Diary of an Oxygen Thief

Aisling shows up to dinner with the narrator a half-hour late: “so clean, young, and adult at the same time. From the moment she walked through the door, my biggest challenge was to hide from her how strongly she affected me” (81). The narrator thinks Aisling looks like the Virgin Mary. He does not expect her to be intelligent and is thrown when she is not charmed by him. He spends the evening playing catch-up, which he is not used to. He talks about himself and finds out she is much more cultured than he is: “I would never have realized that I’d mispronounced the names of all those foreign artists until she pronounced them” (83). She does not correct him rudely, but is gracious, though condescending, about it, talking about growing up wealthy while the narrator falls in love with her. The narrator tries to impress her and fails repeatedly. He thinks she is bored. She drinks Bacardi and Coke. He is charmed by her obvious old-school wealth and comfort with herself and being around men.

Aisling takes the narrator to a gay bar, which the narrator does not realize at first, leaving him alone for a long time while she goes to the bathroom. They go to another bar and Aisling tells him that she got a green card and moved to LA before coming to New York. The only time she lets down her guard is when she talks about dancing in New Orleans, on Mardi Gras. Otherwise, she is incredibly reserved. They go to a coffee bar, which the narrator later cannot find, and Aisling insists they stay out. They kiss in the coffee bar and “she deftly raised the stakes with a little stiff flick of her tongue” (87). The narrator asks her back to his hotel room because he is supposed to be leaving tomorrow. She says it’s too fast, and they walk down the street holding hands. They get a cab, and she says they can go back to his hotel if they take it easy. They kiss more. The narrator worries she is not eighteen.

Once in the room, on the bed, Aisling asks the narrator to tell her a story and he panics, then tells her a story about a woman bringing home a rat from India she thought was a dog. He performs cunnilingus on her and enjoys it, believing “her womanhood tasted better than her mouth” (89). The narrator feels like he has his old love, Penelope, back. He is glad they are taking it easy because he worries he would not be able to perform. They go out for breakfast the next morning, and then get into two separate cabs. She does not look back at him, but he looks back at her.

The narrator goes back to Minnesota and is convinced KF is preventing him from selling his house. He is working on advertising for a charity that provides children with AIDS with summer vacations. He reflects on the capitalism associated with U.S. charity. The narrator reflects on the reader’s complicity in the marketability of charity as well as the marketability of his narrative: “Charities are as competitive as commercial companies and nowadays need to think like them. After all, they’re chasing the same dollars” (91). He talks about how kids are your best bet if you want a charity to be successful, because the networks will give a children’s charity more airtime.

He goes to a summer camp to shoot a commercial, although he has no concept of what summer camp is. He is abhorred at the thought of dirty children’s germs getting on him. The narrator is relieved he won’t catch HIV when he learns that he doesn’t have to shave. The narrator imagines living with Aisling and their child in the woods: “Light dappling our happiness, laughter echoing around trees before we shushed each other lest we wake the baby” (93). He writes Aisling’s phone number on many different pieces of paper and puts them all over his room, feeling physical reactions when he thinks of her.

He finally breaks down and calls her. He thinks she is interested in him, although later reflects on how she was like a prostitute. At the time, he believes that Aisling is his just desserts and wants her to help him out of Minnesota and to New York City. He reflects on how her interest with him must have been of the morbid variety. He starts feeling paranoid that she is gathering dirt on him, for blackmail, but he lets her egg him on. He calls the personnel department to ask how to resign, essentially threatening resignation without actually resigning. His boss asks him if he’s sold his house and then tells the narrator that the narrator will be going to help out in the NYC office for a few weeks: “All I wanted was a few weeks paid up in a nice hotel in New York with my love” (97). He is happy talking with Aisling on the phone.

He’s tried to organize previous trips, but they did not work. He becomes jealous, believing she is sleeping with other men and that she is using him for his position. She tells him she’s having an art exhibition, and he tries to help by suggesting she make it St. Patrick’s Daythemed, which she thinks will cheapen it. She is often silent after he speaks, letting him stew in his own stupidity.

The narrator lists everything he knows about Aisling, including that she worked as a hostess, which he is pretty snide about. Her mother feels patriotism for Ireland, and Aisling spent time in a convent boarding school as a child: “Also, her grandfather died during the time I knew her” (100). She loves portraiture and works for Peter Freeman. The narrator reflects that if he could torture and kill her without serving time, he would.

