Chameleon On a Kaleidoscope (The Oxygen Thief Diaries)

Chameleon On A
Kaleidoscope

Anonymous

Copyright 2012 by V
Publishing

Smashwords
Edition

CHAMELEON ON A
KALEIDOSCOPE

ANONYMOUS

1

I didn’t get laid enough
to be called a sex-addict.

And yet the name felt
right. In the same way a junkie spent all his time thinking about
his next fix, my life had become something I did between orgasms. I
joked about it, saying I was a Vagitarian but I knew it wasn’t
normal. Giving up booze was only the beginning. I wasn’t free. The
prison had just gotten bigger. But I couldn’t meet girls in bars
anymore. And dating within Alcoholics Anonymous was out of the
question since the last thing I wanted to do was wake up beside a
version of myself in a skirt. So it was ironic, that my fiancé
should be the one who inadvertently introduced me to online
dating.

YVETTE

Bobbing and swaying in
front of my face as we ascended the steps to her fourthfloor
Elizabeth Street apartment was the reason we’d been together so
long. Our evening stroll had been cut short by a rainstorm and so
once we got inside we shook off our wet things and lay across her
bed and chatted and ordinarily this would have been enough to get
the ball rolling but I was still not confident enough to make a
move. Was she still pissed at me? I had work the next day and she
didn’t. Maybe she wanted me to leave. Time to call her bluff. While
making the dramatic announcement that I had better go if I was to
be in decent shape for work the next day I began to say goodbye to
her magnificent world class ass.

“
You hug it
like it’s a separate person.” she said thawing a little.

“
You’re
accusing me of having an affair with your ass, behind your
back?”

A smile.

She was pissed because I
hadn’t picked up on her latest hint that we should live together,
get married, have children and die of old age in each other’s arms.
These hints had more recently taken the form of exaggerated street
mimes. The huge crazy-eyed smile she reserved for babies was subtle
compared to the impossible affection conjured up in the presence of
every old couple we encountered. Especially, for some reason, if
they were Asian. I resisted the urge to respond or acknowledge
because I knew that once recognised the subject could never be put
back in the box. There was no way I was going to marry her but
there was no way I’d be allowed access to her ass if she knew this.
It was only a matter of time before something would need to be
said.

I felt sufficiently
encouraged by that half-hearted smile to spank her gently through
her cotton knickers. This led to touching and tickling, pecking and
pouting and after she broke away to brush her teeth, turn out the
lights and close her laptop we progressed to sensual half-lit
sensitive sex. She fluttered up and down on me with such agility I
was reminded of a nymph whose gossamer wings allowed her to hover
and dip at will. The rain persisted outside and as she leaned back
to scratch gently under my balls the colder light from outside
contrasted with the ochre glow from the desk-lamp backlighting her
small perfect dancer’s breasts. I stiffened inside her and her body
immediately straightened as if we really had become one.

I wanted to say
I love
you
but it was too risky. She would surely see through it for
the manipulation it was and stop what she was doing. I toyed with
saying
you’re lovely
but this just felt childish.
I adore
you
was merely
I love you
-lite and
oh baby
was
completely meaningless.

“
Fuck yeah.”
I said at last.

Well at least it was
honest.

On a monthly showreel
called Shotz, in the New Directors section, I was presented with
the fact that a copywriter I worked with at my former agency had
since become a commercials director. Nestled there amongst the
self-conscious up-to-the-minute motion graphics was a link to his
finished commercial, which, if it was a piece of shit would have
been fine but it wasn’t. It was quite good. The reason is was quite
good was because it was my idea. He and I had talked about making
the same commercial for BNV at Killallon Fitzpatrick but for some
reason we never presented it. I think because we decided it was too
British for the American market. And now adding disgust to
discomfort I saw that this commercial was for Falfaux.

Falfaux was my
account.

Was this his way of
getting back at me for leaving him in St LaCroix? I thought Iwas
being paranoid until I saw the casting. The guy in the commercial
looked exactly like me. Gary knew I worked on Falfaux. It was weird
because it wasn’t even a real ad. It was a spec commercial, the
kind of thing a new director puts on his reel to show he can make a
concept work in thirty seconds. But this concept was much better
suited to BNV because Falfaux didn’t make flashy cars they made
safe boring cars. He had shot it exactly as I related it to him
like a pastiche of a British Public Service
Announcement.

It began with a
title.

The Beginner’s
Guide To Lip-Reading

A young woman looks
earnestly into the camera.

“
Bastard.”
she says

“
Bastard.”
she says again. Cut to an extreme close-up of her mouth as she
pronounces the word soundlessly now so we can recognise it when
spoken.

“
Bastard.”
she says again. Cut now to a street-scene where a young trendy man,
looking suspiciously like John, strolls confidently up to a new
Falfaux and jabs his electronic key at the sleek crouched vehicle
and disappears inside it. On the other side of the street a pale
young man with a shaved head, looking suspiciously like me, watches
the car drive smoothly away just as we see him say something. It’s
a two-syllable word. Sitting there watching the commercial I
couldn’t help it, the word had already left my own mouth before I
realised it; “Bastard.”

A title appears across the
bottom of the screen.

Everybody’s
Talking about the New Falfaux.

I casually mentioned to
Yvette that it might be a relief to get out of
advertising.

