Some months back, two of my friends Kim1 asked me to write a piece about What’s Up with Men These Days. Not just the men who have consumed American government and American enterprise, the puerile and selfish men presently stomping our lives flat for their own amusement; they want to better understand the men seething with violent anger for reasons known and unknown, the fish-wielding blowhards on Tinder and the men, like me, who appear to be all fucked up but insist that they’re OK. (Some of them are. I might be.) I doodled with this essay for two months before I realized that I couldn’t talk about all our problems at once, so I’ve decided to take them on piecemeal. First up: lying.

There is no “male loneliness epidemic.” There, said it, done. It sounds like it could be a legitimate thing, because it has the word epidemic in it. In reality, it’s an equivocation, an invention of misogynists and babymen to explain why they can’t get dates. It’s not because of their loud and stupid insistence that women have no agency; it’s not because they use the phrase “body count” to describe a woman’s previous intimate partners; it’s not even because the photos they post on dating sites, taken in the driver’s seat of their truck, look virtually fucking identical to each other2. Oh no no no. It’s the epidemic.

I did my research. Couldn’t find a single proper medical paper on an epidemic of male loneliness, which is surprising ‘cos, y’know, epidemic. When I opened up a Google search, the first result came from Dr. Reddit. But about halfway through the first page of garbage results I did find an NPR segment from February: The men's loneliness epidemic might not exist.

They don’t say loneliness doesn’t exist. Loneliness is spreading like RFK-era measles; has been since well before the pandemic shutdown. But we men hardly own the franchise on it. The NPR segment cited a Pew survey that found only a 1% difference in reported loneliness between men and women (16% to 15% respectively). Women are far more likely to reach out for emotional support from a friend (54% of women to 38% of men), from a mental health practicioner (22% to 16%), or from their mother (54% to 42%).

And that’s it. That, as the saying goes, is the post. Loneliness is pervasive among Yankee Doodle Dudes, but it’s not epidemic. I couldn’t find a single proper medical study to support that, and seeing as the foremost authority on this crisis is Dr. Reddit, I don’t think I’m a-gonna. It’s an equivocation of male loneliness. Bluntly speaking, it’s fucking bullshit, invented to give cover to hate speech like this:

This is from a social media feed called Ask Aubry , which compiles and reposts loud-and-proud misogynist “trash takes” like these. Ask Aubry can drop upwards of a couple dozen of these daily, because the assembly line that produces this hot, craven garbage hasn’t let up since before the web was born. The proud boys and grown-ass men who write posts like these probably don’t have much in common with each other beyond their common, unremarkable chromosome; they are rich and poor, flabby and fit, Republican and Democrat. (Being one thing doesn’t mean you’re not also something else.) But to a man, all of them are aligned on one point: When they write this stuff, every last one of them knows they’re lying. They know it. They know it.

I am a liar. I don’t remember when I first became one (birth), but I remember a ramping-up shortly after my parents separated and then reconciled when I was 12 or 13. After Dad came home, my lying increased and increased and increased until it grazed the realm of the pathological. Now, My parents’ separation didn’t make me a liar, and as much as I’d like to blame this and everything else on the upstate New York organization, I don’t think the Jehovah’s Witnesses played much of a direct role in it, either. (Can’t believe they sold that sweet Brooklyn block.) But both of those influences were present as I developed a thirsting, awful need to be accepted. I lied to keep myself in conversations I would have been ejected from otherwise. I lied to give myself stature. I lied to get in.

It came to a head in autumn 1982. I met a neighborhood girl, Gina, one day while I was out mowing the lawn; she gave me a look that still makes my heart race when I recall it. She had a mousy brown Joan Jett hairdo, green eyes, light freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks and a chunky bracelet of pink bakelite. I’d never seen anyone more beautiful, and I made a consummate fucking fool of myself trying to curry her favor. She was amused, but I think only superficially so—she dated men several years older than she was, some in their low 20s—and when she visited me at home one night, gave me a few kisses that scrambled my brains and left her pink bracelet behind as a keepsake, she probably thought that was the end of it.

