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

  “Look at that ass,” he’d say as one of the junior account girls walked by,“...look at the swagger, it’s innate”

  “It’s a nine.“ I said

  He shook his head in awe.

  “That’s why they pay you the big bucks, buddy.”

  I had actually misheard him but I he didn’t need to know that. That was when I saw through him. Why go home to a complaining wife and screaming kids when you could hang out in trendy office with gorgeous account girls and your witty Irish art director? I was his creative butler.

  When I assured Dr Susie I welcomed the idea of being fired she sighed loudly.

  “I’m sorry. You’re stuck.”

  This new candour amazed me. Was it some sort of technique used by therapists? Remain silent for the first five sessions then open up with all sorts of observations? And by encouraging me to remain employed was she thinking not just of my job but her own? I was after all, her misery-mortgage.

  “You look smaller this time, last time you seemed taller, you stood more erect, you had greater presence”

  This wasn’t at all like her. Ordinarily she was much more tactful about making comments of any kind. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that last time I’d worn my Brothel Creepers. They add at least an inch to my height. I was sparing my therapist’s feelings now? This was the equivalent of neatening the apartment before the cleaner arrived. Something was wrong. When I first lowered myself into the chair at the beginning of that session the cushion and arm-rests were scorching hot. Re-evaluating my near-collision with a huge mannish-looking woman in the hallway I couldn’t help but wonder if I had inherited some of the mood from the previous session.

  “Look,” she said, shuffling forward in her seat, ” what do you do when you come to a fork in the road?”

  Was I expected to answer?

  “Take it.”

  I was paying three hundred and fifty dollars a session for this. Previously, she had appeared all the more intelligent because she had said so little.

  BRIDGIT

  Bridgit’s invitation to inspect the Celtic pendant around her neck allowed me to touch her cleavage which ignited the kiss that led to her bed where, in the throes of fucking her, I noticed a picture of her dad on the bedside table..

  He looked exactly like me. My thin-lipped and blue-eyed head lurched forward to fit perfectly over his before retreating and reappearing.

  Still a novice, not just to online dating but dating in general, I agreed to meet her mother who lived in Syracuse. After an exhilarating train ride where she made me come under a newspaper, right there in the seat as the pylons rushed past; I pretended not to notice her mother’s expression of euphoria when wide-eyed and hungry for her returned husband, she welcomed me into her house.

  I sat at the head of the kitchen table with Nuala, the younger sister, on my left Bridgit on my right. Mom sat at the other end flanked on one side then the other by Paddy the dog. On the wall, a portrait of dad looked down on us from within a gold-frame. He also looked down from the fridge, the hallway, and even from a picture in the toilet where at one point I sought refuge. There was no escaping it. I was dad.

  Bridgit became spokesperson.

  “So what do you think of Nuala’s progress? Is she heading in the right direction?”

  “She still has a few years to fuck around” I said

  This was met with squeals of delight.

  “And the dog?

  “He looks fine to me”

  “And what about Mom?”

  “I’d do her”

  Hysterical laughter punctuated by hand claps.

  Bridgit respectfully requested that I remove my profile from datemedotcom and I respectfully implied that I might like to keep it up and that was pretty much that until we met again two years later.

  *****

  In what turned out to be my penultimate therapy session I found myself telling Dr Susie that everything had improved, that my fear of intimacy was obviously due to my paranoia and that my paranoia was a result of being abused and that yes, it was still there but I was now able to recognize it for the burden it was, as opposed to the good counsel I had imagined it to be. I acknowledged that as a kid I had drawn a map that had reflected the world around me and that it had been a very useful navigation tool at that time. But now thirty years later I was still using it and wondering why I was bumping into things that according to my map shouldn’t be there.

  I heard myself acknowledge the success of the sessions while indicating a desire to end them. I shared my vision of a therapy-free existence where it was possible to be well-adjusted without a weekly outpouring of neuroses and cash. I told her, perhaps too honestly, that I spent the intervening days thinking about what to say in the next session so that we wouldn’t both have to endure the excruciating silences and shifting-in-seats. And then in an ill-fated attempt at alleviating the timbre of the room I submitted a work-in-progress-tag-line that would work well on small-scale media like fridge-magnets and bumper stickers. I paused for effect.

  “Therapy? Enough said”

  She smiled at this.

  “You wouldn’t stop going to AA would you?

  Predictably enough, she began to suggest that I might want to continue with the sessions precisely because they were working. I immediately felt uncomfortable. Guilty even. Like I was suddenly extricating myself from a relationship. I waited for her to say I was avoiding intimacy. That I was being distant. That she hated me. I didn’t want to continue seeing a therapist when I was already going to a minimum of four AA meetings a week and anyway I felt that what I’d gotten from her was about all there was to get. And let’s not forget I already had a sponsor. I did have to admit though, but not to her, that I could see the logic of continuing the sessions since they would at least provide me with someone to bounce ideas off. Someone who could prevent me from making a mistake. Like discontinuing therapy.

