LIES LIES LIES! | MARCH WRITING COMPETITION
The Lie He Told Me
Maybe we were both lying to ourselves
I was fifteen, a new student in a public high school, having transferred from the overpriced Catholic high school only a few months before. I was too young to date (my parents said I had to wait until I was sixteen), and none of the boys I saw at my new school interested me much. Except for him.
He was a senior, tall and pale with auburn hair that feathered back on either side of his head. He had a smile that crinkled his eyes like Johnny Gage and the hint of dimples on his cheeks.
“Who is that?” I asked a girl from my English class.
“Alan,” she said. “He’s president of the drama club,” she said with meaning I didn’t understand.
I stalked him a little from that point, noting which corridors he took to get to his classes and taking roundabout ways for a chance to make eye contact or get him to notice me.
The first time he spoke to me was at auditions for the spring musical, Guys and Dolls. I had arrived at the auditorium early, and since no one else was there yet, I sat down at the piano on the stage and started playing a flashy little Hungarian Rhapsody I was learning.
I felt someone standing behind me, and then he leaned close and whispered in my ear, “Better be careful. People here get very jealous of someone with too much talent. I ought to know.”
So he was handsome and talented? I could picture us singing duets together, going off to Hollywood to become the next Astaire/Rogers team.
But when he stood on the stage to sing for his audition, his vocal range was about three notes, none of which were in the key of the song. And he was a terrific dancer although the beat that accompanied his rhythm was one only he could hear.
I kicked butt at that audition, but because I was a newcomer, the leads went to two senior girls. However, I did attract the attention of Alan, and we soon realized we had much in common. We both wanted to be stars.
He wanted to be a renaissance man. A performer who did it all — sing, dance, act in comedies, dramas, action films, the stage…like Fred Astaire. And he also painted gorgeous portraits of Donna Summer in shades of lavender and practiced the art of cake decorating with his mother.
I wanted to be a singer and songwriter. But mostly, I wanted to be with him.
When I turned sixteen, he asked me out. My memory is a little fuzzy, though, so actually I might have asked him out. For the rest of the school year, we were inseparable. Most of our dates involved movies. We watched a lot of movies, and after each, he wanted to discuss the performances of the actors.
Alan loved Shelley Winters, so I read her biography. He loved Barbra Streisand, so I bought her albums. I was ready to become what he wanted, but I was only lying to myself.
We kissed a lot, but it never went further than that. He said he was afraid of making a mistake that would ruin his future. He had big plans and wanted to get his career started before he even thought about marriage or commitment. I tried to understand. I certainly wouldn’t do anything to derail his career. But I started to wonder if something was wrong with me.
We both agreed that when we got to New York or Hollywood, we would be a power couple. Because so many couples in entertainment quickly broke up, people would want to know our secret for staying together.
And we would reply, “We don’t keep secrets!”
“Would you smoke?” I asked him once. “If you got a part that required you to smoke cigarettes, would you do it?” It strikes me as absurd now that this was the most horrible thing I could imagine happening to Alan if he became a star. And he did little to assuage my concerns.
“I will do whatever they ask me to do for the character.”
It was the last summer before he was leaving for college. He was going to a small, private college about an hour away in northern Maryland to major in theater arts. Because everyone knows northern Maryland is the seat of success for actor/singer/dancer/artists. When he finally left for college, I was hopelessly lost.
I wrote him letters during chemistry class detailing my day, including funny stories and cartoon drawings along the margins and on the envelope. And always, always professions of my love and desperate pleas for him to come home for a weekend visit.
And he replied on the purple Miss Piggy stationery I had gotten him as a going away gift. His letters were about himself, his classes, his ailments, and not much romantic besides the Xs and Os above his autograph. But he did reveal his acting professor was making them keep a journal, and it was a difficult and eye-opening practice.
In his post scripts, he reminded me to save his letters because one day when he was famous, they would be worth something.
His parents took me to the college one evening to see Alan in a play. We visited with him in his dorm room and he was excited to see us and affectionate toward me. But after a while, he had to leave us there to get into his costume.
“Make yourselves at home!” he told us. So his parents sat on the bed and turned on the TV. I sat at Alan’s desk. And there was the journal. The one his acting professor had assigned.
I know this might incense some people, but I don’t believe anything written between two covers is private. And this was right there for me to read.
So I flipped through it, recognizing Alan’s scrawling handwriting from the few letters he had sent. I was looking for my name, for confessions of his love for me. But the name I kept seeing was “David.”
I read about the night when Alan had injured himself in his movement class, and David massaged his back.
I read about the confusion he felt when he liked it.
I read how Alan and David spent many evenings in their dorm room “massaging” each other.
And I read my boyfriend’s lie, written in all-caps and underlined with such ferocity that it tore through the page:
I am NOT gay!
It might seem strange, but my heart wasn’t broken. I felt as if a veil had lifted. I saw the truth even if Alan couldn’t. I read and re-read the words, touching them with my fingers, letting them seep into my brain. It all made sense now.
We went to his play, and I watched him on stage with a feeling of satisfaction, almost smugness. He would figure it out one day, but I already knew the truth.
I broke up with him that night as gently as I could.
“Why?” he begged. “I love you so much!”
And then I started to feel angry. Why couldn’t he just be honest for once? Why couldn’t he tell himself the truth so we could both move on?
So I lied.
“It’s not you. It’s me,” I said. And when I got home, I threw away all his letters.
