get laid enough to be called a sex-addict.

  And yet the name felt right. In the same way a junkie spent all his time thinking about his next fix, my life had become something I did between orgasms. I joked about it, saying I was a Vagitarian but I knew it wasn’t normal. Giving up booze was only the beginning. I wasn’t free. The prison had just gotten bigger. But I couldn’t meet girls in bars anymore. And dating within Alcoholics Anonymous was out of the question since the last thing I wanted to do was wake up beside a version of myself in a skirt. So it was ironic, that my fiancé should be the one who inadvertently introduced me to online dating.

  YVETTE

  Bobbing and swaying in front of my face as we ascended the steps to her fourthfloor Elizabeth Street apartment was the reason we’d been together so long. Our evening stroll had been cut short by a rainstorm and so once we got inside we shook off our wet things and lay across her bed and chatted and ordinarily this would have been enough to get the ball rolling but I was still not confident enough to make a move. Was she still pissed at me? I had work the next day and she didn’t. Maybe she wanted me to leave. Time to call her bluff. While making the dramatic announcement that I had better go if I was to be in decent shape for work the next day I began to say goodbye to her magnificent world class ass.

  “You hug it like it’s a separate person.” she said thawing a little.

  “You’re accusing me of having an affair with your ass, behind your back?”

  A smile.

  She was pissed because I hadn’t picked up on her latest hint that we should live together, get married, have children and die of old age in each other’s arms. These hints had more recently taken the form of exaggerated street mimes. The huge crazy-eyed smile she reserved for babies was subtle compared to the impossible affection conjured up in the presence of every old couple we encountered. Especially, for some reason, if they were Asian. I resisted the urge to respond or acknowledge because I knew that once recognised the subject could never be put back in the box. There was no way I was going to marry her but there was no way I’d be allowed access to her ass if she knew this. It was only a matter of time before something would need to be said.

  I felt sufficiently encouraged by that half-hearted smile to spank her gently through her cotton knickers. This led to touching and tickling, pecking and pouting and after she broke away to brush her teeth, turn out the lights and close her laptop we progressed to sensual half-lit sensitive sex. She fluttered up and down on me with such agility I was reminded of a nymph whose gossamer wings allowed her to hover and dip at will. The rain persisted outside and as she leaned back to scratch gently under my balls the colder light from outside contrasted with the ochre glow from the desk-lamp backlighting her small perfect dancer’s breasts. I stiffened inside her and her body immediately straightened as if we really had become one.

  I wanted to say I love you but it was too risky. She would surely see through it for the manipulation it was and stop what she was doing. I toyed with saying you’re lovely but this just felt childish. I adore you was merely I love you-lite and oh baby was completely meaningless.

  “Fuck yeah.” I said at last.

  Well at least it was honest.

  On a monthly showreel called Shotz, in the New Directors section, I was presented with the fact that a copywriter I worked with at my former agency had since become a commercials director. Nestled there amongst the self-conscious up-to-the-minute motion graphics was a link to his finished commercial, which, if it was a piece of shit would have been fine but it wasn’t. It was quite good. The reason is was quite good was because it was my idea. He and I had talked about making the same commercial for BNV at Killallon Fitzpatrick but for some reason we never presented it. I think because we decided it was too British for the American market. And now adding disgust to discomfort I saw that this commercial was for Falfaux.

  Falfaux was my account.

  Was this his way of getting back at me for leaving him in St LaCroix? I thought Iwas being paranoid until I saw the casting. The guy in the commercial looked exactly like me. Gary knew I worked on Falfaux. It was weird because it wasn’t even a real ad. It was a spec commercial, the kind of thing a new director puts on his reel to show he can make a concept work in thirty seconds. But this concept was much better suited to BNV because Falfaux didn’t make flashy cars they made safe boring cars. He had shot it exactly as I related it to him like a pastiche of a British Public Service Announcement.

  It began with a title.

