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

  “Have you ever tried online dating?”

  *****

  Yvette’s recently becalmed hell-raising father, was separated but not yet divorced from her artist-mother who for some reason, liked to argue in airports. Her ridiculously handsome brother was a geologist and in a way, so was her privately-educated sister, being as she was, a professional gold-digger. The grandfather on her mother’s side made a fortune producing champagne bottles and lived in a small compact stone edifice that could without irony be referred to as a castle. The other grandfather was a retired admiral in the French Navy with a Parisian street named after him; Rue Du Admiral Gumont- Sutre. He owned a summer-house in Belle Ille where they holidayed at the slightest provocation. Yvette had been abandoned in her fair share of airports and when she wasn’t waiting in the lost and found she was watching Papa chase Maman around their antique-laden Parisian home with a kitchen knife.

  Her therapist forbade her from telling me too much about her upbringing presumably because she thought I‘d be shocked but she couldn’t know that having experienced certain childhood eccentricities of my own these nursery tales had a certain soothing effect on me. Anyway, by the time I was formally introduced to Maman I was very well-disposed towards the mass of neuroses, complexes, impulses and moods that stood now collectively before me.

  “Bonjour I’m Veronique. It’s so nice to meet you”

  With her aquiline profile, long dark hair and red leathery skin she looked more like a Cherokee Warrior than the mother of a systems analyst from the Bank of Paris. I had already heard about the legendary debates with airport staff, the aborted attempts to liberate cute little pigs from zoo enclosures and the commandeering of microphones from singers considered unworthy of the title. She bent almost in half to kiss me.

  Veronique was an artist. A pretty good one actually. If I hadn’t been so consistently afraid of being fired I might have even bought one of her paintings which to my eye, were heavily influenced by Henri Rousseau. I didn’t dare tell her that though. We were en route, en famille to the Metropolitan Museum Of Art to see an exhibition of paintings by Gauguin, because logically enough, he was one of Veronique’s favorite painters.

  Yvette, though nervous about this meeting was pleased it was happening. She had wanted us to meet at Thanksgiving but this idea had proved too much for me loaded as it was with so much significance. I knew that meeting the parents, or even one of them, at Thanksgiving was tantamount to a marriage proposal. Even if the celebrants were French and Irish there was still an unspoken implication that I was agreeing to something other than just a plate of turkey. But I was ok with Primitivism.

  In fact Gauguin was a hero of mine too, since he’d given up his job as a bank clerk to shag French Polynesian girls. Confronted suddenly by an almost life-sized sepia photo of the artist’s tight-faced wife and children I felt like I myself had just arrived home late and what time did I call this and who were these two women I’d brought home with me?

  “Can’t blame him for leaving.” I said, and immediately regretted it. It was exactly the wrong thing to say, touching as it, did on Yvette’s sensitivity about being abandoned. I braced myself for the public humiliation that would surely follow. I myself was about to become an exhibit.

  “Ahh she is so afraid of being abandoned, no?” said Veronique bending even deeper now to kiss her daughter. Yvette’s cheeks beamed embarrassment outward into the exhibition space and I suddenly realized Maman was Papa too. She had to be, because Papa had fucked off. But Gauguin had fucked off and they called him a genius. He can’t have been the most considerate of men to dump his wife and kids and take off with Van Gogh, that other famous family man. But the Swedish wife took the children to live with her wealthy parents so there was no need to dwell on them too much and they did look pretty fucking boring compared to the technicolor windows into paradise on the walls ahead. I refused to believe that he wasn’t fucking every little Polynesian trollop he could get his hands on. Painting all day between orgasms and shagging all night between paintings. Art historians count him amongst the most notable Post-Impressionists but to me his most significant achievement was that he lived in an aftershave commercial before aftershave existed.

  “You have found she can be difficult, no?”

  We were on the roof patio of the Met Museum and Veronique was talking about her daughter as if she wasn’t standing next to her. I mimicked a man testing the ground with his foot and then leaned back in mock-horror as an imaginary explosion leapt from the tiled surface of the roof garden. Veronique smiling eyes met mine and we turned to enjoy Yvette’s confusion. The moment felt good and strangely just. This was my cue to produce the glossy book of Gauguin prints from my shoulder bag and hand it to Veronique.

  “Pour toi Maman.”

  I had been forewarned that she loathed people who tried to speak French to her but I had spent a hundred and eighty dollars on the book so I wanted my money’s worth.

  Inhaling loudly and ooh-la-la-la’ing she bowed to kiss both my cheeks again. Real full-on wet kisses not make-up-saving facsimiles.

  She wiped my face like I was a rascal and stepped back to regard me. Later, back in her apartment Yvette put away her phone after a long muffled conversation in high speed French. The verdict was in.

  “Maman says she thought you loved me passionately and that it was clear to her we would be married. She also said that she herself liked you very much and that you were of superior intelligence.”

