To Be Honest Page 24

  The three of us sat in a row at the bar as I recounted my dishonest date with Malaika. Angie half-smiled with crooked teeth. She’d engage with me for a few minutes and then her eyes would float to the corners of her sockets, distracted by memories.

  Carmen, who had a way of being glamorous and joyful until the moment she fell apart, laughed at me as usual. “You told her about your list? She must think you’re crazy.”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “But she made out with me.”

  “See!” Carmen said, grinning. “I told you. You can be yourself. You just have to find the right person.”

  “One sincere moment in a whole conversation isn’t my idea of ‘being myself.’”

  “That’s just semantics.” Someone always said it was just semantics. “Being yourself doesn’t mean saying everything you think.”

  I sipped my drink and retreated into vagueness. “These terms aren’t so easily defined.”

  Angie chimed in softly, “It’s great that you’re honest. It’s everyone’s favorite thing about you.”

  I clutched the edges of my barstool. “That’s like telling a recovering alcoholic he’s more fun when he’s drunk.”

  Carmen laughed again. “Honesty’s a good thing. Everybody knows that.”

  “When I was teenager, I wished everyone could read each other’s minds, that all our thoughts and feelings and histories were automatically public.”

  “Okay, that’s creepy,” Carmen interrupted.

  “I thought if we were all forced to see the full contents of each other’s brains spilled out in front of us, all the stories, the worst things we’ve done, the insecurity and shame and fear and pain, we’d be moved and we’d all love each other.”

  “Wow,” Angie said hazily, considering.

  “But I was wrong,” I said. “When we see feelings or behaviors different from our own, we’re threatened, and we resent them. And when we see our own insecurities reflected in someone else, we feel disgust instead of sympathy. We catch another person doing exactly what we’d do and call him a jerk.”

  Carmen laughed. “You’re really overthinking this.” This was another thing someone always said.

  I continued, “Honesty rarely helps us love each other. Being loved is more about lying and hiding.”

  Carmen stopped laughing. “That’s so negative.”

  “But you agree,” I insisted. “If you didn’t believe that, why would you live the way you live?”

  Eve and I hadn’t been in touch since I’d moved out of the apartment nearly a year before. I hoped enough time had passed that we could meet as friends, so Eve and I got a drink.

  She arrived wearing a summer dress and normal-size glasses. She looked distinctly younger to me, and I had the strangest impression that she looked less experienced, less world-weary. It occurred to me that the whole time I’d known her, she’d always been recently crying.

  When she saw me, she gazed at me the way she used to, and smiled nervously. We sat at the bar and she asked me about my new apartment. I told her about the mirrors and about “Bachelor Pad Jazz.” She laughed, and I asked her about where she’d moved.

  “I didn’t move, actually,” she said. “I’m still in the apartment.”

  “You didn’t move?”

  She smiled, tearing up. “I didn’t move,” she said. Only a few minutes into this and we were already both crying.

  We laughed a moment about our crying together again and I said, “Maybe with us, being friends means always crying. A crying friendship.”

  She asked about my family and I told her that they missed her. “They weren’t so sympathetic toward me about the breakup. They really wanted us to stay together.”

  “My family misses you too,” Eve said. “They still talk about you all the time.” She paused to gather herself. “Because now we can tell each other what we mean. And every time someone talks about how they feel, they think of you. You taught us how.”

  I was having a hard time keeping it together. Eve could move me more than anybody.

  Then she looked down nervously, became shaky. “So,” she asked. “Are you seeing anyone?”

  I had become so used to my forbidden subjects that, without a beat, I said, “I don’t think we should talk about that.”

  Eve stiffened, perhaps at the implication that I’d found another girlfriend already, but I suspect it was more at the shock of hearing me avoid a question.

  “But we’re best friends,” she said, not looking at me. “We can talk about what’s going on. Just tell me, do I know her?” She lifted her wineglass, her hands so unsteady that she spilled. She went red, dashed off, and returned with napkins to wipe the table. “I’m sorry, I’m going crazy.”

