Chameleon On a Kaleidoscope (The Oxygen Thief Diaries) (10 page)

“
Come
on, give it to me.” It was as if I was withholding her property.
Until then it had seemed too rude to unload the contents of my
loins at a girl l but from the look on this girl’s face it began to
look like it might be insulting not to. Three white arcs loosed
themselves into the void between us. The first two disappeared out
of view but the last clung like a smile to her heaving breasts. I
bayed like a dog at an imaginary moon and w
e hugged for so long after coming I felt like we’d been
stirred together like milk in tea. No sugar.
And because she
was unavailable it was ok to fall in love with her.

“
Come on, be
honest, wouldn’t you be a slut if you were a girl?”

The question didn’t seem
fair because everyone knew girls just didn’t think like that. But
here was a girl, a beautiful girl asking me a question that
demanded the reorganisation of everything I’d ever thought about
women. I was suddenly seized with a desire not so much to have her
but to
be
her. I was jealous of her freedom. Her power. A
great looking girl could fuck anyone she wanted. Surely such power
was intoxicating. She was like a guy in a girl’s body. Girls
weren’t supposed to think like this. Maybe all girls thought like
this and Valeriya was just willing to admit it.
She accused me of analysing everything and pronounced
it
anal-ising
.
I couldn’t tell if this was because English was
second language and therefore a coincidence or whether she had
effortlessly out-punned me.

“
If you were
a girl wouldn’t you be a slut?” she repeated the question as if it
was a natural progression from what she had just said and in the
full knowledge that I was defeated I conceded reluctantly, that
yes, I would.

“
Well there
you go.”

She
said this like it explained everything but all it did was confuse
me even more. She saw herself as a slut?
She knew how to
adapt to whatever conditions presented her. It was classic
behaviour of abused children. We learn how to keep the peace at the
expense of our own needs. We merge into any given situation. When
two chameleons successfully take on each other’s hues there is
nothing there. Supplying her with a list of film contacts was
laughably easy for me but I resisted until the last moment in the
vain hope that she might say she didn’t want them. That she loved
me. That I was what she wanted. I knew that as soon as I sent that
email it would conclude our business. Her response said it
all.

“
I don’t know
how to thank you. Well I do, but let’s pretend.”

Especially the last two
words.

ANICA

Anica was a long-necked
Slovakian systems analyst for a pharmaceutical company based in the
Hague. In the time I knew her she visibly brightened only twice.
Once when she swallowed an entire glass of whiskey in one gulp, and
once when she talked about her combat-training as a child; “I am
proficient with a Kalashnikof”

I had hopes
for some heavy petting and a handful of arse in preparation for a
full-on-fuck which I wanted to suggest would be the following
Saturday. When she turned up that first night there was a very tall
good-looking guy close behind her so I assumed they were a couple
and I was already eyeing her up when she broke away from him and
stood there in front of me. I didn’t stand up in case I only came
up to her shoulder. She was tall, but surmountable. I told myself
that her expression indicated satisfaction with what she saw too.
This was always a tricky moment. Great care had to be taken not to
let your true feelings of nervousness or disappointment creep into
your face. We had no knowledge of each other’s facial
eccentricities. Two complete strangers willingly engaged in an
artificially arranged attempt at falling in love. If we allowed
dissatisfaction into our faces we immediately made ourselves uglier
thereby setting off a reaction in the other person’s face that
limited the chances of either of us looking our best which in turn
only increased the possibility of repulsion. Hence our crazy
smiles.

Her
linen trousers were virtually transparent and her tits were pert
and she seemed to be at right angles to herself. All in all, very
Slavic. She drank two glasses of wine at dinner and a Jameson’s at
the bar afterwards. She asked me what whiskey I would recommend as
an alcoholic so I ordered the Jameson’s for her. More than once she
started to reach for it and stopped herself. It was the sort of
jesture that uninterrupted would have resulted in her gulping the
entire glass down thereby requiring another to be ordered. I
recognised this muffled yearning only too well. The injustice of
having a whiskey in front of you, when it should be inside you.
Anything Dutch bored her. We had that much in common. By then I was
looking at her the same way she was looking at her glass.
She hated Holland but couldn’t leave. She said her friends
considered her a pain in the ass after she’d had a few
drinks.

“
In that case
she can count me among your friends” I said.

She smiled and tilted her
head as if I had just paid her a compliment.

“
You should
take your hand away from you mouth when you talk, it makes you look
dishonest.” she said

I could see how she could
be a real bitch. But I wouldn’t let her. She certainly liked her
booze. Three glasses of wine that first night.

“
Do you have
many friends that drink?”

I put my hand in front of
my mouth.

“
Yes” I
said

She laughed
reluctantly.

The next night we met she
wasn’t drinking because she was afraid of making me uncomfortable
which had the effect of making her uncomfortable instead. In fact
she became frighteningly depressing. Had she necked a couple of
whiskeys I would have been the one exhaling in relief. The result
was that she didn’t look so good to me and in her cowboy boots she
appeared even taller. We cowered in some god-awful seaside
restaurant that looked like it might have been on the shores of the
Styx as angry white-knuckled waves tried repeatedly to grip the
mainland and drag it under.

I tried manfully to keep
things light

“
So how was
your day?”

“
I’m not in a
cheerful mood”

“
Oh I’m sorry
to hear that. Bad day at work?”

“
I just heard
that my friend has cancer.”

I was sorry to hear that
too because now I was going to have to listen to this shit all
night. Cancer; the alcoholic’s friend. Nobody could laugh when
cancer was in the room. It must have been killing her. She was
looking for an excuse to drink and she even had a good one but I
was sitting there in front of her the sober alcoholic.

