What’s a Lie and What’s the Truth

My writing teacher told us to write a page, put it away, take a walk, and then come back and rewrite it from memory.

So, I went looking for my drug dealer.

He liked to read John Cheever in public outdoor cafés, usually smoking cigarillos and pretending not to be seen. 

Or maybe that’s how I remember him because it sounds right. He once told me Cheever was “conflicted,” like that explained everything: sexuality, alcoholism, late redemption. A whole life reduced to a character note.

Sometimes I’d find him at Barnes & Noble flipping between Carl Jung and Arthur Rimbaud. Other times, he’d sit cross-legged in the children’s section, reading Dr. Seuss and laughing too hard, like he’d cracked a code no one else could hear.

This time, he was in the magazine section reading The New Yorker.

Or maybe I just needed him to be.

He told me he was a failed playwright. Said he wanted to write like David Mamet until someone explained that Mamet had already done that.

“You’ve got to find your own patch of land,” someone said.

He laughed like it wasn’t a confession. 

I had diagnosed my own condition as being somewhat self-mythologizing vs. actual output. That’s been my whole life. What I talked about doing vs. what I actually did. That was a hard lesson to learn. At any age. I’m still learning it. As soon as he had finished reading the final cartoon, he asked me what he could do for me. 

“Wanna snort some H,” I said.

“Good choice. Mainlining is passe,” he said, tongue in cheek. “Let’s take a walk.” 

So, we walked five blocks to his apartment. It was a lonely walk. Other than purchasing drugs, I really didn’t know much about the dude, including his name. Everyone just called him Bro, so I continued the tradition.  When we got to his apartment, he told me to wait in the living room while he went to get the stuff. 

His place is what most people would call sparse and minimal. No knick-knacks, no plants, no paintings on the wall, just a loveseat, a coffee table, and a La-Z-Boy chair. He joked, “I’m still living like a nineteen-year-old college student.” 

And he was. The only things missing were the empties and the pizza boxes. 

A few minutes later, he returned with a package wrapped in a manila envelope. He’d folded it up so as not to let the product fall out. “Here you go, renegade,” Bro said. 

“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate it.” 

The whole interaction felt more like a performance we were putting on for each other rather than a give-and-take discussion. I thought people could still understand themselves without acting. And Bro seemed to hope that his insight would lead to change. The critics would have to wait for the dramaturg to structure and stage the play. When I completed the assignment, I reread it and couldn’t tell what was true anymore. I left it that way.