  “It’s not just that we can’t talk about it, I’m trying not to talk about this stuff with anyone. I’m trying to be more …” I hated the words “private,” “secretive,” “mysterious” so much that I couldn’t spit them out. “I’m trying not to tell people what’s going on with me. To keep it to myself.”

  Eve squinted skeptically. “Why?”

  “I’ve made rules for myself. One of them says don’t answer any questions.” I sighed. “Another one is to not tell anyone about the rules. I’m breaking that one but I felt like I had to tell you.”

  Her teary vibe dried up quickly. “I get it,” she said.

  Her lack of response surprised me. “What I just said doesn’t require further explanation?”

  Eve had spaced out, wasn’t really listening. “I’m with someone too,” she told me. “I’m with John now.”

  I’d heard about John, a comedian and writer she knew when we were still together. She’d shown me a few of his sketch comedy videos. Before we broke up, she’d told me about their mutual attraction. So, now he was her boyfriend. I hoped that he’d make her feel better, but she wasn’t acting like she felt better.

  “He doesn’t talk about anything real,” Eve said. “If I bring up feelings, he makes an excuse and leaves the room. Sometimes he doesn’t even make an excuse. He just walks away.” She looked down into her wineglass. “It’s kind of good. Maybe that’s what I need.” Now she looked up at me. “If John was honest, I’d be telling him stories about you and about missing you and I’d be freaking out all the time. But he can’t listen, so I don’t say those things. I just sort it out myself. Since I’ve been with him, I haven’t freaked out once. It’s sort of nice,” she said. “To not freak out.”

  “Well,” I said. “I’m glad that you figured out a way to not freak out?”

  After this admission, she got more comfortable and we were able to talk like before. I told her more about my experiments in dishonesty and she found them as funny as I did.

  “How does it feel being dishonest?” she asked.

  “Sometimes it feels like being in an iron maiden where you can’t move because there are spikes everywhere. Other times, it feels like bowling with bumpers on the gutters.”

  Eve laughed. “When Lila and I were kids, we loved the bumpers. We’d get so upset if anyone suggested we bowl without bumpers.”

  “Everyone else is so much happier,” I said. “Which makes me happy too, I guess, in some ways. But it doesn’t feel beautiful. It isn’t romantic.”

  “Yeah,” Eve said. “I know what you mean.”

  We sat there quietly a moment, just a couple of liars.

  Playing Easygoing

  For years, I’d left behind me a trail of estrangements. Almost everyone I’d liked had pronounced me an enemy eventually, always for the same reasons:

  — I’d criticized them or set a boundary

  — The more someone agreed that what they’d done was wrong, the more they resented my pointing it out

  It struck me as backward that the one who’d been a jerk would get mad at me; if they weren’t proud of their own behavior, why not get mad at themselves? Either way, I made a rule:

  — When a friend mistreats you, pretend not to notice or care.

  An
old friend had asked to collaborate with me on a project I needed done by a specific deadline a few months away. We met several times to plan. As the deadline approached, she hadn’t shown me any work but repeatedly told me to trust her to meet the deadline. The day before, I wrote her again and she replied with a snippy message about my bugging her. Then, late that night, she sent me something that had likely taken her ten or fifteen minutes and had nothing to do with what we’d planned. It struck me as odd to send this instead of just admitting she’d flaked, as if she thought I might not notice.* I’d have to stay up late working to meet this morning deadline on my own; she’d known this to be the case and had flaked anyway. Calling her out wouldn’t get her to do the work she’d promised, so I took this as an opportunity to see if I could get through this situation without my old friend hating me.

