How Many Lies?

How many lies shall I tell you, then?  That is the hardest part.  I am not a liar by nature, and am truly no good at it at all.  That is why I never became a drug dealer.  I had friends in the business, but I couldn't do it.  When I'm guilty, I look it.  I once put a joint in my sock on a local flight to Key West long before 9-11 when there was hardly any airport security at all, and just walking by the agent at the gate made me nervous.  I probably looked at my sock ten times.  Involuntary reaction.  Once when coming back from five weeks in Peru, I came through U.S. Customs looking like what I was, long hair, climbing clothes, a scruffy beard.  The agent came up and stared me in the face.

"Do you have anything in those bags I should know about?" she asked.

"No," I said with a big grin.

"O.K." she said, "go on through."

"What?" I almost yelled?  "Really?"

"If you were lying, I'd know it," she said with a tough smile.  I knew she was right.

So. . . how many lies.

I was younger then, and now, looking back, quite beautiful though I didn't think so at the time.  I was prideful enough, though, and worked out in a steroid gym every day and ran in the afternoons.  I liked to run with my shirt off past the campus of Country Club College from which I lived a mere block.  I rented a house that had been built in 1926, and it was a beauty with high ceilings and wooden floors and ceiling to floor bookshelves and a big, walk in fireplace.  There was a big porch in front and a deck in back, and everybody stopped by.  I was teaching then and going to grad school, and I lived with a beautiful girl who was a scholarship student at Country Club College.  We either knew everyone in our little town or they knew us.  It was like that then without cell phones or internet.  You met up with people at the usual watering holes, and when you got there, you were always catching up.  Life was slower, but much more happened it seems now to me.

"Hey, did you hear about Dexter?"

"Uh-uh.  What?"

"His wife caught him fucking Darling Jacobs in the restaurant after hours.  She drove the car right through the double glass doors."

"No!  You're shitting me!"

"No I'm not.  Bob drove by just after it happened."

And then everyone around the bar would chuckle and begin to contribute.  It was like that always, it seems, and I guess the bar was the old form of Twitter.  No matter.  News spread like wildfires.

Books and movies and music were everything then, and afternoons were spent in the sun by pools or on docks at the lake.  The town was smaller and there wasn't much traffic, and there were nights when you just wanted to drive.  But the main thing was to go out and meet with people.  There was always something to do or something to avoid, but there was always something.  You could be lonesome and sad and empty as ever, but so often there were things you just didn't want to miss.

And I was there, dead center.  And you may think I'm lying, but I'll tell you right now, this is not the lying part.  This part is true.  Es verdad.  And whatever I have to tell you about this time, no matter how much I have to lie to you, is true, too.  It is the truest thing I'll ever know and the truest thing I can tell.  So let's see if I can do it.  Let's just see how far this thing can go.