Honesty

Honesty fascinates me. As much as it is touted, honesty is a rare and potentially dangerous thing. People are generally so unaccustomed with raw frankness that they become uncomfortable, irritated or angry when confronted with it. My bluntness is notorious, but nearly everything that comes out of my mouth has been calculated, edited and filtered unless I’ve lost all patience- although alcohol seems inimical to my math.

This blog is full of intentional omissions. I’m not going to put the private lives of myself or others out there for the whole internet community to read, although I often try to write in a way that gives the illusion that I’m doing just that. (This is similar to my strategy of driving in a manner that suggests to a car contemplating pulling out in front of me that I would crash into them if they did so; even though I actually could stop if needed.) There was one blog in which I imprudently said something undeservedly mean about a specific someone, but I’ve since deleted the statement. I never want to be like those dickheads who write those “tell-all” books.

While I was applying for college scholarships in high school, I discovered that it was highly self-amusing to be entirely honest when answering their bullshit questions. I was aware that doing so was sabotaging my chances, but I became fascinated with the fact that the ubiquitous advice to “be totally honest” is absolute hogwash. The truth was I didn’t deserve their goddamn scholarship money anymore than anybody else, and if they were impressed enough with me being a confused teenager savvy enough to ace high school with no effort whatsoever to arbitrarily give me their money that was their problem.

More often than not, my motivation for being honest is that I find it funny. Interestingly, I have found that I can usually get away with being honest precisely because since it’s so taboo, others generally assume I am joking. Honesty is not necessarily reality. There is honesty as it relates to action, which is always filtered through memory; and honesty as it relates to desire, which is known as “thinking out loud.” To me, honesty of this second type is more harmless than what others tend to make it out to be. Sure, I might want to knock you over the head, rip your clothes off and rape you in the bushes; but I’m not going to because I’m not a psychopath, so what’s the big deal?