‘Lies’ by Lucy Sweeney Byrne
ONE
They tell me eighty-nine percent of people tell a lie within the first three minutes of meeting a stranger. Something like that. To impress. But I don’t know if I trust ‘they’ anyway. There’s a subway poster which offers a statistic to this effect as part of an advertising campaign for online dating. The background is black and there is an attractive woman whispering into the ear of an attractive man to the left of the text. They are both white and smiling. I wonder, studying their expressions from my plastic, orange seat, if the models had sex after the shoot. I hope so. I think it’s for online dating, anyway. I can’t tell for sure. That, or medicine. Or shampoo maybe. Something to make you better. The subway carriage is warm and cramped, and smells of piss and burrito, the latter wafting from the tight grip of a tall black man, spread-eagled, defiant, across the two seats to my left.
Remember: you are a stranger to me. This is important.
Substance-Adding Detail: I only ever read the advertisements lining the edges between ceiling and wall when I realise I have been staring at the faces surrounding me too intently, and am obliged to avert my gaze, for fear of eye contact-induced aggression. What am I looking at?
Definition of stranger (noun, from old French estrangier, in turn from the Latin, extraneus, i.e. irrelevant, or unrelated to the subject being dealt with):
A person, animal, place or thing, living or dead, as of yet unknown.
Considered dangerous to children and young women.
Considered thrilling to men, and lone, lip-lined women propped up in bars above the age of thirty-seven.
Definition of stranger (adjective): more strange. For example, ‘a known person proves, ultimately, stranger than an unknown person’.
All of this is true, because I have said it. As true as anything else that is, or can, be said. As true as, say, ‘I love you’, or ‘this is your son’, or ‘this is delicious’, or ‘I’m sorry’.
TWO
A man tells me a true thing on the F as we are digested in the intestines of the city, after we are eaten, and before we are shat back out, slightly changed. He tells me, up close, his breath in my mouth, his fingers catching in my hair; ‘This life, this moment, your youth, your beauty - this is all fleeting.’ I’m reluctant to admit he has a point. It’s true, if not right.
Later, when his son is grown, he too, following in dotted, ostrich-skinned bootsteps, tells me a true thing; ‘There’s nothing for me here. There never was. You won’t miss me, once I’m gone.’ I know now I bore a prophet, although no one in the low-lit, russet-stained bar on the corner believes me.
Foot Note: That man (which man doesn’t matter) lives in Mexico now and makes his living as a pimp in the shadowy recesses, where the sun don’t shine and mould grows on the lungs. He’s very proud and has hot, salted, tequila-soaked sex just to his liking with a side order of jalapenos, every night of the goddamn week.
And that ain’t one word of a goddamn lie!
THREE
The Scientific Approach
Proposition: A statement that is ‘true’ is not necessarily ‘right’.
Case studies:
Telling an ugly person that they are ugly.
Telling a person with a dog as a surrogate baby, that their dog is a surrogate baby.
Telling your dying husband that, on some level, in spite of yourself, you are overwhelmingly relieved. And excited.
Counteractivity (Stop! Turn back!); if a statement is right, does that make it true? Take for example the world-weary words; ‘drugs are bad’, ‘1 + 1 = 2’, ‘it’s good to tell the truth’, or;
‘I’ve done all I can. It’s gotten out of hand. Stop that. No. I found them. Yeah, stuffed down the. Yes, empty. Yeah. Stop. I’ve heard enough. Stop. No. No. Oh stop snivelling, for fuck’s sake! Sorry. Sorry, I know, I know, I’m sorry. I am. Yes. Look, look, look – I think the best thing, at this stage, for everybody – yes, even. Yes. Oh come on. Come on. It’s been a long time coming. Yes! Oh Christ, here we fucking go, the waterworks.’
FOUR
I’ve never been told a lie because I have chosen not to–– – – – – –
FIVE
The only lies I’ve told have been orgasmic in nature. These are jaundiced, eggwhite lies. Cum-white lies. But honestly, come on ladies, sometimes a person just wants to sleep, to close their eyes and dream, without causing pain, am I right?
** Cue talk show host big smile buxom bright lights colour APPLAUSE daytime how daring how feisty ladies ladies doing it for themselves am I right ladies? Yes! Yes! YES! **
To sleep, without causing that humiliating roll off aside alone together worthless sort of feeling, after. So lie, and be done with it. I have lied through groans and back-arching and scrunch-facing. To protect. To save.
Not through words. Not ‘words’ as we have agreed to share them out amongst ourselves, only ever one by one in a straight line and fully-formed, like shiny, round, hard-boiled sweets.
