I am a liar and always have been and always will be. Lies are the stuff of life: I cling to lies the way churchgoing folk cling to God, or my roommate clings to Taco Bell Crunch Wrap Gorditas Supreme. Without lies, even the most basic conversation would be completely out of my reach.
When speaking to classmates, professors or the people who live in my house and claim to share my lease, I lie. During mid-morning sacrifice, when our Right Honorable Priestess of the Moon calls us to confess each of our three sins, I lie. When I deliver important addresses to various governing bodies, I lie, and sometimes I curse a little to appear cool. In short, I lie to anyone who will listen and also to almost everyone else within earshot. You can only trust these words because they have been verified by a professional truth-checker, who the Pioneer has on a $300,000 retainer.
Lying has always been important to me. I was not raised to believe that life is worth living truthfully. My father, a gap-toothed fisherman from Crete, said to me: “I am lying.” He then left me in our granite fortress on Death Island to meditate on this paradox. Lies became like breathing to me: mostly unremarkable, sometimes carrying disease and extremely labored and noisy.
There are only two people who can tell when I lie: my siblings, Fan-Fan and the Gypsy. Fan-Fan is a terrible giant of a man who once wrestled the only remaining Ultra-Bear to the ground and then let it go free to die of shame. I hate him and he knows it, and the last time we spoke he made the Applebee’s waitress blush with his forward remarks. The Gypsy is no better: She claims to be a “lady-in-waiting to pain,” and dreams of constant strife. Behind her cold, dead eyes there is nothing but a dream of blood. Unless you are the mute man who fixes her bicycle, you should stay away from her.
Certainly, I am a master of seven other fields, each more useful than the last. But lies are my bread and butter, and my knowledge of lying serves to buttress my main hobbies, like collecting extremely gullible butterflies and getting people to arrive late to dinner parties. And so I will teach you how to tell several kinds of lies.
The Prancer: Do you need to abandon your plucky child sidekick in a train station? Use this lie. When your sidekick asks you where you’re going, simply ask him if he’d like something to eat or drink or smoke. Alternatively, strike a humorous tone of voice and say “I’m leaving you Tomasz, in this, the worst train station in Bucharest!” Then laugh, and get the boy to laugh as well. Then run hell for leather. This is sometimes referred to as “misleading,” instead of lying, because you don’t actually say anything contrary to the truth. I prefer to call it lying, and I will fight any of the unfortunate men whose job it is to name lies if they challenge me on this count.
The Breather: This is a good lie to use if you need to get out of some kind of obligation, or get someone to do magic tricks for many hours without pay. The trick is to try and pass over the words which are untrue with a light and quick tone of voice. For example: My employer, who happens to be a marsh mystic from the deep bayou, often asks me if I will take an article for the news section. I just say this, speedy as an arrow: “I have taken three articles already.” Then I bat my eyelashes and hope that I have remembered to apply eyeliner. If you do not wear eyeliner you can try a striptease or speaking in tongues.
The Gary: I am still working on this lie, and I have only managed to use it once. Here is the complete history. Our mutual acquaintance, Gary, asked me for a diplomat friend’s Internet number. Knowing that Gary was not the diplomat’s type and that Internet usage would only confuse him further, I consented. I told Gary that I would visit the embassy and find the diplomat and so get Gary a number worth dialing into his Internet machine. When I met the tall embassy guards who carried rifles, I spoke in a low and even and manly voice which never cracked: “Gary sends his regards.” Gary was sent for immediately, and he embarrassed himself when he met the diplomat and did not know her country’s only dance, the Electric Slide. And so I lied to Gary and got away with it.