At worst I feel bad for a while
I like to lie to estheticians.
It’s nothing that would hurt anyone. Sometimes I tell her that I have kids, inventing detailed soccer tournaments and witty anecdotes about the last time they had haircuts. Sometimes I tell her that I just moved back to Canada from England, dropping parts of verbs, throwing in bits of English slang. OhJesusChristAlmighty and the like. I like to lie about husbands and lovers – the number I’ve had, their likes, the size of their feet, what I got them for Christmas, how much they won in Vegas, what the buy me in jewelry stores. Oh, and weddings. I’ve turned embellishment of weddings into a rare art form. Oh, of course it only works if I never see the same esthetician. I’ve been caught out once or twice; a novice slip-up about a destination wedding in Aruba where he was the prince and I was the princess still plays round and round and round in my head, perhaps because it was such an adolescent fantasy for someone who looks like me to have lied about.
A spa is the perfect place to practice lying. For one thing, you’re on your own in that way that only happens in a spa – or at least usually only happens in a spa. Naked, with an almost tatty terry toga thing wrapped around me, I can sense when I will lie. I feel a kind of awakening. I have reason to believe that the combination of essential oils, sterilized files, and pillows tucked under my knees triggers some sort of chemical imbalance that then has to be released after the esthetician’s perfunctory knock before entry. She always looks like she’s been standing for days. My control over lying kind of spirals out of control after that. There is a certain inevitability. I’m just doing what I do.
Really, though, I don’t mean to make it sound like something comes over me. Nor is this just some sick game. I think lying well is a skill that should be cultivated. Lying well is a matter of practice, a matter of repetition with a difference. A detail here, some elaboration there, that part is fairly obvious. Anyone with an imagination and a desire for escapism can do that part. But I aim to lie transparently, effortlessly, like I know what I’m leaving. I aim to lie so that even the most intuitive among the general population could never pick up on it. I’ll get some glances, sometimes, that might seem to indicate a certain distrust of something I might have said, but very few people ever call me on it. Even if people don’t believe me, they are too polite to say anything outright. And, anyway, I could make them think they’re going mental if that’s what I wanted.
I try not to practice on my friends but a convincing lie soothes a damaged ego like nothing else, and I’ve got some very ego-driven friends. I tell myself they’re just unaware. They call me up on the phone just to have a little whine and a moan, they’re feeling alone, they want to feel that their hearts are still beating by telling someone else about their minor problems. I mean, they’re crawling on their knees, practically begging me to release them with a little lie. They are always tiny lies: no, those jeans look fine on your ass; yes, I would have eaten that too; why would anyone question your decision to let your kid do that? They want me to fall down with them, and I refuse. Lying is an ethical choice.
Listen, I’m not a bad person. I’ve never been dragged kicking and screaming from a bar after breaking a bottle over someone’s head. I’ve never caused bleeding, at least not in the physical sense of the word. I’m not sure I could commit mail fraud or lie under oath, although I guess that would be the true test of my desire to lie effortlessly and transparently. I don’t have time to execute the crimes that make headlines. Hell, I don’t have time to do the sort of things that make people cry themselves to sleep. I’ve never been caught fucking that girl next door.
