Diary of an Oxygen Thief

“I liked hurting girls […] The thing is, I got off on it. I really enjoyed it. It’s like when you hear serial killers say they feel no regret, no remorse for all the people they killed. I was like that.” 

One of the very first things the narrator speaks about is his love for causing other people, specifically women, severe emotional trauma. It is one of the few things that he speaks passionately about, as he does not particularly care about his profession or seem to have any other pastimes. Rather, the narrator lives for emotional distress, both that which he inflicts upon other people and that which is inflicted upon himself, via Aisling. The narrator is almost overwhelmingly numb to the reality that surrounds him, except where pain is concerned. He is obsessed with pain but recognizes his own mortality and so refrains from attempting to inflict this pain upon other men because the results could be potentially fatal. In this way, he seems to be very similar to the serial killers he relates himself to, suggesting that if he perhaps had a more traumatic childhood, as most serial killers do, he would have become one. As it stands now, however, he merely revels in pain in order to prove to himself, it would seem, that he is still alive. 

“The idea was to have an impressive queue so that when one girl neared maturity—usually after about three or four dates with some phone calls in between—another would be introduced. Then as one went into the scrap heap, a new one would take her place.” 

The narrator treats the women he meets as replaceable, frequently not even remembering their names. He uses more or less the same tactics on each woman because he does not see them as unique individuals. To the narrator, they do not deserve to be named and deserve only to be replaced. Not only are they replaceable, but they are also objects, to be dumped into the garbage when they no longer have a use. This level of misogyny is so blatant—the narrator even makes a joke about it at one point—that the audience is left to wonder where this sexism stems from. Regardless of its roots, the reader understands through statements such as this the reason why the narrator’s relationship with Aisling—or any other woman for that matter—cannot work out: the narrator does not consider women to be people.

“I’m nothing special, but I’m 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.” 

The narrator uses eyes as a reflection of self-identity. In this case, he describes how his eyes are able to reflect the selves of the women he hurts; it is this reflection that these women find appealing and beautiful. In this way, the narrator hypothesizes that it is not himself that these women find attractive, but rather their own reflection in his eyes, like Narcissus staring into the water. In fact, the narrator makes an implicit connection to this, as he equates his own eyes with the sea. The narrator projects his own narcissism onto the personalities of the women he tortures. He believes that these women are only admiring their own reflection and are not admiring himself. This may or may not be true, but it is most telling about the character of the narrator, who is suspicious of other people and believes everyone to be as narcissistic as himself. In some way, he also seems to believe that this absolves him from guilt: because these women are just as self-centered as he is, he does not feel bad about hurting them.

“‘Hurt people hurt people.’” 

The simplicity of this adage makes it all the more impactful, as does its repetition. The narrator believes that logic as simple as this negates his responsibility to other people. Essentially, because the logic is so simple even a child could follow it, it stands to reason that this is a natural truth; in this way, the narrator evades culpability for actions by disguising them in the cloak of objective truth. Similarly, the repetitive phraseology belies the idea that there are multiple people who participate in this kind of behavior, as the first half of the sentence mirrors the second half. The narrator implies that the women he has hurt have also hurt or are currently hurting other people; because everyone is doing it, he believes that it is acceptable to act in this way. This perception once again allows his behavior to appear acceptable, although, for the most part, his audience will disagree.

“A sitcom I had to sit through. But it was okay, because I knew I’d be writing her out of the series.” 

The narrator suffers from a complete disassociation with reality. He does not conceptualize other people—especially women—as people; rather, they exist merely as characters on a television show. Regarding the television show, the narrator serves both as its author and as the protagonist, living in a wholly solipsistic reality wherein he is the only person who matters yet is also afforded semi-divine capabilities. This series of his own making is also, notably, a tragedy, as the narrator repeatedly alludes to, making himself the victim, despite his sadism. 

“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 ‘misogynist.’ I remember thinking it hilarious that it had ‘Miss’ as a prefix.” 

