Two Four Nine: Belief

I've been presenting stories here, stories by friends and young companions over the years. The stories are things I've saved in my archives, things I want to keep. The stories are things I can read more than once, things I'll want to read again or cite from. Yet there's always the question of belief, of whether others' stories and memories are real.

My friend in London Town recounted what her friend there had told her, and then, after a couple of years of believing what he'd told her, found out (but how?) that the whole secret gay life her friend had revealed was made up. She still hasn't been able to talk to him, and she doesn't know what his reasons may have been. For me, the second issue is more interesting than his life--- what made him create this fake life, and especially this particular fake autobiography?

Friends and young companions have told me things about their past Adventures, and this afternoon I've been wondering about what to believe, and what levels of belief to assign the stories. Some stories--- Marta on the cruise ship, the girl in the kayak shop, the girl at SXSW ---are ones I've known for a while, and I have some faith in the girls' truthfulness. There's at least verisimilitude there, and I can imagine each of those girls seeking out new experiences and pushing limits. It may be only that if a girl has been involved with me, I take it as a given that they're willing to break certain social norms. But I do believe them.

Now I do have a friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud that I can't believe about things. She's told me about a new affair she's having, about being willing to follow her new man anywhere, and about how eager she is to follow him all over the Pacific on adventures. According to her, they went to Bangkok and Pattaya last October for ten days. And all over the South Island of New Zealand (Queenstown, central Otago) on hiking trips over the new year. She says that she went to Tokyo and Osaka with her brother at Easter, and will go back there with her new man at year's end to climb up Mount Fuji and ski in Hokkaido. She's supposed to have gone to Maui for a week in the spring. Her stories include going to Moorea this summer and then taking a boat to Pitcairn Island for a week. She tells me she's booked for Buenos Aires in late September, and that she's making reservations for Singapore. She says she and her man will go to Shanghai and take the high-speed train to Lhasa, then visit Everest Base Camp. She talks about making reservations to visit the Okavango River delta in Botswana and go on safari to Kilimanjaro. She assures me that she's been sitting up nights booking tickets and hotels.

I don't believe this. I don't believe it at all. Bangkok and the Tokyo visit I might believe, but not the rest. She's a successful professional, but the money does add up. More, the time adds up. Corporate life doesn't allow for random ten-day or two-week vacations, and her stories of 2019 add up to a long time away from the office. Her man is supposed to be moneyed, but is he paying for all of this? Is she a sugar baby now? Did she inherit a million or two she hasn't talked about? Even in a country that offers paid annual vacations, how does she maintain a job if she's not in her office for ten days at a time?  There are no blog posts of any of her purported journeys, and no photos or postcards.  That may be (at least for me) the most suspicious thing. Had I gone to some exotic locale, I'd have sent out postcards to friends and written up a travel memoir when I got back. There's no way I wouldn't have traveler's tales to tell.

Her stories from her teen and early twenties are wonderful. She has lots of Slutty Party Girl tales to tell of growing up in an upper-middle class NZ family. But she's stopped telling those, and while she tells me she's gone to Pitcairn Island and will be going to Buenos Aires and Lhasa, she's sent nothing that passes for evidence.

I was taught to do both History and Law, and looking at her emails as texts, looking with a critical eye, I can't believe her stories at all. What she's constructing it seems is a world as imaginary as the haut-gay life my London friend's acquaintance created. I do wish I knew what she was doing, and why.