  I thought of the nicest things I could possibly say in response to what she’d sent me. The best I came up with was to tell her I trusted she had a good reason for flaking, perhaps a personal tragedy going on unseen, that I understood and forgave her. But then I analyzed the way she’d gone about this in the hope that it hinted to her desired response. She didn’t confess, make excuses, or tell her side of the story; she was indirectly asking me not to acknowledge her flaking. She didn’t just disappear either; that meant she probably wanted to stay friends. I decided she’d sent me something to leave room for plausible deniability so that we could both pretend she’d turned in what she’d promised. I was supposed to say I liked what she’d turned in. Then she could convince herself that she hadn’t done anything wrong, or at least that her actions hadn’t had any consequences. I was impressed by this foreign method of smoothing over a betrayal and couldn’t wait to see what happened when I followed her lead.

  I wrote her to thank her for meeting the deadline and for doing such a great job. She responded to my thank-you note with no sign of offense. Soon enough, we were hanging out like before, as if it had never happened. I had no way to know for sure what she thought or felt,* but someone who usually would have walked away hating me had remained my friend; that was a success.

  I’d never depend on this friend again, but I’d learned from experience that notifying someone of a new boundary meant being declared an enemy for life. So, I had a novel idea: I’d set this boundary in my own head, without notifying her. I made another rule:

  — Continue setting boundaries, but keep them secret.

  These rules ended my monthly falling-outs. Now, if I bought a friend an expensive concert ticket and they canceled last minute, I’d write and say I was feeling ill anyway, that I was just about to call and cancel myself. The friend would never know I’d set a boundary. If they noticed my not inviting them to things anymore, they’d have plausible deniability, could tell themselves it had nothing to do with them.

  I’d always heard that some people resented being alerted about food in their teeth, but I’d never understood it. It now occurred to me that this was about preserving plausible deniability. If they came home and found food in their teeth, they could tell themselves no one had noticed. If someone pointed it out, it implied that everyone could see it. Removing plausible deniability, for many, was a crime.

  After I’d tricked most I knew into thinking I was easygoing, they spoke to me much more freely about why they flaked so often.

  “The more I care about seeing the person, the more stressful it is,” one friend told me. “If I have a date with someone I really like, I spend the whole day trying to keep myself calm. If I’m still feeling anxious when I’m supposed to be leaving, I just cancel.” I told her I found it unexpected that she only canceled when she really cared about the person. “Oh yeah,” she replied. “If I don’t care, it’s no big deal to show up. It’s like a work event or obligation. I only flake on people I really want to see.”

  Another friend told me, “Most people are relieved when their plans cancel. I’m always relieved.”

  Another friend said, “I usually imagine they’d have more fun without me.”

  If someone had accused them of flakiness, they’d be too embarrassed to admit they’d felt anxious or depressed.

  I made a new rule:

  — When someone is lying, there’s a chance it’s because they’re going through something personal that they’re ashamed to admit. Instead of getting angry, assume their motivations are sympathetic.

  The less judgmental I appeared, the more people would confess. To hear the truth, I had to deserve it.

  Bad Seeds

  Around this time, Miriam, Josh, and I spent an afternoon with Dad and his girlfriend, a Scottish psychologist and Jeopardy! champion who worked with depressed teenagers. After lunch, she brought out the Times crossword puzzle. She worked her way through it, casually inviting the rest of us to help with answers she didn’t know, calling us out by areas of expertise, like “Michael, you know about old movies. Try this one.” When she called on Miriam to answer a music question instead of Dad or me, I realized what she was doing. She didn’t need any help; she knew all the answers. She’d only involved us in the crossword to make us feel valued. She knew giving Miriam a chance on a music question would be unusual and special. Dad glowed as he watched her lead us through the crossword, no sign of his skeptical stare, no need to correct anyone or insert himself. He was well-aware that she had all the answers. He admired her playing easy.

  Miriam was now in her mid-twenties, living in New York, running educational programs for young children, complaining to me often about her romantic situations. She’d never had a boyfriend, tended to chase after fickle men who went back and forth about being with her. Her dates often went wrong.

