Liar, Liar

What did you study? He asks me, voice muffled by the pillow as my hands work through the knots in his shoulders. I continue to make broad, sweeping strokes as I contemplate my answer.

Economics, I say. A lie, but only just. It’s very close to the truth. I studied business at a small liberal arts college and I retain almost nothing from that education except how to artfully do my taxes every year. It’s close enough to economics that if pressed I could hold my own in a conversation, though it never extends beyond them asking what my major was. I will be 40 still answering this question, so attached are they to the idea that I am a struggling student paying her way through college – that this is not “all that I do.”

Where are you from? He pushes on, and I roll my eyes above him, bemused at his attempts to get to know me. Kentucky, I answer without hesitation. Sometimes it’s Indiana, Ohio, Illinois. So far I’ve never been caught by someone from the same state I claim to be from. As if knowing where I was from would make this experience different somehow. I’m here now, and that’s all that matters.

This isn’t an act of malicious subversion but more of an innocent diversion – men are always asking me the same questions over and over. It becomes a little game, to pass the time. Where should I be from next? I’ve moved around a lot, so it’s not hard for me to imagine being from any number of places. What did I study? Sometimes I answer with all the things I wish I had studied – wildlife conservation, music, dance, linguistics.

Once at the same massage incall a man came in, burly and covered in tattoos. There was a tractor on his shoulder, and I told him I loved it because I grew up in the country and used to work on a farm. He had a breezy way about him, the kind of person that’s just easy to talk to. He asked me where I was from and without any thought I let the name of my real home state fall from my lips.

He turned around to look at me – me too! He said. We marveled at this shared connection and spent the rest of our session in an easy camaraderie. After he left I called my friend to tell her about him, and how I hoped he decided to book with me again. He never did, but I think about him and his tractor tattoo from time to time. Sometimes the best clients are the ones we easily forget, the ones that slip into the recesses of our mind but hold a soft glow when we return to them.

So much of the truth feels irrelevant. A managed establishment like the massage parlor is so different than seeing private clients – it feels like an endless revolving door of flesh, and very few of them did I ever see more than once. It doesn’t matter what I tell them, because they will forget me as soon as they leave. Because getting to know me isn’t the goal of our interaction. They often mixed me up with the other girls, because just like they are all the same to me, we are all the same to them. Or maybe it's just me that was forgettable, little Midwestern wallflower. Maybe I just wasn’t any good.

They lie to me too. About what they do for work, how much money they make, whether or not they have wives and kids, where they’re from. A liar always knows when she’s being lied to, but it doesn’t bother me. I accept what they say without question, just a little quirk of the lips.

Once a man told me he was from Los Angeles, that he had only moved here a few months ago. I was already disbelieving, as he had that certain brand of neuroticism that only seems to come from upper-middle class New York City natives. He gave himself away utterly when he told me a story about being in a store and standing "on line" – an expression I have never heard once outside the confines of the city. Maybe in Jersey. Definitely not in L.A.

We go back and forth like this, two animals hungrily circling each other. Constantly on the defensive, wondering who will attack first. I often ask myself what would happen if we all just told each other the truth all the time, what it would feel like to be stripped bare and show yourself to another fearlessly and shamelessly. So few of us are equipped for that.

There is so little at stake when you know that you’ll never see someone again. Why not take the opportunity transmute yourself into a new person, wear a new face for a little while? Everything is only acting, after all.

I catch myself lying to the men who try to chat me up in bars while I sit alone, annoyed at the intrusion but using the opportunity to sharpen my blade, craft a new character. Occasionally I throw in an accent. Just for fun.

A man believes that he deserves access to me because I am a woman. When I cannot run away I turn to subterfuge, comforted at least in knowing that I have given him nothing to work with but lies.

There is safety in the lie. As you approach a stranger, not knowing what lies in store for you. There are predators out there - some calculated, some accidental - but information is a power you learn to keep close to the vest. There is too much at stake not to lie, because the truth is a weapon you can't trust anyone but yourself to wield. Sometimes not even that. The world is not always benevolent, and though I hate the way it makes monsters of us the lies come easy, like diamonds dripping from my mouth coated in dollar store lipgloss. 


The weight of my lies is a burden that I have no interest in carrying anymore – I cannot hold up the trueness of my self when my arms are filled with layers of obfuscation and false information. Let me tell the truth, because anything else feels too heavy to carry. You must also be strong enough to carry it, for the truth between two people is an obligation, like a delicate figurine you hold in an cupped hand, afraid that it might shatter. I tell the truth too.