  NORA

  After agreeing to meet Nora on the steps of a church on Eighteenth Street I was amazed when she led me inside to attend a mass that was just starting. Imagining all manner of pagan possibilities I was happy to oblige. But once inside the cavernous candle-lit interior it quickly became clear that six o’clock mass was a gay singles scene where well-dressed young men eyed each other up between the Benediction and the Consecration. My father would sooner die than live in a world where this could happen.

  In fact, that’s exactly what he did.

  But Nora didn’t seem to notice. She was there to imitate her version of an Irishwoman. To her it was just a look, like Cowgirl or Gypsy. An excuse to wear tweed. She was in a catholic church with figures kneeling and standing and that was enough for her. It was Ireland by Tommy Hilfiger. Apparently she had gone on a few dates with some guy called Ray. It was pretty clear he hadn’t fucked her yet but she mentioned his name often enough that it was clear she wanted to see how I’d address my competitor. This was more of her Irish posturing. I needed to win her. If she hadn’t been so pretty I wouldn’t have bothered. I emailed her that night.

  On the west coast of Ireland, in a city called Limerick, in the shadow of King John’s Castle, a black leafless tree inclines itself towards the ochre glow of a streetlamp. In the absence of any natural source of light this gnarled trembling hand reaches for the nearest manufactured equivalent. To imagine so natural a yearning squandered on so cheap a facsimile is too heartbreaking to contemplate so instead dear Nora let us turn our attention to the future. Yours and mine. X(ps to help you adjust to the imminent glare we might need to get you some Ray-bans)

  When I did eventually get her clothes off she was so pale she looked like a corpse. And she pretty much behaved like one. She lay there looking up at the ceiling as if she hadn’t noticed I was about to fuck her. I thought about coming on her face just to see her expression but since she had obviously gone to all the trouble of waxing either side of her jet black bush I thought I might as well go down on her. Pretty soon she wouldn’t shut up. “Thank God
. Thanks be to Jesus. Oh, thank God!” It was as if she had misheard the instructions. Oh Jesus or Oh my God was fine but Thanks be to Jesus was just frightening. I felt the sting of her juices on my just shaved face.

  “Oh poor thing,” she said,“…don’t worry I never come, it’s the anti-depressants.”

  SHEELA

  Viewed from the front Sheela was very aristocratic looking, but as soon as she turned even slightly sideways there was a dizzying moment of re-focus while her nose announced its dimensions. Not unlike an aerial view of a ship’s mast. She had lovely, clean, pale skin (her parents were Irish), and a beautiful, compact little ass. Tragically though, her hips protruded like a concentration camp survivor. Was I after a relationship or a few fucks? This was a constant source of concern for her. She was looking for chemistry. I was looking for biology. She smiled dreamily into baby carriages while I winced at the back of her head. It occurred to me that had her nose been any bigger and my dick any smaller a blowjob would have been impossible. In the end it was academic. I knew we were finished after a particularly frustrating session trying to keep up with her breathless directions on how to fuck her. She eventually came very loudly, but far from the audible reward I had hoped for I was sure I heard her say; “Blaahhhhhh…blah.”

  It summed up our time together

  FRANCESKA

  I decided I would never see her again before she even sat down. Her profile picture showed a beautiful girl in a white t-shirt and high heels taking her own photo in a full length mirror. The scenario had a Helmut Newtonish feel to it and I assumed this was why she had used the old Leica to capture it. A witty prop for a tongue-in-cheek shoot. Having described herself as a hybrid photographer-assistant-model-writer it made sense to present herself in this way. It also made perfect sense to meet her for a coffee. But as she approached I realised her decision to use a Leica was more than just a retro-chic affectation. It was a mask. A digital camera would have required her to hold it away from that face. She was a hybrid alright. The world-weary head of an Irish politician surveyed the cafe from the body of a lingerie model

  “I’m so sorry.” she said.

  I tried not to stare.

  “…for being late. I couldn’t find the place, I almost walked past.“

  “Don’t worry, you’re worth the wait”

  A lie so enormous a car probably crashed somewhere.

  “Thank you.” she said reaching into her shoulder bag ‘you don’t look anything like your picture”

  I hid my rage as she took out a small black wallet and began to show me badly composed photographs printed on cheap paper. Even if she had been stunningly beautiful I would have been unhappy about this, but under the circumstances I was breathless.

  “Really?”

  While she talked, mostly about her photography, I tried to summon a version of myself that could somehow ignore her from the neck up, or more precisely from the chin up, because there was something there casting a small shadow, I couldn’t quite tell what it was and though I wanted to study it, I didn’t dare.

  “Do you still want to meet in Ireland?”

  She didn’t actually have any Irish connections but because she loved everything about the country I had talked about a romantic rendezvous in Kilkenny. I hadn’t told her I was already due there the following week for a visit home because I had wanted to make it seem like I was planning the trip around her. But that was before we’d met.

  “Yes” I said involuntarily and threw in a nod to make it more believable.

  “Yes? But it’s very expensive? No?”

