define compulsive lying — (a thorough investigation)

the ikea wardrobe is half built and dave is on the phone yelling he is almost at the bank, which is one of the great compulsive lying classics. mom listens quietly through her own handset, soft about her test results. i am holding a screw shaped like a small lie. i don’t know where it goes. that, also, is a kind of dishonesty.

writing this from my desk on the morning after the wardrobe-and-phone-call incident. carla is the in sales pipeline review — on the third floor. it’s 9:47am on a tuesday and i have, by my count, the rest of the morning before the meeting lets out and somebody asks me about deliverables i have not, in any active sense, started.

so. compulsive lying. a verb form. a behaviour, not an identity. a thing one does on a friday afternoon, on the phone, between the words “i’m almost at the bank” and the sound of a kettle boiling in the background of one’s own apartment. dave, on the call yesterday, performed a small masterclass. mom, on the other line, performed something quieter and possibly worse.

to define compulsive lying: the habitual, automatic, frequently unprompted telling of small untruths, often without obvious gain — a behaviour rather than an identity. compulsive lying is the verb (the action). a liar is the noun (the label). compulsive lying is the daily traffic; the noun is the file. one is something a person does; the other is something a person, on a strict reading, is.

EVERY. PHONE. CALL. CONTAINS. AT. LEAST. ONE.

that goes on the wall. nobody, on a long enough phone call, is fully truthful. the phone, in fact, may be the most lie-permissive instrument we own. the phone removes the face. the face is, on a generous reading, the only honest thing most of us have left.

compulsive lying, the wardrobe edition

the wardrobe was, technically, my project. it is, by my count, the third half-built ikea piece in the apartment. the first was a desk. the second was a bookshelf. the third, this wardrobe, has been at “phase two” for nine days. phase two is, in my own private terminology, the phase where you put down the instruction booklet and decide to “come back to it” after watching one episode of something. phase two has, in this apartment, lasted nine days.

so on friday afternoon, in the middle of phase two, the phone rang. it was dave. dave, my old friend, is in insurance. he is the only person who calls me on a friday afternoon in a way that, by his own admission, never has a good reason. dave was, he said, “almost at the bank”. this was at 3:47pm. on a friday. the bank was, by any reasonable person’s reading, closed. the bank had been closed for two and a half hours. dave knew this. i knew this. dave knew that i knew this.

dave’s claim — i’m almost at the bank — is, in my reading, one of the great compulsive lying classics. it is small. it is unprompted. it is repeated (he uses it most sundays). it has, on the strictest reading, no obvious gain. dave was, in fact, on his couch. i could hear, in the background, what sounded like a football match and what definitely sounded like dave’s wife asking a question dave was answering with the kind of “yeah” that is, in itself, a small lie.

mom, on the other line, doing the quieter version

then mom called in. mom, on a friday, calls. that is, by my count, weekly. mom does not, as a rule, ask much. mom listens. mom knew, somehow — and this is the part i cannot, by any rational reading, explain — that dave was already on the line. so for nine minutes, on the friday call, all three of us were on the phone. dave was at “the bank”. i was at “phase two”. mom was, she said, “fine”. the doctor had given her some test results on the friday. mom said the numbers were “fine”. mom’s voice, on the word fine, had a small wobble in it that the rehearsed “fine” does not have. so the word was, by the strictest reading, true on its surface and not true underneath.

this is, by my count, the cleaner version. the version mom does. the version where the word, on paper, is correct, but the cadence is not. the version where the lie is, by some readings, kindness. mom did not want, on a friday, to walk into a worry. mom said “fine”. mom moved on. mom asked if i had eaten. i said yes. i had not. that was, in fact, the third small lie on the call.

three lies, one phone call, no obvious damage

so on the friday call, by my count, we ran through the full taxonomy of compulsive lying in roughly nine minutes. three categories:

• the geographic lie. dave’s “i’m almost at the bank”. location-claim, no actual relation to the speaker’s body, performed for the small comfort of a fictional itinerary. geographic lies are, by my own count, the most common form. i’m five minutes away. i’m just leaving the office. i’m at the door. all variants.
• the kindness lie. mom’s “fine”. emotional claim, performed at lower volume, designed to absorb worry rather than transmit it. kindness lies are, in some philosophies, not lies at all. they are, in others, the meanest form because they remove the listener’s right to know what’s happening.
• the dietary lie. my “yes, i’ve eaten”. small, automatic, performed for the comfort of the asker, frequently false. dietary lies, by my reading, are practiced from the age of nine and never, in any reasonable case, retired.

three lies. one phone call. no obvious damage. that is, in fact, the shape of compulsive lying as it actually lives in most apartments — small, distributed, mostly affectionate, mostly unrecognised by the people performing it.

the screw shaped like a small lie

back to the wardrobe. while dave was at “the bank” and mom was “fine” and i was “yes, i’ve eaten”, i was holding a screw. the screw was, by the diagram, screw type 14B. screw type 14B is, by the diagram, a structural piece used to attach the back panel to the side panel. i was holding it because i had, at some earlier moment, picked it up and been unable to remember which step i had picked it up for.

the screw, in my hand, was a small physical lie. it was a small object that suggested i was making progress. i was not, in any active sense, making progress. i was holding the screw because the act of holding the screw made me feel, on a friday, that i was the kind of man who was building a wardrobe. i was not. i was, in fact, the kind of man who was on the phone with dave and mom and a half-built ikea wardrobe and a screw he could not place.

this is, by my own reading, the deepest form of compulsive lying. the lie you tell yourself, with a small object in your hand, about who you are. the screw is the alibi. the screw, like the receipt wallet, is evidence of a project that is, on close inspection, mostly imaginary.

cold pizza is breakfast, and that is not the lie

this is, in fact, the trick. the lie i told mom was structurally a compulsive lie — small, automatic, unprompted by any active question. the lie i told mom was also, on a generous reading, a small philosophical claim. the line between compulsive lying and philosophical claim is, on most sundays, thinner than the screw in my hand.

the man who calls, briefly, off-page

somewhere in this apartment, off the page, is a man who calls. he is not on this friday’s call list. he calls during the working week, mostly between 11am and 1pm, in a voice that is, by all reports, calm. i do not pick up. i let the voicemail roll. the voicemail is as box of this morning, full. the voicemail box has been full for eight months. that is, by some readings, also a kind of compulsive lying — by silence rather than by speech. the man does not know that the box is full. the man, in any reasonable reading, does not need to know.

verdict, compulsive lying is what families do on sundays

the pillar piece, liar — a definition i’m fairly sure about, is where the noun version lives if you want the heavier word. this post is the verb version, on the friday phone, with the screw in my hand and the wardrobe still half built.

the sales pipeline review let out. carla is at her back desk she has, by the look of her, had two coffees this morning. the wardrobe, for the record, is still in phase two. dave has not, since the call, been to the bank. mom has not, since the call, called again. i’m minimising this tab.

a spoon is a smaller bowl with a stick, i wrote that in another piece.

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