Again, the narrator justifies his actions in order to attempt to persuade the audience that he is not culpable—or perhaps, less culpable—for them. He believes that other men engage in the same behavior in order to have sex; therefore, just because his motivation is not the same, i.e. he does not care about having sex, his actions are somehow justified as a result of their ubiquity. This is, quite frankly, an absurd and childish argument, belying the narrator’s own stunted emotional growth. He finds this whole thing to be a game that is best summed up by a few sharp quips, thinking himself exceedingly clever in coming up with these mottos or mantras. He wants the audience to be impressed by his wit, but the audience is only horrified by his apathy and sadism. The narrator places great importance on intelligence but none on empathy, as he does not possess the capacity to empathize with other people. His use of humor similarly betrays his lack of emotional maturity; like a child, he is unable to see why some things—like misogyny, for example—should not be laughed at. He finds humor in other people’s pain, completely disassociating the pain that he can feel from that which others feel as well. He does not consider other people to be like himself but rather believes that he is superior; ergo, their pain can be mocked as it cannot equate to the pain that he—a self-purportedly superior being—feels.

“Then came Emily. But she doesn’t really count because she was as good if not better at whatever this is than I was. I kind of fell for her. Laura […] made full use of the men that passed through […].” 

Although this statement is made by the narrator merely as an aside, it is incredibly telling in concerns to the narrator’s self-conception. Essentially, his own words betray him, as he is beholden to the truth and yet simultaneously undone by it. He maintains that he has hurt a number of women, recreating himself as a sadistic Casanova who leaves broken women in his wake. Yet in reality, several of the women seem to also use him and perhaps not to be so debilitated by his games. Under the auspices of telling the truth, the narrator unconsciously admits to a disconnect between his self-perception and the reality of his situation. In this way, the audience is left to question whether or not the narrator is delusional, so enraptured in his own narcissism that he believes to have a greater effect on these women than he actually does.

“Now we were cooking. Her eyes widened. I saw how she tried to keep her outrage to herself. But it was too late, I was already in there. I could almost see out through her eyes. She couldn’t hide. Not from me. I was the undercover cop. I knew all her moves. I’d helped her create them. This was too easy. ‘Your tits sag.’ This I delivered like a punch. I leaned back to better view the effect.” 

The narrator conflates words with violence by using the corporeality of Pen’s body against her. He verbally assaults her physical being, believing this to be the most egregious harm he can perpetrate. In this way, the narrator betrays his own beliefs regarding women: he views them entirely as bodies. This view of womanhood as explicitly tied to physicality also explains why he focuses so much on women’s eyes. He believes in the physical appearance of pain and even goes so far as attempting to empathize—albeit in an incredibly sadistic way—through Pen’s eyes. The narrator uses eyes to form a connection with other people in order to understand their thoughts and feelings, and, in many cases, to sense the pain he causes them. It would seem that he needs this physical connection to others’ bodies in order both to separate them from himself and even to define himself, implying he lacks a concrete sense of self. Rather, it would appear that he exists only in relation to others. In this way, the narrator looks to inflict pain on others to ensure that he himself really exists.  

“Her face looking up at me in disbelief, her chin buried under her pushed-up jumper and bra. Eyes wide. Childlike. And I left her there like that, I never saw her again. Later, she left a message on my machine saying I’d raped her. Emotionally speaking, maybe I did rape her, but physically she was up for it. No question about it. She was loving it. I could see her already storing away the memories as I fucked her. Her face scanning up and down, recording the images like a flesh-covered camera.” 

The narrator’s indication of the child-like aspect of the woman’s wide eyes makes the audience wonder if she was scared when this event was occurring, especially considering the narrator’s admission that he just left her on the floor and never saw her again. Upon reading this, the audience cannot help but agree with the young woman, as the incident in question reads more like a rape than it does consensual sex. Despite the narrator’s protestations, which include the prototypical rapist’s rationalization that the woman wanted it, it seems as though the woman is storing evidence instead of enjoying herself. In fact, the narrator reflects so little on the woman’s emotions that it becomes impossible for the audience to believe that the woman did in fact either enjoy or want this, hence the woman’s disbelief as she looks up at the narrator. However, the narrator’s egotism prevents him from admitting that he is a rapist. After all, he truly believes himself to be the most charming person and cannot possibly imagine women not wanting to have sex with him, which later possibly ties into his seemingly bizarre obsession with Aisling. 

