I like lying. I think it’s fun. I used to use it to the detriment of myself, my education, and my relationships with friends and family. I essentially lied my way from 6th grade to 11th/12th grade or so. During that time I became extremely adept at distorting, manipulating, and figuring out how to make people believe what I believed/wanted them to believe. It was shameful, it was wrong, and I regret every time I told a lie when telling the truth would have been easier. That includes the many times I didn’t get caught in my lie. If I’d had a bit more guts and self confidence my life would have been a little easier. But instead I chose to lie.
Then for a while I went on a big jag of truth telling. I was more succinct, and it was much easier to talk to people. The drawback was that I didn’t feel nearly as creative. Lying caused me problems, sure. But that was when I was lying about things that mattered, like where I had been, or whether I was failing. Lying when it didn’t matter was fun. For example, if I met someone and they asked me what I did, and I was pretty sure I would never see them again, I would just make something up. I’ve had any number of professions, based solely on what I know about what my friends do. (For example, I once spoke for over an hour with a group of construction workers about some of the funny things that happened to me at construction sites. I’ve never worked construction in my life.)
The tricks are simple. Don’t lie about things you don’t know about. Borrow from what you know instead. Monitor people’s language usage, and rephrase what they say. Most importantly, believe the lie. Visualize yourself in whatever position you want to be in. The only place I still use this to my advantage is calling out of work sick. I’ve actually found myself slightly ill after working up the story about why I won’t be coming in. It’s that affect that my lies had on myself that helped convince me that lying wasn’t a good way to go. And why I don’t fake call out of work very much.
The reason I lie about this inconsequential stuff is because I can, and because it’s fun, and because I don’t need to trick myself into believing whatever silly exaggeration I’m spewing. Why tell someone you’re a boring file clerk when you can exaggerate and tell them you do what your boss does? Or what their boss does? I do this especially when people strike up a conversation with no intention of caring what your answer is. To me, faux conversations are similar to someone asking what you do, and you replying, “Hamburger.” (Tip of the hat to The Malcontent, I think.) They don’t care what you do, they’re just thoughtlessly engaging in social rules. Instead of being verbally nonsensical and saying something like hamburger, I’m simply realistically nonsensical, and decide to culture jam through lying.
Because of this, I make up stories just to see if people will buy them, and frequently exaggerate my true stories. But I don’t exaggerate in a way to top other people’s stories, I exaggerate to see how far I can stretch it. Where does credulity stop and incredulity begin? That’s the limit I try to test. This has caused a) contention with one girlfriend, b) a frequently used system of “truthchecking” signals by a second girlfriend, c) and, most fondly, the slow conversion of ACWGF from someone gullible to someone who can pull the wool over. ACWGF got me the other night, and I must say, it was a proud moment for me.
So why am I telling all of you this? Well, because when we were flying back from Chicago (more on that later) I experienced some of the most horrible pain I have ever experienced in my life. When I was 12 I fell down and my two front teeth were broken off INSIDE my gums and dangling into my mouth by the roots. At least then the pain was centralized to my face and teeth. This pain was horrendous and it swallowed my head in a cloud of piercing, unrelenting, ever increasing torment.
As the captain announced we were beginning our descent something popped inside my head and my ears had the type of pain you get when you swim to the bottom of a twelve foot pool. Except I felt I was at about 20 or 24 feet. My head felt like it was going to implode and explode at the same time. It was the same feeling I had gotten when flying into Arizona. Since then I have never traveled without my opium (in Percocet form). This flight was no exception… until I remembered that ACWGF and I had given our luggage to her parents to drive home so we wouldn’t have to drag the luggage around Chicago all day. Damnit! Luckily, this time I remembered what The Malcontent had told me after I told him about the horrible pain from Arizona, and I tried the Valsalva Maneuver. It worked on the ears, but the damage to my head had already been done. For the rest of the flight I kept my eyes closed and tried not to vomit. I scarfed the 4 aspirin ACWGF got from the flight attendant, and when we got off the plane I put on my sunglasses in the airport at 11pm. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t even repeat a simple sentence to clarify a question from ACWGF. When I got home I took some NyQuil to knock myself out, and when I woke up the next morning my head managed to return to a pain level somewhere near the worst headache I had ever had, but nowhere near the unholy skull-fucking that Satan himself may haven taken part in from the previous night.
I haven’t stretched my experience in the least, and the whole time I had the headache all I could think of were metaphors for the pain, i.e. nails in skull, kicked in head with steel tipped boots, fingers in eyeballs, head in a vice, etc. But I hesitated in using any of them because they all seemed to fall a bit short of the all encompassing pain the had enveloped my head, taken it hostage, and refused to let it go.
I am not exaggerating. There are no words for the pain I experienced, and even though my ears didn’t feel like they were about to pop, the pain this time was worse. More than a few times I hoped the plane would just land or crash so I could get better drugs, or in death at least the pain would be over. It was that kind of pain. I can’t imagine anything worse, and I wouldn’t wish that type of pain on anyone…
Anyone except people who don’t vote. Those fuckers deserve worse.
