NOTE: If you have not read A Secret, Part 1, STOP. This post will not make sense and you will be confused. Go ahead and catch up. We will wait.
OK, so life and my little hobby were moving along quite nicely. Only three people knew my secret: my future husband, my friend K. and my mother.* And then things began to unravel. It began with my first trip with M.
We were just getting settled and buckled into our seats. I had a nice, older gentleman seated in the aisle seat next to me (I also regularly sacrifice the window seat since meeting M.). I began to formulate the story that I would share, compiling the details, working out the interesting tidbits that would become my flying alter-ego. I was eagerly anticipating his introduction when I looked over at M. and he smiled at me. OMG! It hit me like a ton of bricks. I was stuck on this flight for 3.5 hours and would not be able to lie... I could not work with him sitting there. Lying with a partner requires collaboration, collusion. Like Sean Connery in Entrapment, I work alone. Partners fuck it up. I had to fake sleep the entire flight, missing the beverage service AND the snack. I think that M. ate my pretzels. In fact, I am sure of it.
I resigned myself to the fact that opportunities to pursue my hobby would be limited to business trips and other solo adventures. And then, the unthinkable.
It was our wedding. A beautiful day, if I do say so myself. We were at the reception and had just been treated to three of the most wonderful and touching speeches. Truly, I was moved. Not a dry eye at my table (couldn't see beyond that for the tears and I am not a sentimental person). I guess that K. decided that we needed a little comic relief, because she proceeded to tell the entire crowd gathered there for the blessed union that the bride is a confessed, compulsive liar. And... had been doing it for years.
(let me give you a moment to just get your arms around that)
Suddenly, 132 people knew my most intimate secret. My husband's v. conservative family, my new co-workers, the rectors from our church, MY GRANDPARENTS... everyone I knew and loved now knew that I lied for FUN. In fairness to K., I never told her NOT to tell anyone. I kind of assumed she would know better. It certainly never crossed the threshold of my mind that she would be so public in her disclosure... My bad. People laughed, it was all in good fun.
But after the wedding, a friend of M.'s family took me aside and said "Well, at least your friend K. didn't talk at the rehearsal dinner. We all might have missed this beautiful wedding." Super. But... that isn't even the worst of it.
Now, I can't really ever enjoy my flights. Every time we go visit M.'s family in Ohio, they ask me who I was on the flight up. I have tried to explain that I don't do it anymore, but they still ask, insist on hearing the stories and re-telling the betrayal to everyone who hasn't already heard it the 20 times before.
It isn't anonymous anymore... it isn't secret. I can't enjoy it because I know that at least 132 other people know that I am doing it.
I guess that I will have to go back to eating paste in the closet, listening to Celine Dion CDs.
*I don't remember how they found out. I am sure that I confided in some guilt-inducing drunken stupor.
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