“He immediately head-butted me with such force that I was able to see blood dollop into my pint glass. And I debated whether I should try to strain the blood through my teeth in order to salvage the inch of cider left in the bottom of the glass. I began to see it as important that I contain the dripping blood in the glass. Mustn’t for some reason get the place all bloody.” 

The narrator suffers from a strange disassociation with his body and possibly even with reality when he drinks. He becomes so consumed with his consumption of alcohol that nothing else seemingly matters, including his own discomfort. Of course, this could be a result of alcohol’s numbing capacity in terms of dulling physical pain; however, the narrator’s simultaneous concern that he not bleed all over the dive bar belies something more sinister than mere alcoholism. Rather, the narrator seems obsessed with control, especially in terms of controlling his own body. He does not seem to have a clear sense of self and so has little control over his emotions; however, he can control his body and so detaches himself from it in order to exert some semblance of authority over his life.

“The Dubliner looked as if he’d just had sex with me. It had taken me this long to realize I’d been head-butted. There was no pain. Just a dimming of lights. Like someone turning down one of those knobs inside a living room door [….]So there I was holding a half-pint of my own blood and he wants me in the worst possible way.” 

The narrator conflates violence with sex during his barroom brawl, which is not so much a brawl as him getting head-butted and then saved from a serious beat-down. The audience is left to wonder why the narrator chooses to talk about the Dubliner like this; to the narrator, it seems that sex is a violent act and perhaps vice versa, that violence is also sexual. This conflation of violence with sex demonstrates the narrator’s deeply problematic and unhealthy ideas concerning sex, including the very last sentence of the quotation, which could just as easily be sexual as it is violent. In this way, the narrator blurs the social distinction between sex and violence by eradicating notions of consent. In the narrator’s world, consent does not seem to exist, which then eliminates the differentiation between sex and violence. In this way, the narrator’s view of sex is more closely related to rape than it is to consensual intercourse, as he seems to believe that sex is naturally violent. 

I heard ‘Kill me.’ If I hurt this woman enough, I could nudge her over the edge into suicide. I’d be helping her do what she really wanted, and it’d be a good test of my powers. It thrilled me to think I could cause a death by proxy. But she proved too strong or too stupid or both or something.” 

The narrator is enticed by the idea of playing God with this woman’s life, as it will break the barrier between emotional and physical trauma permanently. He believes that if he can hurt her enough, she will take her own life, and the ability to have that kind of control over someone else thrills him. He even constructs himself as semi-divine, believing that he has powers that can be exerted over other people. These powers are not like those of normal mortals; rather, they make the narrator exceptional, or at least that is what he believes. In the end, he is unsuccessful in convincing this woman to take her own life, and he is irritated by this lack of success. However, it is important to note that he does not find fault with himself for his lack of success; rather, he places the blame on the woman for either being too strong or too stupid. This projection demonstrates the narrator’s inability to accept criticism and/or his own impotence, a direct result of his narcissism and exceptionalism. 

“Somewhere out there, these girls are getting on with their lives, and I want them to know what happened to me. That even though I’m walking around free in the world, I did get a dose of my own medicine. And it doesn’t matter even if they read these pages. This is just me trying to be honest with myself. Like a 151-page note to self. I’m not looking for sympathy. I’m far more interested in symmetry.” 

Although the narrator says this under the auspices of letting these women know that he has paid for his actions, he acknowledges that this narrative is not about these women: it is about him. He wants these women to know what happened to him because he believes that he is important and so his fate should be important to these women as well. He believes he still haunts them or at the very least still occupies cognitive space, even if this might not be the case. He believes himself to be so special that no person could possibly get over losing him or having him hurt her. However, the latter half of this quotation betrays him, when he admits that it does not matter if these women read this narrative. Rather, he is writing this narrative to himself, as he is the only person who matters, the protagonist of this great tragedy that fate or the universe has created solely for him. Because he is unable to care about other people or even consider other people to be humans, he does not care about their sympathy, just as he has never cared about their feelings. Rather, he only cares about them inasmuch as they are able to reflect himself. In this way, he cares about symmetry: the symmetry of their reflection of his self and the symmetry in terms of his narrative, as believes that this proves that fate and the universe have rendered him exceptional.

