Diary of an Oxygen Thief (The Oxygen Thief Diaries) Read online

  Earlier that evening she had asked me how I had enjoyed my weekend.

  “Not bad.” I said. “Got laid.”

  Stunned she looked at me with the same inquisitive smile that belonged to the question she had just asked.

  Beer hit my face with such force I thought she’d slapped me. But I had not just delivered the line; it had been accompanied by The Smirk. Penelope had felt its girth and now it was Jenny’s turn. I’d never had beer thrown in my face before. It was flattering. Jenny rose, whipped her jacket from the back of her chair and left. After slowly licking some splashed beer from my lips, I exchanged a look with the barman that said Chicks! and returned to my as yet untouched beer. Not for long.

  Speaking of slapping and the art of The Smirk, it had been a long time since I begged to be beaten up. The Swan in South London was the ideal setting for just

  such a beating.

  Very Irish, very fist-happy. Many many bouncers. They’d stand on stools, the better to police the goings-on consisting mostly of heavily drinking Irish exiles like myself. I was deep in conversation with a tall red-haired man from Dublin. There was much jostling for position as the other exiles attempted to get a little closer to their beloved homeland via Guinness.

  The spot that the Dub and I occupied was sacred. Right in front of the counter. It was necessary to get there at 3pm in the afternoon to occupy such a position. I’d been there since 1pm. So I turn to the Dub and quite truthfully inform him,

  “I’ve been listening to your shit all day and I’m fuckin’ sick of it. I wouldn’t mind but to top it all off you have to be from Dublin.”

  He immediately head-butted me with such force that I was able to see blood dollop into my pint glass. And I debated whether I should try to strain the blood through my teeth in order to salvage the inch of cider left in the bottom of the glass. I began to see it as important that I contain the dripping blood in the glass. Mustn’t for some reason get the place all bloody.

  I decided instead to announce,

  “One of us is going to leave this bar and it isn’t going to be me.”

  I looked up at my assailant whose face bore the throes of bloodlust.

  Freeze frame.

  I have only seen that expression three times. This was the first, the next was when I was knocked from my bicycle by the“hired” motorcyclist and was waiting for the ambulance people to ascertain whether I had serious injuries.

  I was lying on my back afraid to look down at my legs. On the top floor of a passing double-decker sat an old lady in a brown coat.The bus had to stop presumably because of the general commotion. The old hag’s expression was exactly the same as the one our Dublin friend is wearing now. Look at him. Ginger stubble, tongue slightly protruding from between fleshly lips…a cunt if ever I saw one.Other heads protruded into what might have been my last patch of sky…but it was her face that dominated my wait for the ambulance.

  Lying there I was still listening to Elvis Costello’s “Accidents Will Happen,” I kid you not. My Walkman, although askew, was still on and still playing. That old cow up there looking down from on high seemed to be nodding in time to Mr Costello’s sentiments. I tried to read from the old lady’s face how badly I was hurt. I wished I’d known her better because if she was a complete bitch, the slight smile on her face meant that I was fucked and my legs were mincemeat.

  But if she was a nice caring person who fed pigeons and stroked strangers’ dogs, I was in good shape because she was smiling on my behalf. I decided she was a bitch and I was fucked.

  The third time I saw the expression was when the girl I loved…hang on a minute, that’s what this whole bloody thing is about. We’ll get to that.

  Unfreeze.

  The Dubliner looked as if he’d just had sex with me. It had taken me this long to realize I’d been head-butted. There was no pain. Just a dimming of lights. Like someone turning down one of those knobs inside a living-room door.

  “No. We’ll keep it clean. No glasses,” he said.

  I immediately knew what this meant. He thought I was going to glass him, or the thought to glass me had occurred in him.

  I was concentrating my attention on directing the strange dribbling blood, which could well have been coming from the ceiling, into the pint glass in my right hand. For some reason it had become important not to mess up the floor of The Swan.

