The Last Lie Of Jeremiah Jacobe

Sometimes I lie to myself.


I was sitting in the courtroom, and the man that raped me was on the bench; and the place was packed with people that I didn't even know. Most of the jury were glaring at the man who raped me; except one man who looked like he was going to be sick and another who looked like he was carrying something very heavy, his face was strained. I was concentrating on the man who looked like he was going to be sick. I guess if a man rapes a woman; it's a big deal but it's kind of...expected. Kind of like a child getting molested or racial hate crimes. They are terrible, but they are all just a normal terrible. But when a man is the victim of a rape, and by another man even, it really gets to some people. I guess it's the imagery that people associate with it, it's just a little bit more than normally terrible; it's just kind of a taboo terrible.


My lawyer was a good one, he had been very expensive. He did a good job, presented the evidence, called up three witnesses. Pretty much locked up the whole deal.


The accused's (the media called him the “sex-crazed lunatic”, I could have thought up a better one) lawyer, he did not do so well. There isn't much to argue when there is DNA evidence and three direct witnesses.


The accused, he was a good looking man. Had a wife and two kids. Both were very young. Played in the little league. His wife was a schoolteacher. He was a pencil pusher. Pretty much a real good family set up. The CITY ENQUIERER said that she filed for divorce (the papers said “the disgusted wife”, God who hired these people!) and that she was trying to gain full and complete custody of the kids. There was a picture in one of the tabloids of the kid screaming.


The guy got up on that bench, said that he has no idea why I would do this to him. He said that he was forced to have sex with me, said he never even dreamed of the situation he was in now. And then he started to cry, and I wasn't sorry. My lawyer questioned him, asking how it felt to cry; seeing how the man he raped had such extensive damage to his face that he would never be able to produce tears again. The man on the bench was really losing it, and the judge said


No more questions!


With a slam of his gavel.


When I was younger, my parents didn't know I existed. We never celebrated my birthday. They were always busy with their jobs, always busy with their work, always busy with THEIR lives; but never MINE. Not once did they ever say that they loved me. I used to lie to myself and try to assure myself that they did love me.


One time, when I was eleven, I took the keys from my dad and put his car in reverse. It rolled out into the road, and it got smashed by another car. The guy wasn't even wearing his seatbelt, and he flew right out. Broke eleven bones and was put into a coma. My dad was REALLY REALLY angry, he beat me so bad that I couldn't sit for at least a month after that and I had bruises on my back; but he paid attention to me and I LOVED it.


Sometimes I used to lie to my friends and say how I always had the best birthday parties, the best Christmas days, the best FAMILY; and they ate it up. And I felt powerful, I felt like I actually did have all of those things. But I would go home, and then remember that I had just lied to myself again.


It got so bad, that once I lied about being a movie producer just so I could sleep with a girl. She asked me to see the script the day before, so I sat at home (neglecting my studies, I was a sophomore at State back then) and stayed up for thirteen hours straight writing a full length screenplay. But hey, it worked.


The jury came out, and started to read the sentence.


I had a funny feeling, like after that girl found out that I wasn't really a producer; and how she cried and said she had given herself to a


DIRTY PERVERTED LIAR


and I had felt bad then, because I had actually started to believe that I was a big shot movie man. And when I realized that I wasn't I felt empty. I felt like I was the only man in a Colosseum, the game was over and everyone else had gone home; but there I was, stuck to my seat and the lights were starting to go out. Before there was lights and laughter and there was SOMETHING, but now all that was gone.


And now I was starting to feel like that.


I was thinking, only hypothetically, that suppose that I had paid off those three witnesses. Gone to a bar (a regular straight bar, those Village People places always made me feel under dressed) and made friends with the guy that raped me. Say that I had bought him a couple of beers, and why not? We were just a couple of pencil pushers (that WOULD have been the lie that I WOULD have told him) and we need to stick together, you know? He would have obliged, even when he could see that he had drank too much. Then I would have led him back to an alley, the one where I was raped in REAL life, and one of the men I paid off would pull out a gun and told him to do it.


And beat him up, make it look brutal.


Or else you get shot, mister.


And suppose, considering my background, that the lie had gone so far that this man would be sitting on a bench, about to be condemned to federal prison for several counts of assault and rape. Suppose that it got that far...


...but I wouldn't let it get that far, because that just isn't like me.


Guilty


they said, and they said


Guilty


Guilty


Guilty


Guilty


again for the rest of the charges. And they were going to put him on the CHAIR to FRY. And my lawyer stood and patted me on the back (gingerly, to avoid the bruises); and he smiled and the room erupted into applause and the judge was trying to restore order but even he had a smile and his eyes were watery.


And I smiled.


And later, I was sitting at my apartment; and I was watching the reporters interviewing me on the television several hours ago. I was crying, and saying how glad that I was that JUSTICE was being served.


I am just so...


...so happy. To know that the man that raped me, he can never do this again to anyone else.


And then on the television it showed the man being taken away in his orange jumpsuit, and he was crying and shouting


NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO


and the police tasered the man that raped me to get him into the car. It was all very embarrassing for this man, I would imagine.


I turned of the television and I stared at it for a long time, and then there was that empty feeling.


But I didn't do it this time. I didn't lie again...


...did I?


All of a sudden I realized that the game wasn't on anymore, that the crowd had left a long time ago and the stadium was littered with their forgotten trash. I was alone again, and that empty feeling was larger than ever, seeming to originate from the depths of my mind where it folded in on itself in a desperately confusing black hole of nothing.


And I knew that this time, it would not be alright. THIS TIME I would fall into that empty space; I would be trapped in that horrible bleak and lightless dome with no hope for escape. THIS TIME, there would be no resolution, I would not sleep at night, and for the rest of my life when I closed my eyes: I would see that kid's screaming, tear riddled face on the cover of the CITY ENQUIERER like a detestable marquee in the lobby of my empty place. I would not be anything anymore, my existence would be a LIE!


Right now I hated myself, and I'm sure that I wasn't the only one. I thought of that man in the jail cell, huddled up on his spring-less cot like a scared child and wondering why his life had FALLEN APART so RAPIDLY. And he would think of me, because he knew the truth; even if he couldn't prove anything he knew that what happened was that I forced him to rape me and to beat me up, and in his head this was concrete. Like a movie. And he would play it back again and again and again; wondering why


FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY!?


He would scream to the bare and unresponsive walls of his cell. He would KNOW that I KNEW about what happened, KNEW that I KNEW the truth behind my LIE.


And when he was sitting on the chair, when he was crying out loud (he wouldn't care who heard him now, he'd be dead in a minute BY GOD), he would be sitting there and picturing my face. He would be wishing with every ounce of his wish-making capabilities that I would burst open the door and scream I DID IT I DID IT, DON'T KILL THIS INNOCENT MAN! And he would be wishing that right up until the electricity flowed through his body and popped his brain in his head like a grape.


AND IT SHOULD BE ME, IT SHOULD BE ME IN THAT CHAIR!


Sometimes I lie to myself, but this time my lie holds grave convictions. And I don't think I can deal with that.


All of a sudden, I sprang up from my couch (although sprung wasn't the best descriptor, more like half-heartily lept with a ginger landing. I still had those bruises you know) and ran to my phone. I snatched it up and dialed the numbers to my lawyer as fast as I could, convinced in some back part of my mind that suddenly the phone would melt in my hand and slip through my fingers if I didn't HURRY. But, my lawyer answered after the second ring.


“Hello,” he said.


“Thomas, this is Jeremiah Jacobe. I need to admit something to you...”