Free Giving Up by Mike Steeves Page A

lifelessness. Or maybe, I thought, they’re more like the eyes of someone in the grip of a major stroke, somehow alive but devoid of any trace of intelligence. In short, I wondered if when he looked into my eyes I was as completely gone as he was to me. If someone were to see us right now they wouldn’t see things the way I saw them, I thought. They wouldn’t see a sad, pathetic, desperate man who was admittedly handsome – though if he wasn’t careful he was going to lose his looks through dissipation – they would not see this strung out con man hustling a young, reasonably well-dressed, sympathetic and naive man out of his hard-earned money. No. They would see two wild-eyed men hurrying along the sidewalk and talking loudly and excitedly, and maybe both of them would look sad and desperate so that the passerby thought he was looking at a couple of psychos. But this isn’t how things looked to me. Instead, I felt superior to Luke, and while he was trying to keep eye contact with me I was doing the exact opposite, because I was worried that eventually he would realize that I knew he was full of shit and I imagined that he’d be devastated (especially after I’d just got his hopes up) and probably ashamed as well. I hated to see a person lose face, as the Japanese say. In fact, when I learned that the Japanese actually had a word for ritually committing suicide out of shame I instantly became fascinated by Japanese culture. (I’ve visited Japan twice and I hope to go back again soon.) It may be maudlin, or romantic, or just plain childish to be mortified by another person’s humiliation, but I can’t help it. When someone is caught in a lie, I’d rather pretend I didn’t notice than acknowledge their pathetic attempt to deny a reality that is staring them right in the face. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t willing to hand over four hundred dollars just to avoid an awkward encounter, but so long as I still had a chance, I wanted to come up with something that would allow us both to back off without feeling like idiots. When I am a witness to someone’s humiliation it is as though I have been humiliated, just like when a child gets embarrassed during a sex scene from a movie or television show, even if they’re alone, because they assume that when their excitement and confusion is this intense everyone must know . I assumed that when one person’s shameful behaviour is exposed, that the sheer intensity of their humiliation was capable of exposing all of my faults and secrets as well, a sort of shame by association. So when I finally concluded that Luke had been lying to me I reacted as though I had been caught in a lie, as if just by listening to this guy’s bullshit story I was equally guilty of deception. On account of some stunted development, an aspect of my personality still stuck in infancy, I can not differentiate between my actions and someone else’s. And so maybe he hadn’t been that far off when he compared me to Jesus, since I was under the impression that I could take on the sins of the world. What was especially maddening about all of this was that I often ended up feeling guiltier and more embarrassed than the actual guilty party. Everyone feels the sting of their own conscience differently, and what some people consider a grave sin, others aren’t bothered by in the least. So when I witnessed what I considered to be shameful and reprehensible behaviour, and responded with a guilty conscience as if I was the one who had behaved shamefully, it was very possible that the person I was feeling guilty on behalf of didn’t feel guilty or humiliated at all. I was particularly embarrassed by lying – the greater the lie, the greater the humiliation. In the case of Luke’s story, he had lied to me so completely and so thoroughly misrepresented his position that I was covered with shame . I just wanted to be rid of him so I