Episode LXXXI – Don’t let truth motivate your performance.

I was shocked that B-grade movie producers were strip mining portions of my life to suit their own needs. I was so shocked that I missed the punch line of the urinating roommate story. Awkwardly, I took my cues from the group and laughed when they did. While people peppered the storyteller with follow-up questions, I tried to relax. I told myself that it wasn’t a big deal that people were totally misrepresenting events of my life. The more I told myself that, the larger the problem became. I didn’t want people thinking I was some sort of bullshit artist, because they had heard some mangled jackalope version of my life.

The minutes passed, and I had no idea what people were talking about in the circle. I was brooding. And as I brooded, eyes cast outward, but thoughts trapped inward, I realized something. I realized that I was probably blowing the whole incident out of proportion. I didn’t even know the people whose conversation I had heard, and they really, only, obliquely, knew me. And, along those lines, I knew I had never heard the story from my lips, or in any form from me. It was a quick realization at this point that the reason their version of my life was off was because they had heard it from someone else who had told it to them from someone else and it had become a complete rubbish version of my life due to the fact it had followed some sort of convoluted telephone tree to their ears.

I tuned back in to the conversation. People were still asking follow-up questions of the storyteller. Then, suddenly, a huge gust of wind roared off the sea, scourging sand into the group’s eyes. After the awkward laughter had passed, the former speaker squinted at me as if noticing me for the first time. He brightened, and immediately began to question me about how I had managed to get out of the Scylla incident when she had been naked on my bed. My heart sank as I realized that my earlier “telephone” conclusion had been desperately wrong. But, after the incorrect introduction, there was no way I could get out of answering a multitude of bizarre questions.

I insisted that things hadn’t happened that way with Scylla. I firmly stated that what everyone had heard was nothing but a pack of lies, even though the actual situation had been quite strange. Despite my steadfast denials, various people kept telling me that my life was what they had heard, and nothing more. I eventually gave up because it was clear to me that they preferred their salacious fantasies to my boring facts. As I stalked away, frustrated, I was still trying to figure out exactly where they were learning about my life.

With my head down, I ran smack into J-Man. I barely knew J-Man, but I knew that he annoyed me, because he constantly talked about himself in the third person.

“Hey LA!” He burbled, “Don’t spill the J-Man’s beer, cause the J-Man don’t like that!” He then looked me up and down. “But don’t worry about it, because the J-Man digs those crazy e-mails you send out, so keep it up, brother!”

I shouldn’t have needed an idiot to tell me, but I had. The e-mails. I couldn’t believe it. I had been writing e-mails to my close friends about some of the things that had happened. I had been doing it because some things I thought were funny and wanted to share with the people I knew, or to stay in touch. I hadn’t been writing them to have them exported to the four corners of the world to be half read and completely misunderstood. I was disgusted. I was leaving. At some point, I was going to correct this mistake, but I was too tired to deal with it at the moment. Ankle deep in sand, I again began to stomp off to my car.