The Liars' Club (Damn You Mary Karr)

Harmless Lies: My College Roommate or The Bar Stool Lie

We are at (fill in one-word bar name) and, if I am lucky, I have exactly 45 seconds to make an impression on you (falsely appearing plaintive and momentarily neglected by your friend who has left you to text or call her lying boyfriend or sniff cocaine/ practice gastrointestinal calisthenics in the bathroom). The first ten seconds have been squandered by my opening line and consequent gauging of your reaction. If you are not initially repulsed, I ask where you're from or what you're up to in the city and then prepare to lie. You went to Syracuse and do PR. I do not have friend who went to Syracuse but I say that I do because there is nothing else to say other than I hate you to anyone you meet who works in PR.

My friend's name is Andy Markowitz, he rushed but didn't go Greek, and was from the South like me and couldn't stand the cold. I charm away until your friend gets back, at which point, you either introduce me to her or tell me that you have to leave. If we went with location instead of college, I shockingly say that my college roommate was from Syosset, northern Jersey, or outside Philly or Boston. I quickly dissolve the closeness of my friendship with Andy when confronted with questions beyond his high school (I shrewdly know the names of high schools in each of these areas), and fall back on a standard, his corresponding obsession with Bagel Boss, Prada, WaWa, or the Red Sox.

Of course, you love these things too or feign love for them, or else you have betrayed your identity, which is something you'd never do or else you'd be somewhere other than Sway, TenJune, Swank, Sugar, Honey, Milk, Lactic, Zone, Trend, Air, Christ, Line, Wait, Sorry, Bribe, Hook, Nook, Cranny, or Shame on this particular evening. Andy Markowitz has been from everywhere including Atlanta (loves Waffle House), Northern California (hates Southern California), Southern California (hates NorCal), the northshore of Chicago (Go Cubbies!), Miami, and even Canada. During school my roommate traveled abroad, like you, to one of the great cultural centers of the world: London, Barcelona, Florence (omg Firenze!), Australia, and once even Milan (he was gay and I was definitely cool with it).

These are the harmless lies. I am pressed for time, trolling for the perfect girl for my mid-twenties (whom I will, of course, pursue and meet in a bar like this), who will stay with me for one night or even a short while, maybe long enough for my friends to lie to yours. This guarantees me that I will meet a girl who will not pull me away from my friends, who may actually construct social outings for myself and my friends, and won't expect too much of me; we'll be fine until I get bored and stop calling back or you don't like that I am not the investment banker (or the person who spends like one), whom you intended to meet at this vapid, Bon Jovi-laden, Potemkin Village of an establishment.

These lies are harmless because you will never remember anything at all about my college roommate, it will never come up again. Ultimately, Andy Markowitz is a device, as much of an apparition to you as he is to me. I know you are (generally) wary of men you meet at bars and I am safeguarding you** (albeit temporarily) from greater problems out there like abusers, moochers, and Republicans. You have come to the bar to meet a fellow and I will have shown you that I speak the same language as you (perhaps self-delusion) and you will be (possibly) charmed and put at ease.

** Just in case you are wondering, my wholly honest friend is back at the table staring at his shoes and crunching ice from a finished drink because he knows that 45 seconds, even by circus standards, is a far too short amount of time, to cast a safety net and walk a tightrope, at least in the chrome and neon milieu of one-word name bars.

Harmless Lies: Lies That Save

My friends and I lie and we are lied to. But when you say you're not feeling well and won't come out, I see through it and know I've neglected you. You always want to see me and this makes me feel worse. I feel guilty about not being ready for all that. I am young and scared out of my mind by the fact that there is someone who wants to see me all the time, that makes me a man, man worthy of affection, which I am not, I am a liar.

I don't want you to need me, plenty of my acquaintances (who frequent bars like Shard) are loaded aspiring businessmen who want women to need them and be subservient to them. They are mechanical, they will cheat without mercy. I want the equilibrium, I want to need you, just not today, not this month, not right now. I need hang among the liars, watching sports, not becoming our fathers.

When I am tired, have had too much to drink, or really need to be there for one of my friends who is going through a rough time (and he'll act accordingly), I am lying to you. I need to not be with you, but would never dare to say so. You would feel terrible about yourself and so would I. These are lies that save.

Lies

Of course I still love you. This is a lie. If you had to ask, then you should know it's not that I've been busy, stressed with work, in a funk, preoccupied about what I'm doing with myself. I may love you, but I am too trapped to feel it. I did not want to spend the weekend with your parents, I did not want you to warm me over with those sanguine eyes of an imagined future when those children ran by us at the pool. I laughed too because they were sweet, but inside I was ready to drown myself. Children should repulse you at this age, if sleeping in next to me is a favorite pastime of yours, here is the antidote (as they say). You're wonderful and it kills me that I cannot age quickly enough to match that wanting, even if it's years away for you, that you see me in that picture makes my nerves prune as much as my fingers have in this water. You have no idea how much I am going to miss you when you leave me. I hope you believe me.