Hurt people hurt people. 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 . He’s blinded by love. She by ambition. 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. "Kinky, artsy, and swoon-worthy." ― New York Magazine "The author does a great job. 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. 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. Scott Fitzgerald for the iPad generation." -- Richard Nash, author of What is the Business of Literature? Anonymous is the author of the New York Times bestseller Diary of an Oxygen Thief . The sequel Chameleon in a Candy Store , skewers the world of online dating while the third book Eunuchs and Nymphomaniacs chronicles his transition from unreliable narrator to unreliable publisher. The fourth and most recent addition The Shame Addict , is a provocative account of the narrator’s traumatic formative years in Ireland and fortuitous advertising career in London. Anonymous lives in New York. I liked hurting girls. Mentally, not physically, I never hit a girl in my life. Well, once. But that was a mistake. I'll tell you about it later. 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. Loved it. I didn't care how long it took either, because I was in no hurry. I'd wait until they were totally in love with me. Till the big saucer eyes were looking at me. I loved the shock on their faces. Then the glaze as they tried to hide how much I was hurting them. And it was legal. I think I killed a few of them. Their souls, I mean. It was their souls I was after. I know I came close a couple of times. But don't worry, I got my comeuppance. That's why I'm telling you this. Justice was done. Balance has been restored. The same thing happened to me, only worse. Worse because it happened to me. I feel purged now, you see. Cleansed. I've been punished, so it's okay to talk about it all. At least that's how it seems to me. I carried the guilt of my crimes around with me for years after I stopped drinking. I couldn't even look at a girl, much less believe I deserved to converse with one. Or maybe I was just afraid that they'd see through me. Either way, after getting into Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't even kiss a girl for five years. Seriously. Not so much as holding hands. I meant business. I think I always knew deep down I had a drinking problem. I just never got around to admitting it. I drank purely for effect. But then, as far as I was concerned, wasn't everyone doing the same thing? I started to realize something was wrong when I began to get beaten up. My mouth always got me into trouble, of course. I'd go up to the biggest guy in the place and look up his nostrils and call him a faggot. And then when he'd head-butt me, I'd say, "Call that a headbutt?" So the guy would do it again harder. The second time I'd have less to say. One of my "victims" stuck my head on an electric cooker ring. In Limerick. Stab City. I was lucky to get out of that house alive. He'd done it, though, because I'd been taking the pith out of hiths listhp. Maybe that's why I moved on to girls. More sophisticated, doncha know. And girls wouldn't beat me up. They'd just stare at me in disbelief and shock. Their eyes, you see. All the pretense and rules dissolved away. There was just the two of us and the pain. All those intimate moments, every little sigh, those gentle touches, the lovemaking, the confidences, the orgasms, the attempted orgasms-all mere fuel. The deeper in they were, the more beautiful they looked when the moment came. And I lived for the moment. I was working freelance in advertising all through this period in London. As an art director. A contradiction in terms if ever there was one. It's what I still do today. Strangely, I was always able to get money. Even in art school, I got a grant because my dad had just retired and I suddenly became eligible. And after that I got job after job without too much trouble. I never looked like a drunk, I just was one, and anyway in those days advertising was a far more boozy affair than it is today. Because I was freelance, I could be my own man, so to speak, and I would keep myself busy by ensuring I had dates lined up. None of the girls were supposed to know this. The idea was to have an impressive queue so that when one girl neared maturity-usually after about three or four dates with