“Now, I don’t know about the rest of you irreligious fucks, but in Ireland we don’t stand for that kind of behavior. I waited outside the pub for the beating I knew I was about to receive. Didn’t matter what the extenuating circumstances were. I’d hit a girl.” 

The irony of the narrator’s moral outrage is palpable, considering he spends most of his time and energy coming up with ways to traumatize women. He also expressly conflates emotional trauma with physical pain, thereby negating whatever alleged line he refuses to cross in terms of physical abuse. However, it is interesting to note that he specifically addresses the audience in this quotation, breaking the fourth wall between himself and his readership. However, it would appear that he believes many of his readers to be other men, as it would not make sense to address women in this manner. This perceived audience then directly conflicts with that of the previous quotation, who he imagines as being the women he has wronged. In this way, the narrator implies that the audience is not these women, but other men like himself,men who will understand his story. Once again, the narrative shies away from any attempt to empathize with people other than himself, as this narrative is really all about the narrator. Every other character exists merely in a supporting role to the narrator’s tragedy.

“If I’d have known what was about to unfold, I would have stopped everything and gone home to live with my mother.” 

This quotation exemplifies the narrator’s use of retrospection and foreshadowing. As the narrative is told in the past tense, the narrator knows more than he allows the audience to know, rendering himself omniscient although not omnipotent. The narrator seems to get off on the fact that he knows more than his audience, in keeping with his narcissistic personality and egotism. He titillates the audience with promises of what is to come, holding all the cards and only permitting the audience to see what he wants them to see. The narrator is able to admit that he did not know things back then without making himself appear to be ignorant. He very much wants to be in control of the narrative, and he plays with his audience, demonstrating his control over his readership. In this position as both omniscient narrator and protagonist, the narrator has constructed himself to be a kind of epic hero of his own tragedy, imbued with semi-divine powers and a narrative that he believes reflects his own exceptionalism. 

“Saint Lacroix is the capital of rehab. They have more rehab centers than anywhere else in the States […] For every year you stay sober, you receive a little metallic coin called a chip. This bar offers free booze for one night to any lapsed member of AA willing to spend his chip. The wall behind the bar is covered with chips.” 

The narrator paints a harrowing picture of Saint Lacroix, Minnesota, characterizing it as America’s rehab capital. The city does not in fact exist, but perhaps that is beside the point, as even the city exists as a reflection of the narrator himself. In the midst of joining AA and admitting his alcoholism, it is important that the narrator also go to a place that reflects this transition in his life; hence, he somewhat serendipitously happens to get a job in the nation’s rehab capital, although whether the audience chooses to believe him is up to them. Similarly, the audience might be slightly confused how and/or why the narrator knows that this bar’s wall is covered in AA chips. Seeing as how cynical the narrator is, the audience does not expect him to simply accept AA’s programming/the Disease Model of alcoholism; therefore, one could intuit that the narrator has in fact visited this bar himself. It stands to reason, then, that the narrator at some point fell off the wagon and is one of the people who paid a chip to drink for free. However, the narrator never admits this, indicating that perhaps he is not being as truthful as he would like his audience to believe. 

“I was in a lot of pain you see. But it had been caused by an abstract blade. What I mean is, the pain was physical, the cause wasn’t. I suppose some people would say I was suffering from a broken heart. Or you might say it’s just life. Or maybe it’s alcoholism minus the alcohol. After all, I’m five years sober at this point.” 

Again, the narrator conflates psychological pain with physical pain by abstracting the blade used to cause damage. He maintains that psychological trauma results in physical pain, although he is not the first person to believe this. Many scientific studies have backed up this idea, indicating that it is in fact possible to suffer physical pain as a result of psychological trauma. However, as the narrator states, psychological trauma is a fact of life: bad things happen. He also alludes that this could be the lingering effects of his alcohol dependency; he no longer has alcohol to use as a crutch for numbing his psychological pain, as it were, and now must feel the full force of this trauma. Herein perhaps lies the reason why the narrator becomes so obsessed with Aisling: the pain she causes him is the first that he has had to deal with since he gave up alcohol. As a result of this, he no longer can numb the pain. Essentially, he feels what rejection is like without alcohol to palliate it. Due to his narcissism, he finds rejection to be so painful that he becomes obsessed with Aisling, even though the two have not really spent that much time together. It is not Aisling he is obsessed with, then, but rather the rejection that she represents. He cannot get over her because he has no way to deal with emotional pain that does not involve alcohol. Essentially, his lack of coping mechanisms makes him more susceptible to the lingering effects of emotional pain. 

