An empty lie September 28, 1985



 Lies! What a curse they are.

And how they somehow manage to slip into your life and make things nasty.

The local pizzeria owner was talking to me about getting change and I told him Fotomat had a special deal with the bank to deliver us change, when he knew we didn’t.

I don’t even know why I lied, and immediately regretted it, feeling the trap close around me and earning lack of respect from the man, who also dealt with the same bank.

I’m not sure whether it is the dishonesty that bothers me or my getting caught.

This all reminded me of Joanne up at the mall, who notoriously invested outrageous fibs, or worse, myself when young when I lied more than I told the truth, perhaps loving the challenge of getting out of it afterwards.

The last time I felt this humiliated when I went to a fancy party in New York City when I foolishly said something stupid to one of the women there, blaming whatever it was I had said on being high, but that wasn’t it, a fib easily disproved, and worse, we both knew it was a fib the minute it left my lips.

I’m notorious for being socially ignorant, as proved by a similar  faux pas at an earlier party at the same place when I struck up a conversation with a Broadway show fashion designer, agreeing to let him take me to one of his plays, only to learn later he was gay and thought I was gay as well, and it took some convincing during  a later phone conversation to make him realize otherwise.

I’m usually depressed for day after I do something stupid, re-running the scene over and over in my head until it turns into a bad dream, doing the “What if I had said…” bit in my head, long after it was too late.

I learned to lie as a kid. I was better at it then. A real story teller, building up my case with lot of phony evidence until I’d almost convinced myself of their validity.  I mostly did it to keep my uncles happy, in a house so full of conflict it was the only way I could survive. I lived in a mad house full of angry uncles, each of whom had different expectations of me, often conflicting, so as to make it almost impossible to actually satisfy one without offending one or more of the others. So, I lied, telling each what they wanted to hear, providing enough back up so that the lie did not unravel immediately, and I would be out of the vicinity by the time it did.

Back then, I lied to feel important, especially at school, or to escape something I was supposed to do --such as my homework. My dog didn’t just eat my homework but was part of an odyssey so perfect in detail and drama teachers hung on every word to see where the tail ended up before they finally gave me detention.

But over the years I’ve lost the taste and knack for dishonesty, lacking energy or conviction for such tales, although at moments such as with the pizza guy, something blurts out of me before I can take it back, and so wind up humiliated for no reason.

What was the point of this lie? I wasn’t getting anything out of it, escape from my uncles or stalling my teachers from punishing me.

I suspect there is nothing worse than an empty lie – except maybe having to live with it afterwards.


1985 Menu 


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