Now that all my work is independent it is different, I am intent on building relationships with people. I see far fewer people. The idea is to see people again and again, a thing that can be difficult to do when you don't even remember where you're supposed to be from or what you studied in college. What is the truth? People think that it is fixed, like a fact. (I studied business in college.) But it is malleable and soft, a shape-shifter. (I am malleable and soft, a shape-shifter.) It is what rises to the surface in moments of stillness, a steady echo in your heart chambers, reverberating the great I am throughout your body. The truth is a 20-sided die that I toss between my hands, a Magic 8 ball I use to divine the present of each moment.

There is a lightness of being in the ability to be honest, and I savor my time with those who make me feel safe enough to do so. It is a gift freely given when it is not asked after. I am like a wild animal crouched furtively at the edge of the woods. Stand still with an outstretched hand, and let me come to you. I'll make it there eventually.

I expose myself just a little each time, once I feel that I am free enough to be open. I like to give pieces of myself away, hoping the image of who I am to another might be one that I could also be proud of. How many times have I held someone and been held by them, my name creeping up my throat only to get stuck behind my teeth.

Sometimes I tell the truth but people don’t believe me, insisting I am just a liar. They think all hookers must be liars, it’s a forgone conclusion in their minds. This is fine, because I know how to be a liar. It is what I am, though it is not all that I am. It is not my job to erase their ideas of me, the projection they’ve crafted in their mind that I am forever on the hunt, eager to deceive at every turn. It is too exhausting to combat the perception that I recreate myself entirely for their benefit, and so I try to let it pass, shift the conversation, already planning to stew on it after they've gone.

Sometimes the lie is a kindness. A fantasy that we are choosing to co-create. I find there is beauty in allowing for the illusion, and eventually letting it go. There is nothing bad or ugly or deceptive about this, and to insist otherwise would be ludicrous. Are you mad at the play because it does not last forever? Because the story that transfixed you was built on fiction and not fact? I too am an artist.

My life has been filled with a yearning, and punctuated by moments of deep restlessness. When I lived in the country I would get in my truck and drive in any direction, no destination in mind, sometimes I would drive halfway across the state before I turned around. I have long been possessed by the desire for constant movement. Living in the city I walk and walk and walk, zigzagging down every cross street. Stopping when I see the ocean. Riding the train to the end of the line.

It is its own meditation, in it I am nothing more than particles moving through space, indistinguishable from the world around me. I look at the buildings above me and the people in front of me and everything feels so clear and focused, like I've been given glasses for the first time. I touch a brick wall and the sensation feels new and close and now, I drag my hand along its surface as I continue to walk. There is a truth of being that requires no words. It flourishes only in that silent contemplation of existing alongside the Other, your particles bumping up against theirs. 


I think of all the Me's I've ever been, loving every single one and seeing the truth of all of them. Even the girl from Kentucky who studied economics. She exists, along with all the others. Being a sex worker allows me to be anyone and everyone - I can reinvent myself simply for the joy or the interest of it. I think this is what actors must feel when they are becoming someone new. I am a method actor, but perhaps a poor one, because I always feel a little bit too much like myself. Whoever she is.

Look me in the eyes and tell me what you see, only sometimes I am the coward, not brave enough to know the truth of myself so I slide my eyes away - letting my gaze wander around the room, never settling on anything. I fear that I hold onto this life so fervently because I am unwilling to know myself, that if I only exist in relation to others that I never have to bother to find out who I actually am.

And yet all my efforts to hide are sloppy - I leave little traces of myself all around, almost daring someone to figure out who I really am. I have no plan for what I would do if someone did solve my puzzle - I like to be challenged, yet undefeated. As if to know my name, my hometown, my college major, is to know me. I suppose it is and it isn't, and this is a paradox we are all constantly battling. What does it mean to know another person? Can we ever really know each other.

I am coming to know the her that is myself but it is a clumsy and imperfect journey. I have it written on my mirror in permanent marker, a quote I once read -

IF WE WANT THE REWARDS OF BEING TRULY LOVED

WE MUST SUBMIT TO THE TERRIFYING ORDEAL OF BEING KNOWN

How can I love myself if I do not know who that is, and so the theme of the last few years of my life has been this. A thorough examination of the self, a cataloging of my traits, my likes, my hopes, my fears. It is a project, as I am. I wonder if there will come a day when I am unwilling to be someone else any longer, if my shape-shifting is a character defect that I will someday outgrow.

Or maybe I am like a broken mirror, reflecting back endlessly, one hundred eyes turning their gaze back onto mine. When I look into my own eyes I see nothing but an ocean of possibility, a road I want to ride on. I have come to love every person I have ever been, I can see the truth in each of them.

I don't mind being a liar, because there's truth in that too.