Drunk, or Lying Pathologically?

Are you lying for your sake or my sake? Both?

I was at a bar—The Downtown—last night with some friends when a friend of said friends, a somewhat cool dude whom I'd never met before, sat beside me in a booth, and we began volleying jokes back and forth. I said something like, "You know what I hate about the bars? It's like an amateur bodybuilding convention." He said something about why these neckless dopes buy five-sizes-too-small shirts. I then tossed out a sentence with the phrase "let themselves go." His smirk vanished. He was all serious now. I don't know if it was vanity, Dutch courage, or full-on mendacity, but he said, "I've been getting back into shape lately. I've lost twenty-five pounds in three weeks." A barefaced lie. "Ah, nice," I said, nodding, gritting teeth, squinting at him to make sure he wasn't Larry the Cable Guy in some take-it-to-the-streets advertising blitz for NutriSystem. (Why won't Larry the Hayseed fall asleep on a couch on a front porch and never wake up? Larry the Cable Goon is why the terrorists hate us. You can't tell me that KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed], in between waterboarding jags, isn't in his cell at Guantanamo Bay cursing Larry's name and plotting an attack on a doublewide somewhere.) Boiling I was.

Do I look stupid or fatuous? (Maybe so.) I was about to scream to Mr. Minus 25 in 3, "Who the hell do you think you're kidding? I'm Jeff Skilling! Jeff. Mother. Effing. Skilling. I'm the smartest guy in the room, you deceitful schmuck." I bit my tongue—I prefer the facade of niceness—and left for the restroom, never to see him again. But his "black jelly bean" lie still resonates, ringing in my ears like a point-blank blast from an air horn. Why this lie? What did he perceive he was gaining? I was ogling women's legs like there was no tomorrow, so he wasn't trying to line up any sweaty bathhouse sex with me. I didn't and still don't see his endgame.

Some lies are necessary. Some lies are risky. Some lies are strategic. Some lies are innocuous. Some lies are fun. Some lies exist solely to concoct more lies; they snowball; before you know it, you've got a village of snowpeople and you're desperately trying to keep them upright, frozen, and free of piss. Some lies are unapologetically and intentionally malicious.

This dude's lie was an uncreative, thoughtless boast with high improbability. I'm clean mystified. It served zero purpose. Maybe he was in that blissful hammered state where logic and reason don't belong in what little blood is still in the brain.

Hey, what if he believed his lie was the truth? It's possible, I guess. Is it even a lie if you truely, wholeheartedly believe it?

I mean, if you're going to lie to a complete stranger—and we're all strangers in a wonderfully strange land when it comes to the bars—tell a whopper. The big lie. When you don't know someone, it's hard to discern fact from fiction, especially if he or she is convincing. When Grey Goose saturates your gray matter, you don't know what to repudiate.

I once claimed to have dated Amber Valletta when she was in her modeling heyday. This was daft on its face, as I would've been a squeaky-voiced, Married...With Children-obsessed adolescent at the time. She's an unknown, more or less, so the lie was decent. It didn't land but it didn't have gaping holes or totally bomb either. Yes, yes, yes, I could lie another day. (Just look at this goddess! Who wouldn't commit quadruple homicide for her?)


I lied about dating her because she's a Venus, and it's admirable to have ties to Venuses, whether those ties are real or fabricated. I don't know why Mr. Slim Fast lied about shedding weight. Maybe that's how he befriends others. Maybe he's related to Nixon. Maybe he's a defective. Maybe it was the gin talking. I have no clue whatsoever. Maybe he wants to bend over Kirstie Alley.

In the end, he told a good-for-nothing lie. What a shame. Lying willy-nilly does a disservice to liars everywhere. He gives us a bad name. (Exasperated sigh.) Doesn't he understand? A lie is a terrible thing to waste, like a party ball.

Lying is a science. It requires time and ingenuity. It requires vast field studies. It requires dedication—"my mission in life is to lie day in, day out with burgeoning aplomb." Lying is best left to the professionals.