Archive

Notes & Queeries: The Truth About Lies

Notes & Queeries is a monthly column that focuses on the personal side of pop culture for lesbians and bisexual women.

On first glance, the two young adult novels Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazara Dole, and Love & Lies: Marisol’s Story by Ellen Wittlinger, both published in 2008, seem quite different. Set in Miami, Down to the Bone is written in an exuberant first person, complete with Spanish-language, hip-hop infused slang. Set in Boston, Love & Lies is more buttoned-up, and much more controlled.

But both books share some interesting characteristics. Both are about Latina lesbian teens – a somewhat rare find among young adult fiction. And both are about lies.

In Down to the Bone, 16-year-old Catholic school student Laura is outed to everyone when she’s caught reading a love note from her girlfriend in class. Laura’s mother, a factory worker, kicks her out of the house when she finds out about the relationship, and she refuses to take Laura back unless she becomes straight.

Laura is expelled from school, starts working full-time, and moves in with her best friend and best friend’s mom. She builds a network of queer and straight friends in Miami, and she deals with the pain of finding out that her girlfriend, who is forced to move back to Puerto Rico, has decided to marry a man.

Laura is a world away from 18-year-old Marisol, the main character in Love & Lies. Marisol’s mother, a social worker, fully supports her out lesbian daughter, and although Marisol waitresses at a diner in Harvard Square to pay her rent, she could easily rely on her parents for financial support.

Marisol is aware, to some extent, of her own privilege. She is self-confident and expects to be seen as the best, and she is comfortable with the fact that she’s gay. But even Marisol is surprised when her gorgeous creative writing teacher, a woman ten years older than her, is attracted to her.

The differences between Marisol and Laura are reflected in the lies they tell. Laura faces homophobia across her community, and at first it seems that the only way to avoid it is to be straight. She tells her mother that she has changed; she insists to her friends that she only ever loved that one girl; she dates a boy and tries to lie to herself about how she can fall in love with him.

Many YA novels about queer teens deal with lying – specifically, lying about being gay. Those are lies born of being in the closet, and I think that for many LGBT people, that lie is the first big one we ever tell.

In a way, they’re more forgivable than other lies. We tell these lies until we learn to accept ourselves. Before that moment, we have very little choice but to deny the truth.

In Love & Lies, the lies are less forgivable. Marisol has been out for two years when Love & Lies begins, and she has no need or desire to lie about her sexual orientation. Everyone around her accepts her queer identity. She is free to lie about something else.

The lies in Love & Lies are sometimes intentional, sometimes not. In a charitable interpretation, these kinds of lies are the ones we tell to make others more comfortable – to cushion the truth. On the other hand, these are also the lies we tell to make ourselves feel better, or to make ourselves feel important. These are the lies that hurt the most.

We’ve all lied before. Many lies arise in the context of relationships, just as they did for Marisol in Love & Lies. There’s the lie you tell when you’re breaking up with someone, just to soften the blow for them – the “it’s not you, it’s me” lie.

But does anyone ever believe that one? Does it ever make it easier? I know that when I heard that phrase or its equivalent, I never believed the speaker.

One night, someone whom I had been dating for about a month told me very earnestly that she thought I was wonderful, and she hoped we would continue to be great friends. But since she broke up with her last girlfriend fairly recently, she just wasn’t ready to be dating yet. I smiled at her, as if it made complete sense to me, and told her, “I totally understand.”

But of course, I did not understand at all. I felt insulted, because I knew she was lying.

It might seem like you’re being self-sacrificing, admitting that you’re just not ready to date, that you need some “time alone.” But anyone who has been on the receiving end of such a statement can hear, loud and clear, the words that remain unspoken: “I’m just not ready to be dating you.”

There are also the lies you tell yourself when you’re trying to convince yourself that the object of your affection really does like you, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Of course she meant to call you the other day; she just got stuck at work, or at school, or in traffic, or at the mall. Of course she cares about you; didn’t she say you were amazing? This kind of lie balloons quickly, creating a universe of self-deception that enables you to tolerate all kinds of bad behavior.

Dismantling that universe is agony. Not only do you have to be willing to see how that person really behaves, you have to endure the pain that comes from experiencing, at last, the truth.

And then there are lies about fidelity. I remember that a friend once told me, “It’s easier to cheat than you think.” People are human, and humans want to be connected to each other.

Both Marisol and Laura have brushes with infidelity in their books. There are no drawn-out love affairs; it’s as simple – and as devastating – as kissing someone you want to kiss when you know you shouldn’t. Who hasn’t felt that before? The problem is that afterward, there’s a decision to make: to lie or not to lie.

I chose to lie about it, once. I was the other woman. That doesn’t excuse it; it was wrong. I can only remember, though, that the lie seemed like the most natural thing in the world. It was about protecting someone else; it was about avoiding the truth; it was about adventure.

Unfortunately, once you tell one lie, you’ll find that you have to tell another. They build on themselves, snowballing until you’re being chased by a growing mass of rumbling, spinning lies. At some point, you can’t run fast enough to outpace them, and they crash into you like an avalanche. Everything gets smashed.

I read Down to the Bone and Love & Lies as an adult. I probably wouldn’t have read these two novels in the same light as a teen. Back then, I didn’t know much about lying. In fact, I generally tended to blurt out the hard truth too bluntly for anyone’s comfort, having not yet learned about tact.

What’s interesting about reading these books now is that I recognize that they do what very little YA fiction has done so far for LGBT teens. In both novels, the main characters have already discovered their attraction to the same sex, and they have already acted on it. They are coming-of-age stories about learning to navigate the world as an adult, rather than coming-out stories.

Both books look at what happens after you come out. What happens when you’re finally dating someone, and they leave you. What happens when you’re sucked into a relationship with someone who has so much power over you. What happens when you think you’re trying to protect someone, but you’re actually trying to fool yourself. What happens? Often, it involves choosing whether or not to tell the truth.

In my mid-20s, I decided grimly that becoming an adult meant learning when to lie. It wasn’t until some time later that I realized that on the flip side, becoming an adult was also about having the courage to tell – and to face – the truth. That’s what Marisol and Laura do in their stories. That’s what we all have to learn, and it’s a lot harder than lying.

For more on Malinda Lo, visit her website.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button