Chameleon On a Kaleidoscope (The Oxygen Thief Diaries) (4 page)

“
Look,” she
said, shuffling forward in her seat, ” what do you do when you come
to a fork in the road?”

Was I expected to
answer?

“
Take
it.”

I was paying three hundred
and fifty dollars a session for this. Previously, she had appeared
all the more intelligent because she had said so little.

BRIDGIT

Bridgit’s invitation to
inspect the Celtic pendant around her neck allowed me to touch her
cleavage which ignited the kiss that led to her bed where, in the
throes of fucking her, I noticed a picture of her dad on the
bedside table..

He looked exactly like me.
My thin-lipped and blue-eyed head lurched forward to fit perfectly
over his before retreating and reappearing.

Still a novice, not just
to online dating but dating in general, I agreed to meet her mother
who lived in Syracuse. After an exhilarating train ride where she
made me come under a newspaper, right there in the seat as the
pylons rushed past; I pretended not to notice her mother’s
expression of euphoria when wide-eyed and hungry for her returned
husband, she welcomed me into her house.

I sat at the head of the
kitchen table with Nuala, the younger sister, on my left Bridgit on
my right. Mom sat at the other end flanked on one side then the
other by Paddy the dog. On the wall, a portrait of dad looked down
on us from within a gold-frame. He also looked down from the
fridge, the hallway, and even from a picture in the toilet where at
one point I sought refuge. There was no escaping it. I was
dad.

Bridgit became
spokesperson.

“
So what do
you think of Nuala’s progress? Is she heading in the right
direction?”

“
She still
has a few years to fuck around” I said

This was met with squeals
of delight.

“
And the
dog?

“
He looks
fine to me”

“
And what
about Mom?”

“
I’d do
her”

Hysterical laughter
punctuated by hand claps.

Bridgit respectfully
requested that I remove my profile from datemedotcom and I
respectfully implied that I might like to keep it up and that was
pretty much that until we met again two years later.

*****

In what turned out to be
my penultimate therapy session I found myself telling Dr Susie that
everything had improved, that my fear of intimacy was obviously due
to my paranoia and that my paranoia was a result of being abused
and that yes, it was still there but I was now able to recognize it
for the burden it was, as opposed to the good counsel I had
imagined it to be. I acknowledged that as a kid I had drawn a map
that had reflected the world around me and that it had been a very
useful navigation tool at that time. But now thirty years later I
was still using it and wondering why I was bumping into things that
according to my map shouldn’t be there.

I heard myself acknowledge
the success of the sessions while indicating a desire to end them.
I shared my vision of a therapy-free existence where it was
possible to be well-adjusted without a weekly outpouring of
neuroses and cash. I told her, perhaps too honestly, that I spent
the intervening days thinking about what to say in the next session
so that we wouldn’t both have to endure the excruciating silences
and shifting-in-seats. And then in an ill-fated attempt at
alleviating the timbre of the room I submitted a
work-in-progress-tag-line that would work well on small-scale media
like fridge-magnets and bumper stickers. I paused for
effect.

“
Therapy?
Enough said”

She smiled at
this.

“
You wouldn’t
stop going to AA would you?

Predictably enough, she
began to suggest that I might want to continue with the sessions
precisely because they were working. I immediately felt
uncomfortable. Guilty even. Like I was suddenly extricating myself
from a relationship. I waited for her to say I was avoiding
intimacy. That I was being distant. That she hated me. I didn’t
want to continue seeing a therapist when I was already going to a
minimum of four AA meetings a week and anyway I felt that what I’d
gotten from her was about all there was to get. And let’s not
forget I already had a sponsor. I did have to admit though, but not
to her, that I could see the logic of continuing the sessions since
they would at least provide me with someone to bounce ideas off.
Someone who could prevent me from making a mistake. Like
discontinuing therapy.

NORA

After agreeing to meet
Nora on the steps of a church on Eighteenth Street I was amazed
when she led me inside to attend a mass that was just starting.
Imagining all manner of pagan possibilities I was happy to oblige.
But once inside the cavernous candle-lit interior it quickly became
clear that six o’clock mass was a gay singles scene where
well-dressed young men eyed each other up between the Benediction
and the Consecration. My father would sooner die than live in a
world where this could happen.

In fact, that’s exactly
what he did.

But Nora didn’t seem to
notice. She was there to imitate her version of an Irishwoman. To
her it was just a look, like Cowgirl or Gypsy. An excuse to wear
tweed. She was in a catholic church with figures kneeling and
standing and that was enough for her. It was Ireland by Tommy
Hilfiger. Apparently she had gone on a few dates with some guy
called Ray. It was pretty clear he hadn’t fucked her yet but she
mentioned his name often enough that it was clear she wanted to see
how I’d address my competitor. This was more of her Irish
posturing. I needed to win her. If she hadn’t been so pretty I
wouldn’t have bothered. I emailed her that night.

On the west
coast of Ireland, in a city called Limerick, in the shadow of King
John’s Castle, a black leafless tree inclines itself towards the
ochre glow of a streetlamp. In the absence of any natural source of
light this gnarled trembling hand reaches for the nearest
manufactured equivalent. To imagine so natural a yearning
squandered on so cheap a facsimile is too heartbreaking to
contemplate so instead dear Nora let us turn our attention to the
future. Yours and mine. X(ps to help you adjust to the imminent
glare we might need to get you some Ray-bans)

When I did eventually get
her clothes off she was so pale she looked like a corpse. And she
pretty much behaved like one. She lay there looking up at the
ceiling as if she hadn’t noticed I was about to fuck her. I thought
about coming on her face just to see her expression but since she
had obviously gone to all the trouble of waxing either side of her
jet black bush I thought I might as well go down on her. Pretty
soon she wouldn’t shut up. “Thank God. Thanks be to Jesus. Oh,
thank God!” It was as if she had misheard the instructions.
Oh
Jesus
or
Oh my God
was fine but
Thanks be to
Jesus
was just frightening. I felt the sting of her juices on
my just shaved face.

