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Confession time.
    I am a liar. A fabricator. A falsifier. A teller of tall tales. A spinner of specious stories. A fraudulent forger of fallacious fictions. A . . . well, listen, you get the point.
    Lies come easier to me than to most people, and my embellishments possess the ring of believability. This is due to something I learned long ago: begin with a kernel of truth. Every convincing lie is formed around a grain of fact, enrobed by several layers of fabrication. A good lie is like a pearl: a tiny grit of truth covered with a dense nacre of falsities.
    Why do I lie? Most likely because I consider my life to be drab and seek to add notes of humor, absurdity, or cinematic panache to its humdrum circumstances. I often feel as though I am tendering my life in the form of a screenplay to an old-school, cigar-chomping Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer:

    PRODUCER: I read your script, Davidson, and it stinks to high heaven. Nothing to sink your teeth into — where's the rising action, the falling action, the sultry love interest and saucy boudoir scenes? Your main character, he's a sap! A nervous Neddie! Make him a fighter pilot or a boxer or, goddamnit, a secret agent behind Kraut lines. Punchier, Davidson — give me PUNCHIER!

    So I lie. I lie in my job as a writer, and I lie off the clock. The problem, as all inveterate liars know, is that invariably these lies catch up. This is especially true when it comes to relationships. Quite honestly, I've broken off more than one relationship due to an accumulation of falsehoods. It would get so I was paranoid leaving my girlfriend alone with family or friends, for fear of an exchange such as the following:

    MY MOTHER: Craig told you that, did he? How ... interesting.
    GIRLFRIEND: Did I get it wrong? He said the orphans —
    MY MOTHER: The ones he rescued?
    GIRLFRIEND: Yes, those ones. He said he was able to crawl into a dumbwaiter and haul himself up to the third floor —
    MY MOTHER: Of the burning orphanage?
    GIRLFRIEND: You look confused — am I describing it wrong?
    MY MOTHER: Oh, heavens, no. It's just my son is such a modest boy; he rarely talks of his heroics. [queasy smile]

    Of course, I've never told quite so flagrant a lie, nor ever dated anyone so incredulous that she might have

swallowed it. But I did lie compulsively and, instead of simply admitting I'd done so and trying to move on, fled relationships like a chicken-gutted soldier fleeing the battlefield, salting the earth behind me as I went.
    It's an awful admission, but the encouraging fact is that a few years ago I never would've made the admission at all. This whole piece, the confessions found following — I would never have set them down. I now make a habit of brutal honesty. I'm like a raging alcoholic turned teetotaler. And as with a reformed alcoholic, I know that one lie, like one drink, leads to another and another and soon I'm claiming to share the bloodlines of Danish royalty or that I once wrestled a spotted snow leopard. Nowadays I am a fastidious truth-teller, no matter how poor a light it casts me in.
    Which brings us to the following tale. It needs only a minor preface: years ago I dated a woman — let's call her "R." — and had taken her out to dinner. We'd been friends for some time, so there was a sense of familiarity coupled with the unease of us moving from friends to something more intimate.
    We'd had wine with dinner and drinks afterwards. R. was wearing the most revealing blouse I'd ever seen her in. It was difficult not to stare. She caught me looking.
    "You like?"
    R. was canny. She left out the qualifier "it" — which would direct me to comment upon the blouse — or "them," directing me to comment upon what the blouse kept in check.
    "I do. What bra size are you?"
    I'll admit it was crass. Also out of character: crassness is not my style when it comes to the ladies, if I can be said to possess any style at all, which truthfully I cannot.
    After the slightest pause she replied with "34C."
    I said something lame like "Good to know" and sipped my scotch and soda, feeling every inch the suave master-seducer.
    "How about you?"
    "How about me what?"

    R. considered me coyly, staring out of the tops of her eyes. "What size are you?"
    We were drunk, the talk had turned salacious: she wasn't asking my collar size. In light of future events, I should've fobbed off her question with a sunny smile and said, "Oh, thirty-four waist, thirty-two leg." But as I said, those were the lying years.
    I pursed my lips, searching for a suitable number. "Around eight inches."
    I don't know why I settled on eight, except to say that it seemed then — and seems to this day — a solid penis size. Not too flashy, no brickbat, but the sort of size that'll get the job done with satisfaction.
    It was an utter lie. Note how it began with a kernel of truth (I did, in fact, have a penis) before falling headlong off the cliff of factuality. It was a two-inch lie — which, considering the appendage in question, was a mighty big lie indeed.
    Because of course, I had measured my penis. It's my naive assumption that most guys have done so, seeing as throughout puberty our penises are a chief source of fascination. It's ludicrous to think that most every boy didn't find himself within reach of a ruler and allow curiosity to get the better of him.
    Certainly I had. First in my late teens, then again in my early twenties under the belief it had grown. Both times the measurement was the same: six inches, root to tip. Or six inches and a little — but because "and a little" signified mere millimeters, I thought it was mathematically incumbent upon me to round down.
    Six inches put me in the fiftieth percentile of penis size nationwide. The very definition of average. And yes, I've heard the platitudes: It's not the size of the wizard's staff, it's the spell it casts. Not the size of the bat but the skill of the batsman. Not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean.