signs of pathological lying — 1 thorough investigation

the line at the dmv breathes the way a tired animal does. signs of pathological lying, the booklet on the wall does not list, include standing in this queue without a package. maggie, off-page, is fine. tom’s old phone, off-page, still rings. one cupholder. one envelope i refuse to claim.

i’m pulling this together from my desk between the dmv visit (which was technically the post office counter inside the dmv, which is its own crime against signage) and the moment carla comes back from the all-hands on the third floor. i have, give or take, the rest of the morning. the pillar i keep returning to lives over at the field guide to the liar, and most of the field guide is about other people. this one is about the lying as it happens, in motion, as a verb, while the man doing it is also doing other things, like waiting for a number to be called.

1. signs of pathological lying, the post-office list

i sat down at this desk after the dmv–post-office hybrid line and i made a list, because lists are what a man makes when he wants his behavior to look like research. the list is short. five items. the booklet on the wall did not include any of them, which is exactly why i’m typing them out. the booklet was about renewing things. lying is a renewal too, technically. you keep re-upping the small choice not to do the thing.

the seventh microwave, i should mention up front, is on the counter at home with the door slightly open because the latch is a suggestion now. that is not on the list. that is just context. context is what a man offers when he wants the actual list to land softer.

the angle here, before we go further, is on the verb. lying, not liar. the difference is the difference between a photo and a film. a film keeps going. a photo can be put in a drawer with the certified letters and ignored on a separate schedule.

2. sign one, the package i did not collect

there is a yellow slip on the counter at home. the yellow slip says a package is at the post office, ready, since a tuesday i can no longer place. the slip has been on the counter long enough to have a sun-stripe across it, which is the post office’s quiet way of saying we both know. i went to the dmv–post-office hybrid this morning for a different reason, and i stood in the line, and i did not present the slip. i had it folded in my back pocket. it stayed folded. it is still folded.

this is sign one. the act of being in the building where the thing is, with the slip that proves the thing is yours, and choosing the queue that does not end at the thing. that is a small structural lie, performed against yourself, in public, in fluorescent lighting.

the package, as i note here i shouldn’t even keep, is something i ordered in late winter and no longer remember the contents of. i suspect a kitchen item. i suspect i already own a worse version of it. this also factors in, but only as a justification, which is a thing the brain hands you to keep the lie ergonomic.

3. sign two, the phone call from tom i let ring

tom called yesterday at 4:11pm. i was not in a meeting. i was at my desk pretending to be in a meeting, which is its own discipline. tom is the friend from college who now owns a house and a a confident sense of his own competence and a car with seats that adjust in too many ways. tom calls quarterly. tom calls when he has news. tom does not call to chat, because tom does not chat, because tom has, in his words, “a window”.

i let it ring. i watched the screen. the screen said tom, and then tom with a voicemail icon, and then tom with no icon at all because tom does not leave voicemails, because tom believes voicemails are a transcription liability. i did not call back. i still have not called back. i will probably not call back today either, which makes the not-calling-back a continuous tense rather than a moment.

this is sign two. a known caller, a known reason, a known window, and a chosen silence. silence is not a lie until it’s repeated. the third time silence becomes a position.

4. sign three, maggie’s email i archived without reading

maggie sent an email on monday. maggie, the coworker from three years ago who runs a small business now with employees and payroll and the kind of calendar that has color blocks. her subject line was a single word. the word was “checking”. no question mark. punctuation, in maggie’s hands, is a thing she chooses on purpose.

i archived the email. i did not open it. archiving without opening is a feature gmail offers because gmail understands its users. the email is not deleted. the email is in a folder i call “archive” but treat like a sub-basement. it is technically findable, in the way the certified letters are technically findable, in the way the package is technically collectable.

this is sign three. a message answered by being moved. movement that produces no contact. on the timeline of the inbox, this counts as a reply. on the timeline of an honest day, it does not.

5. sign four, the man who calls, who keeps calling

the man who calls called twice yesterday and once this morning. the man who calls does not leave voicemails because the voicemail is full, has been full for eight months, and is a closed-loop system at this point. the man who calls does not text. the man who calls is, by my own tally, the most consistent presence in my outgoing-call-screen avoidance budget.

i don’t know what the man who calls wants. i have decided, deliberately, not to find out. that decision is the sign, not the not-knowing. the not-knowing is the alibi. the decision is the act. the decision renews itself every time the screen lights up, which, in the language of this post, makes it a verb, not a noun.

i submit this for the listicle’s middle, because the middle is where the reader checks if the writer believes any of it. i do. the man who calls is real. the man who calls calls. that’s the entry.

6. sign five, the small grin at the counter

at the dmv–post-office hybrid this morning the woman behind the counter asked if i had anything else to do today. she meant: is this the only errand. i said no. that was true. then she asked if i needed to pick anything up. i said no. that was the lie. the small one. the smile that came with it stayed on my face about half a second longer than the sentence required, which is the way a body announces a lie even when the brain has done the editing.

this is sign five. the lag in the smile. the body keeping the shape after the words have left. you can feel it from the inside if you’re paying attention. you can see it from the outside if you’ve been there. the woman at the counter had been there. she did not push. that was a kindness. it was also, i think, recognition. cars should have 1 cupholder, by the way, which is a hot take she would have absorbed without comment, because she has the face of a woman who has heard worse on a tuesday.

this is also where the page wants me to mention Catch Me If You Can, which is a film about lying done at scale, with airplanes. the lying in this post is not at scale. it is at counter, at desk, at phone, at email. small lies, repeated. Liar Liar, the other film the search engine wants in this paragraph, is about a man who is forced to stop. neither film is useful as a guide. both are useful as a comparison. compared to those men, i am unbothered. compared to the woman at the counter, i am behind.

7. verdict, the signs are scheduled if you look

i ran the five signs in order, on a tuesday, before lunch. that is the verdict. they were not random. they were not a coincidence. they were on a schedule i had set myself without realizing i had set it. the package on the counter is a recurring decision. the phone screen with tom on it is a recurring decision. maggie’s archive is a recurring decision. the man who calls is a recurring decision. the half-second smile is muscle memory shaped by the other four.

signs of pathological lying, in this household, in this man’s tuesday, look like a calendar nobody mailed me. but the calendar is mine. the entries are in my handwriting. and the receipt for the dmv visit is in the third pocket of the receipt wallet, with the others, where i can pretend to forget it on a different schedule entirely.

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