I didn’t. I watched sullenly from a distance as she dated a young Marine from Camp Pendleton, eventually moving to San Clemente to be closer to him. I stewed in what I saw as a deliberate humiliation, rather than a lightweight fling. And that’s when I began to tell friends around the neighborhood—whether they had asked me or not—that Gina was dead.

It made so much sense to me. I believed that, in our brief moment together, she’d conferred desirability upon me, the weird, semi-religious kid with the bad haircut. She’d given me stature that, in the wake of her leaving, I believed I was entitled to keep. It was worth more to me than pink bakelite, and I wanted to use it to give myself an unearned lift. I twisted that memory—not just for myself, but for the world as I knew it, which ended well short of San Clemente city limits. It was little short of emotional homicide: If I couldn’t have Gina’s affections, why should I let anyone else have them?

Naturally, my story didn’t hold together for long. My parents never learned of it, but a friend’s mother did, and she dressed me down: “I’ve called hospitals. I’ve called local police. They’ve never heard of this girl.” (Ironically, I never learned if she actually did those things, or if she just sniffed out a bullshit story and clamped down on it.) She radiated disgust, and the shame spread through my body in a way I could feel. Her son, a close friend, didn’t turn his back on me, but he did reflect her disappointment: “Your name is synonymous with lying.”

I walked out of their house beaten, reduced. Some months later, I spoke to Gina on the phone and shakily told her what I had done. To my shock, she was amused: “Did you?” she asked, chuckling. She forgave me, not to soothe my conscience, but to put an end to the uncomfortable anecdote.

We talked for a few more minutes, I think, and then I never spoke to Gina again. I don’t remember whose choice that was, but it was the right one.

I would love to tell you that was the end of my life of bullshit. And, in terms of sheer ambition, it was; I never told another lie so boldly destructive and easily punctured. But I kept on telling lies, of diminishing scope and in steadily diminishing frequency, well in my 20s, when I finally realized that lying was just making more work for me. (The truth, as Hunter Thompson once lied3 in Rolling Stone, is just easier.)

I got bored with lying well before I got disgusted with it. But the disgust did come, and it lingered. I feel it now, keenly, as America indulges itself in high-functioning, speed-of-sound bullshit. Trump fuels his misbegotten ambitions with bullshit. We have round-the-clock television stations devoted to the care and feeding of bullshit. Lying hangs over America like a toxic cloud, and while it’s not confined to one group or another, its the men—us poor, epidemically lonely men—who are always first and foremost in weaponizing it.

I meant what I said before: These assholes know they’re lying. They know they’re lying when they say women are weaker and less intelligent than they are, because they wouldn’t bother to attack them otherwise. They know that their wrapped Cybertrucks, MAGA ballcaps and testicle tanning doesn’t make them stronger men, because my God, re-read the beginning of this sentence and click that link if you don’t know what I’m talking about. They know right from wrong, because they’re continually trying to make them indistinguishable. They are fucking lying, because they’d rather not talk to anyone about their anger and hurt.

Keep reminding them that lying is weakness and selfishness, because all of them need to be told these things, and some of them may not yet realize that they want to hear these things. There is always a limit, a lie too far. And perhaps, somewhere inside them, there’s a crag of uncertainty where those words of rebuke might catch.

I remain a liar. I can’t help it. But I don’t do it very often. I’m sure I’ve told a lie recently—pretty much everybody has, even if only to themselves—but for the life of me, I can’t remember when I told it, or what it was about. If that lie was so small and insignificant as to dissipate in the air the second it entered the world, I’m doing something right. It’s when those lies reach others, choke and bludgeon others, that you know you’ve got a problem. You’ve got an epidemic.

“I wrote you a letter and I told you ‘you were dead.’" I confess: Much of what I do is a not-so-subtle effort to get you to listen to Scritti Politti’s 1999 LP Anomie & Bonhomie. If this is the last time you trust me with anything, let me try to convince you to listen to this record. It’s terrific.

Thanks to everyone who’s been so patient with me while I slow-walked this essay. I’m still not sure if I like it, but it’s time to let it go. Next time, I want to write about something fun. We’ll just see how that goes, won’t we.