DIARY OF AN OXYGEN THIEF By Anonymous (The Oxygen Thief Diaries) (16 page)

             
Suddenly, there's a huge flash of light.

             
Huge. At first you think it’s lightning. But inside? Then you realize that it’s a camera flash. And because you're an art director, you realize that it wasn't just an ordinary camera flash. It was the kind of flash professional photographers use in studios. The light seemed to reach over everybody like a gigantic white hand and tug at your chest with its forefinger and thumb.

             
It almost took something from you. Almost. Afterwards, you remember something about the Aborigines or New Guineans or some such primitive types believing that the camera can steal your soul. Not too long after all this, you agree. But somehow you're intact. You just know it. You feel it. An assault has been made on you and you've deflected it. You don't feel great but you know you'll survive. It's a good feeling. You know now that for some reason they are taking professional shots of you. You don't care. All you know is that a photo of you standing in a bar smiling can't be much use to anyone.

             
So you keep smiling.

             
And without thinking you raise the fuck-you digit on your right hand and in turn raise your right arm in the direction of the audience. Not exactly a victory, but you feel compelled to acknowledge openly that you're aware you're being humiliated.

             
So there.

             
Looking over at them, you wait for the next shot to be taken. You're trying to tell them, "Okay. So you want a shot of me? Take this. This is the only shot you'll be taking of me tonight." But Brazilian-Shirt-Now-With-Combat-Jacket has an idea. Not a bad one, you have to concede. He begins squinting through the telephoto lens at your upraised finger.
             
             
It's not your dick, but it'll do. 

             
You realize what he is up to and bring your arm down to your side again. He's disappointed. He motions for you to raise your arm again. You refuse. He's annoyed now. Things aren't going to plan. He looks over to the girl of your dreams for inspiration. She's busy congratulating him on the finger idea. Applauding him noiselessly. He bows.

             
She wants it again.

             
"We didn't get it,”

             
Brazilian-Shirt-Now-With-Combat-Jacket says,

             
“Just do that with your hand again and we'll leave you alone." This you take as victory. Up to now you haven't been sure whether this whole farce is real or imagined, you have after all been under

a lot of stress lately, but now you know. You resolve in yourself that whatever else happens this night he, they, she will not get that picture of you.

             
You smile. You want him to know that you're winning or that you at least believe yourself to be winning. Next, he takes out a comb. He holds it high for everyone to see. Like a magician, he holds it between finger and thumb. He deftly combs first your right shoulder and then your left. You are genuinely perplexed by this latest development. Then it hits you. You look at her. Her face is exquisite but her eyes are glazed with hate.

             
For you. She hates you? Why? That's not important right now. Right now you've got to get out of this. To your shame and constant embarrassment, you have hair on your back and shoulders. You will later have it waxed, but for the moment, there it is.

             
The only person in the room who knows of your vegetation is Aisling...and now Monsieur Brazilian-Shirt-Now-With-Combat-Jacket. She told him. The enormity of this begins to uncoil. She is out to destroy you. This is when you actually have to restrain yourself from making some pathetic gesture like punching or kicking somebody.

             
You will always be grateful that you didn't.

Lawsuits in the United States are commonplace and someone who makes $200,000 a year is worth the effort. Brazilian-Shirt-Now-With-Combat-Jacket is now flagrantly trying to provoke you with the comb, the lens and the occasional finger jab to the chest, coupled with the wink. You continue to be shielded by shock. You want so much to attack him, but something stops you.

             
You pray.

             
Maybe that did it. Actually, I have to be more concrete than that. I know that's what did it. Otherwise, I'd have tried to kill him. And looking back, the fact that he had donned the combat jacket must have meant that he fully expected me to try. With photographs being taken and witnesses everywhere, that wouldn't have been a good move. My publicity idea of getting someone to fight underneath her photograph would have come true. Poetic.

             
It would've made an excellent contribution to her book. The ad-man who fell on his own poisoned sword. She could play the avenging angel. I imagined the pretty innocent face looking out from the back of the dust jacket. Nice black and white portrait taken by

Peter Freeman.

             
No, she wouldn't bring this book out until she'd finished her stint with him. Mind you, even he wasn’t safe. He'd need to tread carefully. She could get as many shots as she liked of him over a four-year period.

             
So in the end, I managed not to give her everything she wanted for her book except a few static shots of me standing by a bar with a silly grin on my face. Maybe that was good enough for her to use. Maybe not, but at least I didn't give her a shot of me rolling around on the floor in a barroom brawl.

             
I suppose my writing this down is an attempt to make sense of what happened and to try to get it out of my system. Again, I wonder if it even happened at all. It's as if I might have imagined it. The strange thing is the cleverness of the scheme. I would love to have involved myself in something like this seven years ago when I myself was playing similar games. But my efforts were no more than spiritual vandalism.

             
This was professional.

             
I cut myself on a girl I'd been with for four and a half years.The half is important. I was a pig to her. Unfaithful, uncaring and on the piss most of the time. She said she wanted some space. I was delighted at first, and then I was devastated. Great excuse to drink. So I drank. A lot. But while all that booze was going down I entertained myself by using my story of heartbreak to "bag" other girls who were wandering around in the sordid bars I was frequenting. I'd lull them into my so-called web and when I was convinced they were in love with me I'd start to turn on them. I fancied myself the nonchalant playboy in the smoking jacket and cravat. I enjoyed hurting them. I wasn't aware of the depth of effect I was capable of achieving. I only knew how much they liked me after I'd hurt them, by which time it was too late. Correction. I know. That's exactly why I hurt them. How could they like me? I was punishing them for liking me. I also knew that even after hurting them, they would continue to like me sometimes even more, because of their well-meaning nature.