  To be glassed is to receive a pint glass in the face. The mouth of the glass is positioned around the chin and under the nose. A great deal of force is then applied with the ball of the hand to the base of the glass. The handsome face that hovers over the writing of these pages can only wince at the thought of what could have occurred that evening.

  So there I was holding a half-pint of my own blood and he wants me in the worst possible way.

  Suddenly, he was jerked upward as if sucked by a huge vacuum cleaner. Realizing his imminent ejection, The Dubliner reached for the collar of my coat and pulled me along with him. We formed a reluctant Conga train, the locomotive for which was two, then three newly unperched bouncers.

  Ah yes, nothing like a quiet drink.

  Dub wanted to get me outside in order to give me a more leisurely pummeling but I simply stepped out of the coat and back to my position and a freshly pulled pint of delicious draught cider.

  On the house. One of us did leave the bar after all. My coat was brought back folded and presented to me by one of the heroic staff of The Swan. Long may it prosper.

  After Penny? There was…let’s see…I still can’t remember her name. She was, or claimed to be, a designer. Wild curly brown hair. Shiny. Attractive. Thirty-three, looked thirty-eight. Old when you’re twenty-nine. Mind you, I felt eighty.

  “You like trees?”

  That was all I said to her. She told me later that my question enthralled her. She figured out what I was up to much faster than any of the others. But not in time. I spent an excruciating day with her one Sunday, waiting for night. She cooked dinner. Chicken. And invited her four brothers. I found out later this happened every Sunday. At the time I thought it was for my benefit.

  I was never a dope smoker. I was a drinker, you understand. But I was broke that day so I s-s-s-smoked as much of that shit as I could. All it did was increase my already prominent paranoia to international proportions. I thought the four brothers were going to butt-fuck me as an after-dinner treat and then beat me to death with their white fists.

  I was high. When it finally emerged, the chicken looked like some felled wildebeest too long in the Savannah. Jesus, it frightened me. To my high mind, it was still breathing. A vengeful, seething carcass. Mercifully, someone had brought a bottle of red wine. I had to resist lurching across the table and necking it. One glass I had.

  And she had the nerve to drop hints about how much I drank. This from a dope-head? Then I had to wait till the whole pathetic brother-sister thing had expended itself before I was allowed to get into her bedroom and eventually her knickers.

  The fear and paranoia I’d had to endure that day fuelled each pelvic thrust that followed. A dagger widening an existing wound. Merely an action that was required in order to hurt her later.

  The next morning, grateful for the absence of a hangover, I left reasonably refreshed. I even grabbed a piece of chicken on the way out. Never saw her again.

  Next?

  Catherine had just broken up with her live-in boyfriend and had a young son. I hoped to excel myself here. She’d had some problems. Emotional problems. Attempted suicide was touched upon. My ears perked up. I heard “Kill me”. If I hurt this woman enough I could nudge her over the edge into suicide. I’d be helping her do what she really wanted and it’d be a good test of my powers.

  It thrilled me to think I could cause a death by proxy. But she proved too strong or stupid or both or something. From her, though, I learned the technique that would later save my own life.

  I hate to be so dramatic but that, I believe, is how high the stakes were. The pain involved in a pre-med
itated broken heart would easily compare with a case of assault and yet no court of law would recognize it as a crime. A broken arm heals.

  She quickly fell for me, and I was in a hurry to get to the good bit. Once I knew she was in, I began the water torture. I became less available until I banished her to the wintriest regions of my absence. I waited to hear that she had done away with herself, how handsome I imagined myself at her funeral. Or even better to be burying my dick in someone else as she was being buried in the ground.

  I can’t tell you how insulted I was when she called and cheerily asked how I was. I couldn’t believe it. She was supposed to be in a wheelchair. Crippled with grief. Wearing dark impenetrable glasses and clutching a shiny lock of my flaxen mane before cynically abandoning her life.

  No.

