Josh Grimmer: There's No "Mom" in "Denial."

The only thing worse than being caught in a lie is not being believed. When I was 15, my dad gave me his credit card information in order to buy tickets for a baseball game. I did that, and immediately afterward I used his credit card to buy online porn. This was back before really good porn was widely available for free, I'll have you know.

I knew I'd get caught eventually, but I figured I'd just lie and get out of it. Who cared what I told them? It'd all blow over eventually, and years later we'd all be dead and nobody would care. I'm sure this is indicative of deeper, more devious and sociopathic behavior in me or something, but eh, whatever. I had free, high-quality porn, and that's what matters.

Eventually the bill came. My dad figured everything out pretty quickly, considering the email address used in the purchase was mine. My parents confronted me, rather angry. It all seemed to be going pretty much the way I had planned. Then the crazy twist came - rather than lie and see how things played out, I accidentally told the truth. I told them it was me, and I bought it when my dad gave me his credit card to buy baseball tickets. Naturally, my mom didn't believe me, which would have been reasonable if I were lying. She thought that my dad had bought the porn and used my email account to shift the blame onto me when the bill finally arrived.

I was so pissed. Angry beyond words. I spent my entire life lying to my parents about EVERYTHING. “Where are you going?” Lie. Fight. “Did you do your homework?” Lie. Fight. “Are you doing okay in school?” Lie. Fight. I figured maybe, just maybe, the sequence could go along the lines of “did you buy porn?” Truth. Over. I know that it probably wouldn't have just ended like that. That seems stupid and unreasonable, but I figure telling the truth would be better for me. I never, ever got away with anything, even if I did lie. Why bother anymore, right? Tell the truth. The truth will set you free.

My mom flew into a rage. She trashed my dad's bedroom. Did I mention they sleep in different rooms, and have for almost their entire marriage? They do, and they have. I'm sure plenty of healthy couples do this, too. She threw all of his stuff down the stairs. Clothes. Trophies. Furniture. Shoes. All of his ties. It all went.

The lesson to learn from all of this is obvious. Just go ahead and lie to my mom. It really doesn't fucking matter what you tell her. She doesn't listen, and it doesn't really register. Her drug-addled brain is the Only Truth. It's obvious, looking back, that my mom just wanted an excuse to get a divorce, and she was presented with a pretty sweet reason by me and my stupidity. This was the exact moment that I decided to officially become estranged. Can I tell you how hard it is to be estranged from your family but still live with them? It's pretty fucking hard. That's exactly how hard it is. Pretty fucking.

Now that I'm living on the other side of the country, I really don't have to talk to my mom. I call my dad every now and again to see how he's doing, and I have Facebook to get a hold of my brothers. I only speak with her when she wrestles the phone away from my dad, to whom she is still married. Crazy, right? I eventually paid him back for the porn. All is forgiven, all is more or less forgotten. And I still lie to my mom every time I talk to her. “Glad to hear from you.”

Josh Grimmer lives in North Hollywood with his wife and cat. He kinda sorta runs this blog, and has another one at http://mousebed.blogspot.com. Twitter him up at http://twitter.com/JoshGrimmer

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This concludes Lying, Liar, Liest week. I hope you lie-ked it. If you didn't, you can still tell me that you did. That's not a lie, so much as it is something that friends do to spare my feelings.

Another week is over. How great is that? The year is almost over. That's even better. This week's essays are going to be about brushes with fame, if indeed anybody actually sends me an essay. I got nothing. Seriously, nobody has sent me anything. That's fine – I didn't get anything for vague unease week until Monday, and that one somehow turned out okay. Please send something, if you've got something.

The week after brushes with fame will be about Christmas. The last week of October was Halloween, the last week of November was Thanksgiving, this coming week will be Christmas. Where do I come up with this shit? Man, I am GOOD. Please have your Christmas essays in by Friday, December 17.

