Chameleon in a Candy Store Read online

  1

  I knew if I wanted to have sex with a girl within the first three seconds of meeting her.

  After that, it was just a matter of how much I was willing to put up with to make it happen. This period of putting up with their bullshit was what women called charm.

  On dates with girls I didn’t even like trying to get into pants that didn’t even fit.

  Rummaging around inside them looking for what? Had this always been the case even before the drinking? If so, all I’d done was exchange one addiction for another. Far from being free, the prison had just gotten bigger. And they just sat there, protected by the romantic rules of engagement, categorizing my attempts at fucking them. How did I compare to the guy last night? At least he paid for dinner. And wanted children. He was taller too. I was happy to let the gargoyle in my midriff drag me to within fucking distance of these creatures, but even I couldn’t make myself pretend I wanted babies.

  YVETTE

  Bobbing and swaying in front of my face as we ascended the steps to her fourth-floor Elizabeth Street apartment was the real reason we’d been together three years. Our evening stroll had been cut short by a rainstorm, so once we got inside we shook off our wet things. We lay across her bed and chatted. Ordinarily this would have been enough to get the ball rolling, but I was still not confident about making a move. I had already discovered that working for a bad ad agency required just as much energy as working for a good one, and I had an early start the next day. If we didn’t have sex soon I’d be forced to stay the entire night. Did she want me to leave? Time to call her bluff. Making an overly dramatic announcement that I had better go if I was to be in decent shape for work the next day, I began to say my ­good-byes to that 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 overacted 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 the subject was brought out into the open, it 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. I hoped that my silence would indicate that I was still open to the possibilities, but it was only a matter of time before something would need to be said.

  I felt sufficiently encouraged by that halfhearted 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 sex. She fluttered up and down on me with such delicacy I was reminded of a winged nymph as she effortlessly hovered and dipped.

  The rain persisted outside, and as she leaned back to scratch gently under my balls, I got a perfect view of her small dancer’s breasts, backlit by the amber glow from the desk lamp. 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.

  Through a monthly showreel called Shotz, I found out that a copywriter I’d worked with at my former ad agency had since become a director of commercials. He was mentioned in the New Directors section, and nestled among 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 actually quite good. And the reason is was quite good was because it was my idea. He and I had talked about making the same commercial for our client BNV when we were at Killallon Fitzpatrick, but for some reason it never got presented, I think because it was thought to be too British for the American market. And now to add disgust to discomfort, I saw that this commercial was for Olaffson.

  Olaffson was my account at my new agency.

  Was this his way of getting back at me for leaving him in the freezing wastes of Saint Lacroix? I thought I was being paranoid until I saw the casting. The guy in the commercial looked pretty much like me. He knew I worked on Olaffson. The whole situation 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 theoretical concept work in thirty seconds. And anyway he hadn’t succeeded in making it work; this concept—my concept—was much better suited to BNV because Olaffson made safe boring cars as opposed to flashy luxurious ones. He’d shot the ad exactly as we had discussed it, like a pastiche of a British public service announcement.

  It opened 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 recognize it when spoken.

  “Bastard.” She mouths it again.

  Cut to a street scene in which a young trendy man, looking suspiciously like Erik, strolls confidently up to a new Olaffson and jabs his electronic key at the sleek crouched vehicle before opening the door, disappearing 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. A title appears across the bottom of the screen. Outruns Green-Eyed Monsters: Olaffson

  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 that I pay off the mortgage on my London flat so that the rent received from tenants could be treated as salary. With no rent or mortgage hanging over me, 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 clothes, which she’d wear to fancy dinners I was ostensibly going to treat her to. 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 that was ever going to happen. Up to that point I had feigned interest in whatever she pointed me toward, 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 jewelry 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 emerg
e 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 hardheaded yellowy protrusions would periodically emerge without warning. Why did I have to settle for that? I was living in New York, where I regularly 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 United States, and this was something that immediately drew us together. In fact, we were thrown together. An account man from the agency I worked for hosted a rooftop party for some Olaffson clients and I had to attend. Yvette seemed unaccustomed to social situations and I was not exactly an old hand myself, but 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.”

  Freud would have a field day.