  But then she went on to say that her mother’s boyfriend was using the fact that she was too old to have children as an excuse to end their relationship. He was thirty-nine (same age as me) and she was forty-nine. Mother and daughter now shared the same fear of abandonment. Yvette was worried that Maman was on the prowl. It was true she flirted with me but I just assumed this was what French mothers did. She said I would look great in an ornate suit of armor that had been commissioned by the wife of an Austrian count. The sexual possibilities of being the filling in a mother and daughter sandwich were not lost on me but I couldn’t suppress the thought that her clit was at least as big as my dick.

  .

  *****

  “Dare to be average.” said Dr Susie.

  Dare to give me a fucking break.

  If I succeeded in being any more average the likelihood of her getting three hundred and fifty dollars an hour would diminish somewhat. We had agreed that I would write down my dreams and so when she asked me if I had anything for her I took out my notebook and read her the following scenario; “I’m setting out chairs in the gym for my Sunday night AA meeting when I become suddenly conscious of making too much noise. I look around and there, between the stacks of chairs are at least seven or eight young boys arranged in sleeping bags on the floor. It’s a strange sight but I assume for some reason that they are a junior basketball team who made bad travel arrangements and need somewhere to sleep. As I continue putting out the chairs they begin to wake up and without speaking they stand up and bunch together by the wall waiting for me to finish. This is when I notice they have no arms. I wonder how their vests can possibly remain in place on those smooth rounded shoulders. And because they are well-behaved and respectful it somehow feels ok to introduce them to some of the AA members who by this time are starting to arrive I feel proud of these boys even though I have no idea who they are.

  “That’s so beautiful, can you see what it is?”

  I stared at her.

  “It’s your sub-conscious telling you it’s ok now to bring your younger self into the AA meetings. The boys have no arms because that’s how you felt when that guy was touching you.” The boy was contacting the man.

  Later that night Yvette called me an asshole with such conviction I almost felt grateful to hear such an honest utterance. Advertising had all but gutted me of any genuine emotion. We had been talking about us. Or rather she had been talking about us while I stewed.

  “Do you want to be that guy who has to change his girlfriend every three
years?”

  Silence.

  “Because they’ll all want the same thing.”

  Silence.

  Every three years didn’t sound so bad to me. If anything, it was a little optimistic.I prayed that I might be struck in love with her. She was after all a ready-made wife, highly cultured, French, great in bed, (if not a little demanding) her mother was an aristocrat and an artist and so well-connected in France I could already see the dappled summers in Belle Ille, the publishing deals in Paris and the French-speaking children showing me the contents of their mouths. But even as I tried to sell it to myself I couldn’t conjure the required flutter in my chest. Or if I did it was more like a twitch. Yes, the sex was the best I’d ever had. No doubt about it. Guiltless soaring orgasms that felt like time-travel. So what was wrong? Other girls I’d met were boring in comparison or older or uglier or worse; American. Was I was in denial? Would I only find out how deeply embedded I was when I tried to pull out?

  I could think more clearly when we hadn’t had sex. In the time we’d been together the orgasms were so intense and so regular they’d had the same effect as medication. Once every two days after meals; and depending on the dosage-level I’d see Yvette as gentle, beautiful and kind and myself as loving, caring and truthful. But now that she was on sexual strike I couldn’t find this girl or that guy. Maybe lust was all I’d ever felt for her. There was no point in making us both miserable just because she wanted to have a child. I knew I’d find it impossible to love a creature whose first act on entering the world would be to demolish the one thing I really did have genuine feelings for. Her ass.

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  Open on a classroom full of boys supervised by a priest. He walks between the desks craning his head to read the copybooks and pauses to point things out. He stops next to a ginger-haired boy and slides in beside him. The other boys exchange amused looks. Beneath the desk in a close-up shot we see the priest’s hand emerge from a pocket slit in the side of his gown and crab-creep towards the boy’s crotch. The forefinger and thumb pull at the fly fastener on the boy’s trousers but it doesn’t budge. He tries again.

  Nothing. After one more tug we notice the boy’s zipper is pierced by a safety pin.

  Cut to a close-up of the boy’s face as he allows himself a barely perceptible smile. Match-dissolve to the same boy now wearing an outrageous punk outfit complete with a daisy chain of safety pins from his ear to cheek. The music returns at full volume; I am an Anti-Christ. The boy gives the finger to camera. Multi-Pack of Xtra-Strong Safety Pins from Boyles Chemist.

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  Browsing menus of single willing women was intoxicating at first. Pornographic even. Beautiful girls with cocked heads and laughing eyes competing for my attention in a modern day harem. I toiled over half-written messages and deleted them in disgust only to start anew. Finally after agonising over every comma, period and apostrophe I’d send one out like a dove into the night. Annette87 was absolutely gorgeous but believe it or not it was not her beauty that caught my attention. She listed Francis Bacon, a contemporary of Shakespeare, in her last great book I read section and for which superpower would you most like to possess she’d answered; “I’d like to read minds.”

  So yes, I wrote her a poem.