  She continued to call and inquire after my well being, which only increased my ill being. It was the way to win, I had to hand it to her. I couldn’t quite accept her nonchalance, but there it was. In retrospect, I think she just wanted to show how well she was taking it. Otherwise why call? Indeed you may ask why write it all down? Who cares? Doesn’t everyone have brown water like this gushing under their bridges?

  No doubt, but there’s a dam up ahead. In my defense, I could talk about how I was abused by a De La Salle Brother when I was nine. How I’d felt the whole row of desks shaking as he played with his star pupil in the back. How I had to put a safety pin through the fly of my short pants to prevent this young Brother’s religious fervour. He’d go up the leg instead and so I begged my mother to let me wear long trousers. I wasn’t old enough, she said, and anyway it was Summer and Brother Neddy was only being friendly. It wasn’t serious abuse.

  I mean, I never took it in the arse.

  Brother Neddy was later prosecuted for his crime and, in a way, so was I for mine.

  And if you like that, here’s another.

  My father was shaving. It was a cold morning in Kilkenny. The light was on above the bathroom mirror, so it must have been Winter. He looked like he was scraping off a big cartoon beard. I wanted attention and tried something like, “If you don’t blah blah can’t-remember, I’ll never speak to you again.” Then slowly, very slowly he leaned down with great emphasis. The cream-covered face larger and larger as it neared mine. And from under this comical mask came the three little words that meant so much.

  “I don’t care.”

  Even now I feel like I should have capitalized them but that was just the effect they had on me. He said them very quietly. As if he wanted to make sure the message was for me only. Or maybe he was afraid my mother would hear. No fear of that.

  A sort of earthquake took place within me. A panicky crumbling. I’ll always remember it. That was the moment I knew I’d have to do this thing alone. This thing being life. Doors closed. Like in Westerns when the bad guy walks down the street and all the townsfolk slam their doors one after another into perspective.

  My father was someone who until then had been my only friend. My mother didn’t even seem to notice I was around and to my two brothers and sister I was merely an annoyance that needed to be babysat. Da was the only one who had shown me any affection up to then. Maybe as compensation.

  I don’t want you staining my newly published pages with your salty eye-droplets so I’ll get off this topic now. I will say this though. Seeds were sown.

  Maybe this stuff has links to other stuff that happened later. Maybe not. Maybe I was emulating the only relationship I’d ever had by gaining trust and then breaking it abruptly.

  Do with it what you will.

  I invited Catherine and some of the others to my thirtieth birthday party to be held in my back garden. The idea was to create a sort of lasagna of pain. All my ex-girlfriends were to gather in one location. My shitty back garden. These separate personalities, unified by the pain I had caused them, would at last understand the devilish mind that now controlled their futures. Something like that.

  It was a mess. I was far too drunk to greet anyone. In fact, such sophistication was secondary when all I wanted to do was ladle the contents of the punch-bucket into my already bleary-eyed face. At one point, I dispensed with the ladle and drank straight from the bucket. I assume someone hurt someone somewhere that night, because I never heard from any of them again….except Catherine who only called to inquire as to whether I was alright. Jesus.

  Let’s just lay a blanket over the proceedings. I was annoyed, though. Like waking up beside a beautiful girl and not being able to remember the sex. By the way, I mention all this because somewhere out there these girls are getting on with their lives and I want them to know what happened to me. That even though I’m walking around free in the world, I did get a dose of my own medicine. And it doesn’t matter even if they never read these pages. This is just me trying to be honest with myself. Like a 140 page note-to-self. I’m not looking for sympathy. I’m far more interested in symmetry.

  The one who threw the beer in my face called me six months later still sobbing. This was satisfying to me. And Catherine continued to call and ask how I was. Infuriating, but of course I couldn’t let her know this because it would mean she was winning. Maybe you’re beginning to see how futile the whole game was. It went on a while longer until I couldn’t keep up the George Sands act anymore. I basically lost the plot.