Fact! Words are made of swirling smoke which rose from the mouths of thick-lipped men, caught in glass jars. (Grey smoke for English words. French words are of blue smoke, Spanish, dark red, Vietnamese, lime green). Fat men, seven of them, with ferocious beards, cross-legged in a dark room. These words rose from the very bases of their throats to ensure the effective governance of all future communication, especially amongst women. Those curs-ed wimmin, with their fluttering eyelids sending out hidden signals. With their shapes of whispering silks. No, they wouldn’t do. They needed words, language, simple sounds, out-booming, meaning certain meanings, as agreed and understood by these men. The first four words declared were as follows:
Mine
Lie
Will
No
(The first item of punctuation was the bracket, to allow for exceptions)
This is a fact, because I have said it (in words).
ALSO: Origin of the word ‘fact’, as taken directly from Google’s search engine in the first January of the first twenty-fifteen (honest!); late fifteenth century: from Latin ‘factum’, neuter past participle of facere, ‘do.’ The original sense was ‘an act or feat,’ later ‘bad deed, a crime,’ surviving in the phrase ‘before (or after) the fact’. The earliest of the current senses (‘truth, reality’) dates from the late 16th century.
ACT – CRIME – REALITY = FACT.
Remember: you are a stranger to me. This is important.
So I lie with my body? Fuck you, so do you. Trust me. This begs the question; why is it only ever teeth-licking tongues that get all the credit for untruths?
SIX
She takes his hand as they sit, red-cushioned, watching the explosive, pulsating advertisements for other, more thrilling-looking films race across the looming screen, and squeezes it. He returns the pressure, and she nibbles his salted popcorn with her free hand, eyes ahead. The Diet Coke he bought her sits in the drink holder between their seats, warming slowly, losing carbonation by the second. Her blank face flickers with the light of moving pictures, but he doesn’t see this. He too looks straight ahead.
Later, in his shoe-shined black car, outside her house, air-conditioner flushing out recycled air at them from the dashboard, radio song soundtracking (just right, she thinks); this is when she tells him. He feels strangely embarrassed, humiliated at having partaken in the whole evening under false pretenses. Like the butt of some big joke. His clothes, his meticulously clean sneakers, his cap and black denim jacket, as he walked with proud rhythm, up and down, through the cinema foyer beside her, hand resting across her narrow shoulders. Now they all feel ridiculous. He feels like he was a child, playing along, ignorant of the piss stain yellowing his pants. And everyone knew; the guy who sold their tickets, the other patrons. They were all laughing, underhanded, as he passed. And he’d thought he was the cool guy.
He is quiet, surly, but polite. He does not give her the satisfaction of watching her tight low-rise jeans walk away after she thwacks shut the passenger door, but pulls off into the hot heavy night with a roar the instant her hand pulls back. He won’t play that part for her. She finds this momentarily devastating. He has deflated her power. Ruined the scene. But only momentarily.
She stands, aware, on the sidewalk, and listens to the hum of the cicadas and the ever-rumble of the nearby engines of older men. Men she hasn’t met yet, with all different shades of skin and histories to tell, driving fast to exciting places off the highway behind her mother’s house. She holds her exposed, diamante-pierced stomach in, automatically. It is usually tight and empty anyway, but it is important to look good, for this moment. She watches until his tail lights turn the corner, and then sighs, long and low, in pity for him; camera rolling, right there before her, awaiting her signal.
(Oh, says the audience, comprehending; we see! She just feels bad for him. She is the winner. Oh, okay. We get it, we get it.)
She sucks popcorn kernels from her teeth with her tongue as she meanders inside, thinking of how to tell her friends how it all went down, how school will be on Monday morning. How Ellis Burn, white t-shirted black-eyed and goldenskinned, will look at her. She will be sitting and smiling demurely, beautifully lit in her seat alongside the window, two rows from the back, in form class. She’ll flick her hair, glance up, not realising he’s watching, and will catch his eye. And then he’ll know.
In the brightly-lit kitchen she eats an apple from the yellow, ceramic bowl, brought home wrapped in newspaper from Chile last Christmas, while pouring over her laptop, unthinking. The tapping of her fingers and wet crunch of red-wrapped white flesh between her teeth are the only discernible sounds inside the house. Otherwise, there is only the whir of overhead fans, the hum of the refrigerator, the motions of the dishwasher cycle, thumping, hissing. The light snoring of her mother, down the hall. But these are familiar enough to have become composite parts of the silence. She’d only hear them if they were missing.
CONCLUSION
Definition of ‘lie’: an intentionally false statement.
Synonyms: fiction, tale, fable, yarn, excuse, compliment, story.
Remember: you are a stranger to me. This may be important.
From issue #2: spring/summer 2019
About the Author
Lucy Sweeney Byrne is a writer of short stories, essays and poetry.
