two truths and a lie

The last time I’d played the game was at cheerleading camp the summer before junior year. This time, when I walked into the party, a chick named Blue was saying she’d been a pimp for a while. And that was one of her truths. No one at cheer camp had even lied about anything that outrageous.

We were at AK’s ex’s house for a Gay Girls’ Game Night (and what is more gay-girlish than hanging out with your current’s ex?). The first few people who went had truths like “I used to identify as transgendered” and lies like “I have 14 tattoos” (she only had six). I wracked my brain for what to say, and realized that most of the quirky truths I could summon were the same quirky truths I could summon in high school. Was I really that boring? Was I really the only girl at the party who’d never worked in the sex industry?

I was relieved when someone’s lie was “I race BMX bikes,” and someone else’s truth was “I won a year’s supply of Maybelline cosmetics.”

In my head, I rehearsed the following:

1. I used to carry a rat around on my shoulder.
2. I once got the boot on my car for unpaid parking tickets.
3. My name is on the Mira Costa High School record wall for bench-pressing.

I invite you to guess the lie. But I never got to stump the GGGN crowd, because the conversation dissolved into a more general party with more general topics. Or at least as general as GG’s go—there were topics like “So seriously, you were a pimp?” and “My cat likes to eat sourdough bread” and “I hate bisexuals” (and don’t you think that hating bisexuals is a bit overdone? Doesn’t that make you more of a cliché than straight girls who make out with their best female friends at parties?).

Blue the Pimp told me that I look like her friend Nicole. I assume Nicole isn’t one of her hoes—partly because hoes, if they want to work, would probably need better haircuts than the one I got yesterday. I like it from the back, but I don’t see much of the back of my head, so—for the same self-centered reason I wanted a tattoo in a place I could see—I wish I didn’t look so much like a mushroom from the front. Sad but true.