To tell the truth

PROLOGUE

"This is a house of lies!" -Almost Famous

"I know I haven't blogged in a long time. My dog ate it." -Me
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CHAPTER 1: FRIENDS

(Treasure Island Grocery Store parking lot. Two older women are pushing full shopping carts to their cars.)

OLD WOMAN 1: Now, I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you something, and I want a completely honest response from you -

OLD WOMAN 2: What?

OLD WOMAN 1: Because I'll not ask you if you won't be honest with me.

OLD WOMAN 2: Of course I'll be honest with you! What, am I a liar all of a sudden?

OLD WOMAN 1: Well...

OLD WOMAN 2: I don't lie about things! Just ask me your stupid question. I don't lie.

OLD WOMAN 1: Are you lying now?

OLD WOMAN 2: Maybe I am!

OLD WOMAN 1: I forgot my question.
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CHAPTER 2: ART

There's an art gallery down the hall from our office. Sometimes they have installations that are interesting. Less frequent are shows that are actually attractive to look at. The current exhibit is tough on the eyes. Life-sized nude photographs of people looking, well, dirty. They each have nothing but blackness behind them, and they face straight into the camera with stunned expressions. It's creepy and weird and totally creepy. One can't walk to the bathroom without walking by the gallery's big window. And, there they are! Seven feet tall each! Naked and sooty! Weird and weirder.

So I'm in the men's room washing up, and at the sink next to me is the junior employee from this gallery. He's a good guy whom I've befriended over the past few months. He looks like the kind of guy who enjoys cool alternative music I've never heard of but wish I could talk about. The kind of guy who knows the difference between whey and soy.

"How's the new show going?" I ask.

"Oh, okay. I think we sold one today."

"Wow."

He throws me a glance in the mirror.

"So," I continue, "what do you think of the pieces?"

He looks at me as he turns off his water. There is a pause. A pause that makes me wish I hadn't asked. Of course he likes them - they're art. Big time art.

The water drips. He blinks. "I think they're terrible," he says. "I think the show is hideous."

"Oh!" I reply, perhaps too happily.

"Have you seen them up close? You have to see them up close."

"Really?" I ask with a wince.

"Oh, yeah."

"Let's go." I shoot back, drying my hands.

"Oh, yeah," he repeats, leading me down the hall.

These pictures are unpleasant enough when one is walking past the gallery quickly en route to pinch a loaf. Standing five inches away, looking straight on, doesn't really help the situation. My friend is showing me around a bit, looking at me for my reaction, when one of the main gallery reps emerges. He explains the work to me. He explains the way these photographs were taken: naked people lying still in the dark for up to three hours while the artist exposed a piece of film and ran a flashlight over their bodies over and over. Hence the dirty look - it's just an uneven, slow exposure. A single three-hour photograph.

It's ridiculous. It seems absolutely pointless. It says nothing to me. It sounds like this artist was bored and simply wanted to look at naked people with a flashlight for a few hours. And the result is that these people look like they were just pulled out of a fire, glassy-eyed and covered in ash. I think it's unappealing and dull, and it makes me want to challenge the artist - or at least his representative here. To challenge this art. Frankly, it makes me a little mad.

But we don't say these things, do we? No, we don't. We want to be supportive, and appear intelligent and cool, so we lie our way through things like this, nodding and smiling, and maybe even throwing in the occasional "hmm!" for good measure. It's easier. It's better.

Except, in this case, I am saying these things. I'm standing there, in the middle of this gallery, and these words are coming out of my mouth. I try to stop myself, but it's too late.

"Do you like this?" I ask the senior rep.

"It's amazing."

"Okay."

"It's brilliant."

"So, what is the artist trying to say with this work?" I launch back, "because I certainly don't see any message here. I get nothing from this."

"Well, that's... a good question." My friend seems to be enjoying this. "I think he's really playing with convention. He's trying to show us the difference between, say, this man here and his actual self. He wants you to feel uncomfortable with that."

"Okay, great," I continue, genuinely unable to stop myself, "But that has no meaning for me. That sounds to me like he just wants to play around. What's his message? His thesis?"

"Wow. Uh, thesis." The rep responds with a laugh. He doesn't know what to say, but he clearly loves this exhibit. No matter what. "I haven't asked him that. And, I'm not sure he has one. I think he wants people to have an experience looking at these. That's his focus. He went through a process, you see. I couldn't tell you anything about a thesis."

"Maybe he doesn't have to have a thesis, per se." I say, backpedaling for a few seconds. "I mean, maybe he just wants me to have this experience you're describing. The experience of looking at this. Whatever that is. Although, it sounds to me like he wanted to have the experience, not me, and I'm just along for the ride."

There is a pause. Perhaps I went too far.

"Precisely!" the rep says, with a nod and a smile. My friend throws me a wink.

"Okay!" I say, grinning back, unsure of what has just happened. I thank them both and make my way back to work.

I feel tired and sluggish. As I sit down at my desk, in front of this very computer, in front of this very blog, I wonder if I should have gone the lying-nodding route. The ease of it all.

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CHAPTER 3: DETECTING

Galvanic skin resistance (GSR) - This is also called electro-dermal activity, and is basically a measure of the sweat on your fingertips. The finger tips are one of the most porous areas on the body and so are a good place to look for sweat. The idea is that we sweat more when we are placed under stress. Fingerplates, called galvanometers, are attached to two of the subject's fingers. These plates measure the skin's ability to conduct electricity. When the skin is hydrated (as with sweat), it conducts electricity much more easily than when it is dry. (K. Bonsor, How Stuff Works)
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EPILOGUE

"It's good to be blogging again." -Me

Cold, danger, exhaustion and the bluetooth

Almost getting squished by an SUV is no fun. Just ask my old friend Clem.

