Chameleon On a Kaleidoscope (The Oxygen Thief Diaries) (14 page)

“
I’m lying on
my couch in just a t-shirt and socks….”she paused while I
downloaded this mental jpg, “…and I should warn you that I have
very visible veins I’m not proud of.“

“
Oh I don’t
know, veins can be useful” I said “All roads lead to Rome and all
that.”

She giggled delightedly,
“…and when in Rome.” I purred.

“
Now stop
that, I just don’t want you to be disappointed when you see the
real thing.”

When.

She continued describing
herself she might have been reading a letter I’d written to a
Sexual Santa; “I have a very nice bottom. I’m always getting
compliments for my bottom. My breasts aren’t large but they’re well
proportioned, or at least I think they are, and my nipples stick
out a lot, I have to wear padded bras because they poke out through
my clothing and I have pubic hair. I work for a magazine that
doesn’t believe in it but I have pubic hair. I’ve been with men who
really like it bald but it grows back you see…”

As I got up to leave I had
to hide my hard-on from the waiting woman and her accusing eyes. I
walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to meet Prudence at the Henry
Street Ale House and she turned out to be a lot smaller and
prettier than I‘d expected. She still had no idea I had written a
book and so for every moment I withheld this information I felt
like a liar. She was literary and tasty. Nice ass too. Lovely
kissable lips and she was keen. Amazingly keen. She was all touchy
and from the moment we met she couldn’t keep her hands to
herself.

“
There’s a
book.”

She seemed to accept this
information quickly and nodded like it was inevitable. It was as if
I had just told her I was married with three children.

“
Oh there’s a
book is there?”

I was about to explain
that I had no idea who she worked for when we first emailed but I
knew it would sound hollow. We walked down to the promenade and sat
on a bench facing the famous Manhattan skyline. The setting
couldn’t have been more romantic but when I leaned over to kiss her
she stopped me.

“
Be careful
darling, you might cut yourself.”

I was sure she was
referring to my attempt to get published but seeing the confusion
in my eyes she added; “..on my earrings, they’re very
pointy.”

“
Fortifications against unwanted advances?.”

I was trying to impress
her. She smiled weakly and looked across the river as if trying to
decide what to do with me. We had certainly touched a lot for a
first date. Up to that point she had seemed in a hurry to have me
fall in love with her. I think what had impressed her most about me
was the fact that I worked in advertising. Now it was beiginning to
look like I was just another penniless writer. Pushing her breasts
out she mentioned something about her shoulders being tight and so
I dutifully offered to massage her compact little back. She was
tight and muscular but not unpleasantly so. Her mother was a
functioning alcoholic she said without ceremony. Maybe this was
what was bothering her. That I didn’t drink.

“
She only
drinks wine…” and here she left a space for me to say; “Oh well
that’s ok then” but I just nodded behind her on the bench. As she
continued talking I began to feel genuinely sorry for her. Her job
sounded terrible. Here she was, pretty, intelligent,
literary-minded and funny, working for a high-end porn magazine.
She took on the faraway look again when she spoke of a novel she’d
written that had almost been published by Python.

“
They wanted
revisions and more revisions until in the end, well...they didn’t
want anything.”

“
I’d like to
read it.” I lied.

Then she answered an
accusation I hadn’t the courage to make.

“
I can expose
writers to much larger audiences.”

She reeled off an
effortless list of surnames and then fell conspicuously silent the
better to reap my amazement.

“
That’s some
list.” I said, only because I knew it was expected of me. I hadn’t
heard of even one of them.

“
And John
Banville has contributed more than one piece, you
have
heard
of him.”

“
Of course
I’ve heard of him”

“
Thank God
for that.”

She was only half-joking.
How would she introduce someone so literally feral to her friends?
She was so small and tightly wound I said I’d help her uncoil but
she thought this was not the most attractive of images. I said she
took my meaning to be more serpentine than spring-based. I wanted
to refer to my penis in this way but I thought it was too soon and
then there was always the question of over-claim. For a penis to
uncoil it would need to be a lot longer than anything I could
muster. Mine was more likely to depant than uncoil. She giggled
wickedly and as I continued to massage her crackling back. I tried
to sustain an effortless demeanour in an attempt at disguising my
nervousness born out of the belief that I was being interviewed for
the position of Writer.

She said she had smoked
some dope the previous night after her dad went back to his hotel
and I suddenly saw her for what she was. Not so much coy as I had
first thought but conservative. She was capable of breaking hearts
because her apparent openess would clam shut and leave the suitor
standing outside and alone. Being a writer herself she knew I’d do
anything to move my precious book forward, like a mother with a
newly-born. So she can’t have been in any doubt as to whether I was
interested in her.

“
You don’t
smoke?”

“
No”

“
And you
don’t drink?

“
No.”

“
You don’t do
drugs at all”

“
No.”

“
You’re like
a monk”

“
My middle
name is Camillus, my dad actually wanted me to become a
Monk”

“
But Monks
are allowed to have sex right?”

“
Of course,
you read the papers, we get more sex than most.”

Her tight little laugh
rippled throughout her back.

“
It’s just as
well you’re impoverished darling, because with all that charm you’d
be unstoppable.” This no doubt referred to my admission that I no
longer wanted to work in advertising.

“
And all the
more impressive when you realise my penury is self-imposed, I’m
merely being of service to humanity.”

She wanted to see my bare
head before I got on my bike so I took off my woolen skullcap and
she ran her open palm over its surface.

“
It’s a nice
shape.” she said.

Maybe her dad was
blue-eyed and bald too?

