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An awkward void filled the room. Stub swallowed a quarter-laugh before saying "You must have been going quite slowly, then?" His eyes flicked over to Diane’s momentarily. This glance between Diane and Stub was a small betrayal of me, but I understood. I would certainly be doing the same if I were in their position. Duckworth nodded, beatifically. His expression and bearing put me in mind of a saint about to be martyred. An activist about to be imprisoned by a corrupt administration. Accepting of his fate. Forgiving of those around him. Absolving them of blame for their pettiness. His eyes were almost closed. He licked his lips slowly before answering.
“Yeah, I was going pretty slowly.”
It was the first time Duckworth had met my friends up here and he was embarrassing the shit out of me.
This is a story about telling stories; a story about telling lies. Duckworth was a liar. He still is. What we could never work out was whether he believed the lies himself. I’ve met two or three other compulsive liars and they’ve all been outgoing, loud people – verging on manic – but he was so quiet and low-key generally. It was easy to see why most inveterate liars told stupid lies, lies collapsing under their own grandiosity: they wanted attention, they wanted to look glamorous, they wanted to be interesting. Duckworth’s motives remained murky. Certainly he didn’t seem to derive any pleasure from his stories.
I’ve known him forever, more or less.
This time he’d arrived at my house in the north of England unannounced. It was a four-hour drive from London, where we’d grown up and where he still lived with his parents. Some time before I’d invited him, along with plenty of other old friends, to a party we were having on the Saturday. Everyone else had declined the invitation; he hadn’t responded so I was initially surprised - if not meta-astonished given what I knew about him - when he rang the door bell on the Wednesday evening before the party. It didn’t take long before his stories started to come out as we all sat in the living room and shared a joint.
First off: “I’ve fucked a porn star.” His voice was flat as always. It sounded more like a confession of murder than a boast. The story was totally incongruous; I can’t remember what we’d been talking about but it was something completely unrelated to sex or porn.
“I was on the train to Birmingham. There was this girl sitting opposite me. Really fit. Blonde hair and massive tits. Really short skirt. She kept looking at me. We got chatting. Then I fucked her in the toilet.”
We were all speechless, my friends with amazement, myself with shame. Deep under the shame a spiteful little worm of glee burrowed away; when he’d finally gone (he stayed with us for five days) we’d have a good laugh over his bullshit. In a way the fact that he was my friend, that such a crazy oddball had been presented to them by me, would reflect well on myself. His stories would make a good story. His visit would be something to talk about for a long time afterwards.
We talked about it for a long time afterwards.
Consider the flaws in his tale. Firstly, I’ve been traveling by train all across England since I was a small child and I have very, very rarely sat next to or opposite an attractive woman. There just aren’t that many good-looking people in the UK. Secondly, how many women will have sex with a stranger they meet on the train? I’m sure there are some out there, but you know they’re gonna look like a baboon’s ringpiece. Thirdly, it was just patently bullshit. Duckworth was telling it. He came out with stuff like this all the time.
He’s had some classics over the years. On holiday in Spain one year he disappeared all night. He finally turned up at about 11am, walking into the hotel lobby, walking with his oddly non-arrogant swagger. It was locomotive, it was just the way he walked. Where had he been?
“I met two birds. We went back to their hotel room. I shagged one of them while the other watched. She said ‘ooh, this is really turning me on’ and started fingering herself. They were sisters.” We didn’t even bother calling him out on it. He always added in some unnecessary extra detail that really tipped the story over into full-on fantasy territory, yet there was nothing gleeful or mischievous about his tales or the way he told them. The details fell from his mouth without prompting, without hesitation, but also without inflection or excitement. We thought he’d probably spent all night in a bus stop or something.
Another one: “So I was at Starface and I went into the toilet. My mate Dunc was on the floor in the bogs, passed out cold. Pissed off his face. I picked him up and slung him over my shoulder and brought him outside. He’s about 6’5”, about 17 stone. Rugby player. As I was going out the head bouncer – Mr Universe winner – said to me ‘Fucking hell, I tried to lift that bloke earlier. I couldn’t even get him off the floor.’”
And:
“One of the bouncers tried to chuck me out ‘cos I’d just been sick at the bar. I just got sick in between my shoes. I hit him on the chin. Out cold. Just kept on dancing.”
And:
“That happened to me. Someone put razor blades in the flumes. I saw them when I was going down. I managed to swerve round them.”
This last one had led Stub make his comment about going quite slowly. We’d been talking about that urban legend of people putting razor blades in the flumes at swimming pools , specifically, how it was obviously absolute rubbish.
What do you do with a childhood friend who’s a compulsive liar? Do you challenge his stories? Do you humour him? I have no idea.
As it happens, I haven’t seen him for a while. My work as an international supermodel pussy-eater keeps me very busy.
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16 comments:
c00l st0ry br0
good comment bro!
