The Lying Game
Hey there Delilah…
Listening to the Welcome to Hell VIP podcast for a second while I wait for the Nooma to kick in (go-go Gadget caffeine) (up brain, up!…wow, that just made so much more sense…Penny…as in penny for your thoughts…the dog’s name was Brain…anyway, what ADHD?), and they were talking about the Delilah radio program, which IYKYK…
Anyway, it reminds me of being in Chicago in July of 2023. After a Cubs game, the person I was with and I stopped at a bar, and this guy knocked his chair over but then came over. He was mainlining White Claw, but I remember him telling a story random story about being Delilah’s marketing director. He said he was looking for another job in university healthcare marketing, but it was just SO random and hilarious. I really wish I could remember everything he said, but I was like, “What if he just made all of that up? What if not a lick of it was true, and he just made it up?”
Can you imagine? Just going up to someone and making up some BS unprovable life story and then going about your life?
Well, I kind of did that once—for fun. In Savannah in February 2024, I went to the BayBerry Writing Workshop hosted by the remarkable Charlotte Pence (Mobile’s inaugural poet laureate) and her husband Adam Prince (a truly amazing short story and fiction author) during the Savannah Book Festival (stayed at a truly bespoke VRBO on Jones’ Street, which was once deemed by Southern Living “the most beautiful street in America” that happened to be positioned above an iconic Southern restaurant called Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room that did family-style lunch service—it had people wrapped around the block every day, but I digress…).
After the key notes (I got to see John Berendt who wrote Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil (about Savannah) and City of Fallen Angels (about Venice), Jeanette Walls (The Glass Castle), and Ruth Ware (The It Girl, The Lying Game, One by One, In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, Woman in Suite 11, etc.), we all went to do karaoke at McDonoghou’s Irish Pub. I’ve never considered myself a particularly competent singer, but entertainment wise, I suppose it’s the 20 years of dance training that kicks in, I can’t help but perform.
At the time, my go-so song was Meredith Brooks’s timeless jam “Bitch”. I get up there, and I’m like, “So, this was my Star Search audition song when I was nine. I didn’t make it, but anyway, here’s Meredith Brooks’s ‘Bitch’.”
Afterward, Charlotte said, “I didn’t know you were on Star Search!”
I laughed said I wasn’t, I just made up the nonsense on the spot. (More often than not, mouth speaks while brain is in the background facepalming shouting, “You’re on your own! I take no part of this!”) But then the other writers decided to play along and come up with nonsensical origin stories about their song choice. We had so much fun.
It kind of reminds me of that game teachers have you play—two truths and a lie and everyone has to guess what the lie is. I think lying as a game can be fun when everyone knows you’re playing and the goal is to read between the lies. Kind of like in Ruth Ware’s book The Lying Game—it’s such a good book. It’s a murder mystery about four friends who come together in their formative high school years who have a sort of lying game amongst their clique that ultimately leads to a death and a secret that they all carry until the truth comes out 15 years (if I’m not mistaken) later—because the truth always comes out, which is why I think you should only ever lie if you’re willing to let everyone else know the rules of the game first.
Which is also why I feel that at this point in history, many people are feeling betrayed by the veil of lies that’s thinned to the point that the truth has been unveiled for so many people, and it’s why there are so many people who are justifiably hurt and angry. Eventually the hurt dissolves into a sort of disappointed hurt and a grief for what could’ve been. Yes, much of our time has been wasted, but equally, we could waste so much more mourning for the past when we still have the present to live and the future to create—a more honest future, something that we can all live in honestly and play honest games that are silly and playful and magical.
On the Welcome to Hell Podcast, Dane, the Irish / Indian comedian says that on his dating profile on Hinge (I think) says that he always just tells three truths—he went to school with one of the Sugar Babes, and I forget the other two—I think one is that his also left handed (so am I—daaaahling! (Listen to the podcast, and that will make sense)), but it always makes me giggle.
Like, let’s see what mine could be…I’m left handed (you already knew that), I performed on the Samsung stage at the Sydney Olympics, and I competed to be on Star Search when I was nine. Yeah, see, but if I hadn’t already told you the truth, it would be hard to guess. Because the other two are so specific that you might think that being left-handed was the lie. I’d love to try to guess other people’s…as a treat. Feel free to comment if you want to play…because at least with this, it’s just a game.
