Survival

“I have this friend in Hollywood, and he often garners publicity by way of volatility or by way of being an anointed darling in his younger days. Many years ago, after a blockbuster movie release, he went on television and shared a tender story about his young son. They’re in the car because he was sent home from school for disrupting his class with a line from his famous father’s movie. While being reprimanded, his son is asked how many times he was told to not do the same outburst. It was rhetorical. But his son responds with, “Five times, Daddy.” It makes for an endearing yarn. Years later, his daughter is on tour in Dublin with Justin Bieber; she finishes her set and says, “I’m finished. I’m ready to go home, Daddy.” What follows is a back and forth about the promising Mr. Jay-Z. The daughter responds, “No, you did, Daddy.” What are the odds? Absolutely preposterous.”

Well, he is not a despicable liar, just a typical one, as all liars are typical. Lies are never elegant. The duality isn’t all that interesting, but the tales he tells are. Here is the rub, though: his son and daughter are the totems he needs to complete the lie. Why? He imbues them with the most value. I cannot tell you who directed him to hit the points he has to in his formulaic lie, but I can tell you that the structure is predefined; the content and its arrangement are impromptu. Every recall of his children returns, postage paid, is a reading of them. He must do this. But often the eye does not see the eye. The little bracket —“Here stands a good father”—is printed over his every scene by a hand he can’t catch, because the hand is the inside of his own head.

But you didn’t write me about Hollywood. Nobody ever does. Jayne Mansfield must be kept waiting.

No clairvoyance here, but the seeking of input means that you want to act on what you know. This is dependent on the relationship you share. But no true friendship is worth letting friends be liars. Why? Lying is stupid.

Survival can prompt a race against chaos; chaos always wins if you challenge it. It consumes you; it doesn’t outrun you because it has no distance to cover—it’s already everywhere, it is the floor and the air, it starts at the finish line, and it is the track. A man whose survival depends on sprinting—staying one step ahead of the verification that would expose him—has already lost before the race begins.

But don’t gossip about a friend; kick some sense into him if the friendship is worth it. What’s the line? If you love someone more than they love you, let them go.

~Ignacious

I have this friend who tried to sell me a watch at my shop. The weight’s wrong, the sweep’s wrong, the whole object is wrong. And while you’re seeing all this, he will not stop talking about his grandfather. Multiple times he tells me it was his grandfather’s. Passed down. My guard is down so I use humor, give him shit about never telling me about his grandpa. The humor doesn’t do anything but make him push more. The writing is on the wall, and I told him I would think about it. Is there anything to think about?

The first thing I’m going to take away from you is that there is no ambiguity re the con. This is the only clean fact in your letter, and to your credit, you did not use it to seat yourself as the wronged party. So we are off to a good start. Delusion is a barrier that I cannot permeate.

Here’s the scene as you tell it. A friend comes to your counter with a Rolex. It’s fake—you can see it’s fake; you handle the real thing all day.. His grandpa is said to have wore it through everything. On and on, the grandfather, the grandfather, until you want to put the loupe down and ask him who he thinks he’s burying.

You don’t need a ruling on the grandfather or the watch. If anything is of value from this, it is best to understand the underlying issue. The grandfather is structural. Your friend is loading a witness. And you know you can test the watch—you did, in three-seconds, with your eyes and whatever else. You cannot test the grandfather. He’s dead; he’s sacred; he’s not coming to the counter. This amigo of yours, he routes the watch’s realness through the one source you’re not allowed to question, and the unquestionableness is the entire engineering. He didn’t reveal anything but desperation. He moved the watch to a court with no judge. And here’s the part you didn’t want from me, the part you’ll have to sit still for. He’s a man that sees you as disposable. But this doesn’t make him hopeless; it makes him desperate. And there is a question about whether one can be productive around desperate people. This is dependent on how hopeless and useless a person might be. Selling a fake watch is low. And at the same time, I don’t know what compels him or what has wrought him at this very moment.

Now the counsel, and it’s the same counsel I give everyone who pings this column, because there’s only one.

Having to ask questions about the base character of your friends is always a bad sign. The watch is fake, which means his survival that afternoon is a sprint—one story ahead of the loop, one sentence ahead of the weight in your palm that’s about to go critical mass. And a survival stage as a race against exposure is already lost, because it isn’t his current bad luck, luck changes. He’s picking a race with chaos. If the grand father is real or not, he serves as an amulet, again and again, perceived power or actual.

In the end, a man with his house in order doesn’t carry a fake Rolex into a real expert’s shop (friend or foe) and reach for a dead relative. Someone with a Rolex knows the time. His continuance doesn’t depend on staying one sentence ahead of the truth, so the truth holds no terror, so he never needs the witness who can’t be called. He’d hand you the watch and let you weigh it. The order is exactly what makes him auditable. The running is the whole reason the grandfather had to exist. Chaos consumes. Most importantly, go home and check your own house. Not for fake Rolexes. For the grandfathers—the unauditable witnesses you reach for when something of yours needs to read as real and you’d rather not take the stand. The “thoughtful recollection that bathes in honesty” is one. Watch for it. The man at your counter is just yours with worse materials and no loop to fool him. Keep your house so ordered you never have to run like a man with a fake Rolex—and you’ll never need to misuse a memory or anyone; the value will be present in the thing itself.

Remember to not lose track of time; all watches stop ticking. ~Ignacious

Survival is what girds both liars in both letters. The degrees vary, reasoning varies, but it is survival. Both men require a totem that makes any lie sing. Both chose family. The problem with totems and lies is that you agree to a race with chaos, which simply doesn’t work.

The machine hums to life. The little green light on the Voight-Kampff scanner blinks steadily. I adjust the ocular scanner and look at you across the table.

Question one. You are walking through a desert. The sand is hot under your feet. The sun is directly overhead. You look down... and you see Will Smith lying on his back in the sand. His belly is exposed to the sun. His arms and legs are moving — slowly at first, then more desperately — as he tries to turn himself over. He can’t do it. The sun is cooking him. He keeps wiggling, trying to right himself, but he has no leverage.

You stand there and watch. You do not help him. Why?” The scanner is waiting. Your answer. That a Rolex?