DIARY OF AN OXYGEN THIEF By Anonymous (The Oxygen Thief Diaries) (6 page)

             
American lawns are loaded with social and political meaning. There is a law somewhere that says you have to maintain your lawn or the neighbours can force you to. I knew nothing of this and immediately revelled in the possibility of allowing my front and back gardens to return to nature. A polite knock on my front door changed all that.

             
The polite knock has a lot to answer for in this world. There he was, frown on forehead, hand on heart, leaflet in hand. The State of Minnesota personified.

             
“Mornin’.”

             
“Oh hi…” I said, feigning surprise after watching the fat fuck trespass his way to my front door.

             
“I was noticin’ how you were havin’ some trouble with your lawn care and well I think you might find this leaflet interestin’.”

             
The lazy pronunciation of words like interestin’ is code for informality. Saying interest-in instead of interest-ing is their way of announcin’ they are just regular guys.

             
“Oh thank you very much that’s really very kind of you,” I said, drawing on the ten years of Britishness that lay in reserve for moments like these.

             
Very humbling though.

             
The lawn mower I borrowed from yet another neighbour had a full tank of gas and even I knew that it would need to be returned full. Such a task would entail conversation with a petrol-pump-assistant.

             
“You’re not from around here, are ya?”

             
Every time.

             
I’d change my accent. Flatten it a little. I could pretend I was from New York or Los Angeles. At least they wouldn't feel as if they'd landed such a catch.

             
If you said you were Irish but from London, it was as if one had performed a method of fellatio so bizarre, their eyes would glaze over and a little happy smile would bend the momentarily speechless mouth.

             
Then the thanking would start. I represented every postcard, movie or rumour that had ever emanated from Europe. And everybody knows ambassadors need to be diplomatic. I'd just pick up whatever I'd been trying to buy and leave. I hated them. Forgive me, but I fucking hated them. When I got back to Ireland for a break at Christmas I couldn't even look at a McDonald's sign without wanting to spit. I'm all right now because I live in New York. Thank you God for New York.

             
But the Midwest is something else.
             

My boss used to point at girls who had just joined the agency and whisper, “She's single.” I couldn't believe it. He actively encouraged me to go out with girls who worked for the agency. The theory being, of course, that if I married within the company, then the company would live forever. And then I might even have kids.

             
Or he’d say, “You come in on the bus, don’t you?”

             
“That's right.”

             
“I met my wife on the bus.”

             
For fuck's sake.

             
He was a decent enough sort of guy. I don't think he did it cynically. He just seemed to have bought the whole package. Advertising is false. Once you know that, you've got a chance. But he believed the hype. The wife/the house/the kids/the dog. I think he was good at what he did and a great boss, he just didn't have enough suspicion.

             
I am of course aware that reading this you could conclude that any unhappiness I experienced was homemade. That my suspicion of my boss’s good intentions was in itself the problem. But it's what I do. I suspect. It's the other stuff I find hard. Like trusting people. Foreign concept. Just ask any of the billions of girls I haven't dated.

             
So the boss had his motives and I had mine. I just wanted to get Killallon, Fitzpatrick on my CV for one year. That was it. A year. I was panicking after three months. If I hadn't just moved into the house, I'd have left right then and there. So, I suppose it worked out for the best.

             
Anyway, it took almost two years before I got out, but that's not what I want to talk about. I only mention all that stuff about advertising to give you a background against which to project the rest of my story. The real point is to tell you how I purged myself of my sins against women and, indeed, against myself. They say you're not punished for your sins, you're punished by them.

             
Also, I'm completely paranoid. I mean, seriously paranoid. Not just mildly interested in the fact that there may be people who don't necessarily have my best interests at heart. No. The word is paranoid. Another word is self-centered. I don't like that one as much, though. Doesn't sound medical enough.

             
The paranoia is worth mentioning because it sometimes fuels my crazy thinking. Like when I thought Pen was paying people to follow me. Why she was doing this was not totally clear. My paranoia only gives me broad scenarios. It’s too lazy to go into details. I believed that people, ordinary people on the street, were operatives in her employ. Their mission was to disrupt me psychologically. Every time I left my basement flat in Camberwell, an old lady or a man with his daughter became enemies I had to avoid.

             
I would wear an expression, which in my poor confused mind exuded the following statement, “I know who you all are. I'm going to give you the impression that I don't know just so we can keep this charade going, but in truth I know. So don't push it.”

             
You may wonder what this expression might look like. I'll tell you. Cocky anger. A snarl with a slight smile, imperceptible, but there. I know you know I know recurring to infinity. Of course, the fact that I've told you all of the above does slightly dent my credibility concerning the below, but my only obligation here is to relate what happened.

             
This is my therapy. I'm too fucked up to go and see a therapist and to be honest, I wouldn’t trust him anyway, would I? I mean it’s not as if my paranoia is going to clock off for an hour a week. And I've got enough on my plate, having to be a genius during the day and at AA leading light at night. I heard someone say, somewhere, that it's possible to write the sickness out of yourself. And, who knows, maybe someone will benefit.

             
Anyway as I said, I live in New York now. Much happier, and even though the way I got here wasn't exactly graceful, I love it here now. It is amazing to me that I do. The first two months I spent in Manhattan were the nearest I ever got to suicide. It was funny how it came to me. The thought of killing myself.