“
How are you
going to bring up kids if you haven’t got a good job?”

There was no way to answer
this truthfully without robbing myself of sex and so attempting to
redirect the subject I told her I wanted to go back to London and
write a book in my newly paid-off flat. It had been her idea to pay
off the mortgage on my flat in London so that the rent received
could be treated as salary and then with no rent or mortgage to pay
I could always go on the dole for pocket money.

“
A man who
goes on welfare by choice is a disgrace”

Obviously her vision of my
future involved me working my ass off to keep her in expensive
dinners and clothes. Her reaction confirmed what I was already
thinking. That I should never tell her what I was
thinking.

My continued presence
would be understood as an agreement to marry and there was no way
this was ever going to happen. Up to that point I had feigned
interest in whatever she pointed me at, as long as I was sexually
rewarded. And the sex was so influential I had managed to convince
myself I wasn’t even acting. I was more than happy to pay for the
restaurants, the Broadway plays and even the clothes she picked out
as long as we continued with our unspoken agreement that I would be
sexually compensated. And for the first year we had been very fair
about this distribution of sexual currency. Her first. Then
me.

But more recently a new
worrying pattern had begun to emerge where my orgasm couldn’t even
be contemplated until she had come not just once, but twice. It was
starting to feel like my second high-stress job. And it wasn’t as
if she was scorching hot. Yes her body was fabulous and yes she was
French (that accent alone got me hard) but her face was far from
perfect and I could hardly admit it to myself but she had some sort
of skin problem where hard-headed yellowy protrusions would
periodically emerge without warning. Why did I have to settle for
that? I was living in New York where I regularly encountered four
or five life-changing women on the way to the subway.

When we first met I was
still reeling from a romantic catastrophe that would eventually
become the subject of my first book so I wasn’t even remotely
looking for a girlfriend. But Yvette knew what it was to be foreign
in the US and this was something that immediately drew us together.
And like all Europeans we enjoyed the luxury of being able to
encapsulate the world’s problems in one word.

“
Americans.”

We rolled our eyes
knowingly.

It was obvious even in her
staid work clothes that there was a great body under there but I
honestly didn’t see her as a sexual possibility until months later.
The fact that she was French was something I couldn’t ignore. She
loved toilet humor. Anything to do with piss or poop and she began
to giggle like a sneaky schoolgirl at the back of the class. Her
pet name for me was Poopie-Head. She sometimes even repeated the
word during sex;

“
Poopie,
poopie.
”

She loved to show me the
contents of her mouth while she ate. Especially in expensive
restaurants. She’d beckon me towards her, as if she had a secret to
share, with her hand supposedly directing her voice into my ear
until at the last moment she’d open her mouth wide revealing mashed
bouillabaisse and bread. When I appeared sufficiently disgusted her
hand morphed from horror-shield to giggle-guard and she sat back
satisfied into her chair.

She was impossible to
sleep with.

I’d lie motionless at
3.30am in her moonlit bedroom her arm heavy as a fallen beam across
my chest, afraid to move for fear of initiating a wee-hours
discussions about how distant I was. Did I feel I was distant? Why
was I always so distant?

“
Distant?
What? Yvette I’m right here”

Then fondling my balls
she’d whisper ”you’re not nice with me” and I’d find myself inside
her. How ridiculously easy it was to get inside a vagina when the
owner actually wanted you in it. And as her weightless silhouette
gyrated above me I knew better than to come. That would be the
ultimate act of selfishness.

Not yet fully awake she
moves like an animal sure and silent with her palms pressed flat on
my chest as her groin insists itself against me scratching some
unbearable, unreachable itch inside her. To prevent myself from
detonating I conjure up John’s shit-eating grin as he admires his
own reflection in the monitor during the few seconds of dead space
preceding each showing of his new Falfaux commercial.

My present agency wasn’t
capable of producing anything good enough to wipe away that grin
but most New York production companies would at least listen to an
idea from an on-staff creative like me working on an account like
Falfaux since they were always keen to develop a relationship that
might lead to a lucrative job. Above me, naked and shining Yvette
might have been peering into a well.

Open on
a shot of a young man who looks exactly like John.
He’s
playing the part of a Falfaux dealer as he hands the keys to a
happy looking customer who looks exactly like me. We get a nice
sleek shot of the car as I drive out of the dealership. The
voiceover begins; “At Falfaux our work doesn’t stop after your
purchase.” The car swings out of into the street and the
John-a-like follows alongside still waving. Cut back inside the
car;
”Yes, thank you ...yes thanks...goodbye ” I
say, but John is still hobbling alongside even though it’s now
starting to speed up. The voiceover resumes; “Our after-care
programme ensures that you have a personal relationship with one of
our staff who can help you with any questions that might arise.” In
my role as the driver I wave goodbye to John in his role as the
dealer and push the gear-stick forward. There’s a close-up of my
foot stepping on the gas before we cut to a close-up of the
speedometer indicating twenty-five mph. He’s s still out there.
He’s under pressure but he’s still there. Cut to a close-up of
John’s tie caught in the door. The car brakes suddenly. There are
embarrassed apologies back and forth.
Falfaux. We go further.
Shuddering over me Yvette
leaned forward and exhaled in my ear.