  She told me about meeting up for a second date with a guy near his office after work. When he asked what she’d like to do, she said, “We’re right by the 9/11 museum.” She said she’d been meaning to go. Apparently, the guy politely ran with this and accompanied her to the 9/11 museum. “If he didn’t want to, he could have just said so,” Miriam told me.

  “People are uncomfortable saying no!” I told her, though I’d only recently learned this myself. “And it’s just generally wise not to take a second date to the 9/11 museum!”

  “If he’s weird about going to the 9/11 museum, maybe he’s not for me,” Miriam said.

  Josh was now twenty-eight, finishing grad school and applying for government work at crime labs. He was hired for the exact job he wanted. But at one point in the hiring process, he went through a background interview, a formality for certain types of government work. A panel of three law enforcement officers asked him a series of questions and eventually asked him about his history with drugs.

  Josh knew the policies about drug use, that one couldn’t be hired as a government employee if he’d ever done psychedelic drugs. When the panel asked him about it, he replied, “I did mushrooms when I was fourteen. In 1998.”

  I wasn’t present for this moment, but I can picture the shocked and pitying expressions on the cops’ faces that meant: “Why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you putting us through having to participate in your destruction?”

  They informed Josh that they were legally required to document his answer in the system, that his admission barred him from working in this profession. He told them that he’d expected them to appreciate his honesty.

  “It’s okay,” Josh told me. “I don’t want to work for anyone who would want me to lie.”

  At the time, Mom had similar job troubles. Parents would come to her for help with a child they described as a terror. She’d meet the child alone and find that she loved the kid, that he was wonderful and brilliant and communicative about why his parents’ behavior bothered him. When Mom met with the parents, praised their child, and told them what she imagined they could do differently, they would become angry. “They’d rather believe their children are just bad seeds, that it has nothing to do with them. And they’d prefer a therapist who will tell them what they want to hear.”

  Josh, Miriam, and I had
all been rooting for Mom and Joe to break up since their relationship began in 2000, twelve years before. But when they finally did break up, we saw it was going to be challenging for Mom to be single for the first time at age sixty. She wanted to tell her kids about her dating experiences. Josh and Miriam listened for a while, but eventually started setting boundaries. So Mom would tell her dating stories to me, recounting speeches she’d given on first dates outlining the pros and cons of being with her.

  “I used to do that and it’s not okay!” I told her. “You can’t be honest. Let go of this now. Other people don’t communicate the way we do.”

  “What’s the point of being with someone if I can’t be myself?” Mom asked.

  After a few years of trying to lie, I’d forgotten this question. It sent my brain unspooling. Then I felt the mental string catch. I longed to believe there was a point. I just had no idea what it could be.

  Opposite Day

  Normal social life demanded so many complex on-the-spot decisions. No longer behaving naturally, each date felt like a series of tests. I couldn’t tell if a whole life of this would have made it easier or if I’d have ended up an anxious wreck like most people.

  Still, I was now often able to get second dates, a huge triumph. But I noticed a frustrating second-date trend: if my date excitedly made future plans with me, suggesting something like going to a particular museum exhibit or playing music together or watching a movie we’d discussed, then after the date, she’d never reply to me again. It happened consistently; if they brought up the future, there wouldn’t be one.

  As I asked around about this, I learned that many had experienced being dumped mere days after extreme proclamations like “I want to grow old with you” and “I can’t imagine ever not being with you.” I couldn’t comprehend talking like that right before dumping someone. But I began to notice other similar instances of people saying the reverse of what they felt. Someone who said she disliked an attractive acquaintance would soon go out with him. Someone who talked a lot about being over her ex was still hung up. One man I knew tended to go on and on about people he claimed not to care about. “I don’t care,” he’d say over and over, and everyone else would hear it as, “I care. I care. I care.” I named this phenomenon “the rule of opposites.”