lies we told in july
I. The beautiful friend
I’m on Instagram when I see my friend in London with another friend of hers. Her friend has high cheekbones and short black hair and freckles that lay neatly across her cheekbones. I reply directly to their photo: “your friend is so beautiful.”
My phone rings then, and it’s my friend from London. “I have to tell you something terrible,” she says. She tells me how she introduced her friend to her boyfriend and is now convinced her boyfriend’s going to leave her for her beautiful friend.
“Never tell ANYBODY I thought that,” she says.
I ask if I can write about it.
She says yes, but only if I lie.
II. Texting
My writer friend in Bed Stuy is texting me about the last lines of our paragraphs. He wants to cut them all. Our last sentences are always summarizing what we’ve just shown, why not leave them before that?
“You don’t have to tell the full truth,” he says. “Just as much as they need.”
III. In bed
I am seeing a boy who is moving to New York. We eat big bowls of bolognese and drink red wine, and later when we lay in bed, he says he is worried I think he doesn’t care. I ask why that worries him, and he says because it isn’t true.
I ask, “What isn’t true? That you don’t care?”
He says yes.
I’m confused and ask again. “So what, you do care?”
He falls asleep.
IV. Other Writers
I’m at a party with Other Writers and all the women are wearing tunics. Big flowy dresses that start above our tits and bellow out. We tell each other how much we love our big dresses. One woman calls hers, her nun dress! We say how happy we are in our dresses and how we only want to wear our big dresses forever.
V. Stairs
I’m walking down the stairs of my sister’s house when I remember a teacher I had in high school. He taught English and coached running, and one day I stopped by his office just as a runner was finishing up her meeting.
“Sarah just asked if that was Sophia Jennings waiting,” he said, closing the door behind me. “And I said yes. And she said, oh, she’s so beautiful.”
And then he said it again.
VI. Terrible news
I’m watching the boy drink a beer in the garden when I decide to ruin my night.
“I think I like you,” I say. “Even though you’re moving to New York.”
He goes silent and tells me this makes him feel very guilty.
I ask him why.
He says because he is Jewish.
I say okay then I take it back, I don’t like you, whatever, it’s fine, let’s have dinner.
He downs his beer then puts his face in his hands and then, eventually, he asks me:
“What does ‘like’ even mean?”
VII. Sick
The Other Writers and I go to our doctors to find out why our bodies feel so big. We decide it's probably hormones. Cortisone. Stress. We talk, and I suspect that by not telling me I look bigger, the writers are telling me that I look bigger. I do the same.
VIII. High fashion
I ask the boy who is moving to New York for a compliment, and he says I am an excellent conversationalist. I ask him for another, and he says I am super smart. I ask him to objectify me, and he says he left his e-cig in his car.
The next morning I call my friend who works in high fashion. I tell him I am concerned I am very unattractive.
He tells me I am NOT ugly, I am so beautiful and so smart and uniquely talented and that he loved my newsletter!
IX. Grapes
I remember more. A few months later, I stopped by the teacher’s office with an essay for our Creative Writing class. It described the last time I hugged my dad and a bag of green grapes we shared on our drive to Stinson Beach.
I sat there as my teacher read the story aloud for me, and when he got to the grapes, he cried.
X. The Boy
The boy moves to New York. Like he said he would.
XI. Bhutan
Years later, my teacher was fired and sent to Bhutan. A similar school, miles away.
Rumors circled about an inappropriate relationship with a high school poet. Not that that was rare. We all knew about the rugby coaches and the rowing coaches and that Philosophy teacher who gave my Japanese friend a book about Japanese porn. For no apparent reason, other than that he wanted to.
XII. The Runner
When I was back in London last month, I saw the runner on the Heath. She was climbing up the hill as I walked down it, this time accompanied by a much older man.
I said hi, nice to see you, and she said she wasn’t sure if it was me.
We paused then, and I guess I could’ve asked her if it was true. If she’d said that I was pretty, back then.
XIII. Lying
Years ago I lived with a single mother who got in a fight with a younger lover. He told me about it. The fight, he said, was simple. She believed there was a difference between lying and withholding the truth.
He did not.