Wherein douchebaggery is exposed and Baron Munchausen gets mad props.
After a few days, Bruce finally visited me in the hospital. He claims he visited me already; he says I was still out of it due to my concussion. I don’t remember him visiting me, so as far as I’m concerned, this was the first time.
He apologized for setting me up with Deborah. But he had heard about how I orchestrated the fight with Becky, and made an impromptu escape from the scene of the crime. Because of that, he wasn’t quite so sympathetic. I tried offering my reasons, justifying the need for a girl-on-girl fistfight in a nice restaurant, as well as my need for a low profile. He just shook his head and wondered why I was that way.
I chose to ignore his comment and instead explained to him that I was writing my memoirs.
“Memoirs? Are you dying?”
I assured him I wasn’t dying. I explained that I was preserving them for posterity. “A rough draft, if you will. For when I really write them when I’m older.”
“Why would someone want to read them then? Are you going to be less of a dick?”
“At some point, I think,” I said. “Maybe the next section of my life. Every good bad boy memoir has a redemption part. If not, death bed confession.”
“How are you going to write a memoir with your own death bed confession?”
“Would you stop being unconstructive? Here, check out what I wrote the other day.”
“It looks like chicken scratch,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not chicken scratch.”
He looked at it again. “Okay maybe the writing of a particularly neat chicken… who is also mentally disabled.”
“Y’know? Guess what, I’m writing a new section,” I said. “Oh, just look at what I’m writing here,” I said, turning the page so he could read as I wrote.
Bruce is a douchebag. Underline. Underline.
* * *
I started writing a memoir because… well, what else did I have to do? The doctors expected I’d be in the hospital for a few more weeks at least. Besides watching my medical bills skyrocket, there was little to entertain me. I sweet talked a nurse into getting me a notepad and pen, then started writing.
I was lucky I didn’t hurt my writing hand. Otherwise I’d have to learn to write with my off-hand. My natural handwriting is atrocious. Not quite the chicken scratch Bruce would suggest, but it has been affectionately called “the handwriting of a mad child.” On second thought, maybe that wasn’t very affectionate. I didn’t really have an idea what my left-hand writing would be like. Who knows? Maybe it would be a flowery cursive better suited for the illumination of manuscripts.
I doubt it.
When Bruce finally read one of my entries, he did rightly point out that it wasn’t exactly true. I scoffed at his disbelief. I told him I clearly remembered it that way. He shook his head and said something under his breath about a concussion, but then smiled at me patronizingly.
I freely admit to embellishment, the same way we all do. We always add in some subjective changes when we tell a story. We make ourselves look better in recollections, or sometimes worse to gain sympathy. We excise irrelevant details of a story or go off on relevant tangents. I’m doing nothing different; I’m just doing it on a larger scale. Go big or go home. I was stuck in a hospital; going home wasn’t an option.
I’ve always had a fascination with Baron Munchausen. Besides the amusement of his stories, there’s a lesson there. He returned from the war, telling all sorts of tales that were obviously not true. Other men returned and told true stories. Over two hundred years later, the world remembers Munchausen and his stories of riding cannonballs and outwitting sultans. The true stories of those other men are forgotten. Of men who time remembered, the liar prevailed. Something to live by.
Am I completely lying? Of course not, this is a memoir, and memoirs possess some truth. That’s important. For all the falsehoods and half-truths, the core is absolutely and positively true. Pure lies would not be a memori. So when I smile and tell you that it’s all true, believe me, it’s all true.
Would I lie to you?
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