  But hang on, I promised I’d tell you about the one time I hit a girl. Long time ago, before all this other stuff, I was in the Court Arms in Kilkenny. I was leaving with a so-called friend, Lenehan. I was drunk, so was he, so was most of Kilkenny on a Friday night. The bar was crowded and we had to push our way through the throng. Lenehan was ahead of me cutting a path. An attractive girl turned around and slapped me really hard on the face. Before I knew what was happening I had punched her.

  Now, I don’t know about the rest of you irreligious fucks but in Ireland we don’t stand for that kind of behaviour. I waited outside the pub for the beating I knew I was about to receive. Didn’t matter what the extenuating circumstances were.

  I’d hit a girl.

  The word rippled through the drunken mass and it wasn’t long before five guys, who I knew quite well, came out and after much apologizing and wringing of hands proceeded to punch and kick me.

  But there was no passion in it. And they wouldn’t stop till blood was drawn and no blood would bother to show itself to these amateurs.

  From my crouching position I tried my best to insult them. My most reliable jibes had no effect until I accused them of having relatives in Britain.

  It was over in minutes.

  I remember shaking hands with them. One refused because he was still hurt by what I’d said. I allowed my bleeding eyebrow to run it’s course unwiped, an advertisement that justice had been done. Why had she slapped me in the first place? Lenehan had put his hand under her skirt as he passed behind her and she assumed I’d done it.

  So I went to Alcoholics Anonymous. And slowly I got better. Eight years later, I still go to meetings. I hope I will always go to them. And I stayed away from the dreaded Female for the next five years.

  Five and a half, actually. And my career took off. Big time. I got a job in a renowned advertising agency in London and won awards for the work my creative partner and I did. We were quite famous at one point. My name is still known. I went to my AA meetings in the evenings and worked as hard as I knew how during the day. I suppose I must have been good at it, because I never really found it that hard to come up with ideas.

  It was the awful corporate politeness that I found so draining. Little did I know that London’s corporate world is virtually anarchic compared to it’s American counterpart.

  After a while, I became disenchanted with my business partner in London because I didn't feel he was pulling his weight. I believed myself more talented and I was tired of working with him. We'd been staring at each other across a desk now for four years and I'd resisted diving across and burying my thumbs in his larynx for the last time.

  We ended a
micably. We really did. He ended up with another partner in the same agency. I was approached by a headhunter to go to a really good agency in the States based in St Lacroix. As soon as the headhunter said the company's name, I knew it was the right thing to do. I was due for two weeks holiday in France with some of my AA friends so I said we'd talk when I got back. She was keen that I call from France. So I did.

  Killallon Fitzpatrick’s creative director was visiting London for a few days, doing interviews.

  The conversation that started the ball rolling on the events of the following three years took place in the rattling hallway of an old French farm house in the Dordogne with dogs barking and the Mistral shaking the windows trying to get in. I had no idea what he looked like but his voice sounded hilariously American. Like one of my friends had called to take the piss out of me.

  The smell of cooking surrounded me, and it must have made me feel more homely than I had a right to because I pitched myself to this American as the Irish equivalent of Jimmy Stewart, only half his height and talent. It was what he wanted to hear. He virtually fell in love with me.

  He apologized for St Lacroix, Minnesota, warning me the city was no London or LA. He said St Lacroix got “pretty cold” in the Winter, but it wasn't as bad as people made off. You can buy a house there next to a lake.

  He thought I was the right sort of age for the job. I was thirty-four. There were lots of lovely ladies working in the agency. He felt sure I’d be popular. Pimp. At the time, though, I was ripe for it. Of course, I loved London but I was bored. I'd gotten the awards, I'd succeeded. Time for something new.

  I told him I didn't care if it was cold because all I ever did was work anyway. They had heating, didn’t they?

  I apologized to him for not being a smoker or a drinker, knowing he'd be thrilled since Americans were nervous about the British Creatives’ reputation for hard drinking. Didn't go down well in corporate America.