A Short History of Deception

I'm back. This is the start of a longer thing I'm working on. Blogger won't let me use bolds, italics, and occasionally tabs, so it may be a little confusing. I also promise that his will take on a more narrative quality later on, but for now, I look forward to your comments. The basic idea is that this will work as a history, with two witnesses and commentators telling the story, and with some primary sources interspersed throughout.

A History of Deception

You and I, tempted by the promise of a different life
Time has fled, there’s a constant battle runnin’ through my head.
-Richard Thompson

Jen

I knew that something was wrong with Stephen when his calls began to come regularly and started to write me letters again. When first left home, he wrote once a week for several months, then stopped with the explanation that life was going well. I didn’t hear from him for three years. Then, as if he had never stopped, one of those thick envelopes with two too many stamps arrived in my box. His characteristic scrawl leaned all over the front of the envelope. Inside, the familiar malaise-filled letter and six or seven poems that could have been worthwhile if he ever cared to really work on them.

This occurred before that dreadful business in Scotland, about which many claim to know. Suffice to say that I might have paid a little more attention to what was between the lines if I had been in Sacramento. As it was, it surprised me that he had even found my new address.

- - -

Yes, I knew Stephen Baker when we were younger, and then a bit longer. One might describe him as a contradiction, but that would be too trite. I prefer the image of a pendulum—swinging back and forth between two poles but never resting in the middle. On one end, the life of the mind; he could be intellectually brilliant when he wanted to be. On the other, a sordid, drunken, shell of an animal that he unsuccessfully tried to hide.

Of course, when a pendulum stops swinging and rests, it is useless. Personally, I think he began to unwind when he came to believe that he needed to maintain some equilibrium. In doing so, he lost himself. He did not realize that there is as much equilibrium in motion—what Bergson calls duration—as in stasis. It was that very motion that individualized him. All of this will become apparent as events unfold.

Physically, he is an attractive man, though not so much so as to define him entirely. Let us begin with the basics: The last time I saw him he was just over six feet tall and 180 pounds, dark hair shortly cropped; thin expressive lips. Small hands, roughly calloused with feet just as small and skinny legs from which began to lose hair at the age of seventeen. A fairly toned body made possible by exercise in which he would fanatically participate until interrupted by the illnesses that frequently struck him. I wasn’t more attracted to him than anyone else, but I could certainly see the appeal.

His demeanor is more difficult to pin down. He could (and often did) charm the pants off nearly anyone. He could also be (and frequently was) one of the grumpiest, crankiest, most cantankerous people you could ever have the misfortune to meet. He wanted to be alone; he hated to be alone. He could justify the most obvious egotism with a queer rationality, and then turn around and commit the most stunning acts of generosity, which he labored to keep unseen. Everything right one minute and everything wrong the next. I imagine that to this day he persists in declaring his hatred of driving while simultaneously refusing to allow anyone else to sit behind the wheel. He could engage in remarkable stretches of self-discipline, feverishly working on something for weeks and ignoring any distractions. Other times, the merest excuse would have him out with a drink in one hand, a woman in the other, and raving about the incoherence of all humanity by the end of the night.

“I am perfectly aware of, and willing to acknowledge, these flaws,” he once said to me after I presented him with a more tactful reproduction of the list above, “but I do not want to be reminded of them.”

That is really what it comes down to: Stephen didn’t want to be reminded…of anything. So imagine, then, the ensuing chaos when he fell in Love with a woman whom he sometimes referred to as his Alarm Clock.

- - -

Derek

The first thing you’ve got to know about Steve is that he’s a very smart guy who loves to fuck very dumb girls. That’s the crux of the problem right there. That and the fact that he wants to believe, at least at first, that these very dumb girls have a modicum of intelligence. I think he confused the word "slut” with “freethinker,” but you probably shouldn’t put that in the book.

Look, here’s what you’ve really got to know no matter what anyone else says about him. Steve always tried to see the best in his women for as long as he could. He would meet a girl while he was out, bring her home, and the next day he would rave about “the conversation.”

“Derek,” he’d say, “we actually talked and it was great. She could actually keep up. I never meet girls that can keep up, that are really interested in things.”

This was when he was sober. When his mind was really working, it was hard for anyone to keep up. But when he was out he was always hammered, and when he was hammered, he had a very average intelligence and extraordinary confidence. Anyone could get Steve when he was hammered, and to be frank, he could be more likeable if you were meeting him for the first time. More laid back, less dismissive, much more patient. In most respects he was a normal guy, and the few quirks he kept seemed to make him an attractive individual.

- - -

The two other guys we lived with in those days were always shocked at how many girls he brought back.

“He doesn’t even like people,” Cal said.

“I know he takes what he can get,” said John, “but he’s not exactly scraping the bottom of the barrel. All he does is read all day. What gives?”

I could have told them now. Steve had a sense of purpose and could be gregarious in spite of his nature. When those two sides of him got hot, they alloyed.

Like the rest of us, nothing could ignite him more quickly than a woman.