My old friend Clem and his girlfriend-at-the-time were on their way back to his place to get into each others' pants for the very first time when instead they got run over by an SUV. No kidding. They were both fine, believe it or not. Which is exactly why we can all laugh about it uproariously now.

Or just ask me. It just (almost) happened.

First thing you need to know: I'm exhausted. I'm tired in all kinds of ways, and, frankly, I feel overly edgy about most everything. It's the lack-of-sleep, up-with-the-children, rampant-virus, picking-fights kind of exhaustion that many of you know all too well.

Second: it's ridiculously cold here. Five degrees this morning, with a wind-chill of something much worse (though it's worth noting that my buddy Bill hates the use of wind-chill: "who are they to tell me how it feels out here to me???"). It's the kind of cold that makes everyone on the El platform stand in a crude formation each morning to avoid the wind. Today: everyone facing 45 degrees to the right, heads cocked slightly down and to the left, hands in pockets, rocking gently side-to-side. Some possibly moaning. Or maybe that's just the sound of the ghosts of the people who died up here last winter, their faces frozen in whatever final facial expression they were making.

So, here I am, afternoon now but equally cold. I'm on my way to a nearby bank to do a little financial transaction, and I'm minding my own business. It's a less congested part of downtown, and only a few of us are on this particular block. The light changes to green, and we cross. Myself, fucking grumpy and fucking cold, and a couple of people behind me. And, from the other side of the street, a solo woman. We all start walking. And we're walking.

And then, well, it happens.

A huge, vomit-green Yukon, currently facing me, is trying to turn right onto the street we're crossing and decides to do so regardless of the pedestrians already in mid-cross. You know, us. This guy floors it, as we could all hear by the straining engine, and navigates his rapidly-accelerating, monstrous truck between us as best he can.

I will say this: I am absolutely sure he has not seen the woman crossing towards me. He's coming from her direction, and she is clearly in his blind spot. Perhaps we all are. He cuts her off so quickly and closely, that she stumbles backwards trying to avoid him; her hand looks like it brushes the side of his vehicle. I still don't know if he's seen me or not, but, well, he comes rather... close to me. Inches. He comes so close to me that the people who are behind me by several paces scream out. We all sort of scream - out of fear, out of anger, out of shock. He responds accordingly by gunning it down the street.

(Hey, I am not kidding when I say that, to my knowledge, this is absolutely the closest I have come to death to date. I am being as fair and rational as I can when I say that he was at most 6 inches from me. It felt like he hit me, that's how close he was. Fucking suburban, gas-guzzling, blue-tooth-wearing, button-down-shirt-sleeves-rolled-up, cocky, grinning, distracted, motherfucking-ass-clown.)

We're in awe. The four of us look at each other, unsure of what to say. There is great distress, though we are clearly all okay. I think the woman facing us might be especially sad. His engine fades as he zooms off.

Like I said, I'm tired. I'm freezing cold. I'm, to put it simply, a man not to be fucked with. And this is a bad thing that just happened to us here, it really is. And, as it just so happens, our new friend has only made it about 30 yards because of the red light down the way. I look at him, his huge SUV, now mixed in with other cars, tail lights ablaze. I watch my shortened breath cloud up before me.

You bet I fucking take off.

I run down the street after him, hoping out loud that the light won't change before I get to his vehicle. The air in my lungs feels even colder as I reach the standing cars. I slow down to a careful walk, as now would be a crappy time to get hit by someone else. I walk slowly between the idling cars, giving a friendly wave to each driver. A wave that I hope conveys, "what you are about to see has nothing to do with you. It doesn't really have anything to do with me - not the real me, at least. What you are about to see, fellow citizen, is outside of the box. Outside of the box of comfort for us all."

I'm there. And there he sits. Chubby little suited-up guy jabbering away into his glowing blue headset, laughing at something I don't give a shit about. The light is still red.

I slam on his window one, two, three times.

He's startled, that's for sure. And I'm thrilled. I'm so glad that he's surprised, glad that he doesn't quite know what to make of me. I'm glad for his sudden change of expression, and I feel a little guilty, too. He stares back at me, his mouth still moving, but more slowly now. He won't roll down his window. Shocker.

I scream into his window from about an inch away. I scream in the cold, gray air.

"You almost hit two people back there, asshole! You really did!!!" I hold up two fingers for emphasis.

He looks at me blankly as the light changes to green.

"Watch where you're going and get off your fucking phone!!!"

THIS he seems to understand. He sort of nods and grins and, as he pulls away, does that little point-at-you-while-winking-and-making-a-double-tongue-click thing. I give his car an affectionate punch, and he's gone. Fucker.

I wander back to my initial path, feeling kind of good and kind of bad. I used to believe that the frigid Chicago weather brought the people of this city together. You know, you’re all in the same boat, there’s no denying it’s cold, hang in there… that kind of thing. As I head towards the bank, I’m not so sure. Maybe it brings out the worst in us. Maybe it makes us the kind of people who bark at each other, ignore each other, run each other down.

I sigh, notice once again how visible my breath is, and decide to watch my feet as I walk. I get to the corner where the bank is and hear a woman’s voice.

“That was really scary.” I look up and see the woman who had been a few steps behind me, the woman who screamed the loudest.

“Yeah, it was super close,” I say with a half-smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to being hit before.”

“Me neither. And I was a few feet behind you!”

“Well,” I add, “I normally don’t do that kind of thing there. You know, yell at people in their cars.”

“That’s okay. It's good what you did there. You were yelling for the group of us. We all watched you. We were all glad to see you do it.” She blinks a few times. “Thanks for speaking for us.”

We say our goodbyes, but not before laughing together about how unbelievably cold it is. We tell each other to hang in there.

This is a good city.