Chameleon On a Kaleidoscope (The Oxygen Thief Diaries) Page 5
“Third. Table. On. The. Right.”
Without hesitation I push through the gamblers till I reach a roulette table surrounded by people already in the middle of a cycle. The ball clatters to a stop and two people walk away dejected leaving a gap in the crowd. I heave the flight case onto the table. This must be it. The moment that will make sense of it all. I open the case and tip the contents onto the baise. There is a loud groan of pleasure from the onlookers.
"Put. It. All. On. Twenty-Four. “
I make an ineffectual attempt at grouping the cash into one area as if to ensure it straddles the number twenty-four.
“Red.” the voice says.
Accordingly I shove the mound of money a little to the right.
“No more bets.” The croupier is adamant. The wheel is spun. All eyes on the little metal ball as it revolves inside the roulette wheel for what seems like an eternity. There is at least four hundred thousand dollars in cash on that table. People saunter over from other tables and a quiet descends as the croupier flashes a look at the security camera overhead. In black and white extreme close-up we see the little metal ball bounce, hop, skip, skidder and wink. At last the wheel slows down and the ball seems to be trying out random compartments for comfort before leaping out to try another. Finally as the spinning subsides the individual compartments move slowly enough to be discernible. The ball sits in a black compartment numbered twelve. A collective groan rises from the spectators and they immediately disperse as if such misfortune is contagious.
“Aww. Shit.” the voice says.
The croupier drags the stack of money towards him and begins stuffing it into the slot in the table. A title appears on the screen. For more reliable investment advice call Belvedere Bank Services 0800 244 7864.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
JESSICA
“...now push your hips up to me because I want to shove my stiff cock inside you….but I’m going to make you wait… you’ll have to beg me….I want to hear you beg me…” I held the phone to my cock so she could hear it squelching as I pummelled it.
“Can you hear that?”
Silence. She wasn’t sure if she should be doing this and yet she wanted me to continue.
“Yes.”
“That’s what your cunt will sound like when I fuck it with my stiff cock.”
“Ohhhh.”
It was interesting to note that the word cock on its own didn’t seem to have any effect until it was accompanied by the word stiff, hard or rigid. A cock was just a cock but a stiff cock was a compliment. The power of the adjective.
“Ohhhh.”
I’d experiment sometimes and leave a long silence inviting the caller to guess what I’d say next (I’d have to resist throwing in something surreal like lawnmower or tupperware just to see what would happen) These silences would sometimes bring forth surprises.
”I want you to come in my mouth.“
The dirty little cunt. She would never have said that if we had just met in Starbucks.
“You’re a dirty little cunt.” I said
“Ohhhh. “
Over the tannoy system the stewardess asked passengers to return to their seats.
“You’re on a plane? I’ve never done it on a plane.”
“You have now.”
As I left the toilet cubicle I must have looked like I had just received some excellent news. This was better than real sex. I would definitely be calling her again. A jpg arrived in my phone of a picture she’d taken seconds earlier; a close-up of two glistening fingers inside herself. We were approaching New York and I had a date.
VICKY
Vicky turned up at Cafe Lost looking so gorgeous and tiny and cute I wanted to have sex with her there and then in the street against the wall. In her profile, she looked like a ten-year old boy with tits and so I was already a little ashamed of the explicit nature of my intentions towards her before she even turned up. But she seemed to enjoy the attention. Or was it my discomfort? She looked so young a siren went off somewhere inside me.
All her clothes came from the children’s section of Old Navy and she had become quite adept at removing cartoon characters and bunny rabbits but sometimes she said she liked to leave them on. There was a pause here as she waited for my reaction. Sometimes she left them on? Why would she tell me that? An unspeakable sexual sea-creature caught the light for a second a slithered silently back into the murk. Such a sighting could never be reported. Maybe it was a diversionary tactic designed to sway me form the fact that her interest in me was purely professional. She couldn’t mention that what she really wanted was a photo assignment and I couldn’t give voice to my illegal longings.
“I love your emails.” was the first thing she said to me in person. This of course was clever of her not just because it was flattering but because my emails to her had been predominantly erotic in nature.
Here are my balls,
This is my penis,
My hopes are high,
It’ll come between us.
She let me believe I might have my way with her that very night if it wasn’t for the fact that she needed time to get over her ex-boyfriend. What she didn’t mention and what I found out later was that she was already living with a man and would go home to him that very evening. She was very pretty in a pointy sort of way and even though she did her best to behave like a lost little girl in a world of wonder the prominent nipples under the tight white cotton of her skin-tight t-shirt seemed to suggest otherwise. That she had chosen amongst all the clothes in her wardrobe to wear such a revealing t-shirt to our first date gave me a thrill that must have informed my features. I assumed it was one of the items of clothing she had referred to earlier. And since I was the one doing most of the talking the conversation seemed to sparkle. At the end of an excellent evening after a faux argument about who should pay the bill (I won) she jokingly punched the air between us and I angled my cheek mimicking impact. But misreading my intention she leaned forward to kiss me there instead. Suddenly in danger of rejecting a kiss I hadn’t expected I clumsily kissed her cheek as she tried to kiss mine. This was particularly dishonest of her since she had effortlessly conjured up one of those awkward romantic moments that so often occur between people still unsure of the others’ affections. This seemed like a good time to tell her that I had been working too hard and it would be nice to slow down a little.
