DIARY OF AN OXYGEN THIEF By Anonymous (The Oxygen Thief Diaries) (13 page)

far too happy about his little accident. And the timing was too precise, as if he realized that the emotional peak had been reached. There would be nothing more expressive than the face I was wearing, had to be done now. The unwitting photographer and his accomplice remained beside us at the other table.

             
Aisling asked me if I wanted something to drink. I still had my Perrier. I took this to mean, did I want something stronger? I was very hurt by this considering what had already happened. But my pain was easy to conceal. All I wanted now was to get away from her and get on with nursing what would definitely be a broken heart. Something in me wouldn't give up, though. I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk. She reacted too loudly, over-emphatically,

             
"No..." and then more mildly, "...it's freezing  outside."

             
I couldn't get it out of my head that she was following some pre-arranged structure. I'd read a very cynical article in a woman's magazine about "How to break hearts and enjoy it." There were many helpful anti-man techniques including, and I'm paraphrasing here,

             
"Find out his hobbies before dumping him, he may be useful as a friend, or you may want to introduce him to one of your friends. Especially if he's good in bed. What better gift for a close friend? Get good at chess, there is nothing more humiliating for a man than to be beaten intellectually by a beautiful woman. You'll be able to cause him physical pain. If he doesn't let you know how he's feeling, call him late. Wake him up. It's hard for him to hide his feelings when he's in love with you and you're speaking softly to him in bed, even if it is only on the phone...."

             
These were some of the tips mentioned in the article. Aisling had fulfilled a good many of these tips before the evening was through.

             
All of this occurred to me in retrospect. At the time, I had too much on my plate to analyze. I just ate what was put in front of me, as it were. You have to remember that I had a lot going on; new city (New York) new job (basically) Killallon Fitzpatrick NY, new assignments. Freaky. Then this. As far as I was concerned, I'd moved to New York to be with this girl, and she was just laughing at me. That's how I saw it. That would have been quite enough, but there was this extra layer. This unnerving feeling that there was an agenda. A hidden agenda. Looking back, it seems even more terrifying that it felt at the time. At the time, I think I was protected by shock or, dare I say it, God.

             
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to talk a bit about a deity here. I prayed every day for a month or more to be delivered from Lacroix. I was delivered. When I look back on the whole experiment in psychological torture (for that's what it was), I wonder if I had known what was going on sooner, would I have either used it as an excuse to drink (we alcoholics like our excuses) or would I have taken an ineffectual swing at someone, or come out of some red mist with her limp body held at her cut throat by, what I'd slowly realize were, my hands? The rage I felt later, as it dawned on me what had happened, was almost visible around me.

             
As always, I have my theories.

             
Because I met her at Brian Tomkinsin's studio, I thought it might be a set-up. Tomkinsin did a huge amount of work for Killallon Fitzpatrick and, therefore, favours.

             
He took the occasional free shot here and there when asked because he knew it was good business to keep in with one of the best advertising agencies in the world. It was common practice. His agent was an ex-beauty queen from Poland (still looked good) who seemed to have eyes like a jaguar, not that I'd ever looked a jaguar in the eye, but you know what I mean.

             
One conspiracy theory is that Killallon Fitzpatrick didn't like the idea of someone they'd invested in so heavily leaving for New York, so they wanted to help me ruin myself by introducing me to a young lady from Ireland who wanted to further her own career.

She got the job with Peter Freeman very soon after showing me a good time in New York.

I'm just talking here. I know it's very far-fetched, but Killallon Fitzpatrick was a fucking

weird place.

             
The other theory could exist alongside the one above, or on its own, if you prefer. Theory Number Two supports the artistic coffee book route. In this version she has two friends from Harvard studying publishing, who have already negotiated a publishing deal, and approved a concept of a high-quality book of photography featuring photo-essays in the style of those True Romance picture sequence things that used to be more commonplace in the 1970’s. In this case, though, the romances would all feature the same girl with different guys. The photo essays would record the progression from the very beginning to the very end. In Theory Two, I am one of those guys.

             
Theory Three is that Theories One and Two are bullshit, and that life is random and therefore everything that happens has no meaning or structure; it just happens. As the man with the lisp said on hearing about the fate of the Titanic, "Unthinkable."

             
So there you have it. My money is neatly spread over the area of Theories One and Two, with most of it on Two. Just so you know.

             
If we look at Theory Two, she had covered the early stages of this "True Romance" and even the beginning of its demise. But she didn't have anything decent. Just moon-faced shots of a man too much in love. No anger, no tears, no anguish. What's a romance without anger, tears and woe? Can't have a book entitled True Friendship, can we? Well, of course not. Not if you've got a publishing deal, which means a deadline and money spent from a set budget, which you've been allotted to help you "gather material." Hmmm.

             
And not if you've already invested quite a bit of time and energy into your subject. Oh no. Another photo flash outside Fannelli’s as I raised my hands (tilted upward) in what could, I realize, be misconstrued as a pleading gesture and that particular page in her forthcoming book turned over.

             
The next day after promising I'd call her, I did everything I could to resist leaving fifteen pleading messages on her machine. In the end, I left a message saying I couldn't see her that night, that some work had come up and that "I'd see her around." My hand was shaking. It took everything I had, which wasn't much, to make that call. My intention was never to call her again. Ever. I was going to use the same method I'd been taught to kick the booze. Keep it bite-sized. One hour at a time. One minute. Jesus, it was torture. My ego would tell me I was hurting her needlessly by not calling her. That I was hurting her. That she had to play hard to get. That was what girls had to do.