  She loved to show me the contents of her mouth while she ate. Especially in expensive restaurants. She’d beckon me toward her as if she had a secret to share, her hand shielding her mouth from the rest of the restaurant, and 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 into her chair, satisfied.

  She was impossible to sleep beside. I’d lie motionless at three-thirty in her moonlit bedroom, her arm heavy as a fallen beam across my chest, afraid to move for fear of waking her up and accidentally initiating a wee-hours discussion 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 is to get inside a vagina when the owner actually wants you in it. And as her weightless silhouette gyrated above me I knew better than to come. That was the ultimate act of selfishness.

  Not yet fully awake, she is moving like an animal silent and sure, her palms pressed flat on my chest so that her groin insists itself against me, scratching some unbearable, unreachable itch inside her. To prevent myself from detonating inside her, I conjure up Erik’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 Olaffson 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 a spec idea from an on-staff creative like me working on an account like Olaffson. They were always keen to develop relationships that might lead to a lucrative job.

  Above me, naked and shining, Yvette looked like she was peering into a well.

  There was only one thing I was sure of.

  I must not come.

  I must not come.

  I must not come.

  I’d distract myself by thinking up commercials.

  Open on a shot of a young man who looks exactly like Erik. He’s playing the part of an Olaffson 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 away.

  The voice-over says: “At Olaffson our work doesn’t stop when you buy a car.” The car swings out of the dealer­ship into the street and the Erik-alike follows alongside still waving. Cut to inside the car.“Yes, thank you . . . yes, thanks . . . good-bye,” I say, but Erik is still hobbling along beside the car even though it’s now starting to speed up. The voice-over continues: “Our after-care program ensures that you have a personal relationship with one of our staff who will help you with any questions that might arise.”

  In my role as the driver I wave good-bye to Erik in his role as the dealer and push the gearshift into drive. Close-up of my foot stepping on the gas; cut to a close-up of the speedometer pointing to 25 mph, but Erik is still out there. He’s under pressure, but he’s still there. Close-up of Erik’s tie caught in the door.

  The car brakes suddenly.

  Our After-Care Service Goes Further: Olaffson.

  Shuddering over me, Yvette leaned forward and exhaled roughly in my ear.

  “Ohhhhhh, oui . . . ouiiiiii.”

  I would have been very happy to go back to sleep, but I was now 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 that time 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 materialize—but because on Yvette’s insistence, I would start seeing a therapist. She had decided that because I didn’t share her enthusiasm for marriage, I needed my head examined.

  Dr. Jessica Feldman.

  I told myself that I’d be more open with a woman, but the real reason I chose her was because I could fantasize 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.

  The girlfriend nods understandingly.

  “Now you. What’s your fantasy?”

  It’s her turn to be reluctant. “It’s too . . . out there.”

  “Come on, I told you mine.”

  “Okay. 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 an unconventional 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. Jessica 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 gray skirts and jackets with shiny brooches 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
fervor and fueled the fantasy even further.

  “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 the $250 a session at 8:00 PM every Wednesday and she wouldn’t have to worry about cancellations.

  But as she creased her smooth buttery forehead in my honor, I could sense her willingness not just to witness my pain but also to inhabit it. Between the filthy fantasies of what I’d do to her in our sessions, she somehow managed to point out patterns I hadn’t realized were there. For instance, it was natural, she said, to emotionally and mentally shut people out, given that I had used a safety pin to physically prevent Brother Ollie from fondling my pre-adolescent balls. In other words, she said it was pretty normal to seek out similar solutions with anyone else who tried to get in.

  Maybe my desire to butt-fuck, cock-spank, and ass-tongue her was an example of this. Thinking of her in such a light would keep even my therapist at bay. Why was I so distant? I felt like there might be an answer here.

  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. Whether it was caused by my childhood or my previous romance wasn’t clear. Maybe both. At least she didn’t say it was badly written.

  • • • •

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

  “I look like shit,” she said.

  The idea being that because she knew she looked like shit and acknowledged she looked like shit, she was relieved of any responsibility for actually looking like shit. 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. But that night nothing was stirring, maybe because I’d spent the previous hour being investigated, or perhaps it was because she did indeed look like shit.