Funny the way it is, how we are all liars.
We constantly walk and pass by acquaintances. They always ask us how we are, but they might as well just shove the word down our throats.
“Good,” I say. Just like everyone else. Lying—it’s the one thing that unites us as a people.
I am standing next to a tree on the sidewalk, waiting for a dog that I am walking for a friend, one of the few I have left, to finish shitting. My clothes now have that stench embedded in them. I try not to think of it as a scarlet letter, but it kind of is. As long as my relationship with this friend has lasted, I can tell that he is fading away and I am becoming the outcast.
He just started selling insurance—life insurance. I got a policy with him just to be nice. What a lie I am living. Now, the only truth in the matter is that I blindly agreed to do a favor for him in the pouring rain while he is vacationing in sunny, shuffleboard-loving Florida with his hot supermodel wife, waiting for me to die.