Secrets & Lies

‘are… intimate secrets what make [people] the unique beings [we] love? No. What people keep secret is the most common, the most ordinary, the most prevalent thing, the same thing everyone has.’ Identity - Milan Kundera, pg. 97

Do we all have secrets in common? Why do we choose to keep secrets?

I keep secrets because I know I cannot admit something without revealing a dishonesty or hurting someone. I cannot tell the secret without exposing myself in a way that leaves me or others too vulnerable. I keep secrets to protect others from myself. So I have very few secrets because for me they are a bad thing. I have none from the people I love most.

Some people keep secrets for different reasons; some keep them because they are delicious: succulent, selfish pleasures. They create mystery, they satisfy a need to intrigue – they are a holding back. A tease. Having a secret can give you a thrill – can make you feel special, but why are you keeping it?

What makes it different from a lie? Where does the line fall between a secret we keep for pleasure [that we feel entitled to save for ourselves] and information we know we cannot pass on without incriminating ourselves? Sometimes they must be the same surely. So do we justify lying by calling it something else?

One can lie by omission. Holding back something we know to protect others from the truth. We reason that if we are not asked a direct question then it is not lying to not tell what we are not asked for. Is this a secret?For example if I am having an affair is my affair a secret that is mine to keep, a delicious, sexy secret knowledge or is it a lie to my husband? If he never asks me if I am sleeping with someone else can I pretend that it’s a secret to never tell him?

How many lies do you tell? How many secrets are you keeping? Or have you kept? And when you choose to tell someone a secret [which we nearly always do] what are you doing? You are decommissioning the knowledge, making it public – is this trusting someone or betraying yourself or possibly the others involved? What if the secret isn’t yours to tell? How well do you keep other people’s secrets – does it count if you know the have already told you?

When someone loves you and you love them does that grant them access to everything? Do you have to tell them your secrets? Or your lies?

Free Fallin'

Today I remembered a few things about being younger. When life was not about bills and banks, politics and policy, work and worry. The days I drank in the afternoons without feeling guilty and spent hours in a pub with only a pint and never worried about looking like a pikey. The times that I thought smoking was something I'd give up when I got older and that I'd never end up like my parents.

The days I discovered The Eagles and Tom Petty and thought I was original. When heartbreak was something you pretended to have because it looked interesting on Dawson's Creek. When having an argument with your friends meant making up via a passed note in English or French or Maths depending on how long you could hold a grudge for.
The nights when not doing your homework was the most brilliant rebellion and that Cocktail was a blue movie because of the waterfall scene.

Here's to those days! What a beautiful, sweet memory they are now. And for you darling, here's some music that takes me right back there . . . . to The Angel and Queens Street and 8a and our wonderful, fucked up issues.

She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too

It's a long day livin' in Reseda
There's a freeway runnin' through the yard
And I'm a bad boy, 'cause I don't even miss her
I'm a bad boy for breakin' her heart

And I'm free, I'm free fallin'

All the vampires walkin' through the valley
Move west down Ventura Blvd
And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows
All the good girls are home with broken hearts

And I'm free, I'm free fallin'

I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
I wanna free fall out into nothin'
Gonna leave this world for awhile

And I'm free, I'm free fallin'

I love you x

The Blunders of Men

As a newly single person I feel that it is important to share my most recent experiences with you.

I do appreciate that I have been ‘off the scene’ for a while and probably was never very on it in the first place but despite not looking for any kind of partnership I have encountered some serious blunders in recent weeks. Not my blunders I add. The blunders of men.

The first is pretty standard accept for the total denial of the protagonist. I met someone recently who I was going to ‘date’ [as in going out with the intention of getting laid] but it never really got off the ground. We live some distance apart and so it seemed too complicated given that neither of us was really that keen. Well, he decided to get back in contact recently and I happened to be available so suggested a meet [this time not with any intention] but he had a busy schedule. We missed each other again and I decided that rather than wait up all night I should put it down to fate and go to bed. I also happened to turn my phone to silent [unusual] for me before I finally fell asleep. When I woke I had 16 missed calls, 5 txt messages and 2 answer phone messages from this person. All of them from the time between 02:15 and 02:45. Obviously the man was drunk and his messages proved how utterly incoherent he had been – but this severe flurry of activity seems to have occurred during the time at which he would have been least capable of entertaining me. What makes this perhaps typical oddity even stranger was that he continued to ring me throughout the morning until I finally spoke to him and he accused me of being a “light-weight” and not “up for a laugh”. Have I missed something here?

After this disappointing show my weekend proceeded to get weirder.

I left very early from Devon to drive back to Sussex and stopped in Taunton for some fuel. I pulled up to a pump at 06:22 and proceeded to try and fill the tank – the pump unfortunately was not working and looking around in hope of finding some assistance I noticed a man staring at me from the door of the service station. Now, I want to be quite clear in this description, he was about 40 and was dressed in a dirty, cream linen suit and he was decidedly dishevelled – he looked like a cross between the man from Delmonte and Michael Douglas when he gets out of a coffin in Mexico in The Game.

I asked him in a bit of a stroppy tone “Is there a reason that this pump isn’t working?” thinking 'he probably knows something that I don’t which is why he’s grinning at me'. He replies, in the most disgustingly smooth voice “I don’t know darling but I’d really like to help you” and starts walking towards me.

At this point I get that uncomfortable feeling I get when two ugly people are snogging in public. But just in the nick of time a bloke walks out of the garage and tells me that pump 5 is not working but he’s just about to go so I skip the car over and fill up the tank. Mr Delmonte has backed off a bit and is lurking by the door. As I go in to pay for the petrol he asks me where I’m going and so I tell him I’m going home to Brighton.

As I leave the shop he’s still there and starts walking besides me toward my car.
HIM: “Next time you’re in town why don’t you come up [insert address and postcode!] – I will make you feel very welcome.
ME: Abject horror.
HIM: “I think you’re lovely.”
ME: “It’s too early for this shit.”

Why on God's earth would you give a total stranger your full address and postcode?

Men here is a note worth taking down. There are ways and means and neither of the above examples are acceptable. Must try harder.