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Mr Liar Liar

Boys are another kind of a being all together. They all lie and for that reason “no” is the best thing you can say to them. James says it is because females cannot handle the truth.

“You are saying that men lie to women because women cannot handle the truth?”

“Yes, you are very right.”

“Why do you say that? Of course we can handle the truth.”

“Well, if a total stranger comes up to you and says: ‘Hello. How are you? My name is Stranger. What is your name? Mokgethi! What a wonderful name. Like the way you smile too. Mokgethi, can I please have sex with you? I really want to – you just aroused me.' What would you say to that?”

“I would tell him to go fuck his mother.”

“Exactly my point. We are lying to you because you cannot handle the truth. If I tell a girl that I want to have sex with her – nothing else, just that I want to have sex with her – then it will be like I took a gun and shot myself in the head. But the funny part is that I would be telling the truth. So that is what we do – we lie! ‘Hey, I love you – you are my every day and every night and every thing. You are the sugar in my tea and the cream in my ice cream. You are the blood in my heart. You are my own rib.' And then you all put on that smile because you believe that you are the air that I breathe. ‘I feel warm inside when you smile. You do not know what you do to my heart. You are my sunshine. Can I buy you a train? Blah blah blah ...' All lies, but women believe them. And then after you open your legs and I have ejaculated, you discover the truth and call me a dog. Who cares? The dog got what it wanted. I leave you with your hurting heart, which is not really hurting but just feels betrayed and foolish after all the lies it swallowed.”

“Whatever, hey!”

“Whatever, hey! You can dismiss me but it is only because you are still not willing to see the truth. Because, truth be told, there is a fool with balls who is coming to lie to you too, Mokgethi, and you will undress for him and that is a scary thing to your mind, a nightmare. If it is any consolation, it is not only women who cannot handle the truth; the entire world cannot handle the truth.”

“And other people know the truth but they ignore it,” Mamafa added. “And others just love the lies so much that they forget that they are being lied to.”

Afterwards I thought about everything that James had said and I discovered that it was true. We cannot handle the truth and that is why they have to lie to us – they lie because it makes us feel valued and very important, which we are not at all. What James said made me realise that I need to value myself. I have to be a valuable and important person not because somebody says I am but because my life is important and valuable.

The worst liar that I ever had to listen to was some thirty-something-year-old man, one afternoon on my way home from church. The service had been pretty boring, long (as usual), and immediately after it we'd had three different meetings and I'd had to attend two of them. He said:

“Can I please walk with you?”

“If you do not intend to harm me, I do not mind at all.”

He said what people called him and asked what they called me.

“They call me Mokgethi.”

I could tell by the way he was smiling that he liked the way I was talking and thought that because I had allowed him to walk with me this meant ... He was very wrong.

“I could talk to you until forever ends, you know.”

“No, I cannot talk to you until forever ends.”

He smiled, his unsureness and dwindling self-confidence written all over his face. I like his kind, the unsure ones, because with them I know that even if I were to be left all alone with them on mother earth, there is nothing they can do to me unless I allow it. I give them my time, smile and listen to all the lies that they have to tell until they run out of words, thank me for being such a great listener, put their tails between their legs and turn back.

This one was no different. He just gave up very early in the game:

“Hope you find someone who loves you.”

I gave him a mocking smile because even at that point he was dangerous – once his confidence rose again I knew that I would feel that he was a man like all men.

The best I ever came across was Kevin. He took his time to get into my heart, not with sweet talk and trying to impress but by making me think about things that I had never thought about before. He asked me questions and made me aware that I had limited myself to considering only the things that I was interested in.

“What is the difference between making love to an individual and loving an individual?”

At first I thought that they were the same thing, but making love is having sex and loving is not sex, so I said:

“Making love is sex and love is not sex, but I cannot tell you what love is because I have never been in love.”

I said the last part because I thought he was going to ask me if I had ever been in love.

“Thank you for the honesty. Many people think that having sex or making love is love, which it is not.”

“I thought you were going to tell me the difference.”

“Sex is an act and it ends, while love is a process that never ends. Love is eternal and God is love – He was, He is and He will be. Love was, love is and love will be.”

For the first time in my whole life I was charmed by words that were coming out of a male mouth.

“I have reason to lie to you, but I am not lying. We men lie too much; we always say that we love girls but only so that we can have sex with them. So, yes, I have reason to lie to you but I am not lying.”

I wished I could have given him a hug and a kiss; the honesty with which he spoke was overwhelming.

“Can you define love for me?”

“I cannot because I have never been in love ...”

“Well, let me tell you, love is God. God was, God is and God will always be.”

Then we got to speaking about God and life in general but we were not really speaking, he was telling me what he thought about life.

“What do you fear the most in your life and why do you fear it?”

“Failure.”

“Can you tell me why you fear it?”

“Because if I fail I will have wasted my time, the time I invested in whatever it was.”

“Do you know that I fear nothing? Why? Not because I am a man and not because I am strong but because I trust in God. And if He can feed the birds, He will feed me. It says so in the Scriptures. Because He loves me.”

“So, what are you saying?”

“You should banish fear from your life. ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil'.”

“Kevin, you cannot live without fear.”

“Where does it say in the Scriptures that you have to live in fear?”