  The Beginner’s Guide To Lip-Reading

  A young woman looks earnestly into the camera.

  “Bastard.” she says

  “Bastard.” she says again. Cut to an extreme close-up of her mouth as she pronounces the word soundlessly now so we can recognise it when spoken.

  “Bastard.” she says again. Cut now to a street-scene where a young trendy man, looking suspiciously like John, strolls confidently up to a new Falfaux and jabs his electronic key at the sleek crouched vehicle and disappears inside it. On the other side of the street a pale young man with a shaved head, looking suspiciously like me, watches the car drive smoothly away just as we see him say something. It’s a two-syllable word. Sitting there watching the commercial I couldn’t help it, the word had already left my own mouth before I realised it; “Bastard.”

  A title appears across the bottom of the screen.

  Everybody’s Talking about the New Falfaux.

  I casually mentioned to Yvette that it might be a relief to get out of advertising.

  “How are you going to bring up kids if you haven’t got a good job?”

  There was no way to answer this truthfully without robbing myself of sex and so attempting to redirect the subject I told her I wanted to go back to London and write a book in my newly paid-off flat. It had been her idea to pay off the mortgage on my flat in London so that the rent received could be treated as salary and then with no rent or mortgage to pay I could always go on the dole for pocket money.

  “A man who goes on welfare by choice is a disgrace”

  Obviously her vision of my future involved me working my ass off to keep her in expensive dinners and clothes. Her reaction confirmed what I was already thinking. That I should never tell her what I was thinking.

  My continued presence would be understood as an agreement to marry and there was no way this was ever going to happen. Up to that point I had feigned interest in whatever she pointed me at, as long as I was sexually rewarded. And the sex was so influential I had managed to convince myself I wasn’t even acting. I was more than happy to pay for the restaurants, the Broadway plays and even the clothes she picked out as long as we continued with our unspoken agreement that I would be sexually compensated. And for the first year we had been very fair about this distribution of sexual currency. Her first. Then me.

  But more recently a new worrying pattern had begun to emerge where my orgasm couldn’t even be contemplated until she had come not just once, but twice. It was starting to feel like my second high-stress job. And it wasn’t as if she was scorching hot. Yes her body was fabulous and yes she was French (that accent alone got me hard) but her face was far from perfect and I could hardly admit it to myself but she had some sort of skin problem where hard-headed yellowy protrusions would periodically emerge without warning. Why did I have to settle for that? I was living in New York where I r
egularly encountered four or five life-changing women on the way to the subway.

  When we first met I was still reeling from a romantic catastrophe that would eventually become the subject of my first book so I wasn’t even remotely looking for a girlfriend. But Yvette knew what it was to be foreign in the US and this was something that immediately drew us together. And like all Europeans we enjoyed the luxury of being able to encapsulate the world’s problems in one word.

  “Americans.”

  We rolled our eyes knowingly.

  It was obvious even in her staid work clothes that there was a great body under there but I honestly didn’t see her as a sexual possibility until months later. The fact that she was French was something I couldn’t ignore. She loved toilet humor. Anything to do with piss or poop and she began to giggle like a sneaky schoolgirl at the back of the class. Her pet name for me was Poopie-Head. She sometimes even repeated the word during sex;

  “Poopie, poopie.”

  She loved to show me the contents of her mouth while she ate. Especially in expensive restaurants. She’d beckon me towards her, as if she had a secret to share, with her hand supposedly directing her voice into my ear until at the last moment she’d open her mouth wide revealing mashed bouillabaisse and bread. When I appeared sufficiently disgusted her hand morphed from horror-shield to giggle-guard and she sat back satisfied into her chair.

  She was impossible to sleep with.

  I’d lie motionless at 3.30am in her moonlit bedroom her arm heavy as a fallen beam across my chest, afraid to move for fear of initiating a wee-hours discussions about how distant I was. Did I feel I was distant? Why was I always so distant?