“Yes, you should be kinder to yourself” she said, ingratiating herself with someone that could lead to a seventy-thousand-dollar-a-day photo-assignment.
“My first act of self-kindness will be to see you again on Wednesday night” I said camouflaging my desire to rip off her child-sized knickers and fuck what I found there.
“I’d like that.“ she said, blushing at her own dishonesty.
“Excellent.” I said, mortified by mine.
I googled her name and a blog came up featuring the daily trials of a fixer-upper as she renovated a brownstone in Bushwick. There was a picture of her in a check shirt cuddling a huge wild-haired fucker in a newly delivered claw-footed bathtub.
“Me And My Man.” the caption said.
The plumbing alone would cost a fortune.
*****
Back in the agency the following day just before lunchtime I was printing out fifty pages of Diary Of An Oxygen Thief as requested by a potential literary agent when suddenly standing there beside me was Andy. He was waiting for something of his own to print and he just kept turning over my emerging pages and smirking to himself. I couldn’t stop him. He was entitled to look for his printout. I couldn’t stop the printer either I would have pulled out the plug if I had known were it was.
Click whirr….pffht..
“I liked hurting girls…”
Click whirr…pffht…
“Your cunt is loose.”
Click whirr…pffht…
“Call that a head-butt?”
Slivers of my life being served up like Prosciutto. Eleven pages in th
e tray meant thirty-nine more to go. Sweet Jesus make it stop.
“So this is your big break-out novel?”
He didn’t look up from the pages as he spoke. I shouldn’t have been printing anything that wasn’t work-related. Before I could answer our account director Perry walked over with some other guy in a suit I’d never seen before. Andy looked quite handsome when he was enjoying himself.
“Do you want me to call you when it’s done?”
“No that’s ok, I‘ll wait. So do you have a publisher?”
“Not yet, I’m sending this to an agent”
He raised his chin and nodded once as if this explained everything he’d ever wondered about. I decided to hide in the men’s room for a few minutes. When I felt enough time had elapsed I’d come out and retrieve my vileness from the printer and retreat to my office and call my sponsor and beg him to let me resign. But after only a few seconds of pretending to piss Andy seemed to spring from the floor at the urinal beside me.
“So, do you have these in Europe?”
He was referring to the flushers on the urinals which might or might not have been particular to the US and I suspected he already knew the answer before he asked me. I turned to look at him mostly in disbelief. Was he going to work in some witty remark about me being flushed down the toilet and never getting another job again?
This fucking guy.
I pretended to misunderstand.
“Penises? Yes we have them, but they’re much bigger”
The easy smile froze onto his face.
“Remind me not to set you up like that again.” he said.
Had I lost my mind? This guy had the power to fire me. Without a job, I was an illegal immigrant.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Open on a shot of me with my own shoe-shine stall. A suited executive talks on his cell phone as I finish giving him a shine. The camera finds my sad forlorn face in the refection of his shoe. In that same reflection somebody steps into view behind me. I look down at the pavement and instead of another pair of men’s shoes I see what appears to be a pair of ladies high-heeled boots. But as the camera follows my gaze upwards we realise the girl is wearing a one-piece leather cat-suit stretched tantalisingly over every contour of her gorgeous body. And though she’s flawless in every way the leather looks lacklustre and uncared for. She needs a damn good buffing.
Keeping her eye on me she gingerly steps up onto the shoe-shine-stand and dramatically dusts off the seat before lowering herself into position. Passers-by stop to look at her. She‘s that beautiful. I try to remind myself she’s a customer but it’s impossible to hide the effect she’s having on me. Is she naked beneath that body-hugging leather? Obviously enjoying my discomfort she uncrosses her legs and offers me a foot. I reach for a piece of cloth but when I try to spit on it I realise my mouth has gone dry. Unperturbed she leans provocatively forward and offers me her bottle of Perrier.
Perrier. Thirst for Life.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
MISS CANADA
But I wasn’t fired. Instead I was assigned to oversee yet another shitty commercial, this time being shot in Canada where all five cars in the Falfaux stable demonstrate their snow-traction capabilities as they converge at a ski-lodge for the holidays. Each member of an unlikely family drive a Falfaux and it is only due to this that they can be together for the Holidays. A lesser car would have careered off the road. This it turned out was the script Andy had been waiting for that day at the printer. And this assignment it turned out was his way of punishing me for being so brazen as to announce my ambitions of being a writer. All advertising creatives have at least one book, musical, screenplay, play or children’s book hidden under the metaphorical floorboards but it’s considered very bad taste to talk about it. Why talk of escape when you’re in a maximum-security prsion?
