Big Mike: When A Lie Is The Truth

I hung out at the fabled Urbus Orbis coffeehouse from the early 90s until it closed on New Year’s Eve, 1997. It was the center of the Wicker Park – Bucktown avant garde scene back when that neighborhood was packed with artists, anarchists, street hookers and public restroom junkies. Now, of course, the area is home to moms pushing strollers, cute little boutiques and the trendiest restaurants in the city. It’s a shame when a neighborhood goes downhill so dramatically.

Anyway, I met a madhouse full of characters at Urbus Orbis. One — let’s call her Serena — was a 19-year-old chain-smoking couch surfer. She appeared shy at first glance. She wouldn’t even look me in the eye when she was introduced to me. Some months later, Serena had warmed up to me enough to share her story..

She told me she’d been locked in a closet as a nine-year-old by a caretaker uncle who fed her a steady diet of cocaine and only let her out when he wanted to have sex with her. Serena related this matter-of-factly, the way I’d tell you how I became a Cubs fan.

Naturally, I figured it was traumatic for her to reveal this horror to me. I even felt flattered that she’d taken me into her confidence.

Some weeks later, I came into Urbus Orbis on a Wednesday night and found Serena holding court in front of a semicircle of people. She was telling them the closet story along with other shocking accounts of her childhood. Then she fielded questions from them as if she were holding a press conference. The heretofore shy teen suddenly was transformed in my eyes into a confident, beaming young woman. Despite the unspeakable horrors she’d experienced as a little girl, she appeared to enjoy sitting at the center of that semicircle.

The next afternoon, sitting with Sid Feldman, the pride and joy of Skokie, I confided a suspicion.

“I wonder,” I said, “if Serena’s stories are true.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sid said. “They’re her stories. They’ve shaped her.”

“But, if she’s lying….”

“She’s not lying.”

“How do you know?” I demanded. “How can we prove or disprove what she says?”

“Why do we need to?” Sid asked. “Isn’t it enough that she believes them?”

Sid sat back like a buddha who’d just dispensed a couple of koans.

I never did find out if Serena was on the square or not.

Flash forward to this week. I wrote about my next door neighbor, Captain Billy, and his seemingly cavalier attitude about taking his first life in Vietnam. Benny Jay then posted an assertion that something didn’t quite ring true about Captain Billy’s recollections. In fact, Benny Jay even has doubts the man actually fought in Southeast Asia.

I have to admit I’d never entertained the notion that Captain Billy has been fudging about being a soldier before this. He has told me about the dark nights, fetid swamps and steamy jungles of Vietnam. He relates in excruciating detail his run-ins with superior officers and recalcitrant underlings. He boasts of the long line of soldiers in his family. The man also has deep romantic feelings for guns, describing the automatic rifles soldiers carried the way I’ve described my first kiss. He even told me about his auto insurance policy that he got through some veterans organization.

None of that, of course, would stand up as proof in a court of law that the man wore the uniform in Vietnam. But, by and large, we take people at their word. Yet, occasionally, something smells rotten. And if the stink is that of untruth, what does it matter?

It matters, I’m sure, to a guy like Milo, Gary, Indiana’s Greatest Writer, who served in Vietnam. Well, he says he served in Vietnam. How do we believe anybody in this crazy, mixed up world?

It’s a conundrum writers and journalists have had to grapple with since they first started clacking on their keyboards. In my quarter of a century-plus in the biz, I’ve learned only that everybody’s memory is faulty. I’ve also learned that everybody’s story is designed to make the teller look (take your pick) righteous, put-upon, unique, courageous, far-sighted, nearer to god, nearer to the devil and so on. It all depends on the image the teller wishes to plant in your mind.

In that sense, everybody’s a liar. We’re left only with a quibble over the extent of the lie.

My guess is Captain Billy’s lie is that he’s such an emotionally hard man that taking his first life meant no more to him than sneaking packets of sugar out of a restaurant. But, as Richard Feyman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Captain Billy may have told this lie so many times that he now believes it. It’s his story. It has shaped him. Like a Ponzi schemer or a TV evangelist, he’s become so good at it that it is now his truth.

My own story is that I’ve been hamstrung all my life by debilitating depression, panic disorder and agoraphobia. It’s a tidy explanation for why I haven’t won the Pulitzer Prize yet or don’t live in a Malibu beach home. Perhaps I’ve given short shrift to some hitherto unacknowledged laziness or even — horrors! — lack of talent.

But I believe my own story. As did Serena hers. And Captain Billy his. Even if the young Captain Billy suffered mightily the first time he killed a man, I suspect he wouldn’t bat an eye if he had to do it again.