Lies I Have Told

“I’m itching my belly button.”

I used to masturbate a lot as a kid. This was what I would tell my parents I was doing when they would try to talk with me about it. I remember them looking at each other with concerned, yet amused faces.

“I just woke up and Lady was peeing on the couch.”

This was told to my mother at around two in the morning when I was eleven years old. Lady was our dog. I had fallen asleep on the couch while watching TV. I was dreaming that I was looking into an old-fashioned water well. I said “Megan” into the well and listened as the sound of my name reverberated at one-second intervals. I woke up rhythmically urinating in the same intervals as I was hearing my name in the dream.

“I’m one quarter Jewish.”

The girls I ate lunch with freshman year of high school identified strongly with their religions, which were mostly Christian. One girl was a Mormon. My family isn’t religious at all. I thought being a little Jewish would give me an “edge.” One quarter seemed small enough for me to not have to explain a lot, but everyone acted curious and confused. The Mormon girl asked me what holidays I celebrated. I said we went to my uncle’s for Hanukkah.

“We go to my uncle’s for Hanukkah.”

I don’t have an uncle.

“I think I’m having a migraine.”

The night before my half sister’s grandmother’s funeral, I drank a bottle of cough syrup. I was seventeen. I still felt high when I woke up. After I took a shower, I sat at the top of the stairs, wearing only a towel. My dad came over and looked at me and asked if I was okay. I said I felt a little funny. He said my pupils were dilated. My mom would get bad migraines where light hurt her eyes and her pupils got big. I said, “It hurts to look into the light. I think I’m having a migraine.” We stopped for Excedrin on the way to the funeral.

1370

This is the SAT score I tell most people I received. I actually got a 1020.

128

This is how much I tell people I weigh. Last time I checked I was 134.

“I was molested.”

Told this to the third man I was physically intimate with. I think I was eighteen. We were in a play at community college together. He was twenty-three, lived with his parents, and wore the same thing every day. We maybe had a total of three conversations before I invited him to my parent’s house where we immediately went down to the basement to make out. He lifted up my shirt and started kissing my back in strange places. He said, “I want to experience all of you, I don’t just want to hit the main spots and run” while looking at me intensely. I thought this should’ve been arousing. He went down on me for maybe twenty minutes. We were lying on an orange carpet. I felt like I needed an excuse for not having an orgasm.

“I’ve only done this four times.”

Said this to the second girl I had oral sex with. I had done things with three girls, but only had oral sex once.

“Seven, I guess.”

The twentieth man I had sex with told me he considered a woman to be a “slut” if she had more than nine sexual partners.