             
Anyway, I somehow got through another day and that night, at around 11:30pm, she called me in the hotel. I was asleep. It had snowed earlier and I had tried to meet Telma, that lovely girl from work who I've seen a few times since (she's a flirt), but who didn't turn up that night.

             
When the phone rang, I woke up and who was I talking to? The source of my worst nightmare. She got me talking about some of the stuff I swore I'd never say to her. Ugh. I wince now just thinking about it. All that naive shit about Tom Bannister and my father and that she must be The One and how I had threatened to resign from my job if I wasn't sent to New York and...oh God. I was half-asleep and didn't know what I was saying. She encouraged me, of course, consoling me with things like "I didn't know that…"and "you should have said…" or "that's different." I took these barely audible utterances to mean, ‘there’s hope”

             
That’s the other thing I remember about our phone conversations. I could never fucking hear her. I'd be embarrassed asking her to repeat what she'd said. I spilled my guts out and in the end left it at;

             
"I'm not going anywhere under the banner of buddy."

             
I hung up, proud at least that I'd managed to initiate the ending of the call. That's how pathetic I had become. She ended the relationship and I ended a phone call. Not exactly 1:1 on the scoreboard, but it would have to do.

             
Until two days later.

             
I couldn't hold out. I called her and left a message, saying something about having thought about what she'd said and that I wanted to meet her for lunch. In my mind, lunch was less of a commitment than dinner. She left a message back saying we could meet for dinner that night Sunday "if I was feeling up to it." That fucking killed me. It implied that she knew her effect on me.

             
Exactly the effect.

             
I couldn't stop myself. I had to get my fix. I called her and we arranged to meet at a French restaurant not far from where she worked. She was preparing for an exhibition opening the following Wednesday. She was working quite hard. I suppose I should've taken that into account. I was trying to see it from her point of view. Guy turns up in New York, expecting her to drop everything for him just because it suited him to leave St Lacroix. A guy she was only lukewarm about to begin with. Now he was acting all hurt because she didn't want to have sex with him. I could see that.

             
The problem, though, was that there were these photographs being taken. Halfway through our conversation in the charming French restaurant on Lafayette, there was another camera flash. This time from a table on the opposite side of the room at which four people sat. They laughed and even waved. I couldn't be sure if the light was facing me or whether they'd just taken a shot of themselves. But in retrospect (where would we be without retrospect?) it fit the pattern. The people at the other table had bags. So what? Bags that were for equipment, not clothes. (Okay, maybe I'm stretching this one a bit thin).

             
Another shot was definitely taken that Sunday night. I even made a joke about it. I was telling her how my old partner and I had been on TV in London for an outrageous ad we'd done. I was trying to impress her. To let her know that she was dumping a fucking media genius. And I ended up telling her how much I had disliked my former creative partner, saying, "He's the one you should be trying to fuck up instead of me. He deserves it. He's not a good person. You and your friends should have a go at him." I nodded at the other table.

             
Now, you'll have to forgive me here because my memory tells me that she replied with a meaningful look,

             
"So, you know."

And then my memory goes on to tell me that I replied,

             
"Of course I know."

             
"Why are you doing it?"

             
"Because it's interesting to me," I said.

             
Now that could have meant anything, but I know what I thought it meant. And I do apologize because I can't even be sure this verbal exchange even took place. I did, however, mention my ex-partner and even told her where he worked in case she wanted to fuck-him-up. (By the way, I did hear that he'd recently visited New York for a wedding and that, consequently, had come to work here. Say no more.) Anyway, I paid the bill and explained to her that I was on expenses and that I was making more money just by being in New York. Hotel bills and every scrap of food were expensed. She seemed jealous of this.

             
Money was the only subject where she showed emotion. Her lovely eyes would widen when the subject came up. So what? Can't hold that against her. Women only love money so much because we men make it hard for them to get at it. They have to massage us and our egos to get it. Otherwise, they wouldn't even bother with us. Except maybe for the occasional fuck. Not unlike how we treat them.

             
We left the place. Not wanting to risk rejection, I didn't even try to kiss her on the cheek. I didn't want the friendship thing to become official. At least, this way there was still some hope of sex. So, I stood about two yards away from her (mind you, she wasn’t exactly trying to close the gap) and I said things like, I'll call you. Just as I'm about to go, she says,

             
“Are you coming on Wednesday?"

I secretly leaped for joy.

             
"Oh yeah, I forgot, your exhibition. What's the address?"

             
I waved goodbye and stomped off as if I had a thousand other things to do in the direction of the Soho Grand Hotel.

             
In the meantime, I was working in one of the most famous advertising agencies in the world on two of their toughest accounts, Nikon cameras and Fortune magazine. Miraculously, it was going okay. The boss seemed happy. I couldn’t believe it because I was only working with half my cylinders.

             
So the big night of Aisling’s exhibition arrived and I was very nervous. I was going to meet her friends. In my mind I’m still her boyfriend. We’re just going through a bumpy patch. I mean, I didn't feel too confident about it. I had a nasty feeling that I would discover some stuff I wouldn’t like. I got there and the event was already up and running. I pushed my way through the impressive crowd of fashionable, comfortable looking people. People who appeared as if they were used to being loved (Strange thing to say, but that's how they looked to me...the sought-after). So I tried to find her and couldn't at first. But I could see the huge photo on the back wall of the bar.