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Diary of an Oxygen Thief
Anonymous
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eBook - ePub
Diary of an Oxygen Thief
Anonymous
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Hurt people hurt people. Say there was a novel in which Holden Caulfield was an alcoholic and Lolita was a photographer's assistant and, somehow, they met in Bright Lights, Big City. He's blinded by love. She by ambition. Diary of an Oxygen Thief is an honest, hilarious, and heartrending novel, but above all, a very realistic account of what we do to each other and what we allow to have done to us.
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Literature General1.
I liked hurting girls.
Mentally, not physically, I never hit a girl in my life. Well, once. But that was a mistake. Iâll tell you about it later. The thing is, I got off on it. I really enjoyed it.
Itâs like when you hear serial killers say they feel no regret, no remorse for all the people they killed. I was like that. Loved it. I didnât care how long it took either, because I was in no hurry. Iâd wait until they were totally in love with me. Till the big saucer eyes were looking at me. I loved the shock on their faces. Then the glaze as they tried to hide how much I was hurting them. And it was legal. I think I killed a few of them. Their souls, I mean. It was their souls I was after. I know I came close a couple of times. But donât worry, I got my comeuppance. Thatâs why Iâm telling you this. Justice was done. Balance has been restored. The same thing happened to me, only worse. Worse because it happened to me. I feel purged now, you see. Cleansed. Iâve been punished, so itâs okay to talk about it all. At least thatâs how it seems to me.
I carried the guilt of my crimes around with me for years after I stopped drinking. I couldnât even look at a girl, much less believe I deserved to converse with one. Or maybe I was just afraid that theyâd see through me. Either way, after getting into Alcoholics Anonymous, I didnât even kiss a girl for five years. Seriously. Not so much as holding hands.
I meant business.
I think I always knew deep down I had a drinking problem. I just never got around to admitting it. I drank purely for effect. But then, as far as I was concerned, wasnât everyone doing the same thing? I started to realize something was wrong when I began to get beaten up. My mouth always got me into trouble, of course. Iâd go up to the biggest guy in the place and look up his nostrils and call him a faggot. And then when heâd head-butt me, Iâd say, âCall that a head-butt?â So the guy would do it again harder. The second time Iâd have less to say. One of my âvictimsâ stuck my head on an electric cooker ring. In Limerick. Stab City. I was lucky to get out of that house alive. Heâd done it, though, because Iâd been taking the pith out of hiths listhp. Maybe thatâs why I moved on to girls. More sophisticated, doncha know. And girls wouldnât beat me up. Theyâd just stare at me in disbelief and shock.
Their eyes, you see.
All the pretense and rules dissolved away. There was just the two of us and the pain. All those intimate moments, every little sigh, those gentle touches, the lovemaking, the confidences, the orgasms, the attempted orgasmsâall mere fuel. The deeper in they were, the more beautiful they looked when the moment came.
And I lived for the moment.
I was working freelance in advertising all through this period in London. As an art director. A contradiction in terms if ever there was one. Itâs what I still do today. Strangely, I was always able to get money. Even in art school, I got a grant because my dad had just retired and I suddenly became eligible. And after that I got job after job without too much trouble.
I never looked like a drunk, I just was one, and anyway in those days advertising was a far more boozy affair than it is today. Because I was freelance, I could be my own man, so to speak, and I would keep myself busy by ensuring I had dates lined up. None of the girls were supposed to know this. The idea was to have an impressive queue so that when one girl neared maturityâusually after about three or four dates with some phone calls in betweenâanother would be introduced. Then as one went onto the scrap heap, a new one would take her place. Nothing unusual about my method, everyone did it. But I enjoyed it so much. Not the sex or even the conquest, but the causing of pain.
It was after my crazy night with Pen (more on that in a minute) that I realized I had found my niche in life. Somehow I was able to lure these creatures into my lair. Half the time I was trying to push them away, but it had just the opposite effect. And the fact that they were attracted to a piece of shit like me made me hate them even more than if theyâd laughed in my face and walked away. As for looks? Iâm nothing special, but Iâm told I have beautiful eyes. Eyes from which nothing but truth could possibly seep.
They say the sea is actually black and that it merely reflects the blue sky above. So it was with me. I allowed you to admire yourself in my eyes. I provided a service. I listened and listened and listened. You stored yourself in me.
Nothing had ever felt so right to me. If Iâm honest, even today I miss hurting. Iâm not cured of it, but I donât set out to systematically dismantle like I used to. I donât miss the booze half as much. Oh, to hurt again. Since those heady days I heard an adage that seems to apply here: âHurt people hurt people.â
I see now that I was in pain and wanted others to feel it, too. This was my way of communicating. Iâd meet the women the first night and get the obligatory phone number and then after another couple of days, making them sweat a little, Iâd call and be all nervous. They loved that. Iâd ask them out and pretend I hardly ever did âthis kind of thingâ and say that I hadnât been out a lot in London because I didnât really know the scene. This was true, though, because all I used to do was get out of my head in local bars around Camberwell.
