Lying Seaweed

Lie:  To give false information intentionally with intent to deceive; to convey a false image or impression.

I spent many years perfecting my ability to leave other people with an incorrect version of the facts, of reality itself, all while carefully avoiding the use of words that were untrue.  My view was this: if I could lie without making provably false statements then I was off the hook.  It didn't matter to me if I led you to believe something that wasn't true as long as I could say I didn't specifically say untrue things.  I'm fucking exhausted just writing about this tortuous process so you can imagine how awful it was to have to live with myself after I convinced someone that something was true which was - in fact - not true.  I was proud of this ability.  It was a mark of my cleverness to shunt someone off onto a trail of false facts without getting caught.

Let's not mince words: I like to lie; I'm good at it; and I have a deeply innate ability to do it.  I'm sure I could beat a lie detector machine.  I'm sure the needle would exhibit nary a flicker.

Costanza: "Remember - it's not a lie if you don't believe it."

I had lunch today with a guy who lives in my mobile home park.  He's an OK guy although I would have not gone out to lunch with him if I could have figured out a way to do it without being a total dick, which I could not figure out how to do.  I thought about lying but decided against it.  I didn't think he would believe I was dying of dysentery and was under federally mandated quarantine.

Guy: "SuperK's golfing Wednesday, right?  Maybe we could go out to lunch that day?"
Me:  "No."

I used to be a total dick.   Now I'm a total dick with a conscience.

At lunch he told this story about smoking a couple of joints in the community clubhouse after the manager had left for the day.  A few residents were drinking some beer and playing pool - totally acceptable -  and decided to blow some weed.  You can't, of course, smoke anything in the clubhouse because of insurance regulations.  I don't know why these guys didn't just step outside for a minute.  This is California, after all - more people smoke dope here than drink beer.  I'm not even sure it's against the law anymore.  You're as likely to get offered some pot at a dinner party as you are a mixed drink.

Anyway, like all people who smoke a bunch of dope my guy was stupid enough to leave his utility bill in the pot-drenched room for the manager to find when she came back to lock up later that evening.  The next day she called my guy to tell him she found the bill, taking the opportunity to mention that the smell of dope in the pool room almost knocked her down.  She didn't accuse him directly but the comment hung in the air, hash-like.

My guy did the evasive dance where he didn't admit to anything while not saying unequivocally: "I didn't smoke dope in that room."  He tried to convince me that he had gotten away with something.

I may have mentioned I'm not . . . er . . . crazy about this guy?  At the very least I don't care if he doesn't like me.

"So you lied," I said flatly.  He laughed and he equivocated, but he was caught and I wasn't letting him off the hook.  If you would like to lie I'm OK with that.  If you mention, in passing, that you lied I'll let it go.  If you tell a long, involved story about lying I'm kind of stuck.  What was I going to do?  Agree with him?  Change the subject?  Share a lie of my own?

The thing about trying to live an ethical, moral-ish life is that I can't do that kind of stuff anymore.  It's not so much the lying itself - it's the getting caught lying.  Lying got me out of a lot of tight spots but getting caught lying provided me with some of my greatest humiliations.

Let me blunt - my greatest motivation for not lying is that I cannot STAND getting caught in the lie.  We all know that feeling when someone who has just caught you in a lie is looking at you silently.  Really awful, that feeling.  I avoid it like the plague.

So my guy, the next time he sees this woman, is going to have live with the knowledge that she almost certainly knows he lied.  At the very least she suspects it.  So there will be a degree of skepticism whenever he talks to her.  There will be an uncomfortable suspicion that maybe the lying is continuing.

The best thing about telling the truth is that you don't have to remember what you said.