             
It is shameful for me to say that I considered this to be the most devilishly clever part of the whole thing. The very fact that they were naturally caring and loving would be the millstone that drowned them. The formula is perfect. The nurse becomes willing to sacrifice herself for the patient. But the patient isn't suffering from an external illness, he's suffering from self-inflicted wounds. The nurse wants to prevent him from this pain. The patient wants her to feel the pain, too. How else will she understand him? So she joins him. Now there are two patients. Something like that. But I, at least, was able to recognize some of the signs of what was going on. Which I would never have been able to do if I hadn't actually been there myself.

             
Also, I want to just get a mention in about the French connection here. I've since heard that in Paris there is among the more aristocratic French a fashionable habit of inviting, what we in Ireland used to call, a verbal punch-bag to a social gathering. It's very important that the victim not know what's occurring.

             
The victim is invited to a dinner or gathering and unknowingly supplies the other guests with much mirth. The evening is a success if everyone is allowed a stab at the poor bastard and an even bigger success if the poor unfortunate doesn't know what's going on. So I know you must be thinking. Jesus, this guy has got a chip on his shoulder about this whole thing, but I tell you, I don't want her book coming out without some sort of reaction from me. I'll be completely defenseless.

             
Of course, I don't even know if I'll get someone to publish this, but my hope is that I can get it out and published before her book comes out. That way I'll have the first word in. Then I don't give a shit what shots she's got of me.

             
I mean can you imagine it?

             
A photo-fucking-essay of a part of your life. Justice? Is it justice that I should have someone manipulate my image after I've spent the last ten years in advertising manipulating other images for money? Maybe it is. At least if you read this, you can hear my side. I know that if I saw her book and it had some guy connected with advertising I'd just assume he deserved what he got. Stereotypes, you see. Like I expected to be shot dead in New York as soon as I stepped off the plane.

             
So, anyway, there I go again straying away from the point. Where was I? Oh yeah, The Cat and Mouse, Christ, I still shiver when I walk past it. I have a girlfriend now who lives in that area. I often walk past that bar. I don't like it. She knows all about this. She's French. Freaked me out at first that she lived nearby because I thought she was one of Aisling's crew enlisted to fuck me up even more. She thinks I should go to a therapist. Bloody cheek. I'm already going to six AA meetings a week. She's nice though, I like her. She likes me. Let's just say we like each other. The French for dick is "bitte," by the way. So, I suppose that's a sort of happy ending because nothing's finished really, I'm still alive and fully intend to continue that way and I'm still waiting for Her book to come out.

             
Actually, it's just occurred to me that there is no ending to this book, if it is a book, happy or otherwise. It'll only be a comma in the sentence that will be added to when her book comes out. There is a revenge element to all this. I can see there's a side of me that's being small-minded and sad and twisted and bitter and generally like the roots of a European tree (you don't see gnarly roots in this fucking country). Page after page of pinched-faced bile. I honestly don't feel like that, though.

             
Wait until you hear this. Just before I decided to leave the Cat and Mouse that night, a pint glass of Coke was passed to a man from Galway by a blue-eyed blonde girl who looked too young to be served alcohol. The Galway man then passed the pint glass of Coke to a Kilkenny man who hadn't taken a drink in just under six years. He was an alcoholic. He shouldn't have been in a bar in the first place. He was living dangerously. He was, after all, dangerously in love with the girl who had just bought the drink. That pint of Coke didn't look an awful lot different from the pints of Guinness that everyone else seemed to be clinging to.

             
That was the idea. To fit in. And he'd had a strange night. He'd also had a lot of Coca-fucking-Cola. But this one was from Her. It was special. He knew it. She knew it. The Galway man knew it. Let's say it was known. The Kilkenny man took the glass. She looked at him from over there. She seemed keen to keep a safe distance. As if she was afraid he might lunge at her without warning. Almost as if she wanted him to lunge at her. She stood there, braced for action, ready to flee. Her pose had a strange effect on him. He found himself soul-searching for reasons why he might want to lunge at her.

             
He found none. He was protected from something. By something else. Something had stepped between him and the urge to lunge. He knew logically that he had been made a fool of, expertly, but his right to reply had been postponed. Not cancelled, just deferred.

             
She raised her glass in a mock salutation and winked a wink that said "Gotcha" and it should have hurt but it didn't. Not that night. Later, it cut him so deeply that he had to grit his teeth to breathe. The realizations would sear through him like his blood had turned poisonous. Like ground glass flowing through him. He could see her lovely face

laughing at him.  

             
That night, though, none of this affected him. He raised the pint glass and held it in the air creating if only for a few moments, a symmetry between them that hadn’t until now, existed. If this were a movie, there would be a close-up on her smile as she sips from her pint, and then another on his, as he raises the Coke. Cut back and forth. Her top lip sinks into the foamy liquid. So does his. She swallows. He doesn't. She takes her glass away from her lips and holds it up high in a triumphant gesture.

             
His glass remains in front of the lower half of his face. His top lip is cold in the Coke. He can smell Vodka. He believes he can smell Vodka. The Galway man is looking