Jayne d'Arcy
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Every Secret needs an authenticated vestige of Truthby Patrick Darnell
Hello my name is Tittio Pinelli. I’m a liar. I had a childhood friend, Jimmy Totter, who was also a liar. He once told his mother that his dad had bought a mink coat for her Christmas present. You see he was true to his name: he forced something open using a jimmy of a lie.
“She tore up the whole house for two weeks before Christmas,” said Jimmy.
We were standing in the Methodist Church back lot at twilight when he told me this. It was Tuesday, Scouts night, and we were looking for suitable grapevines on the back fence for stogies. It was our Scout Troop ritual to smoke these particular grapevines as a tradition to pass down to tenderfoots.
“Your mom?” I was astonished. “You told your mom that? What did she do?”
“Here,” said Jimmy to a sixth grader, “see you have to find a dried vine that is mostly hollow. Like this one.”
“My mom, yeah, she looked in every closet and up in the attic, and then Dad’s work shop in the garage,” said Jimmy after showing the trick of the vine, sucking in smoke and puffing out a smoke ring.
“Did you get in trouble?”
“Oh, yeah, especially my Dad...” Jimmy pointed his nose more downward, and his eyes twittered ever so minuscule.
This is the point when embroidery begins for Jimmy; for me it would have been the moment I begin to reel him in. From my perspective most lying starts with a stonewalling, and a pause, then a long list of things that “his Dad did to him.” His vacillated tempo between attitudes gave up his dotter and wobble, and a little shoulder shake was his final totter before the humdinger.
“That’s the time I got coal in a stocking, for Christmas,” said Jimmy. Not so good a liar, Jimmy.
Sure, his dad was a hot head, and probably worked out a little frustration on Jimmy’s behind... among other things, but Jimmy really was telling me this before he knew I was his superior liar. You see Jimmy could lie about trivialities.
There has never been anything trivial about my fabrications. I am the greatest natural born liar; I am Tittio, the
Fellini of liars.
Jimmy lied more to gain attention for himself. He had not begun to enter my sphere of lie. It turns out, I lie to protect others. I lie to dissuade other's actions, or to defuse tense moments and gain time. I don’t tell the same lie over and over again. My lie is a continuous head trip, improvisational modal development. I will use just enough truth needed to steer the situation to mutual complacency. That is the root of being a trustworthy liar.
As it turns out, Jimmy became a ship’s pilot on freighters, and made a bundle as
his natural ability turns out to be very good for that business. As Ship's Captain he had a slew of underlings to lie to at great length. His talents gave him berth on a career that he could retire early and wealthy from. He successfully shuffled cards. He hid real intentions behind his stonewalling, and there is no doubt he found treasure on many of his excursions; in unclaimed freight. He could be friend to everyone, and friend to no one.
If I am trundling along on a train, I engage fellow passengers with a parable to keep our trip poignant at maximum speed. I hope secretly distraction makes them miss their stop. If I am on the platform, I offer a lie to make small talk and muck up a stranger’s mental processes. It is mental conditioning set on superficiality, and acknowledgment of regimens.
My gift is something I suffer with emotional ineptitude. My lies are a sinking car being swept along a river bottom with me in it; a tomb. Yet despite the unswerving certainty of death, half-truths have served well to mitigate risks, in my unsavory swaggers, but have not served to soothe despair.
An existence masterfully created out of lying could one day actually become true; stuff of lies could be perceived as bona fide houses. Lying to survive in one's own fabrications requires so much synthetic superficiality, the structure might be insupportable. Others could find it too crazy to keep up maintenance on a house of cards.
A true liar, as I, has not only height and width in his lies, but also breadth. Factoring in breadth makes lying three-dimensional. There is a devil and an angel sitting on my shoulders; it is Faust, and demons, angels, and curmudgeons, and twins.
All the faking, and constant inventing, inventing and weaving concoctions, comes alive in the moment of motive. A childish flare imitates desire. A sordid type of bonding takes place. My victim is captured for the moment. Then when it seems a good time to splits-Ville, I might hold another delicious carrot up to my acquaintance‘s nose.
In final survey, what really gets my goat though is my altruistic lying has interrupted my settling down. I always appear available. I’m not available, and I want like mad to settle down.
Only by practicing this state-of-the art in lying avidly, like a ritual, could anyone ever perfect it. Or of course you could have been born with it like fabulous me.
Fellini once said
; “Rinaldo, I managed to spit on her ass!”
and I believe him. He's an excellent liar. I heard it through the grapevine.
