codified, still inarticulate--force them into the role of liar.
And then the lies, once having been freed from Pandora's Hope Chest, begin to breed. They multiply like maggots and riddle a relationship like a submarine hit by a depth charge. Consider just the most obvious ones we've all either used or been victimized by:
You walk into a room and she (or he) is brooding.
"What's the matter, something wrong, something bothering you?" That's what you say.
Then he (or she) replies, "Nothing."
A lie, a bald-faced lie. You know damned well there's something wrong. The way the legs are crossed, the way the arms are folded, that telltale pursing of the lips, the vacant, abstracted stare, the peremptory way the words are bitten off. There's something wrong. But she (or he) says, "Nothing."
Is it because the brooding party really has something heavy to brood about and, out of love, chooses to lie rather than to lay it on the other person? Is it (more likely) that the brooder has been brought down by something the other party did, and wants to whip a little unconscious, free-floating guilt on the perpetrator before spilling the loadof shit being carried in the gut? Is it part of the stylized ritual of hide-and-seek so many lovers play? Is it a physical manifestation of the brooding party's having done something they mutually consider "wrong" (like going out and getting laid on the sly), and getting him or herself set to rationalize it in such a way that the other member of the team feels like the criminal, using the brooding dark mood as a kind of head start in the argument that will follow?
What does it matter? What we're dealing with here is dishonesty, cupidity, misdirection, acting-out ... lying.
Here's another one. And you've all been on one or the other end of this one:
"No, I have a headache."
"No, I'm tired."
"No, I'm a little inflamed."
"No, I have a hard day tomorrow."
"No, it isn't right."
"No, I'm still in love with [fill in appropriate name]."
Now none of those oldies but goodies is being spoken by a man or woman on a first date. I'm talking about their use in an already ongoing relationship. But a relationship in which one of the partners has been turned off, and won't cop to it! So he or she lies. Again and again and again. Instead of simply saying, "You have bad breath," or "I'm not sexually turned on by you any more," the lies are ranked like Mirv missiles and fired off, one each time an enemy approach is sighted.
Here's another one. Before they met, he was attracted to medium-height, auburn-haired females between the ages of seventeen and twenty-eight with high conical breasts and very thin legs. She was attracted to guys with tight little asses and an almost total absence of chest and arm hair; guys with blue eyes and heavy torsos and English accents and thin, aquiline noses. But one time he made the error of going on admiringly about one of those fantasy-women just a few seconds too long, as they sat there watching the hair coloring commercial in which the woman appeared, and she got extremely uptight. And one time she made the error of spending a half hour in a corner at a party talking to a guy just like the kind she lubricated for, and he (her boy friend) went into a towering Sicilian machismo rage about her flirting.
So now, they purposely turn away from the somatotypes that attract them, when they're out driving, when they're walking in the shopping mall, when they go to the movies, when they spend an evening at the bowling alley, when the tv camera pans across the bleachers at the football game, when they're at a party. She'll test him by drawing his attention to a girl he's already clocked and turned away from, by saying, "Do you think she's attractive?" And he'll glance over quickly, and with feigned disinterest mumble, "Legs're too skinny." But he has a stack of beaver magazines hidden away in his work bench, each magazine containing 372 unretouched shots of girls just like the one he
And then the lies, once having been freed from Pandora's Hope Chest, begin to breed. They multiply like maggots and riddle a relationship like a submarine hit by a depth charge. Consider just the most obvious ones we've all either used or been victimized by:
You walk into a room and she (or he) is brooding.
"What's the matter, something wrong, something bothering you?" That's what you say.
Then he (or she) replies, "Nothing."
A lie, a bald-faced lie. You know damned well there's something wrong. The way the legs are crossed, the way the arms are folded, that telltale pursing of the lips, the vacant, abstracted stare, the peremptory way the words are bitten off. There's something wrong. But she (or he) says, "Nothing."
Is it because the brooding party really has something heavy to brood about and, out of love, chooses to lie rather than to lay it on the other person? Is it (more likely) that the brooder has been brought down by something the other party did, and wants to whip a little unconscious, free-floating guilt on the perpetrator before spilling the loadof shit being carried in the gut? Is it part of the stylized ritual of hide-and-seek so many lovers play? Is it a physical manifestation of the brooding party's having done something they mutually consider "wrong" (like going out and getting laid on the sly), and getting him or herself set to rationalize it in such a way that the other member of the team feels like the criminal, using the brooding dark mood as a kind of head start in the argument that will follow?
What does it matter? What we're dealing with here is dishonesty, cupidity, misdirection, acting-out ... lying.
Here's another one. And you've all been on one or the other end of this one:
"No, I have a headache."
"No, I'm tired."
"No, I'm a little inflamed."
"No, I have a hard day tomorrow."
"No, it isn't right."
"No, I'm still in love with [fill in appropriate name]."
Now none of those oldies but goodies is being spoken by a man or woman on a first date. I'm talking about their use in an already ongoing relationship. But a relationship in which one of the partners has been turned off, and won't cop to it! So he or she lies. Again and again and again. Instead of simply saying, "You have bad breath," or "I'm not sexually turned on by you any more," the lies are ranked like Mirv missiles and fired off, one each time an enemy approach is sighted.
Here's another one. Before they met, he was attracted to medium-height, auburn-haired females between the ages of seventeen and twenty-eight with high conical breasts and very thin legs. She was attracted to guys with tight little asses and an almost total absence of chest and arm hair; guys with blue eyes and heavy torsos and English accents and thin, aquiline noses. But one time he made the error of going on admiringly about one of those fantasy-women just a few seconds too long, as they sat there watching the hair coloring commercial in which the woman appeared, and she got extremely uptight. And one time she made the error of spending a half hour in a corner at a party talking to a guy just like the kind she lubricated for, and he (her boy friend) went into a towering Sicilian machismo rage about her flirting.
So now, they purposely turn away from the somatotypes that attract them, when they're out driving, when they're walking in the shopping mall, when they go to the movies, when they spend an evening at the bowling alley, when the tv camera pans across the bleachers at the football game, when they're at a party. She'll test him by drawing his attention to a girl he's already clocked and turned away from, by saying, "Do you think she's attractive?" And he'll glance over quickly, and with feigned disinterest mumble, "Legs're too skinny." But he has a stack of beaver magazines hidden away in his work bench, each magazine containing 372 unretouched shots of girls just like the one he
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