The 12 Phases of Relationship Lies

The first date: You can tell him about your suspicions about your roommate’s alcoholism. Better to say this before you knock back your fourth or fifth cocktail. Of course you have a high tolerance — you’ve been living with a drunk for the last two years! Why else would your apartment look so messy? It’s not you! It’s the intoxicated train wreck in the back bedroom! God. Don’t you wish someone could just take you away from all that?

The third date: You can admit you lied on your profile and no, you never read Infinite Jest— but you did read half of that lobster essay and that was really, really life-changing. What’s that? Oh, yeah. You still eat lobster. It’s delicious. Please.

[from my pseudonymous column at The Gloss]

Darling, I’m Tired and I Should Be Leaving.

I’ve been telling lies, but I’ll tell you the truth.

Margot & the Nuclear So and Sos – As Tall As Cliffs

Challenge is for lovers.

And don’t be terse and don’t be shy
Just hug my lips and say good lies.

An oldie but a goodie, and a perfect song for my Sunday restlessness:

Tapes ‘n Tapes – Insistor

The Truth Will Out

I’m making stupid decisions left and right. I can’t stop. I keep saying things I feel outloud. I don’t do that. I mean, I do, so much, that people think I just say everything I feel the moment I feel it. That is not true. The more I say, the more I keep quiet. The more I say, the more I push back into little secretive recesses in my mind. More talk, more silence. More noise, more lies. Filling those gaps creates honesty. Honesty creates failure. And I don’t like to fail.

Or Lie

We all have secrets. It is cute when we pretend we are the only ones.

If we all told our secrets, we would have nothing, not even half-truths.

Farmhouse

It’s cold up here and the crickets aren’t out yet.

I can’t wait to get up here when it’s hot and sticky, the crickets and cicadas and humming, the grass is slick with dew and the pavement is hot under my feet. I like to take a blanket, double it up and lie under the stars with a bit of marijuana and a pack of cigarettes. Or a few beers and someone to talk to. I like the dead silence. Even more so, I like that rumble of noise the bugs make as they rustle their wings and the echo, the soft slow noise the leaves make as the winds slowly push through the trees. The dew soaks into the double up blanket and my back feels damp and cold.

I need to get out of the city more often. I was born in the country, and when I come up here I feel beautiful and calm. My entire demeanor changes. I joke a lot less. I lie a lot less. I ease into my own skin and squint less. I, perhaps, am slightly quiet, content to spoon on a blanket in the grass on a hill. There is nothing in that scenario that makes me want to tell jokes or fashion lies. I tell the truth, clear as the bright-shiny stars.

In Our Bedroom After The War

I have stopped dating. I have cut them all off. I just can’t go through these motions anymore. I’m sick of the cocktails, the text messages, the poorly-chosen restaurants for the second or third dinner, the nervous jokes, the lies, the abrupt honesty… And I don’t miss being in a relationship. Maybe I’ve forgotten how. It doesn’t matter what I remember and what I don’t, anyway. I’ve sunk myself too deep into my cynical isolated cut-off New Yorker shell.

Last week I found myself in an intense conversation with a travel writer. And after a discussion about Amsterdam, or Prague, whatever we talked about, the canals or the Vltava, and after his lips grazed mine, I pulled away and crossed my arms. His hand slowly brushed my cheek and he shook his head, searching my eyes for signs of life. My thoughts, my eyes, whatever fire I had in them, were drifting. I was drifting. It happened so quickly he was caught off guard. He leaned in again and press his lips to mine. The warmth was gone. I was gone.

How does it feel to kiss a girl and lose her in the same instant, I should have asked. Tidal? Is that the inertia of romance?

Excluding minor exceptions, I have been alone for the last year. I sleep in a cocoon of quilts, paperbacks, pillows and the white noise hum of a box fan. I rarely think about the past, the hands, the breath on my neck, or the sweaty early-morning snow angels we became in my sheets; the fog of the smoky darkness as the evening thrashed unrelenting, beneath the covers, between my legs. I almost completely forget the flinching gasps or the slow-stroking fingers tracing my spine.

These transient men across the table at the bar, the restaurant, wherever they plan on seducing me, have no idea how I lie in bed now: alone, curled up, the white noise of the box fan soaking the bedroom, my warm back pressed up against a future fantasy’s arms.