Lying Is In My Blood
BY Richard Hebden
Like an old-timey vaudevillean or a drunken uncle at Christmas, Richard Hebden has something to tell ya. Whether you should believe him is another tall story.
Lying is in my blood. When they met, in the buffet car of the Orient Express, my father told my mother he was an aeronautical space doctor and James Coburn’s best friend. She told him she was a Chinese elbow masseuse and on the pill.
As my mother puffed and grimaced in the hospital/kebab stand in Turkmenistan, the doctor/vendor assured them that highly fortified pickle brine was an effective sterilising agent for medical utensils. They assured him that Rolex watches always had three Xes and one hand.
When they enrolled me in primary school, the headmistress assured my parents that Saint Murgatroyd of Hellfire’s was a progressive, non-denominational institution. They assured her that my wild frothing and biting was due to a rare, non-contagious strain of rabies.
On my first date, Mary Lou swore that my shocking gigantism had nothing to do with her lack of amore. I swore that the sketches with which I presented her, fine depictions of her nude womanhood, were drawn purely from my mind’s eye.
Upon graduating from high school, they told me that a deformed, socially retarded monster could do anything he wanted in life. I told them I sure hoped they caught the filthy blackguard who stole all the clocks and burned down the gymnasium.
When I started writing for Is Not Magazine, they told me that its every inked fiber was routinely scoured by the editors of The New Yorker, The Paris Review and Fuck You: A magazine of the arts, and that my imminent literary acclaim was a historical inevitability. I told them that this article would have a witty punchline.