“This is going to sound awful, but I don’t care. I’m way past embarrassment. You can’t hurt a man with a pinprick when he’s already for a spear in his chest. I swear to you that she looked just like the pictures of the Virgin Mary in Irish Catholic homes. I kid you not. The Virgin Fuckin’ Mary. ‘You look great,’ I said, motioning toward the hostess stand. ‘Thanks, so do you.’ That was her first lie.” 

The narrator further reflects on the pain that Aisling caused him, using the hyper-phallic spear as a metaphor. He maintains that he is too brokenhearted to feel embarrassment anymore, although it seems that he rarely feels embarrassment to begin with. Regardless, he finds that Aisling exactly resembles the mother of Jesus Christ. In this way, the narrator feels like Aisling links him to his childhood, as his parents would have undoubtedly had pictures of the Virgin Mary in their house when he was growing up. The Virgin Mary is frequently associated with purity; in fact, she embodies purity within the Christian religion. Part of the narrator’s compulsion towards Aisling, then, might be a compulsion towards this perception of purity. However, he notes that this resemblance is only skin-deep; she does not pretend to be chaste or pure by any stretch of the imagination. Part of his obsession with her could also be resultant from his desire to despoil her; that is, if he believes her to resemble purity, he wants to be the first to taste that purity, as it were. It is important to note that this conceptualization of Aisling has nothing to do with Aisling herself, or her personality, but rather entirely revolves around the narrator’s projections. In this way, the narrator’s conceptualization of Aisling’s very appearance is reminiscent of their relationship in its totality, a relationship that only seems to exist within the narrator’s mind and as a result of the narrator’s desires.

“She was very attentive. That was it. She knew how to handle a guy. She made you feel like it was okay to be a guy. To be yourself. This, it seems to me, is the most devastating weapon of all in a woman’s arsenal. If you can encourage the man to be himself, to reveal his character, his ways, then you know how to navigate him, and therefore he will never be able to hide from you.” 

The narrator envisions himself as this complex creature deserving of continuous attention from the people who surround him. However, from the very beginning, Aisling knows what kind of man he is; she has his number as soon as she meets him. The narrator cannot fool her with his poorly disguised self-praise; she is not impressed by him simply because she has met many more impressive people than the narrator and has done things the narrator only talks about. In essence, she is more interesting than he is. However, the narrator is not used to coming across women like Aisling. He is used to impressing everyone. It is particularly because he does not impress her that he becomes so obsessed with her. Due to his own narcissism, he believes that anyone who is not impressed by him must be extraordinary in their own right. As such, he projects these ridiculous assumptions onto his so-called relationship with Aisling without ever getting to know her. Because she is able to immediately assess him and is not impressed by what she finds, she is comfortable around him. As a self-possessed woman, she does not need his approval and therefore can get him to admit things he never thought he would tell anyone. He cannot surprise her, and he is fascinated by this, a fascination he misinterprets for love. 

“It’s important which charity you affiliate yourself with […] A charity that raises funds to help addicts get off heroin isn’t nearly as reliable or photogenic or even pitiable as one that treats kids with AIDS. Adults with AIDS are not good. It could be their fault. No, kids are good. Kids with AIDS are better. Sorry, but it’s true. It’s not the fault of the ad agencies. It’s actually your fault.” 

In one of the rare moments in which the narrator is not discussing himself, he actually has an incredibly acute and incisive criticism of American charities. In the U.S., many charities are run like a business and are based off capitalist ideals. They use advertisers like the narrator in order to enhance their marketability; however, because they are also all competing for the same money, they must make sure to do whatever they can to increase their own marketability, namely by preying upon people’s compassion. In order to do this, many charities will prefer to give the money they earn to children, as children are infinitely more pitiable than adults. Even though the narrator, as an advertising executive, plays into this capitalist extortion of social pathos, he maintains that it is not his fault. Rather, it is the audience’s fault, as they are the ones who are more likely to give their money to children with AIDS than to adults afflicted by the same disease. The narrator projects his own guilt onto his readers, removing himself from culpability. These are the same techniques he uses to deny responsibility for any of his actions, all of which stem from complete and total narcissism. 