I seriously would like to hear how other people deal with liars in their life.
There are lots of them around. Usually I find they're either very good actors - capable of stitching elaborate and convincing worlds together - or very poor ones. The weak liars like Duckworth can't enjoy their own performance because they're too trapped in self-doubt and maybe self-hatred.
The way we deal with liars seems to be part of the same problem that produces them in the first place. I invariably humour them, choosing to save my doubts for the ears of others. Normally I end up adopting a slightly passive-aggressive, not-easily-impressed stance towards their more improbable tales. Doesn't seem to change anything though, I think because I never make the liars genuinely accountable. Would an arm round the shoulder/punch in the face do any good?
A real liar doesn't care if you don't believe them. I don't think they even notice because they're too busy convincing themselves.
I'd rather deal with a Brit liar than an American one. I'd be running Guy Ritchie montages in my head (backed by the Snatch soundtrack of course) while they talked. They'd throw out their bullshit and all I'd hear is, " 'Arold, you're a silly cunt." "Oi fucka, what are you about my son?" Throw in some slow mo and I'm set. The accent alone oozes class. You've no idea how good you've got it, PK.
Get a midwestern dipshit fibbing to your face and you'll want to kill yourself in 5 minutes.
"Hey Pat, I was eatin' a orange..." Fucking slob can't even use an. At least Ducky has a grasp of the English language. I propose an international liars exchange. I'll take a dead eyed lying goon from somewhere ending in Shire for a 98 pound (a whopping 7 stone!) cholo killing machine from the desert southwest.
Ha. I think, and I'm going out on a limb here, that Brit liars are just as intolerable to them as American ones are to us. Otherwise though I agree. They're so cute!
Ducky is from Greater London, but I'm up for the swap. Duckworth will be at Laredo airport at 05:00 tomorrow morning; what time is Isaac Gutierrez-Bartolome gonna be at Leeds-Bradford International?
@ Tim: yeah, I'm a humourist (not online obviously). It just seems cruel calling him out tbh.
Try to out-lie them? Although with Duck that sounds impossible. I v have a friend who's the same way except he takes it a step further, lying about where/how much he works to the point no one even goes to his "job" anymore to verify he's actually there. It sounds like your crew has a similar approach by putting up with it and ridiculing him once he's gone. Not much else you can do.
Isaac Gutierrez-Bartolome? Nucca please. He ain't playing for Real Madrid. My boy is Lil Puppet Martinez (pronounced Mar tee nez not Martin ez like your UK sportscasters do). Even your airport sounds fucking sexy.
So what you're saying is you're friends with Jay from the Inbetweeners?
@ Justin: exactly. Smile and nod and laugh about it later!
@ anon: Leeds-Bradford airport is the single thing in the universe the most far from sexy. Un-sexy. Anti-sexy. I actually looked up the names of the leaders of the Gulf Cartel and mashed them together. I like "El Títere" though. Them drug lords always have really sweet nicknames: "Shorty", "Barbie", "Desert Ant", "Strawberry"...
@ the spiral: Jay comes out with the odd funny comment. Ducky is quite depressing, to be honest.
No joke, had a guy in my office commit suicide last weekend. Turns out he was a pathological liar, and his tales were just about to unravel and bite him in the ass. I know it goes beyond the compulsive liar that we're talking about here - he wasn't bragging about tagging porn stars on the train, his were big, long con lies - but I've been thinking a lot about it all week. This guy, his name was Al, he was able to get away with it for years, mostly because no one challenged him on his bullshit.
He lied about having cancer; you can't just call someone out on that. I started to get a little suspicious as little details didn't make sense (I won't go into them all here, this'll be long enough), and eventually some other people in the office were questioning it too, but no one ever confronted him. Turns out he got fired from a job 10 or 11 years ago for pretending to have cancer and going out on paid disability.
In the end, it turns out that almost nothing he had ever told us about himself was true, from where he lived and went to school, to details about his family; and he had other storylines for other people that were completely different from what he'd been telling us. It's weird, I'm not a dumb guy, most of the people I work with aren't dumb people, but not one of us connected the dots with this guy, mostly because calling someone out on their lies is uncomfortable.
That's super sad. Everything is awful.
@ Richard: lying compulsively, I think, is symptomatic of some pretty deep-rooted unhappiness. It has to be. Tragic story. I actually feel bad now for writing this about Duckworth but it's frustrating to be friends with someone who pushes people away by constantly coming out with stupid tales. Obviously it's not something that you can get them to drop by just saying "stop it with the bullshit'. But the sad thing is, despite them lying because they need attention or want closeness you actually stop wanting to hang out with them because they waste your time with these stories - and when they do turn up they're a figure of fun behind their backs. I mean, surely the whole point of friendship is honesty? Friends being people you can actually be honest with? And like you say, it sounds like your colleague was on a different level of lying again, with whole parallel lives on the go simultaneously.
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