Weâd agree to meet somewhere. I liked Greenwich, with the river and the boats and of course the pubs. And it had a great boyfriend/girlfriend feel. Nice and respectable. Iâd be half out of it before we even met, but Iâd be witty and charming and boyish and shaking. Trying to put me at ease, theyâd smile and comment on my trembling, thinking I was nervous to create a good impression. Because I wasnât getting in enough booze, my very being would shudder. Iâd have to order two large Jamesons at the counter for her every half lager. Iâd down the Jimmys without her seeing and then on with the show.
Lovely.
I didnât really care if I got them into bed or not. I just wanted some company while I got pissed, while I waited for the courage to hurt to well up in me. And they seemed pleased because I wasnât trying to grope them. Sometimes I would. But mostly Iâd be fairly well behaved. This would go on for a few dates. In the meantime I would encourage them to tell me about themselves.
This is very important for the successful moment later. The more they confided and invested in you, the deeper the shock and the more satisfying the moment at the end. So, Iâd be told of their dogâs habits, their teddy bearâs names, their fatherâs moods, their motherâs fears. Did I like kids? How many brothers and sisters did I have? A sitcom I had to sit through. But it was okay, because I knew Iâd be writing her out of the series.
Sheâd talk and talk and talk, and Iâd nod. Raise a strategic eyebrow. Grimace when necessary. Guffaw or feign shock, whatever was required. Iâd watch people in conversation and record their facial expressions. Interest: Raise one eyebrow and raise or lower the other depending on the conversation.
Attraction: Try to blush. Not easy, this (thoughts of what I was going to do to her later helped). And a blush usually begot a blush. That is, if I could muster a blush, she was more than likely to blush back. Sympathy: Crinkle the forehead and nod gently. Charmed: Cock your head to one side and smile apologetically. Iâd supply these prefab masks on cue. It was easy. It was enjoyable. Guys did it all the time to get laid. I did it to get even. Unkind to Womankind. That was my mission. Around this time I discovered the meaning of the word âmisogynist.â I remember thinking it hilarious that it had âMissâ as a prefix.
All I know is, I felt better when I saw someone else in pain. But of course they would often hide how much I had hurt them. Yes, it was a challenge in itself to help her externalize her feelings, but also bloody frustrating to have gone to all that trouble and then not be able to enjoy a dramatic playback. Thatâs why it became necessary to condense everything into the one demonstrative moment.
Sophie was from South London. She used to do the wardrobe for Angus Brady on the comedy show Arenât You Glad to See Me? I met her at a Camberwell College of Arts party that I had crashed. After her, there was that designer girlâwhose name I honestly canât rememberâwho Iâm sure I hurt very deeply because she never called me back. Funny that, because even though I never met her again or even heard her say another word, I knew she had it bad.
How do I know?
I know.
There was Jenny. She was the one who threw the beer in my face. I was thrilled to have had a hand in causing so much rage.
Then came Emily. But she doesnât really count because she was as good if not better at whatever this is than I was. I kind of fell for her. Laura was somewhere in there. An exâband publicist with a superb arse that had survived a young daughter. I woke up one morning and there was an eight-year-old girl watching as I tried to extricate myself from the freckled tentacles of her comatose mother. And then after she guilted me into walking her to school, I got the feeling that mother and daughter made full use of the men that passed through their lives. Like the Native American and the Buffalo, The Eskimo and the Seal, The Welfare Mother and Me.
And the one who started it all.
Penelope Arlington. Iâd been going out with her for four and a half years. Long time. Sheâd been nice to me. Nicer to me than any other girl had ever been. When I spoke, she turned her head toward me and seemed to abandon herself to the meaning of my words. I liked that. It was only much later that I found out she was terrible in bed. At the time I thought she was wanton. She wasnât. But sheâs the one I regret hurting the most. Why? Because she didnât deserve it. Not that the others did, but she wouldnât have left me if I hadnât ripped her apart. And I needed her to leave me because she was getting in the way of my drinking.
And one night I just cracked up. Itâd been bubbling for ages. Simmer, simmer, bubble, stew . . . gurgle. I got completely fizzingly drunk and this whole chain of events began to rattle. Why would anyone set out to break the heart of someone he loved? Why would anyone intentionally cause that kind of pain?
Why did people kill each other?
Because they enjoyed it. Was it really that simple? To achieve a soul-shattering, it is better if the perpetrator has been through the same experience. Hurt people hurt people more skillfully. An expert heartbreaker knows the effect of each incision. The blade slips in barely noticed, the pain and the apology delivered at the same time.
I had grown tired of the girl I was going out with for four and a half years. I loved her. That was the awful thing about what Iâm going to tell you. The possibility exists that sheâs out there somewhere reading this right now. The rest of you turn your heads away; the next bit is for her only.
Pen, Iâm so sorry. I needed to hurt you. I knew we were coming to an end. I knew you had started to despise me. You tried to hide how you felt, but it rippled across your face. Disgust. I began to hate you for not having the courage to tell me what you really thought of me. So I had to make up your mind for you.
The rest of you can look now.
It was a Friday night in a pub in Victoria Park. I was out of work early. Yet another ad agency where yet another clutch of concepts had been mass-murdered by yet another ham-fisted creative director. I was sure of one thing. I needed to get soaringly drunk, so I downed pints of beer at an alarming rate.
The wizened barman seemed concerned. Then whiskey. By 7:30 PM ...