“Being in that camp, with birds singing and children everywhere being so cute and nice to each other, had awoken something familial in me. I saw Aisling and me living somewhere wooded like this. Light dappling our happiness, laughter echoing around trees before we shushed each other lest we wake the baby. How fortunate we’d consider ourselves to be that our child was not infected with some horrible disease or other. My future wife’s phone number burned away against my thigh.” 

The narrator pretends as though he does not want the prototypical American Dream with the family and the white picket fence. However, as soon as he meets Aisling, this is what he imagines: a family, happy and laughing. The narrator believes that he is unique, that he is special, and so he cannot admit that he wants the same thing everyone else does. In essence, he is a fraud. He also has no concept of reciprocity in relationships. In the context of his fantasy, Aisling becomes his future wife—his property. He cannot even conceive of her rejecting him because he has no concept of her as an individual person. Rather, he can only conceptualize her in relationship to himself. 

“She thought I was laughing at her. Also, I was nervous. It had been (yes, we know) five years. We rolled around and basically kept ourselves busy till dawn. I can remember her on top of me at one point. Her long rich brown hair falling forward as she pumped me. The hair formed a darkness that looked like the interior of the hood of the Grim Reaper. Like something out of one of those horror movies where from the darkness you see the faint glint of two little red beads.” 

The narrator plays with the concepts of darkness and light. Here, the audience sees the Virgin Mary’s fall into the Grim Reaper wherein her eyes becomes red: a horrible foreshadowing of what the narrator believes is yet to come. However, the way in which the narrator constructs this scene feels very contrived, like the set of a movie. This is the part in which the tragic hero has a premonition of what is to come, a vision given to him by the gods. The narrator communicates this vision to the audience in a way that feels insincere, as though he is trying too hard. Luckily, the audience will probably see the narrator for what he is: a narcissist who so truly believes in the beauty of his epic tragedy that he alters reality in order to fit his perceptions. 

“I did everything I could not to call Aisling until I got back to Saint Lacroix. I really didn’t want to go back at all. She was not the only subject that held any interest for me. I hated my big wonderful job. ‘Hated’ wasn’t even the right word. It was too active. This felt more like apathy.” 

Here, the narrator admits to the audience—though not to himself—that he conceives of Aisling as a subject. She is not once considered to be a person in her own right. Rather, she serves as the narrator’s mechanism for escape from the life and job he so loathes. He projects his hopes and desires onto her, never stopping to ask if she feels the same way. 

“She said she’d love to play chess with me someday. I said I’d thought that being beaten at chess was doubly humiliating for me because I fancied myself a bit of a strategist. Her eyes glinted. She was having fun. I couldn’t help shifting uncomfortably in my chair. She sat back and watched me squirm. She looked […] relaxed. Not so innocent now. More at ease with herself. Totally in control. I envied her this feeling, even though I didn’t know what she was in control of. I would soon find out.” 

This scene between the narrator and Aisling mirrors the scene from the beginning of the novel, wherein the narrator begins to dismantle his relationship with Pen. However, the narrator’s relationship with Pen lasted for almost five years, as opposed to the brief fling he has with Aisling, which lasts mere months. In fact, it seems as though his so-called relationship with Aisling is mostly her trying to dismantle his obsession with her. The actual time that they spend together is fairly paltry and seems to exist mostly in the narrator’s fantasies. Regardless of the relative length or actuality in these relationships, what is important for the narrator, and possibly why he becomes so obsessed with Aisling, lies in her control of the situations at hand. The narrator does not like feeling out of control of his life; one could argue that he ruins relationships and quits drinking specifically because he wants to have more control over his life. Similarly, part of the reason that the narrator seems to hate his job at KF is specifically because he feels he has little control there; they seem to own him, preventing him from moving forward. As such, he is drawn to the ease with which Aisling controls social situations: she is a woman who is comfortable with herself, a fact which the narrator finds equally threatening and fascinating.