Aisling tells him she has a publishing deal for a book of photo essays, and the narrator is jealous of the purity of her creations. She says that he might be in it, and they agree to meet in Dublin over Christmas. He is impatient at everyone to get to Ireland. Aisling leaves him a note at his hotel, asking him to call. The narrator worries he won’t be able to buy condoms in Ireland. He feels like Dublin has changed irrevocably. He calls, but gets her stepdad, and she calls him later. They meet up and she is late, as usual. They eat at a café, and Aisling takes his picture with a disposable camera: “I immediately felt robbed. She’d gotten my moon face” (105). She drinks Bacardi and Coke all night, and the narrator believes he’s tricked her into coming back to his hotel.

They have sex, and at one point, the narrator can’t stop laughing. Aisling believes he is laughing at her and gets annoyed. In the morning, she takes pictures of him while he dresses. She says she looks terrible, and he says she doesn’t look that bad. She gets annoyed. She makes another phone call from reception.

The narrator goes to visit his mother, feeling euphoria at his new relationship and the end of his time in Minnesota. Aisling visits him, and she mentions meeting up with a visiting friend. The narrator books a fancy hotel for the night after New Year’s Eve, but when he calls Aisling, he finds that she has neither told her parents about him nor has any intention of spending another night with him. He can’t cancel the hotel. He refrains from calling Aisling until he gets back to Minnesota. He wants to be fired from his job, telling people he’s going to resign. KF arranges for the narrator to go to the NYC office, and the narrator knows he’s never coming back. A couple agrees to buy his house.

He goes to New York but does not tell Aisling he is moving there. She tells him she’s in Miami, but eventually they meet up at Georgina’s. He remarks on the bar, and she coldly tells him he’ll remember it after tonight. She interrogates him about banal details of his life and then abruptly informs him she’s going home alone. He feels like she has knifed him. They talk for a while longer, and she tells him she wants to be friends, although offers a future where they can be more than that. She hopes that he will be angry at this and then is disappointed when he is not. A light flashes from the other table, and the narrator suspects that the man sitting there is friends with Aisling and has taken the narrator’s picture at her behest. She tries to get him to drink, hurting him more, and refuses to go on a walk with him. “I couldn’t get it out my head that she was following from prearranged structure […] a hidden agenda” (116-117). The narrator believes that his feelings were protected by God, just as God delivered him from SL.

The narrator reflects on a variety of theories concerning his so-called relationship with Aisling: that she was hired by KF as payback, that she was using him as the subject of her photo-essay book (which he believes most plausible), or that “life is random and therefore everything that happens has no meaning or structure” (118-119). There is another flash of light when they leave Georgina’s. the next day, he leaves her a message saying that he’ll see her around, resisting the impulse to leave her 15 messages. She calls and wakes him up in the middle of the night, and he spills his guts to her. He eventually gets so embarrassed, that he tells her he won’t be just her friend and hangs up, feeling like he won that battle although she won the war. However, a few days later he can’t hold out and calls her to go out to lunch.

They go out to dinner, and the narrator believes that Aisling has gotten friends to follow them with cameras. He alludes to this, and she accepts that he knows. However, “I can’t even be sure this verbal exchange even took place” (122). He reflects on Aisling’s jealousy over his expense account, and how he believes that if not for money, women would not bother with men. Aisling reminds him about her exhibition on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, he is nervous to meet her friends, still believing that they are in a relationship that is going through a rough patch. The narrator is shocked to find how talented Aisling is, and Aisling meets him with a pint of Guinness, which breaks the narrator. He gets stuck talking to her very tall friend. He buys the tall girl a drink, and she flicks it at him with her straw, which he does not believe is accidental. He almost licks the alcohol from his lips but stops himself. He buys her another drink and then goes to meet his AA friend, Adam. They go for a brisk walk. He refrains from calling Aisling the next day, convinced that she and her friends are bored rich kids who want to humiliate him, but he caves the day after.

They meet for lunch and she is forty-five minutes late, which he pretends does not bother him. They talk about how he wanted to get a lot of media attention for her exhibition, even getting a fight to break out in front of her work so that it could be prominently featured, and she apologizes for making a rude comment to him that night. He tells her she can pay for lunch, and she coldly declines, which tells the narrator that their relationship is for her own professional gains. They go to a gallery exhibition, and while walking there, Aisling spins around and punches him very hard in the chest. They go to Chess Café, and Aisling soundly beats him the first game. In the second game, the narrator willingly tips over his own king, and Aisling becomes furious, telling him to finish the game. He refuses, excusing himself to meet his friend/mentor. Busy at work, he purposefully doesn’t see her for the next week, although they agree to get a drink on Friday night.

