Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

1/13/06


Today, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to discuss lying. We all do it; it’s just a part of the human animal. The reasons, or should I say motivations, for lying are simple; either we wish to portray ourselves in a better light or we wish to avoid unpleasant repercussions. To be fair, these are two sides of the same coin, which is a fancy, literary way of saying they’re the same fucking thing. I'm clever that way.

What I find most interesting about lying is that children do it in a much more specific way than us adults. Whenever children lie it is almost always because they don’t want to get in trouble for something they’ve done. Whenever adults lie it’s sometimes for that reason--“No, baby, I never even touched that girl!”--but more often because we don’t want to unnecessarily hurt someone’s feelings; “No, baby, you don’t look like a beached whale in that dress!” I have less problems with this last than most people, as it takes me significant cognoscente effort to realize sometimes people don’t actually want to hear the answer to what they’re asking. Also, I don’t so much care for people as a whole and being rude and blatantly honest--“You smell like cheese, please go over there,”--seems to be the best way to make people stop talking to you. Unfortunately this rarely seems to work as most people will think you’re being cleverly facetious. It’s a curse. But I digress.

Anyone who has spent a fair amount of time with young children will know that they are frighteningly honest when it comes to pointing out someone else’s foibles, but starkly restrained when it comes to their own. I’m curious as to when this practice makes a sort of homogenizing amalgam and adults start telling the truth in situations where they know the admittance of the truth, (and the good will about yourself connected to it,) outweighs the negative connotations of wrongdoing--“I’m sorry, I broke your lamp; I’ll pay for that,”--while compensating by more often lying about what they think of others. I suppose it’s all about rewards.

A person telling their friend that they broke their lamp or camera or dildo or whatever has a greater chance of being forgiven if they fess up to the minor crime than if they hide it under a pile of dirty towels and hope it’s never connected to them. On a completely unrelated note, I’d like Sharon to know that it wasn’t me who broke her dildo and hid it under a pile of towels in the bathroom…wasn’t me. So the payoff for telling the truth in this situation is large, (you look honest and upstanding and people like to fuck honest, upstanding individuals,) and the downside is low, (your friend will appear a petty, selfish prick if they make too big a deal of the affair; a negative reward for them.) But as taking responsibility for one’s actions increases, so does the lying about other people; to their face, at least.

For example, have you ever had a friend, (especially female; I find straight males care little for this,) ask you what you thought of their haircut, and despite the fact that it made them look like something out of Return to Ass-Face Mountain, you told them it looked smashing? Now why did you do that? It couldn’t possibly help the person in the long run; they’re walking around under the delirious impression that their finger-in-a-light-socket hairdo is flattering in anything brighter than the light from a firefly. No, in reality what you’re doing is verbally, (and untruthfully,) investing in a sort of good-will fund that ensures most people are not saying you’re an asshole behind your back. The fact that most adults are terrified other adults are being as big a liars as themselves by being nice to the front and catty behind their backs is a very amusing, self-perpetuating phenomenon of lies and half-truths that might be an actual incident of literal irony. All in all, adults understand the rewards for telling someone their ass is, yes, in fact the size of an industrial refrigerator are negligible and the detriment to you personally is high. Children, taught that the truth is something to strive for, understand that admitting they broke the lamp amounts to huge negative rewards in the product of a spanking and possibly larger positive rewards in the chance of not receiving a bottom-bruising by saying the Easter Bunny, high on alcohol and PCP did it. But when there are supposedly no negative rewards for telling the truth they have no compunction about letting Uncle Francis know that he has shit his pants and his teeth look like small, uncooked chili beans.

I’ll give you a few personal examples.

Whenever I was maybe eleven or twelve my mother had a friend who used to come by the house frequently and hang about the place drinking Nestea or something of that nature, (I was usually in my room conducting odd experiments that yielded no publishable results and usually consisted of taking something high-tech and expensive apart, failing to be able to put it back together correctly, then hiding it under a pile of towels.) Anyway, my little sister, who was six or seven at the time had expressed to both me and my mother her dislike for my mother’s friend. Well one day Mom and this friend were hanging about the kitchen talking about fantastically dull adult things that had nothing to do with removing all the wires from a perfectly functioning television, so I was only half-listening when I crossed through the kitchen to procure a Swiss Cake Roll I could consume after liberally dunking it in a glass of Dr. Pepper. Suddenly my naïve ears pricked up at this statement:

“I don’t think Ali likes me.” This was said by the friend, in reference to my younger sister Ali. My mom then proceeded to tell a “white lie” by saying,

“No, no; you’re wrong. She does like you.”

I, being dutifully taught that the truth was sacred, said, “Nah-uh, Mom, Ali said just the other day she didn’t like him.”

My mother, attempting inept damage control, turned to me and said, “She didn’t say that.” Then to her friend, “She does like you.”

I, misconstruing my mother’s blatant lie as a mis-remembrance of the truth, reiterated.

“No…no, Mom, remember? We were talking about him and Ali said she didn’t like him.”

At this point some harsh words were spoken to yours truly and I was forcibly sequestered to my room, never really understanding what I had done wrong.

The second example I have also involves my mother, and also an attempt by her to avoid embarrassment. One night when I was probably around the same age as the above story I remember she went out on a date or something and returned home around 1:30 in the morning. It was a weekend and so I was up watching USA Up All Night or some such delicious nonsense. The next day Mom was talking to a supposed female friend of hers on the phone and said that she had arrived home around 11 o’clock. Hearing this from the living room, I loudly announced over the episode of Transformers that it had actually been 1:30 a.m. Once again, Mom gave me the opportunity to shut up saying,

“No, Ryan, it was maybe 11:30.”

Undaunted, I puffed up my chest and prepared to set the record, which I honestly assumed was merely an oversight on my mother’s part, straight by saying that, no, I had actually been awake when she came in and looked at the clock in my room and it had clearly read 1:30. I was again dumbfounded and confused when my mother’s angry retort came back.

“I don’t need you checking up on me!” It was her, I’m about to get mad enough to spank voice.

Again I retired to my room, unclear as to what I had done wrong. Had it been explained to me that in the first instance she did not wish to hurt her friend’s feelings, or in the second case that she hadn’t wished to appear a whore, I might have understood the lies. But I came to believe that telling the truth was the kind of activity that could get people yelled at, so it took me a long time into adulthood to finally come back around to not sugar-coating something just because it’s easier. People deserve the truth; you don’t have to be a prick about it, but you don’t have to be a pussy, either. Not telling the truth led me to not having a decent blowjob from a girlfriend until I was 21. See? Lies hurt.

“No, baby; you suck my cock just fine!”