The two weeks after that will be a little different. There will be a sort of end-of-the-year wrap up. I'm going to re-post some of my favorite essays from the year. Not all of my favorites, to preemptively soothe anybody who gets all butt-hurt. Just some of them. If anybody has any essays that they'd like to nominate for re-posting, I'm more than willing to listen to your stumping. In fact, I encourage it.

Grosses bises,
Josh Grimmer, Editor-in-Chief

Steve Strong: The Most Interesting Man in the World

The key to telling good lies is to believe them yourself. They say if you can do that, you can pass a lie detector test. But fooling actual humans who are quickly raising red flags of uncertainly, and who are, in fact, starting to question your integrity - well, that takes a different kind of talent altogether.

The key to telling the biggest whoppers – and getting the masses to actually believe them – requires a special gift of detail. The stories must be sold in such a convincing manner that the hearer feels stupid for questioning any part of them. These crazy tales of pure malarkey need to be told with such conviction and in-your-face detail that the listener will decide to back down mentally before challenging the yarn.

How do I know this? Because I have had the fascinating opportunity for over 22 years, of watching up close, the world’s biggest chronic liar: my ex-brother-in-law Brad.

Let me say up front that Brad is a guy whose life story is quite compelling in its own right. Most people would look at how diverse his life has been, and think, “Why would he need to lie?”

Brad stands six foot seven inches tall and every inch of that frame has been filled with diversity of circumstance. He was hit by a car when he was in high school. He nearly severed a finger in shop class. He served a mission for the Mormon Church. He is a meth addict. He’s been married and divorced three times and has four children he has no contact with. He has hepatitis C; he’s been incarcerated twice in the infamous Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix; and his weight shifts from 180 LBS to over 400 LBS depending on his latest drug of choice.

When I first met Brad he had just finished High School. He was riding in my car and he was telling this tale about a little beater of a car he was driving once when the steering wheel came off in his hands and his car hit a tree. When I started to doubt the story, he made me drive to the tree and showed me the scars on it.

When I got married, he was told to take the wedding announcement to the newspaper office so they could publish it. When the notice didn’t appear after many weeks, we questioned him and asked if he really delivered the notice there. He said for sure he had delivered it, and gave this long story about how the receptionist was on the phone when he got there and how she motioned for him to drop it in her In-Basket.

He tried to recall her name, but couldn’t. But he described her as being cute and in her mid-twenties. A year later, after he had moved away from home, we found the notice folded up and shoved in the glove box of his old car.

So, if you’re looking for pointers on how to lie effectively, note how Brad worked in the case of the wedding notice. Great detail here. Even going so far as to admit he couldn’t remember the woman’s name. Very impressive.

When Brad was 19 he was living in Colorado. I was working and going to school in Utah at the time. A friend of Brad’s from Colorado was visiting Utah and looked me up and upon meeting this man for the first time he greeted me with these words, “How does it feel to be the brother-in-law of the youngest winner of the Talladega 400?”

Wow. How do you reply to that? I know for a fact that the closest Brad came to a NASCAR race was watching “The Dukes of Hazzard.”

Once he was working for a water delivery company in Fresno and I met up with one of his fellow employees and was making small talk with the guy when he said, “Do I know Brad? Sure! He’s told me tons of stories about his days playing for the New York Jets. He even showed me a better way of attacking off the line of scrimmage!”

Well, that would be Brad: Lots of added detail to the lies so they sound more convincing. I know Brad once spent some time talking with Mark Gastineau at a gym in Phoenix, so I suppose that gave him his material to cook up the whopper about playing professional football. He didn’t even play high school football himself.

One of my last conversations with him was when I heard him trying to explain to his parents why he had $700 in his wallet even though he was unemployed. He told them he had “found an ESPN camera” and sold it for the cash. His folks smiled and were impressed with his ingenuity.

But after putting up with his lies for so many years, I couldn’t listen to this last one. So, in front of his folks, I asked him what the camera looked like. He described it as being a shoulder mounted unit with a big sticker on the side that said ESPN. I asked him who he sold it to, and he described in great detail how he first offered to return it to ESPN, but when he called them, the ESPN employee on the phone didn’t seem concerned about the thing and told Brad to just keep it. So then Brad supposedly pawned it.