The narrator arrives at the bar early, and Aisling’s two friends, Sharon and a man the narrator calls Brazilian Shirt, get there after. Sharon talks with the narrator, but Brazilian Shirt is openly hostile towards him. When Aisling gets there already a little drunk, she “hardly looked at me, barely acknowledged me” (133). The narrator thinks he could be flirting with the attractive women in AA, instead, but stays anyway, with hope of having sex with Aisling. Aisling and Brazilian Shirt talk closely and flirt, ignoring the narrator except to pointedly look in his direction, to see if he notices them.

Then Aisling makes gestures to indicate that the narrator has a small penis, looking at the narrator and laughing as she does it. Brazilian Shirt also laughs. They whisper in each other’s ears, looking the narrator up and down, and Aisling continues to make the hand gesture. The narrator laughs to be included, still not entirely sure what is going on. Brazilian Shirt and Aisling talk about the four other men she has done this to and then talk about having sex themselves. Dazed, the narrator tries to talk to Sharon, to avoid running out of the bar crying, but Sharon refuses to give him reprieve. He goes to talk to another of her friends, people who Aisling wanted the narrator to meet, and who he realizes are her publishing friends from Princeton.

Brazilian Shirt puts on a combat jacket, puts a bag next to the narrator, and holds a light reader. He puts the light reader away and takes out a camera, pointing it at the narrator’s groin. The narrator tells Brazilian Shirt to make it look like the narrator has a small dick. Brazilian Shirt looks back and forth between the audience and the narrator, pretending to pick a grain of dust that hides the narrator’s penis. The narrator laughs, in order to pretend like he’s enjoying this, and the audience and Aisling laugh, too. The narrator takes the camera. Two guys put their hands on his shoulders and take the camera away. The narrator tells the bartender to call the cops because he’s being harassed. The bartender tells the audience, instead. The narrator takes the camera back and points it at Brazilian Short’s groin, squinting, only to realize that Brazilian Shirt has gotten a bigger lens and is doing the same thing to him. The narrator thinks about hitting Brazilian Shirt but smiles at him instead. BS winks at him in mocking friendship.

“Suddenly there’s a huge flash of light” (142), which the narrator realizes is a camera flash. The narrator flips off the audience, thinking about how cameras steal your soul, while he waits for his picture to be taken. BS tries to position the lens so that the narrator’s finger looks like his tiny penis; the narrator, realizing what BS is doing, lowers his arm and BS gets frustrated that his shot has been ruined. Brazilian Shirt tells the narrator that if they get this shot, they’ll leave the narrator alone. The narrator refuses, believing he is winning.

BS takes out a comb dramatically and pretends to comb the hair on the narrator’s shoulders and back. The narrator is hurt that Aisling has told BS about this embarrassment and realizes she hates him. The narrator fights every urge not to get into a brawl with Brazilian Shirt, who is jabbing and mocking him incessantly. The narrator prays and realizes that Aisling has used his idea of the fight to garner publicity at her exhibition as a kind of pièce de résistance for her book of photos. The narrator refuses to let this happen, only giving her “a few static shots of me standing by a bar with a silly grin on my face” (145).

The narrator reflects on Aisling’s professionalism, his ruined relationship with Pen, and all the women he hurt: “I was punishing them for liking me” (146). He believes himself to be a patient with self-inflicted wounds and the women are his nurses. He talks about the French aristocratic habit of the verbal/social punching bag. He hopes his book gets published before Aisling’s. The narrator talks about his new French girlfriend, who thinks he should go to therapy. He says there is no ending to this book.

At the end of the bar night, Aisling passes a Coke to one of her friends who gives it to the narrator. The narrator thinks it looks like Guinness. Aisling raises her own pint of Guinness and winks at the narrator: “He raised the pint glass and held it aloft, creating, if only for a few moments, a symmetry between them that hadn’t until then existed” (150). Aisling drinks, but the narrator believes his drink to have vodka in it, so he refuses, as the other guy looks back and forth between Aisling and the narrator. The narrator talks about how smelling his drinks saves his life. He reflects on how if his book gets published, hers probably won’t; if his does not, then hers will be published, and she will win. He addresses the reader, asking for congratulations.