  “Distant? What? Yvette I’m right here”

  Then fondling my balls she’d whisper ”you’re not nice with me” and I’d find myself inside her. How ridiculously easy it was to get inside a vagina when the owner actually wanted you in it. And as her weightless silhouette gyrated above me I knew better than to come. That would be the ultimate act of selfishness.

  Not yet fully awake she moves like an animal sure and silent with her palms pressed flat on my chest as her groin insists itself against me scratching some unbearable, unreachable itch inside her. To prevent myself from detonating I conjure up John’s shit-eating grin as he admires his own reflection in the monitor during the few seconds of dead space preceding each showing of his new Falfaux commercial.

  My present agency wasn’t capable of producing anything good enough to wipe away that grin but most New York production companies would at least listen to an idea from an on-staff creative like me working on an account like Falfaux since they were always keen to develop a relationship that might lead to a lucrative job. Above me, naked and shining Yvette might have been peering into a well.

  Open on a shot of a young man who looks exactly like John. He’s playing the part of a Falfaux dealer as he hands the keys to a happy looking customer who looks exactly like me. We get a nice sleek shot of the car as I drive out of the dealership. The voiceover begins; “At Falfaux our work doesn’t stop after your purchase.” The car swings out of into the street and the John-a-like follows alongside still waving. Cut back inside the car; ”Yes, thank you ...yes thanks...goodbye ” I say, but John is still hobbling alongside even though it’s now starting to speed up. The voiceover resumes; “Our after-care programme ensures that you have a personal relationship with one of our staff who can help you with any questions that might arise.” In my role as the driver I wave goodbye to John in his role as the dealer and push the gear-stick forward. There’s a close-up of my foot stepping on the gas before we cut to a close-up of the speedometer indicating twenty-five mph. He’s s still out there. He’s under pressure but he’s still there. Cut to a close-up of John’s tie caught in the door. The car brakes suddenly. There are embarrassed apologies back and forth. Falfaux. We go further. Shuddering over me Yvette leaned forward and exhaled in my ear.

  “Ohhhhhh oui…ouiiiiii”

  I would have been very happy to go back to sleep but now I was owed an orgasm. Declining her offer would be regarded as a callous misstep and would require a more carefully worded explanation than I was capable of delivering at four in the morning. It would be wiser to accept her manual advances. She had become very skilled in this department so I knew it wouldn’t take long and I’d make sure my gratitude was audible. The next day I was due to become a certified New Yorker. Not because my green card was about to come through, God forbid that should ever materialise, but because on Yvette’s insistence, I would start seeing a therapist.

  Dr Susie Fisher

  I told myself that I’d be more open with a woman but the real reason I chose her had more to do with the fact that I could fantasise about fucking her. I already had a story in mind that would, I felt, set the tone for our sessions. It was a story that touched on many of the areas I felt were pertinent to my case and it would give her succinct overview of where I was coming from. A girlfriend invites her man to share his deepest darkest fantasies. He is reluctant at first since deep dark fantasies are often best kept that way, but his girlfriend, intent on getting to know him better, assures him that no matter what he says she won’t be shocked because after all it’s just a fantasy. Falteringly he begins tell her about how he’d like to be gang-raped. By Japanese schoolgirls. Wearing strap-ons.

  She nods understandingly.

  “Now you, what’s your fantasy?”

  It’s her turn to be reluctant.

  “No. It’s too out there.”

  “Come on, I told you mine”

  “Ok, to get married and have kids”

  Yvette was simply not willing to continue seeing me until I dealt with my intimacy issues. Fearing an impending sexual embargo I agreed. I wouldn’t have even entertained such pusswhippery if she wasn’t so sexually adept and in certain lights and on certain days and in her own way, quite beautiful in a non-conventional sort of way.

  When she turned up looking terrible I’d feel a jolt of shame as if somehow it was my fault and carefully disguise the emerging grimace under a smile. And on the rare occasion she arrived looking carefree and beautiful like a happy pretty sixteen year-old I’d stifle my glee. The idea being, that either way I was expressionless.