             
It’d only been a week since Aisling rejected me in Fanelli’s and somehow during that period I was able to do a decent impersonation of myself. You’d think it would have been easier considering I’d been my own understudy for years.

             
Taking breaks to go outside and cry helped.

             
So, I found myself looking out the window on the seventh floor of the New York branch of the same agency I worked for in St Lacroix. It was around the end of March and very humid. Nothing like as bad as it gets in July but humid nonetheless, and much worse, because they don't turn on the air-conditioning until then.

             
So there I was gasping for air, a waft, a ripple of merciful breeze when I looked down on the cement below. It was the back of the building so I was looking down on those weird fans they always have in New York. Fuck knows what they are. But there was a little rectangular clearing of combed concrete in the centre. Gently it came to me. Gently now. Not like some crazed jump-cut that makes you blink.

             
Calmly, I saw myself lying as if in REM sleep, perfectly framed in that rectangular area. Left leg bent, right leg straight, left arm bent with the palm of the left hand down. Right arm straight down by my side. My head turned sideways on my left hand, as though asleep on a pillow. Just above my head, and under my left hand, there appeared to be a very neatly arranged abstract area of red. Like a big flattened flower upon which my head rested. Rested. I looked peaceful. Beyond pain.

             
I was in a lot of pain, you see. But it had been caused by an abstract blade. What I mean is, the pain was physical, the cause wasn't. I suppose some people would say I was suffering from a broken heart. Or you might say it’s just life. Or maybe it’s alcoholism minus the alcohol. After all, I’m five years sober at this point.

             
True, but something else was going on. How do I know? I don't. I just can't believe that my emotional state could be explained by such an adolescent term as Broken Heart. I'm willing to be wrong, but I don't know how anyone will ever be able to prove it, so I'm safe enough. That's another thing you'll learn about me as we go on. I don't like to take risks. I'll only offer you the possibility that I'm wrong, if I'm fairly sure I'm right.

             
Makes me appear more humble.

             
For example, if I believe something I've thought of is funny, I'll pretend that someone else said it in order to get an unbiased reaction from the person I'm telling it to. If they laugh, I congratulate myself on having come up with something funny, truly funny, because it achieved laughter from my acquaintance without them feeling that I'd be hurt if they hadn't found it funny.

             
Where was I? Suicide. Yes, suicide came like an old friend. I had just moved from Minnesota to be with the girl I loved but that girl didn’t exist. I couldn’t find her anywhere. I could see her anytime I wanted. I could talk to her day or night. She was very happy to be my friend. The ultimate demotion. The word “friend” registered as Eunuch in my fevered mind. I could see her but only as a non-man.

             
Exquisite torture.

             
And it was so hot.

             
I had so much scary work to do. People to impress. Apartments to see, ideas to generate. I had a strong sense that the world and its inhabitants were trying not to burst out laughing in my face. That they would do that later, when I wasn't looking. The thought came to me. You could use a rest. I felt myself nod at this slowly. And then it'd all be over. No more pain. Cool air on the way down.

             
It made sense. Especially the cool air on the way down. That was very attractive. Something stepped in and said No. I suppose I was kind of numb for a month or so after that, but that picture of myself framed on a gray mattress will stay with me forever. My paranoid Polaroid. That's one picture she definitely had a hand in.

             
So, let's see, we’ve gone too far, let’s reverse a little…right, I'm in St Lacroix, and it's around August. My dad has died and now lives in the ground outside Kilkenny in the corner of a churchyard near his own dad. Strange to think of that. I was alive and well and waiting for what everyone was waiting for in St Lacroix. The Winter. If you're smiling, and brimming with fun, and full of lip, some Lutheran type will savour the moment before saying,

             
“You wait.”

             
They don't like happiness.

Seriously. All that Swedish /Norwegian influence has the same effect as a big wet hairy blanket that freezes hard in The Winter for at least six months. Fucking freezing. If you live there, the frozen-ness becomes relative.

             
I felt a sense of elation if I woke up one morning and the asshole on the TV told me it was minus 17 degrees instead of the minus 30 it was the day before. I was all ready to break out my shorts and sandals. To any sane person, from the real world, it's still fucking freezing. Never before has the picture of a girl in a bikini brought forth such feelings of incomprehension in me. There in an ad for holidays on the side of a bus stalled in a snowdrift. Smiling and tanned resting her head on one hand, she said, “You are a fucking idiot.” As the bus crept past me her lips actually seemed to move as she inquired,

             
“Why are you freezing your balls off in semi-
             
Siberia?”

             
I would have cried, but tears would probably freeze and blind me. I didn't know what tears did at these temperatures. How could I? I wasn’t from here. I had no experience of this. I trained myself to derive a perverse pleasure from the surrealism of the place. Hell in reverse. Instead of fire and brimstone, it was snow and ice.

             
There exists in Minnesotan myth, a phenomenon that at certain temperatures somewhere in the minus 40s, a cup of coffee can be thrown in the air and it will crystallize before hitting the ground. I heard this at least three times before experiencing my first Winter.

             
The purpose, I suppose, of this little fact was to scare the fucking shit out of newcomers. It has a beautiful disguise built into it, in the sense that, on the surface it appears to be an interesting fact worthy of mentioning.