At the end of the evening
I tried to kiss her more from duty than desire but she almost
snapped her neck pulling away. It would have been more depressing
if I hadn’t even tried. Was there such a thing as a nice pretty
girl who wasn’t divorced, married or crazy? Was that possible?
Anica, on closer inspection was a communist-built structure
teetering on the brink of collapse. I still wanted to at least see
her naked.;

“
Wow”

“
Wow?
What does this mean?
Wow
?”

“
The
passion.” I said

“
I’m deciding
if I should go or stay.“

“
And you’re
short.” she added. It was with a smile but she said it.

“
It doesn’t
matter when you’re lying down”

”
You’re not lying down
all
the time”

I wanted to tell her to go
fuck herself but I’d come all the way to the Hague and I felt I was
owed something. Something I could still get if I was
patient.

“
You could be
a sweet guy but you hide behind the jokes.”she said at
last.

Then she told me she was
still married but I hardly even heard her. When Valeriya told me
the same thing I nearly broke in half. She lived with her husband
of seven years in

a very
respectable neighbourhood in Haarlem.
I was suddenly
thinking about Valeriya I couldn’t unerstand how she’d become so
deeply embedded in my being. Like an arrow that hurt less if it was
allowed to remain in place. Anica was almost waving now as she
tried to get my attention. She invited me back to a depressingly
large mostly white apartment. Didn’t she say she had a husband
somewhere? Was this where she took her online dates? Would the
husband walk in any second? The moment we got inside she turned
around and kissed me. I had no idea she would be so feminine and
gentle under all that Slavic frost. We shed our clothes like they’d
just turned poisonous. With her hair down around those slender
shoulders she was a different person. Sweet even. She whispered to
me as I fucked her.

“
I love it,
yessss oh baby, ohhhhh nice, yes, nail me.”

Nail me?

The she got on top and let
her hair fall over me like darkness and I laughed out loud when she
orgasmed because the sounds she made were so feminine and innocent
and so gratifying to the ears of someone as jaded as me, I assumed
she was faking. But then I saw the tell-tale red patches on her
neck and chest as if her body was blushing. And as her taut stomach
shivered against mine with my cock still hard inside there I began
to feel something other than just lust for her. It was gratitude.
The sort of gratitude you feel when someone who has done you a
great kindness. There was a selflessness about her in that moment
that was endearing. I had never made a girl come like that before.
And the fact that I hadn’t come yet merely confirmed my status as
stud. I’d give her a rest before going again. And so
lying there beneath her limp perspiring body with her knees
either side of me and her hair spilled across my face, I began to
talk about Valeriya. How she had lied to me. How I was better off
without her. How she saw herself as a slut. I couldn’t stop. I even
mentioned the lure of the pussuq. Anica made soothing sounds of
encouragement. She was hearing my confession, making me truly hers.
Minutes passed before I realised she was snoring. She had fucked me
and fallen asleep.

REBECCA

Rebecca’s profile picture
showed her straining against the confines of a skin-tight
mini-dress in mid-Tango. The faceless silhouetted male with whom
she danced was obviously for presentation purposes only.
Look at
my scorching hot body.
This was how she wanted to be seen on a
dating site. In her other picture, a close-up, she looked like the
aging mother of the girl on the dance-floor.

Following her father’s
nervous breakdown Rebecca was sent to live with her uncle (his
brother) and aunt in Germany. He would be her first sexual
experience when he made her come with his fingers. She was
fifteen.

“
So he abused
you?’

“
Yes I
suppose so, but he didn’t go all the way”

I was reminded of how I
had defended Father Eddy, because in defending him I could convince
myself I had actually wanted my balls fondled by a priest. It was
sad to think of all that sexuality locked up inside the
conservative life of an English teacher in Amsterdam. She looked
like she was holding her breath permanently. But after one kiss
Agatha Christie became Julie Christie and yes she had the accent to
match. You need six hundred years of British oppression stored away
in your DNA to appreciate the satisfaction of thrusting your
undeserving Irish cock into a mouth that has just finished saying;
“Darling, I’ve been frightfully busy today.”

Fucking her took on
political status.

“
This is for
The Famine…this is for Bloody Sunday….now turn over…this is for
Maggie Thatcher…and this? This is for Princess
Dian-aaaaaaggggh.”

.On rain-soaked Mondays,
which in the Netherlands, were indistinguishable from every other
day, she cheered herself up by appearing in front of her class
wearing a light grey one-piece boiler suit that showed off her
lithe body to full effect. When she turned to write on the
chalkboard the class fell silent. For most teachers it was the
other way round. It was an honor, she said, to be part of their
sexual awakening. She intentionally made spelling mistakes knowing
full well that she would first need to bend and reach for the
eraser before shaking herself vigorously as she scrubbed it away.
She delighted in the idea of these boys pummelling themselves at
home under the blankets with the image of her superb ass coaxing
them out of puberty.

And she loved to suck me
off. It was the first thing she’d do. I began to suspect that her
uncle had taught her well. The moment before she reached orgasm she
would look at me like she’d just been grossly insulted. As if in
the middle of fucking her I’d said;“Rebecca, you are a sad-faced
English bitch who I’m only fucking as a favor.” She looked for that
moment like she was being overtaken not by ecstasy but a shuddering
exhalation of abhorrence. As if all the platitudes and denials
burned away and there beyond the mist for just for a moment before
being engulfed again was the truth.