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The Pathological Liar
In Grade 10 I met this guy who was really confident, very sure of himself, and was always lots of interesting stories. He was fun to be around, and -- miracle of miracles for my fifteen-year-old self who had zero self-esteem -- he was interested in me!
After a little while, though, I noticed his stories became less and less believable. On our first date he told me he had walked down part of the 401 (biiig Toronto highway, Americans) naked on a dare. He told me he drove sports cars and used the parking brake to stop and turn really fast like they did in the Fast & the Furious or something (the movie had inspired this image in his head, obviously). The best one was when he told me he was good friends with the members of Our Lady Peace, his favourite band. He would tell me about the emails he and the bassist would exchange, the parties he'd been to with Raine Maida ... Oh there were more, so many more, just unbelievable stories that he obviously expected me to believe.
He also passively pressured me into having sex with him by telling me all the stories of his wild sexual escapades in Toronto. Something tells me now that he was probably a virgin just like me.
Since I was fifteen, impressionable, and vulnerable, with no experience with boys, I just smiled and nodded and let him walk all over me. At the time I was pretty devastated when this guy blew me off. (He dumped me by putting us on a "break", moving to Newfoundland, and then breaking up with me over MSN. Yeah, I know.) But by now, this is just an amusing story about a boy who probably had as low self-esteem as I did, but with a larger imagination to make himself feel better.
I never heard from him again, good riddance. I'd hate to hear his stories about what he's been doing since then. Probably scuba diving with the queen.
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The word "time" split its husk; poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without his making them, hard, white, imperishable words, and flew to attach themselves to their places in an ode to Time; an immortal ode to Time.
—Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
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