I tried to act all interested like his parents and asked Brad how he got the phone number for ESPN. Did he look them up in the phone book? He said he used the internet. I said, “What computer did you use? You don’t have one at home.”

That’s when he shot me the murderous look and told me to shut up.

Barbi Beckett: Tom Mays

I lied a lot growing up. I lied to avoid getting in trouble. I lied to get my way ("If the kitten goes, I go!" -- I wouldn’t have gone anywhere), and I lied to get attention.

Me: Hey mom, this professional singer came to school today and he liked my voice -- he asked if there were singers in my family!

Her: Well, did you tell him your mother’s a singer?

Me: (deflating, forgetting all those Shirley Temples at the piano bar, feeling stupid for not thinking of a lie she could find no connection to) no, i forgot.

Her: Well, you should have. Your brother sings too.

But, that was when she was around to try and impress with lies. Later, she and her third husband moved to Greenland to work for some technologies company in the tundra; it was impossible to make an impression from that distance. There were no phone calls and letters took weeks to reach her. She was gone.

Things felt bleak but I had nothing on Karlia and Tony Garcia across the street. Their single mom, Cheryl, worked (or something) a lot. When they first moved in, she had a boyfriend that took a particular interest in Karlia. And then another. The boyfriends didn’t tend to have jobs and were around more than Cheryl -- unfortunately for Karlia. Little Tony’s lot was not better. Cheryl HATED him -- something to do with his resemblance to his father. Karlia was nice enough to Tony when Cheryl was gone but when their mom was around, she hopped right on the torture Tony train.

I recently read something Lynda Barry wrote about how even crummy childhoods don’t seem all bad at the time. It’s true, we did have fun. My dad worked an hour away so we had a lot of freedom. That freedom mixed with responsibility could be tough though. Having to go to school, for example, with no one there to watch, created the constant struggle of trying to figure out how to ditch without getting caught. Getting caught was very bad. My dad let me know it was particularly bad for me because, he said, if certain authorities were to find out, I could be taken away from him. So there were stakes.

It would have been much easier to have a grown-up around so ditching wouldn’t always seem like an option. When we did ditch, it was fun, at least before lunch. We’d lip sync to Neil Diamond and put on shows. As the afternoon crept on, things got heavier and uneasy. I’d go home and dread hearing my dad’s car pull into the driveway around 5:30. He’d always heard from the school.

So, one day after school, Karlia, Tony and I got to talking. We weren’t happy with things as they were and decided to make a change. We got out some paper to write plans on. I drew a butterfly while we waited for the first action point to come to us. We knew we were leaving but we weren’t sure where we’d go. We lived about three miles from the foot of the Franklin mountain range -- desertous mountains, sloping down toward an elevated freeway, a long stretch of flat desert and then, our neighborhood. On the other side of the mountains, with a road running through them, was Tom Mays State Park. It was really just more desert but in the "park" the mountain face had caves. Shelter. So, the plan was to go live in a cave in the desert. On some level, I did think I could make it all the way to Greenland. But first, I needed to get to the other side of town.

We wrote out the plan and what we’d need to take: cans of tuna, bologna, blankets, clothes, diary. We were careful to crumple up the plans paper and throw it away so we couldn’t be tracked.

I went home and packed my bag before my dad got home from work. I used my laundry sack, which was like a long canvas army bag with a drawstring except mine had pink, yellow, white and orange flowers. It was stuffed full, half my size and heavy.

You know that feeling that’s the difference between talking about doing something big and knowing you’re really going to do it? My dad came home from work and we went about our evening, me hoping he wouldn’t notice that my heart was beating louder and my nerves were all atwitter. He didn’t. I went to bed and the next morning at 6:00AM when his car pulled out of the driveway, I got up, ate some Frosted Shredded Wheat, then tossed my duffle bag out the tiny window-within-a-window in our dining room and awkwardly crawled out after it. Now, it may seem like gilding the lily to crawl out the window but there was a sleeping older brother, you see, and the thing with our front door was you had to slam it ridiculously hard for it to lock and it had already slammed once that morning. Sneaking out was necessary strategy.