He said many things, always referring back to the King James version – so much so, in fact, that I had to have it with me when I was talking to him so that I could refer to it and validate what he was saying. The most daring thing he said was that my pastor is a fraud as are most of the pastors in the world. They are the ones making war in the world, labelling people to make them feel different – this is a Muslim, this is a Catholic – but they all serve the same God and are all hoping for eternal life. He used a parable form the Gospel according to Matthew to prove what he was saying:

“In the parable of the sower, some of the seeds dropped on rich soil and they grew and produced, some fell on poor soil and they grew but didn't produce well and some fell on rocks and got eaten by birds. Whose fault is it that the seed fell on the rocks? Is it the sower's fault or the seed's fault?”

“The one who was planting the seeds.”

“Then, my dear, redemption is yours because the person who planted you here wanted you here, and what you are doing here is because he wants you to do what you are doing. And that, Mokgethi, is something that no pastor will ever tell you.”

Kevin is an exceptional Mr Liar Liar. He has been with his girlfriend for ten years and they have two children together, and he still has countless beautiful girls. He is a player. Those who know him say that once he sleeps with a girl, she will forever be his. They say it is because he uses traditional potions to get into the mind of a girl, but that is not true. It is just that he knows what to say. Kevin can talk his way out of hell and once a girl trusts him, she will trust him forever. He knows how to put words together. He will take his time imposing himself, but eventually he will overwhelm a girl. I summed him up as if he were a tricky trigonometry sum the first time I met him and yet he is still thinking and hoping that one day he will dip it in Mokgethi. But he never will.

There are also community terrorists, powerful and above the law. Prison is a five star hotel for them. Tsietsi, for example. If Tsietsi shows up in a place, most people will disappear as fast as lightning.

James is so full of balls and shit that he can defend his ground against an older man any day of the week, but in front of Tsietsi he kneels down and raises his hands. He will not even try to run away.

One night I will never forget – the 27th of April, as we were celebrating our freedom – Tsietsi crept up on us like a lion. As soon as someone announced that Tsietsi was on his way, we all tried to disappear as quietly as possible. James's girlfriend, Katlego, was with us and she suggested that we should avoid using the main gate, but unfortunately Tsietsi avoided using the main gate too.

“Hey!” Pause. “What is going on here?”

We froze. There was no response. The sound of celebrating faded away and all I could hear was my heartbeat.

“Are you running away on Freedom Day? On Freedom Day, are we running away? On Freedom Day? No. No.” He shook his head. “No way. We cannot run on Freedom Day. Never, ever on Freedom Day. Never.”

He looked at James as if expecting him to do something and all of a sudden I wanted to pee, even though Tsietsi wasn't even looking at me.

“We do not have to run from anything on Freedom Day. It wouldn't be Freedom Day if we had to run.”

I do not know what he expected us to say and it was clear that none of the others knew either. This guy lives on the same block as James, six houses from James's house, so we know him well – we grew up with him. Although Tsietsi is not even twenty yet, he has been in more trouble with the law than anyone I know. At school he terrorised his schoolmates and stole from his teachers. He broke into houses, got arrested, got released. He robbed somebody. He has been beaten until he was almost dead a dozen times. Add all the things that he has been through together and it gives you what he is today. His heart is ice cold; true terror lives inside it. How do I know this? Because one afternoon he took a sharp knife and painted what was in his heart on his face. And so now, when we look at him, even if we just steal a glance at him, we can see the terror that lives inside his heart. It is all there, painted on his face.

“Boys, where are you taking my future ex-something-something?”

His eyes did not move from James's, but I knew he was referring to me. We were standing in a row – James, me, Katlego and Mamafa – and he was standing in front of James, a metre or so away from me.

“Where are you boys taking my future fiancée?”

Just like Khutso, his voice changed from being hard, heavy and powerful and became sweet, caring and kind of protective. He said:

“Hello, my sweetheart.”

I peed, standing right there.

“Honey. Sweetie. Ah! No, no, no. Not on Freedom Day. That old man served hard for this day. People died; they sacrificed their lives.” He said this as if I had just disappointed him. “And you wet yourself. Ah! Damn.”

His body didn't move and his eyes were still locked with James's.

“Honey. Sweetie. You are disappointing me. You are disappointing the spirits that are celebrating this day. How can you do that?”

“I am sorry.”

That was what I said but I still do not know why I had to say it – it just came out of my mouth.

An eternity passed; his eyes were still locked with James's. His voice became powerful again but this time it sounded like the voice of a retired general – relaxed, commanding and definitely not in any hurry. It was as if he was selecting the words carefully before said them out loud.

“Boys, I am short.”

Mamafa reacted: “With how much?”

“How much do you have? I am short that much.”

“If I give you the money, will you let us all go?”

Tsietsi closed his eyes. “Are we negotiating?”

“I am asking.”

“You are asking?”

“Yes, please.”

“Permission granted. Anyway, I was not planning on going anywhere with you. She,” he pointed at me, “still has to grow enough mentally to know that when she sees a man she does not have to pee herself!”

Then he was in front of me and his voice changed again as he caressed my chin and neck, pulling me close to give me a hug.

“Baby, I am very, very sorry that I scared you. Forgive me.” My cheek was against his cheek and as he rubbed it against mine I could feel the scars. “Will you forgive me, please?”

He pulled away, releasing me.

“Mokgethi,” he whispered. “Mokgethi, please forgive me. Please.”

He knew my name. Tears pushed themselves out of my eyes.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I forgive you.”

His eyes locked with James's again as Mamafa paid for us all to leave unhurt.

“Is that all?”

“James.”

James put in what he had. “That is all I have, you can search me if you do not believe me.”

“I only asked. Please give me what you want to give me and give it willingly. I am only asking, please.”

For a moment Tsietsi smiled, but then he killed it. It was as if his smile worked on battery power and he had to save the battery.

“Now I need to make a call. Please lend me your phone.”