“
Oh poor
thing,” she said,“…don’t worry I never come, it’s the
anti-depressants.”

SHEELA

Viewed from the front
Sheela was very aristocratic looking, but as soon as she turned
even slightly sideways there was a dizzying moment of re-focus
while her nose announced its dimensions. Not unlike an aerial view
of a ship’s mast. She had lovely, clean, pale skin (her parents
were Irish), and a beautiful, compact little ass. Tragically
though, her hips protruded like a concentration camp survivor. Was
I after a relationship or a few fucks? This was a constant source
of concern for her. She was looking for chemistry. I was looking
for biology. She smiled dreamily into baby carriages while I winced
at the back of her head. It occurred to me that had her nose been
any bigger and my dick any smaller a blowjob would have been
impossible. In the end it was academic. I knew we were finished
after a particularly frustrating session trying to keep up with her
breathless directions on how to fuck her. She eventually came very
loudly, but far from the audible reward I had hoped for I was sure
I heard her say; “Blaahhhhhh…blah.”

It summed up our time
together

FRANCESKA

I decided I would never
see her again before she even sat down. Her profile picture showed
a beautiful girl in a white t-shirt and high heels taking her own
photo in a full length mirror. The scenario had a Helmut Newtonish
feel to it and I assumed this was why she had used the old Leica to
capture it. A witty prop for a tongue-in-cheek shoot. Having
described herself as a hybrid photographer-assistant-model-writer
it made sense to present herself in this way. It also made perfect
sense to meet her for a coffee. But as she approached I realised
her decision to use a Leica was more than just a retro-chic
affectation. It was a mask. A digital camera would have required
her to hold it away from that face. She was a hybrid alright. The
world-weary head of an Irish politician surveyed the cafe from the
body of a lingerie model

“
I’m so
sorry.” she said.

I tried not to
stare.

“…
for being
late. I couldn’t find the place, I almost walked past.“

“
Don’t worry,
you’re worth the wait”

A lie so enormous a car
probably crashed somewhere.

“
Thank you.” she said reaching into her shoulder bag
‘
you
don’t look
anything like
your
picture”

I hid my rage as she took
out a small black wallet and began to show me badly composed
photographs printed on cheap paper. Even if she had been stunningly
beautiful I would have been unhappy about this, but under the
circumstances I was breathless.

“
Really?”

While she talked, mostly
about her photography, I tried to summon a version of myself that
could somehow ignore her from the neck up, or more precisely from
the chin up, because there was something there casting a small
shadow, I couldn’t quite tell what it was and though I wanted to
study it, I didn’t dare.

“
Do you still
want to meet in Ireland?”

She didn’t actually have
any Irish connections but because she loved everything about the
country I had talked about a romantic rendezvous in Kilkenny. I
hadn’t told her I was already due there the following week for a
visit home because I had wanted to make it seem like I was planning
the trip around her. But that was before we’d met.

“
Yes” I said
involuntarily and threw in a nod to make it more
believable.

“
Yes? But it’s very expensive?
No?”

Was she was offering me an
escape or was she trying to get out of it herself? Or was she
pretending she didn’t fancy me so I wouldn’t feel obligated? Or was
she angling for a free flight? I couldn’t read that face one way or
another. The fact that she could use a camera to hide her face
might well have been the reason she got into photography in the
first place. There was an ad for cameras in there somewhere. You
get more detail with a digital camera. I tried to summon a version
of myself that could somehow see it as a large pimple. A
chin-nipple perhaps, but it was useless. The wart wagged the
woman.

MOTHER

After an overnight flight
to Dublin and a joyless train ride to Kilkenny I was jolted from a
virtual sleepwalk into the kitchen of my childhood home to find my
brother and mother touching my jacket
like
Bangkok peasants. It would not have seemed surreal if I thrown
coins to the floor. Only slightly more dignified I placed a
fifty-Euro note between the salt cellar and the sauce bottle and
emptied my caressed coat-pocket of coins into my mother’s wide
expectant hands. This secured my first
compliment.

“
Doesn’t he
look great?”

This was the Ireland I
remembered.

Before I‘d even sat down
she warned me not to call the fire brigade since the last time I
was home I had needed their services to extinguish a chimney fire.
Having recently taken to counting each separate rock of coal my
mother was hardly going to welcome the cost of having the chimney
swept. The last time already mindful of her sensibilities I had
very carefully placed one diamond-in-waiting on what appeared was
no more than a pathetic sputtering flame but apparently the chimney
couldn’t deal with the increased traffic and the smoke began to
back up. I had no idea the fire brigade charged by the hour. I
thought they were a government service like the postman or the
police.

My laptop was met with
oohs and awws.

My mother began dropping
the first of many hints that she needed to pay off one thousand
Euros on a car accident she’d caused. She left a silence after this
which I suppose, I was expected to fill with money but when I
pretended not to understand she stopped making me cups of tea.
Brian said I was paranoid about my money, that I was obsessed with
it.

“
I’m not the
one obsessed with it.” I said

There was another silence
after that.

Due to the prohibitive
cost of oil the central heating was never on for more than an hour
a day even in December. Brian had discovered that sleeping with a
pair of underpants over his head afforded the warmth of a hat but
with more ventilation. He helpfully began to explain that seventy
percent of your body heat escaped through your head. He had
obviously forgotten that it was I who told him this after serving
two years of my life in Minnesota. I wanted to suggest he’d be even
warmer if he shut his fucking mouth, but I didn’t. I pitied him
living in that house with that woman.