I must have wondered if Karlia and Tony would follow through. I wonder if I was hoping they wouldn’t be standing there with their laundry bags, ready to cross the craggy wilds. But they were. It was nerve-wracking and surreal to be walking up our quiet block at that early hour. If anyone were to see us, it would look very suspicious. We had some ideas about what we’d say if questioned but, still. We climbed the rock wall at the end of our street and were relieved to be safely in the desert for a while. We trudged along, shifting our poorly conceived packing from shoulder to shoulder, until we came to an area where we could be seen by passing cars in what was becoming rush hour traffic. Again, we felt unnerved and self-conscious. There was no way drivers weren’t spotting us, three 9 to 11 year-old kids, walking nowhere near a school at school time. It was a busy road with no traffic lights, though, and we got all the way past the freeway and safely into the open desert again.

Things were less familiar now. This wasn’t our backyard desert anymore. It was vast and starting to climb toward the mountain. We were all getting tired when Tony got stuck by a prickly pear cactus. Apparently, he was allergic because his calf turned red and swelled up. He started to cry and that’s when I remember getting scared. Karlia and I took turns carrying his bag and supporting him while we pushed on. I was just hoping it would go away and, eventually, it did.

For some time, we stood at the mouth of a giant, metal irrigation tunnel, looking through at a dot of light at the end. We finally stepped in. It was long, dark and echoey. We were anxious to come out the other side and curious to see where it would land us. After navigating up the steep gully we’d been deposited in, we were surprised to find ourselves on Transmountain Road. That was the goal, so we were happy at first, but after walking on the road a few minutes, we got sad. It was brutally windy and sand was stinging our faces, pushing us back. After an hour or so, we were desperate for a break so when we saw a light blue VW van parked in a turn-out we all agreed to check it out.

I’d been in less sketchy situations, sure. But it wasn’t even noon and we were beaten. We had no other option than to learn if the owner of that van was a benevolent being. I was elected to knock on the side. No answer. We stood silently until a thin, somewhat scruffy-looking, bearded guy came walking toward us. We told him our story about how we were just three kids with really cool parents who let us go hiking and spend the night in the mountains on school nights. Nodding. Silence. "Cool. You wanna get in?" Did we ever!

Want to know how I determined Ray was trustworthy? It came up that his birthday was February 7th. Same as mine, so = good guy.

It was decided that we would spend the night in Ray’s van. Phew. That was a relief. He even drove us to the secluded Tom May’s Park where the four of us hopped out to see what cave we might sleep in -- at that point, we still thought the cave was integral to the plan. At first, the climb up wasn’t so bad but the ground became dustier and slippery. We were filthy, I could barely see through my glasses, and I was having trouble breathing. This is when I started to cry muddy tears; I was afraid and stressed out of my gourd. We made it to a cave but, surprise, it too was dusty and BATTY. Pass. Down the hill we slid.

As the afternoon waned on, I grew more aware of the sun and the time. School was out. Dad was driving home. Dad was home. Dad was looking for me.

Night fell. I lay inside the van with my diary, as Karlia, Tony and Ray laughed and roasted bologna over a trash barrel outside. There was a dim yellow light and a tiny black-and-white TV was on without sound. I wrote about my grandma. I missed her and from what I was writing, you’da thought I hadn’t seen her for months. My heart was breaking over all the future nights I wouldn’t be sleeping at her cozy, hazy-from-Kools house. No more hot breakfasts (mini toaster doughnuts) and cutting out Family Circus to glue into the scrapbook she gave me for collecting the round cartoon.

I was alone in the van, but at least I had my Garfield diary.

We slept. I don’t remember it being a bad night’s sleep. We were exhausted as never before.