  Was she was offering me an escape or was she trying to get out of it herself? Or was she pretending she didn’t fancy me so I wouldn’t feel obligated? Or was she angling for a free flight? I couldn’t read that face one way or another. The fact that she could use a camera to hide her face might well have been the reason she got into photography in the first place. There was an ad for cameras in there somewhere. You get more detail with a digital camera. I tried to summon a version of myself that could somehow see it as a large pimple. A chin-nipple perhaps, but it was useless. The wart wagged the woman.

  MOTHER

  After an overnight flight to Dublin and a joyless train ride to Kilkenny I was jolted from a virtual sleepwalk into the kitchen of my childhood home to find my brother and mother touching my jacket like Bangkok peasants. It would not have seemed surreal if I thrown coins to the floor. Only slightly more dignified I placed a fifty-Euro note between the salt cellar and the sauce bottle and emptied my caressed coat-pocket of coins into my mother’s wide expectant hands. This secured my first compliment.

  “Doesn’t he look great?”

  This was the Ireland I remembered.

  Before I‘d even sat down she warned me not to call the fire brigade since the last time I was home I had needed their services to extinguish a chimney fire. Having recently taken to counting each separate rock of coal my mother was hardly going to welcome the cost of having the chimney swept. The last time already mindful of her sensibilities I had very carefully placed one diamond-in-waiting on what appeared was no more than a pathetic sputtering flame but apparently the chimney couldn’t deal with the increased traffic and the smoke began to back up. I had no idea the fire brigade charged by the hour. I thought they were a government service like the postman or the police.

  My laptop was met with oohs and awws.

  My mother began dropping the first of many hints that she needed to pay off one thousand Euros on a car accident she’d caused. She left a silence after this which I suppose, I was expected to fill with money but when I pretended not to understand she stopped making me cups of tea. Brian said I was paranoid about my money, that I was obsessed with it.

  “I’m not the one obsessed with it.” I said

  There was another silence after that.

  Due to the prohibitive cost of oil the central heating was never on for more than an hour a day even in December. Brian had discovered that sleeping with a pair of underpants over his head afforded the warmth of a hat but with more ventilation. He helpfully began to explain that seventy percent of your body heat escaped through your head. He had obviously forgotten that it was I who told him this after serving two years of my life in Minnesota. I wanted to suggest he’d be even warmer if he shut his fucking mouth, but I didn’t. I pitied him living in that house with that woman.

  She was really pissed off that her husband was dead. She couldn’t see that she was in fact very lucky to have someone, anyone, at home with her, even if it was only Brian. The house had gotten worse since dad died. There were pockets of unwiped goo everywhere. It was all too familiar and yet it was like some sort of dream. Brian without his wife and my mother without her husband. They’d become a sort of sexless bickering couple and I was the umpire. In the mornings I’d hear them stiffly descending the creaking stairs. The undead.

  I gave my mother a signed copy of The Potter And The Rose and joked that it would be would be worth a fortune some day because it was a hardback and the author was quite reclusive. She was happy about this until she noticed my inscription wishing her a Happy Christmas. I had obviously devalued it. I looked past her annoyance, like I had done so many times before out the kitchen window at the black defeated trees and I felt fortunate I could leave. When she got sad about me leaving I was reminded of all the times I’d left home for Art College in Limerick or London or St LaCroix or New York. My tears became easier and easier to hide until there were none.

  My constant state of sleeplessness was like some sort of torture technique where my eyes were sewn open and I was forced to watch something I didn’t want to see.

  My mother’s decline and my brother’s misery.

  I got up early the next morning after another sleepless night. I crept quietly around the kitchen so as not to wake them. The less conversation the better. There were only two more days before I flew to Las Vegas but I desperately tried to think of excuses to leave earlier. I was in exactly the same place
I’d sat when I first told my mother about Father Eddie thirty years earlier. I remember waiting as she drained yellowish green water from a saucepan of boiled cabbage. I was about to inform on the coolest priest at my school. At nine years of age I couldn’t even be sure that what I was about to tell my mother was controversial. Mostly I was looking for a reaction. Shock. Disbelief. Laughter. For all I knew I might have been leading the priest astray. After all, why would a man dedicated to God want to play with the thing I peed with? The only satisfactory explanation was that I was evil. Some weeks after I had established the habit of going to school with my trusty safety pin in place I experienced what I would later realise was a sexual stirring. As Father Eddie approached preceded by the smell of his hair cream and aftershave I actually wanted him to come and sit beside me, to touch me, down there. I even removed the safety pin, just in case. This means that my very first sexual yearning was not only co-opted by the Catholic Church, it was rejected. But the cabbage was more important.

  “Oh” she said “he’s just being friendly.”

  She dissolved momentarily as the steam enveloped her. I was her fifth Caesarian in a row. She barely had time to heal between births. It must have been difficult for the surgeon to find fresh skin for his blade. Each of us literally left a huge scar on her. Mid-century Ireland was a moral-middle ages where Priests, Nuns, Brothers and Bishops were feared like Gestapo and contraception was the stuff of science fiction. The way things were back then she was lucky she didn’t have four more children. So were they.

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