“
It’s because
I’m a Caesarian; no forceps;
untimely ripp’d
doncha know,
like McDuff.” I felt fortunate to be able to harness my head-shape
to Shakespeare; “In fact, I was as reluctant to enter Ireland as he
was.“

“
McDuff?

“
No,
Caesar.”

This referred to Caesar’s
hesitation in conquering a country he dubbed Hibernia

(Land of EternalWinter).If
she didn’t get the reference she didn’t show it.

“
Send me your
book” she said stepping back and regarding me like an art exhibit
Something had happened. Something important. It had suddenly become
about my book. A major decision had been made. She made me promise
to ‘write her’ when I got home safely. It was like something a
mother might say. We had already hugged a few times and it had felt
nice and natural and now that we were parting she seemed to want
something more. It hadn’t occurred to me to kiss her so I hugged
her again this time for longer.

“
I’m sorry.
I’m being quite huggy and touchy-feely.”

“
It’s ok I‘m
not stopping you, I’m ok with it”

Not exactly gushing but it
would do. .

“
Never mind
the book I’m just glad you like my head”

“
I’ll show it
to our fiction editor.” and then added with her weak smile; “If I
like it.”

This was my big chance. I
was sure she’d like it. I felt like it was the most important
meeting I’d ever had. An excerpt in Prowess and I was made. A week
later she emailed me in her official capacity as Literary
Editor.

“
We have a
policy at Prowess never to print any material that is demeaning to
women.” I never heard from her again.

MARIAN

I logged onto
datemedotcom

0
messages.

I was sick of this. Where
would it end? All this rummaging around in girls looking for what?
Even as I emptied myself into one I was already looking for
another. A life dictated by the gargoyle in my midriff. It had made
sense up to that point since I had been so nomadic, but now I had a
rent controlled apartment in the east village. To a woman in New
York this was the equivalent of beer goggles. I looked longingly at
the face of a beautiful dark-haired blue-eyed girl smiling at me
from a profile called sculptorgrl82. It was time to unleash the
most devious tactic of all.

Honesty.

sorry but I
hate this fucking site...please save me from the indignity of
having to sell myself in this Meatmarket...we'll tell our friends
we met in a bookshop...you need to know that you're far too
beautiful and smart to be on this thing...meet me in the real world
and I'll read to you in my Irish accent in my rent-controlled
apartment while I massage your feet...anything you
say...

Hi, yes
I hate this site too, but I like the idea of meeting in a
bookshop
.

Her name was Marian and
after a hurried meeting in the design section of The Strand
Bookshop and a half-drunk cup of coffee in a nearby café she
indicated a desire to see the final-we-really-mean-it-this-time
director’s cut of Blade Runner. I’d get the tickets if she got the
treats. Perrier and pistachios. I couldn’t be sure if she was
looking for a friend or whether there really was some romantic
interest there but I liked her immediately.

It was unusually hot for
October and as she approached me in the crimson foyer of The
Zeitfield Theatre she removed her grey cardigan and stuffed it in
her bag. She wore a pair of short scuffed black boots with long
black textured socks that stopped abruptly above her knees and
silhouetted her beautiful slender shapely legs as she
walked.With

the cardigan gone I tried
not to gape at all that clean skin racing up and down and around
her arms, neck and shoulders and the outline of her small upturned
breasts were easily discernible under the black sleeveless
t-shirt.

“
I neglected
to get us treats.” she said.

She couldn’t pop into a
deli and get a bag of nuts and bottle of seltzer on the way? I had
already queued for an hour to ensure we got decent seats and now I
was being told I was to go treatless for three hours in a pair of
jeans that were too tight for me. I must have made some sort of
face because after disappearing for a while she returned with
one
bag of popcorn and
one
bottle of Perrier and
handed them both to me. Now I had treats but she had nothing. I
felt like a selfish complaining bastard. But this was the moment
she first exposed me to a smile that seemed to gather every
molecule of my being around it like scouts around a campfire. Even
the people in the queue seemed to shuffle closer. Now I felt like a
lucky, selfish, complaining bastard.

She seemed to like me but
I couldn’t be sure if it was romantic. It had to be. Otherwise
wouldn’t she have to say something? Wouldn’t she? But being newly
arrived from Iowa she might not know the rules of engagement. Would
I be referred to as a friend in her next carefully worded email?
Instead of trying to kiss her after the movie which in its uncut
state was three fucking hours long I was invited to touch a weird
thumb ring that looked like an Egyptian clockface and after I made
some comment about time standing still she said; “I haven’t heard
that one before.” and I couldn’t tell if she

was being facetious or
just making conversation.

It became important to
understand what I was dealing with. Was she just looking for a
friend? If so, I would need to be careful because this girl would
be far too easy to fall in love with. In the subway seat beside me
as we hurtled downtown I was treated to retina-scorching glimpses
of her clean-skinned thighs as she rearranged herself according to
the shift and shove of the carriage. It was like a dance. Did she
know I was enjoying this so much? I had an urge to lift her
straight up out of her seat and position her on my lap. The train’s
vibration would do the rest. She didn’t ask one question about me
all night. Not one. I even checked my reflection in the subway
window to make sure I was visible. This beautiful uninterested girl
unnerved me. And it wasn’t just me. Other guys on the subway looked
at her too. Long lingering wistful looks. They wasted no time
looking jealously at me. I watched to see if she checked herself
out in the subway windows. Did she derive any satisfaction from her
image? I wanted to dismiss her as conceited. But she seemed not to
notice. It simply wasn’t her fault she was beautiful. In fact, if
anything, she was careful where she looked. Maybe because she was
so accustomed to being looked at she had learned to limit her
options. It certainly didn’t appear to be something she enjoyed.
Male lust and female jealousy.