The next morning, Ray, Karlia and Tony putzed around outside. I don’t remember ever leaving the van once we returned from the cave. I guess I was hiding. Suddenly, Karlia and Tony popped inside, "It’s the police." Sure enough, two officers were approaching the van as Ray slowly walked toward them. They all stood talking. The three of them came to the van and Ray opened the door. We all stepped out, with our bags. I looked at Ray but he was looking away, disappointed in us. Maybe Ray DID have "really cool" parents. Maybe he believed us. I can’t imagine.

That was it for old Ray and us though. He stood there and watched as my cohorts and I were loaded into the back of the squad car and it pulled away. Off we went, back over the mountain with our duffle bags on our laps. Quiet. Dirty.

On the walk over to the police car, I’d noticed one of the cops was holding a crumpled sheet of wide-ruled notebook paper with a butterfly on it. So, if our parents hadn’t told them our names, they would have gotten them from the plans, along with a crude map of how to get to Tom May’s Park from our house.

About halfway over the mountain, one of the officers asked, "Why did you all run away?" Karlia and Tony both mumbled, "I don’t know." ‘Cause, how do you say the Truth?

"I was looking for my mom," I blurted. Dork. Lie. I knew where my mom was.

The cop didn’t say anything. We pulled up at my house before 8AM on a work day but my dad’s car was home. One of the cops walked Karlia and Tony across the street while the other walked me to my door and into the house. My dad stood up from his chair in the living room and walked over to me. I stood frozen until he pulled me into his arms and sobbed.

I was embarrassed when the cop told my dad, "She said she was looking for her mother." God, I shouldn’t have told him anything.

No one was mad at me. After the cops left, my dad and I sat on the couch and talked. He told me how worried he was and asked if I wanted to take a bath. After my bath, I was standing in my room brushing my hair when my older brother came in and gave me a hug. "Don’t you ever do that to us again," he said. And then he noted, "You went out the window so you wouldn’t have to slam the door. Smart."

For years after that, I would sometimes fantasize about running into Ray in a K-Mart or some place. I don’t know if he was questioned or bothered by the police at all. He seemed like a pretty nice guy and I felt bad for lying to him. My biggest regret about Ray, though, is that I left my Garfield diary in his van.

Marsi White: Yes, Harrison, There is a Santa Claus

Driving to lunch one day with my colleague, the topic of conversation turned to the fact that I have very beautiful, very smart children. (I love when that happens!) Knowing that my kids are ages 10 and 7, my colleague turns to me and asked if Harrison, my ten year-old, still believes in Santa. I thought for a moment and answered, "Yes, I think so."

My colleague’s children are in high school and college. I have worked closely with him since the birth of my younger child and have known him for more than 11 years. Surmised through the experience of knowing my children and his own, he says, “Harrison is too smart to believe in Santa, Marsi. He’s just too sensitive to spoil it for his younger sister and smart enough to keep his knowledge under wraps, using it to his advantage.”

"Oh," I said, neither denying nor confirming his assumption. Truth be told, I recognize my own denial -- my kids are growing up.

As the Christmas season begins and conversations of doing chores turn plausibly to idle threats of keeping on "Santa’s good list," I contemplate this conversation often. I am waiting for the moment where my smart and sensitive child looks at me and asks if there really is a Santa. And I have to lie.

Or do I? I have never really had a problem lying to my children. I like to think of them as little white lies or fibs. Nothing that will harm them or anyone else. Just the traditional parental manipulation to get out of buying the candy bar at the store or avoid an amusement park.

Of course, there are other reasons why I might lie to my kids. The protection of their innocence ranks very high in my priorities. In a world where anything you want to know is on the Internet and my child can undoubtedly discover a world of adult truths, scientific or assumed, by reading articles on his iTouch, my husband and I seek to protect them from what we can. And sometimes this involves a lie or two.