  Yes, I was looking forward to therapy.

  Dr Susie looked directly at my crotch and played with her hair as I talked. She was tall and thin and big-titted and always wore sensible grey skirts and jackets with shiny broaches and sometimes blindingly white blouses over those lovely bulging…oh to do her. The knowledge that everything would need to take place within the allotted hour only heightened my fervour.

  “So, how was your week?” she’d say

  “Fuck my week,” I’d say

  “Fuck me weak” she’d say

  I’d fold her over that big beige armchair and talk about my fantasies of fucking her while I fucked her. That would be worth three hundred and fifty dollars a week at eight pm every Wednesday and she wouldn’t have to worry about cancellations. But as she creased her smooth buttery forehead in my honour I could sense her willingness not just to witness my pain but to inhabit it. Between imaginary bouts of being butt-fucked, cock-spanked and ass-tongued she somehow managed to point out links I hadn’t realised were there. For instance it was natural she said, that having used a safety pin to prevent Father Eddy from fondling my pre-adolescent balls, I should seek out similar solutions with anyone else who tried to get in.

  Maybe my desire to butt-fuck, cock-spank and ass-tongue was an example of this. Perceiving her thus would keep even my therapist at bay. Why was I so distant? She asked me to bring in the recently written ending to what I kept referring to as my book. I couldn’t see how any of it related to our therapy sessions but because I hadn’t shown it to anyone else I thought I might as well get some feedback since she was already on my payroll and so in our next session after reading the last thirty pages of what would eventually become the ending of Diary Of An Oxygen Thief my therapist confidently
proclaimed I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

  At least she didn’t say it was badly written.

  Yvette opened the door to her apartment before I got the key in it.

  ”I look like shit” she said

  The idea being, that because she knew she looked like shit she was relieved of any responsibility for it. If anything it became my problem since I was now expected to make her feel better about it. Whenever she kissed me her hand would automatically stray to my dick to monitor my affection for her. She hated when I got hard without her knowledge. And that night for some reason maybe because I’d spent the previous hour being investigated or perhaps it was because she did indeed look like shit there was nothing stirring.

  “You’re not affectionate.”

  "It’s because your stomach is hurting. I didn’t want to…"

  “You’re distant.”

  It was a question of theft. There was no hard-on where a hard-on should be. Ordinarily it wouldn’t have been a problem. If anything, I was just as surprised as she was. The long silence that followed, was punctuated by the sighs of a martyr and the whipping back and forth of glossy magazine pages until at last she slipped wordlessly away to bed. I grabbed a pillow and a blanket and made for the couch.

  The next morning I was woken by the sound of spigots being turned on and off until finally she appeared in the living room in her uptight formal bank attire looking pinched-face, unfucked and even uglier than the night before.

  Pausing at the door she turned to look at me on the couch

  "You can go back to bed now”

  I was lying on a smouldering hard-on.

  *****

  Paedophile priests, punishment-beatings, mental and physical abuse, domestic violence, two near-drownings and the recurring nightmares of the little boy I saw mangled in a farm accident.

  “You had a brutal childhood.”

  Dr Susie looked directly into my eyes making sure I heard her. There, it was official. But none of it felt like it had happened to me. I was detached from these events. Had she confused my case with someone else? Maybe she was exaggerating my trauma so I‘d keep coming every week. I was after all, her misery-mortgage. And yet I began to enjoy our sessions mostly because it was becoming clear I wouldn’t be expected to marry Yvette. That I wasn’t so much in love with her, as terrified of letting her down. I was about to marry her out of politeness. Why do that to myself? Or to her? She had her own agenda and her own time-frame. At thirty- three her body-clock was sounding the alarm. I told Dr Susie about an unusually calm stretch of water on the Niagra River called The Deadline. Once passed there was no way to avoid the pull of the falls three miles ahead. Without looking up from her lap Dr Susie asked a seemingly unrelated question.