Our anonymous Irish recovering alcoholic has a streak of paranoia in him because he thinks that since he’s screwed over so many women, the universe is out to get him. This time around I would leave little notes for my crush, telling him I was thinking about him, wondering how his day was going all the while behind the words I was asking “Do you ever think of me?”īeing human is crap sometimes, folks. That kind of crap will get you arrested nowadays. Since I am socially retarded and not used to men giving me compliments I couldn’t exactly do what I did to Joe Clifford in second grade: I pushed him to the ground threw a rock at him and screamed “I REALLY LIKE YOU. I was into this guy once for all the wrong reasons. I related to him so hard that I had to put the book down, flip my stupid heart the bird, and try to repress wanting to vomit thinking about what I’ve done when I’ve had a crush on someone. I saw a plastic bag floating down the street in a frisky breeze and it reminded me of that scarf you wore that matched the green of your eyes and I’m counting down the minutes until I can accidentally brush your hand with mine and die in suspense wondering if you’ll thread you’re fingers through mine.” Translation: “I haven’t stopped thinking about you, everything reminds me of you. Thought I’d call and see how you’re doing.” Who hasn’t done that, developed some super heavy feelings for someone and then made promises to ourselves in the name of dignity and sanity that we won’t fill up their voicemail with uncertain false cheer: He finds himself in too deep and has to restrain himself from calling her 30 times a day. “Um….yeah,” she replies and then shows up 45 minutes late. “So, you want to get together for dinner?” He asks. He’s imagining a life together with her: suburban house, picket fence, rug rats running around with a dog. Our poor narrator becomes insecure, a man who once beguiled dozens of women and is now She is God, life, sex all rolled into one. She’s every song that is played on repeat. She’s every gorgeous painting that caused the looker heartache. She has a name but it might as well be God in his eyes. I have to spell it as HER because she’s the one who coaxes him out of celibacy, both physically and mentally. Besides, he’s gotten his act together so why screw it up with a complicated relationship?Īnd then he meets HER. He decides to get sober, becomes a faithful AA attendee and doesn’t touch a woman in 5 years, terrified he’ll regress and hurt someone. He drinks and drinks and becomes sick of his life. What follows after this break up is a gift from the karma police. He gets off on seeing the confusion swirling in her eyes, the half-smile melting from her lips like cheap lipstick in a heat wave. “This is what I look like when I’m pretending to be in love with you.” While she’s smiling with that idiot smile of love at him he begins his destruction: Anonymous sits down to a romantic dinner at a pub with his girlfriend of 4 1/2 years. Ghosting is when you don’t actually break up with someone (be it a friend or lover) but you ignore them until they’re hurt, baffled, and finally disappear for good. I came across the term ghost a couple of years ago. Just when a woman exposes her heart to him he cuts them loose. He makes love with his eyes wide open all the while snickering at how he’s going to tear a woman’s life apart. Scott Fitzgerald for the iPad generation' Richard Nash, author of What is the Business of Literature? Visit 02thief.He seduces women into his world by pretending to be THAT guy: the one who’s a good listener and leans in further as if to catch every word that falls out of her mouth. One of the most interesting and controversial encounters I've made through a book' Lorenzo DeRita, editor in chief, COLORS magazine 'A dark-horse Williamsburg bestseller' Jonas Kyle, Spoonbill & Sugartown, Booksellers 'F. I loved it!' Junot Diaz, author of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 'First he steals the oxygen from you, then he spits it right back in your face. 'Kinky, artsy, and swoon-worthy' New York Magazine 'The author does a great job. 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. 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.
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