The freelance producer found some idiot French-Canadian director to shoot it on the cheap because he was as desperate to get into the business as I was to get out of it. Before we even landed in Calgary I couldn’t wait to leave. The director, Jean-Philip, asked in his thick French accent if I needed anything shot for my reel. He must have guessed I was so bored with this shoot that he needed to offer something extra to keep my interest. Creatives often asked a director to shoot personal projects on the back of a fully paid-up production but even if I had something in mind I wouldn’t have trusted this guy with it. But he was way ahead of me. Eager to impress, he had already thought of an alternative. That same evening after the so-called shoot, (it was all over after two hours) the client, Ken (No-Ken-Do as I called him), our freelance producer (I forgot his name) and myself were picked up in a huge SUV outside the hotel and taken to Calgary Adult Entertainment Club.
Within seconds of being ushered into the VIP area and offered a drink I didn’t want, I realised I had no prior reference for a rabbit-fur bikini. Why would I? It had never occurred to me that a bikini could be made from such material. It wasn’t practical. It contradicted itself. It was like a candle lit by a lamp. The contrasting textures of fawn coloured fur and the clean white skin almost got me going. I say almost because the lighting was too harsh and the interior too cavernous and let’s not forget that getting even a hint of a hard-on in the same room as No-Ken-Do was an imponderable.
“She’s a former Miss Canada” the sideways shift of his eyes was all he could afford to confirm that I was indeed there beside him. I could hardly believe it myself as I risked a sideways glance of my own at the leaning tower of red chips surging upwards from his table representing only too graphically his desire for the alarmingly young girl on the stage in front of us. As he lobbed, flicked and tossed these plastic discs, the artist formerly known as Miss Canada positioned herself expertly to catch each filthy thought above her now fur-free and hairless vagina. This, it turned out was Canada’s real attraction. Not the strength of the dollar or the endless available snow but the fact that the strippers were allowed to go nude.
“In Canada the beaver goes free.” said Kenneth Berg, Falfaux’s recently promoted Marketing Director who at that moment was busy scrunching up his nose like he was making faces for a baby. But this vagina was dry and uninterested. I knew this because I could see right into it. Its owner made absolutely no attempt to appear aroused by what she was doing and as a result neither did I. Until later. After refusing the second offer of free drinks I slipped away and hailed a cab back to the hotel where I had a Posh Wank (I used a condom) and fell sideways asleep still clinging to my dick. In a dream, I was reciting a customised version of the right-to-bear-arms-motto; You’ll have to take this dick from my cold dead hands, when I was awoken at three-am by a knock on the door.
“Your early morning call, Sir.”
The producer had arranged it because apparently I was due back in the office. And so it came to pass, while boarding that half-understood fateful five-am flight to New York, I was stopped by an immigration officer in Toronto Airport.
“I’m sorry Sir, your visa has expired.”
I feigned wakefulness.
“My what is…what?”
The producer was already on the plane. My bags were being recalled. My phone was dead. I remember feeling the beginnings of a tsumani surge of panic that almost immediately subsided and settled into what could only be described as relief.
Something significant was happening.
My HIB work visa was out of date and there was simply no way in the present politically fraught environment they were going to let me back to New York where, let loose amongst the unsuspecting public I might put the finishing touches to yet another crap commercial. They were right. I had to be stopped.
“So, I can’t go back to New York?”
“No Sir. You’re staying in Toronto“
Harsh punishment indeed. I was shown into a windowless room where a huge, testicle-faced man in a blinding white shirt did his best to behave like he was asking trick-questions.
“But you just sa
id you flew in from Calgary.”
“Yes.”
“So where were you going?
“New York.”
“What for?”
“I live there.”
“But you have an Irish passport.”
“Yes, but I live in New York.”
“And you say you were shooting a commercial.”
“In Calgary, yes.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m an art director.”
“What does that entail?”
“Making the copywriter look good.”
His eyes remained on my passport.
“And you don’t drink?
“What? No.”
“Nothing at all.”
“No.”
“Not even at Christmas?”
“No.”
“And you’re Irish?”
“Yes, I’m Irish.”
“Conas ata tu?”
Were they fucking serious? I was being asked questions in Gaelic now? And how did he know I didn’t drink? Had they looked up my profile on datemedotcom? It was true that anyone growing up in Ireland would have at least a rudimentary understanding of Gaelic but how the fuck did he know that? I had always been terrible at Gaelic. I never managed to get even a pass on all the test papers I’d taken and now because I couldn’t think of the response to this basic question I was going to be incarcerated in Canada.
Slowly from somewhere uninvited, maybe because my internal editors were not yet at their desks, a deep sense of dread began to overtake me like some huge abstract ink-stain widening within me. Would I be strip-searched by this gargantuan? Each of his fingers was bigger than my dick. He reached into a drawer where I suspected he kept his rubber gloves. I was about to lose my virginity to a Mountie.