Diary of an Oxygen Thief

The narrator talks about how he used to like hurting girls emotionally, specifically about how he watched their eyes, to wait until they were in love with the narrator, and then try to see if he could kill their souls. The narrator talks about how Aisling killed his soul just like he killed the souls of his victims: “Justice was done” (2). The narrator says the guilt set in after he stopped drinking, and speaks of how he ignored girls for five years after joining Alcoholics Anonymous.

The narrator reflects on his drinking problem and how, at first, he refuses to admit that he has one. When he was drinking, he used to get into fights a lotby running his mouth and purposefully taunting large men in bars by questioning their sexuality or mocking their lisps. He remembers moving on to women, so he wouldn’t get beaten to death, and living for the hurt he could cause them. He reflects on his ease of ability to find work as a freelance advertiser, which allowed him to drink copiously, just like everyone else in the business, as well as have a constant supply of women he could torture.