We could not protect them from my cancer. They were too smart for that. However, I could protect them from what was to come for their mommy and how the preventative measures, radiation treatments, chemotherapy and surgeries would destroy my strength, leave me permanently marred and make my hair fall out. They did not need to know that right away. But did we actually lie? A little. I said "I don’t know" a lot, when most the time I was about 90% sure of what was to come. Then again, I said "I don’t know" to a lot of people, just to avoid the conversation and the detail. To my children, however, I tried to explain where I could, especially when I thought that an "I don’t know" would cause them more worry than not.

My children are growing up faster than I ever could have imagined. Technology and television mitigate our ability to keep them in a bubble and hide them away from harm or recourse. Soon enough, their inquiring minds and adventurous hearts will take hold and their innocence will wither away like a wilting flower. They have plenty of time to KNOW.

So, for now, I will keep lying, in the hope that with each little fib, I grasp an extra snuggle or giggle that is unique to a young child who still does not know that mommy is the Tooth Fairy. Or that Daddy hides Easter Eggs at 4:00 a.m.

And if/when my son asks if there is really a Santa. I might just say, "yes." I am not sure if I am really to give up that lie yet.


Marsi lives in San Diego, CA with her husband, two children and dog. A private foundation grants writer by trade, Marsi explores her creative side by contributing to Writing Writer Writest. She is a breast cancer survivor and keeps a blog of her journey, entitled Nip-It.

Katie McMahon: Pour Me Lies

I have grown up on lies, so I search for them daily, like old habits that I always come back to, whether or not they will hurt me and harm me and make me feel sick all over.

Not big lies, but I have been fed small, bite-sized lies. You are not enough. You can’t do it. You would be better at something else. You are not pretty enough. You are smarter than them. You are not smart enough. This will be important to you someday. Make me a sandwich. This is not right. Where is the mustard? You are not enough.

The problem with lies is that they become little facts in your brain. A whisper turns into a shout and then it becomes who you are, without you even asking for it. After the shouting, trust becomes impossible because everything that is close to being true is full of doubt and strands of advice and suggestions that you never asked to hear.

The lies I tell myself:
I am not afraid. I like everything that we do. I like being quiet while you talk. I like the way you smell. You are handsome in the morning. You are so funny. You are so strong. What a nice car. I love cats. I like sci-fi movies. Of course that’s okay with me.

And I lie to my body when I stay up all night with you. I tell her she will get sleep another day. I will make it up to her, so my hands can touch your arms and hold onto your shoulders and my mouth can move without making a sound and I can tell myself that these are the moments that I am supposed to enjoy.

So I will say things like, “I can sleep better on my own,” or “I like sleeping on this side of the bed,” when really I sleep best wrapped up tight, unable to breathe or move or feel anything at all, with my head buried so deep in your chest that I could just suffocate and die. Every part of my body will fall asleep and then I will be completely numb to everything you say and do.

After turning off the lights, I like it best when he lies on top of me and only parts of me can move. I feel his sighs on my stomach and my sighs are felt by the sheets beneath. The sheets’ sighs are felt by nothing because they are crushed too thin to make a move or maybe it’s just that no one cares because sheets are just things. But we are supposed to mean something more.

Then he whispers lies into my ears and I feel at home, like a kid again, before going to bed with the door cracked open just enough so that I could see the light from the TV, sweeping its way down the hallway. Then the whispers become shouts and the shouts become what I see when I look in the mirror.

And people keep saying, “What do you want?” What do you want? All I can say is that I want someone who will not lie, who cannot lie, but what I crave is someone who will only lie. What I want is for everyone to stop saying, “You are more than enough,” because being more than enough is too much.

To wake up one morning and to recognize not only you, but me. To say, “I am afraid,” and for you to only say, “Me too.”

Katie McMahon is a lady who lives in the North Hollywood area. She has a bachelor's degree that she keeps on her bookcase and looks at sometimes. She is getting a master's degree to put on her nightstand. Sometimes she takes pictures which you can look at here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/katiemcmahon/sets, but you don't have to if you're busy right now.