ESSAYS
There Have Been Many LiesLOS ANGELES 30 August 2009 |
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I had a friend in grade school named Krista. I didn’t like when she came over to play with me because when she was around I had to eat dry cat food.
It was my own fault. I told her I ate dry cat food, that I enjoyed it. It wasn’t true. I don’t know why I said it. She didn’t believe me, so I had to prove it to her by, indeed, eating dry cat food in front of her.
It’s not that the taste is so horrible. It’s really a texture thing. It crumbles dryly in your mouth, and because the flavor isn’t fantastic, your mouth doesn’t respond with much saliva. The result is a mouthful of paste that tastes very little like the “Chicken Dinner” it claims to be.
A few years later, I was thrilled to discover that Krista and I would not be attending the same middle school, which meant our friendship would likely end, and I would no longer feel compelled to eat dry cat food.
Within two months of middle school, however, I made the mistake of telling a select group of people that I was not human, but rather a very sophisticated robot. “Shut up!” they all said in disbelief. “It’s true,” I lied, smirking.
While living the robot lie, I was simultaneously working very hard to keep up a lie I’d told to another group of people: at night, when no one could see me, I would sprout wings and I could fly. They believed me because I was (and am still) able to do unnatural things with my shoulder bones. “The feathers come out of here,” I said, gesturing to the tips of my freak-bones. They nodded.
When I was very young, my parents told me that when I lied, my forehead would blink red and white. This is how they knew when I was lying, they told me.
“Why doesn’t it blink when I lie to myself in the mirror?” I asked.
“Because you know you’re lying,” Dad said.
I only believed it for a few days. I lied to them on a number of occasions, and my forehead sure as shit didn’t alert them of the facts. To be safe, however, I took the necessary precaution of sneaking into my mother’s bathroom and chopping my hair crudely with a pair of old scissors, giving myself bangs to cover my treasonous forehead.
Later in life, when I was in college, I didn’t really lie so much. On the other hand, I did have what I consider to be my most embarrassing moment resulting from my dishonesty at that time.
I was friends with a group of guys. The entire group was miserable, bitter, and mean. Frequently I became annoyed with them, because I was also miserable, bitter, and mean. One particular night, I drove to one of their houses, where we were all meeting for a lovely evening of being miserable, bitter, and mean to each other. At some point in the middle of the night, I decided that I felt like walking home. I told the guys I was leaving, but that I was walking. They urged me to drive.
“It’s late, it’s not a great neighborhood, it’s dark, we’ll worry about you.”
I refused.
“Can we walk with you?” they asked.
“Fuck off,” I said.
Miserable, bitter, mean.
I walked home. There were no incidents during the walk home. No one bothered me, I made it back in one piece, and I went to my bedroom. Then my phone started ringing. The guys were calling me to see that I’d arrived alive. “Ugh,” I thought, and I didn’t answer. They continued to call me, over and over, and I continued to refuse the calls.
About twenty minutes later, I heard the three of them speaking to each other as they were walking up the stairs to my door. One of these guys was my roommate. He was going to open the door, and they would all flood in and annoy me. I wanted to be alone! Had I not made this clear enough to them? What assholes!
So, I hid. I hid under my desk.
They came in, and as I was hiding under my desk, I heard what they were saying.
“Do you think something happened? Where could she be?”
And then I realized that they were frightened for my safety. Yes, it seems obvious that this is what they’d be all flustered about now, but at the time, I was surprised. But, because I was miserable, bitter, and mean, I wasn’t touched by their concern. I was annoyed.
Fuck those guys, I thought. I’m going to stay right here under my desk and they can act like hysterical women for as long as they want.
They called a few of my other friends, asking around. One of them walked in my room. I held my breath as his legs moved by my hiding place. It was at this moment that I realized that what I was doing was really stupid. Really, really stupid. But I was locked in now – no way out. Or, no way out that included the preservation of my dignity.
This went on for quite some time. Eventually, I realized that they weren’t leaving. They weren’t calming down. If anything, their panic was escalating. I had one option, and that was to emerge from my pathetic hiding place and approach them with my tail between my legs.
So I did. And they were very angry. One of them even shoved me, but that was only cause he was in love with me and he was reacting strongly to the realization that he was in love with a stupid cunt.
People do silly things for silly reasons. Even after they grow up, they continue to do silly things for silly reasons. And, at least in my case, when I’ve looked at some of the things I’ve done, I deal with enough self-hatred and embarrassment that I don’t really need to be encouraged to reflect upon those actions critically. I already know I’m an idiot. I’ve known for quite some time.
I think the lies people tell are indicative of the world they’d prefer to live in to reality. If I could, indeed, sprout wings at night when no one was looking, I’d want for nothing. Similarly, having a complex system of wires and blinking lights beneath my skin seems a much more lovely existence than what is real, which is sticky, clogged organs and a mess of blood.
And while I certainly would like to maintain my diet of human food as opposed to dry cat food, I do wish that I favored the stuff for cats. It’s cheaper.
Lies will get you into trouble. But a world without lies is a bland, bland world.
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