There’s a very funny episode of I Love Lucy called Lucy Tells The Truth where Ricky, Fred and Ethel bet Lucy $100 (that was 1953, so now it would be what? $1000?) that she can’t go 24 hours without telling a lie.  Right after they shake on it, Ethel reminds Lucy that they have a date to play bridge with “the girls” (Carolyn Applebee and Marion Strong) the next day. Lucy’s response is to pretend she’s sick and to call and cancel, which she quickly realizes while dialing, that she can’t do (with her famous, grimacing, overacted, glissando “iiiiiiiiii” to the camera).

When they arrive for bridge, they discover that Carolyn has had her home décor redone in Chinese Modern.  While Carolyn’s out of the room, Lucy tells Ethel that it looks like “a bad dream you’d have after eating too much Chinese food”.  When Carolyn returns, Ethel insists Lucy tell her what she said.  Lucy: “I said it looked like a dream.”  But Ethel’s not to be fucked with, and insists, several times: “What kind of a dream, Lucy?”  Lucy fesses up, and Carolyn is hurt and insulted, but then Marion arrives wearing a very silly looking new hat.  After an evasion of Carolyn’s insistent “What do you think of Marion’s new hat, Lucy?” (Lucy: “If that’s the kind of hat you wanted, you sure got a good one!”), they push her to the truth, and Marion is also insulted and hurt.  Then, the three women turn the tables on Lucy and ask, in quick succession, “Lucy, how old are you? How much do you weigh? What color would your hair be if you didn’t dye it?”  Lucy fires back with “33, 129, and mousy brown”, discovering that it feels wonderful to tell the truth and suggests to the stunned threesome: “You should try it. We’d all be much better friends.”  Ethel’s snappy reply: “Somehow I doubt that.”  We laugh of course, since we understand that Ethel is right, as these are essentially surface relationships with the other two. Lucy, uncharacteristically drunk on the rarefied air of authenticity, then gets brutally frank and lets loose with some hard (hilarious) truths she’s been suppressing about each of them for years. 

There are certain truths one must never speak to friends. Lately, I’m finding myself cast as Lucy, but with a few important differences. Unlike the superficial things she zeroes in on, I’m having a hard time keeping my mouth shut about some core stuff that’s been bothering me for years about some friends who are more inclined to believe in the image they have of themselves than the more fact-based reality of their own behavior. (Feeling freer and freer of giving a shit what people think as the end of my life approaches is the catalyst for my tiptoeing into this “inappropriate” territory.)  Rather than a need to win $1000, my need is to break through to something more satisfyingly authentic, or to finally end some of these tangential relationships masquerading as close friendships by virtue mainly of longevity, and forcing some issues that need some fucking forcing.  This is also an invitation for the other to call bullshit on me too. What’s good for the goose IS good for the gander. If you’ve ever been stuck in any kind of crummy, unsatisfactory relationship, blame yourself, because you know that in order to make it better you have to be willing to lose it. If you’re not, it’ll go on forever in its familiar, shitty state.

George Bernard Shaw said, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” Perfect, and also his specialty: very funny, very hard to admit, and very true.

Example: When a person who sees herself as unfailingly kind and empathetic makes a carelessly (perhaps even unconsciously) cruel remark, she’s inclined to imagine it was misinterpreted or misheard if the listener takes offence.  Of course the listener rarely speaks up, being habitually intimidated by the carefully cultivated image of the speaker as an altruist. 

Example: When a person who sees himself as fascinating notices his listener falling asleep, he’s inclined to see the listener as tired, or perhaps even narcoleptic, rather than bored.  And, of course the listener will likely say “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m just tired!” and might even believe she’s telling the truth, having bought into the idea that the speaker is always spellbinding.

Then, of course, thankfully, there are those fantastic people in our lives to whom one can say anything, as long as it’s TRUE.  When there’s a conflict or misalignment of opinion, both parties can look at it squarely and with some objectivity, each can take responsibility for his or her role, both can express how they feel (both the reasonable and the unreasonable emotion), and what invariably follows is a huge growth spurt of intimacy, which, in my extremely subjective view, is the most satisfying part of any dynamic relationship, whether it includes sex or not.  (If it does, the next fuck will of course be spectacular.)

YES, I’m an intimacy junkie.  (Perhaps you’ve already figured that out?) I can’t think of anything in life more satisfying than real, resounding intimacy with as many other human beings as possible.

I also can’t tell you how many times, teaching a scene study class, I’ve seen the actors go through a scene the first few times and either miss the climax (the most important moment) of it entirely (which is invariably about a lack of recognition of its depth and intimacy) or self-consciously Over Act it (which is invariably about the avoidance of putting themselves into their recognition of it).  I’m not sure which is worse.  Well, yes I am, quite sure. I’d rather see unconsciousness in the work than fakery, as it’s easier to cure unconsciousness. Not easy, not easy at all, but easier.  Both of these shortcomings result from the actor’s avoidance of intimacies that are difficult in his or her own life. What a shocker, huh?

There’s a great moment in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (which a genius literature professor of mine at Northwestern called “the greatest trash novel ever written”) where Dagny Taggert says to Hank Rearden, after he gets furious at a truth he doesn’t want to acknowledge or confront: “Hank, never get angry at a man for telling the truth.”  It’s a great iconic line (read: iconic truth) because Ms. Rand, (regardless of what you think of her philosophy), accurately identifies with that moment the mechanism this is often crucial to defeat of both artists and human beings: self-deception, denial.  The definition of a tragic hero in drama is “a character who makes an error of judgment or has a fatal flaw that, combined with fate and external forces, brings on a tragedy”.  Best of luck finding one where that “error of judgment” or “fatal flaw” isn’t a result, at least in large part, of self-delusion. 

The truth should make us angry when it reveals injustice or cruelty, but not angry at the messenger.  That reveals denial of who we are, and that anger should be self-directed, which can then make it a productive way to get at the layers that lie beneath it. 

Anger is not the enemy. Anger can be very productive, if responsibility for it is taken. Anger is a lever for movement, a catalyst for progress, a motor for change.  Martin Luther King was furious about the reality of fear, hate and torture of the American Negro, and he channeled that staggering sense of loss and fury (watch his behavior in the I Have A Dream Speech) into a peaceful juggernaut of awareness that exposed the rampant denial about the cruelty of White America toward Black America for anyone willing to see it, and ignited the civil rights movement in this country. What lies beneath anger when understanding or empathy of another’s POV is needed will invariably be sadness, frustration, loss, and at bottom, as always, FEAR.