  Look ye to these blackened leaves,

  Deathly froze ‘neath icy screen,

  Neglected thus by suns and moons,

  These worried words seek news of you,

  Thine eyes to them are planets bright,

  Whose orbit brings the gift of life,

  Sayest not thou art bereft of powers sublime,

  Thou canst read words and therefore minds.

  No reply. Maybe she never received it. Should I send it again? Maybe the internet was down. In many ways a fleeting glimpse of a beautiful girl in the street was more merciful. You saw her and she was gone. Here you could ogle what you couldn’t have for days on end. Meanwhile capitalising on your disappointment, ads for cars, aftershave and clothes promised to make you more attractive. But I wasn’t about to give up.

  Intelligence, height, wealth and wit.

  These were the most commonly sought qualities on datemedotcom. I already had three of them and I could mimic the fourth in the right shoes. I was never going to attract many replies on my looks alone but I was confident that most girls were going to at least feign interest in a guy who made two hundred thousand dollars a year as an Advertising Art Director. And as such, having worked with some of best digital retouchers in the business I couldn’t help but notice that many of the photos had been modified. Skin lightened, blemishes blended, legs lengthened, weight reduced, children removed.

  It quickly became clear, after only a few dates, that if a seemingly gorgeous twenty-five-year old girl was willing to meet a guy nearing forty, it meant he was going to have to pull up an extra chair for her ass. Witnessing a girl rearrange the table in front of her as she waited for her anatomical entourage to catch up was not something I wanted to repeat. I felt like the victim of a crime but with no emergency number to call because legislation had yet to catch up with whatever this was.

  Scrutinizing the profile photos even more carefully I realized to my horror I had been deceived by three very basic methods of in-camera trompe l’oeil. 1) Lying face-down on a plush carpet absorbed all manner of immensity. 2) Holding the camera high created a false perspective that funnelled even the most amoebic madness into a neat vanishing point. 3) Posing between two friends converted a milk-churn silhouette into an hourglass figure.

  I was looking at this all wrong. Instead of being the customer, I needed to become the product. Instead of buying I would sell. At first I didn’t catch the significance of profile names like Erin76, Shannon12 and Colleen111, but it soon arrived in me like a smile. As a walking, talking, realistically rendered, three-dimensional, life-sized export of that mythical faraway land called Ireland I had something to sell after all. These misinformed females, having grown up with stories of the old country strained through generations of omission and embellishment, were ripe for the romantic advances of a native-born Mick.

  An Irishman with a girl’s name?

  Yes, that’s going to be my headline for this e-mail. You probably get a lot of messages(gorgeous girl like you) and as you trawl through them going…DELETE...DELETE...DELETE….I thought I’d at least grab your attention with an eye-catching line.…and let’s face it, it must have worked because you’re still reading. But why would my parents give me a girl’s name? Well, since they had me late in life they knew I’d grow up with less attention than my siblings, and like the Johnny Cash song, A Boy Named Sue, the hope was that I’d grow up independent and tough (imagine the playground taunts). Did it work? You can judge for yourself when we meet. Girlsname

  At first I only copied and pasted this message to girls who referenced Ireland in their profiles but pretty soon I began to send it out randomly. Why not? Irishness was attractive to all cultures except the British and there weren’t too many of them over here. And anyway I could always screen the responses later. The objective was to see just what kind of quality I could attract. It was revealing how grateful they all were, beautiful or not, for being referred to as gorgeous. Seemingly, this was enough to blind them to the fact that what they had received was a form letter. And almost all of them wanted to meet, or at least learn more about the man behind it.

  “You have two new messages. First message.”

  Beep.

  “I hate you…I hate you…I hate you…I hate you... I hate you…I hate you…I hate you… I hate you...” It continued, with a few breaks for inhalation, until the tape ran out.

  “New message.”

  “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you….”

  Yvette had obviously felt a need to underline the passion of the first message with the comparative composure of the second. Why was she so aroused? Talking on the phone earlier I had made the mistake of mentioning Dr Su
sie’s suggestion that I might want to think about online dating and she immediately hung up. Which was just as well because I was about to remind her that it was she who insisted I see a therapist in the first place. If it hadn’t been for her I would never have even considered online dating. But when she called back I let the call go to voicemail. Twice. When I felt an urge to call her back I listened to those messages. They were my equivalent of a fat person-picture on the fridge.

  Dr Susie said I looked for conspiracy everywhere.

  “Whenever you’re stressed or overworked you look around for the enemy. That’s your pattern. You learned it from childhood; abuse from your teacher, denial from your mother and now you’re doing the same thing with this guy Andy”

  Andy was the creative director on Falfaux who very rarely left the building. It seemed to me that if you were any good at what you did you should be able to go home every now and then. But not Andy. On weekdays we worked into the early hours and on weekends we just worked late.He needed me there because of my experience writing tv commercials and yes I had a better showreel than him but was there really any need for us both to be there at 1am on a Friday night? He tried to make it seem like we were goodpals hanging out together. Just two guys checking out chicks.