Lie to me. Please.

In a city of 9 million people – where the cab drivers are qualified to perform surgery in more than a few (sizeable) countries and your barista will someday be your boss, is it surprising that my most consistent relationship of late has been with the man who hands me my morning tea from the breakfast cart on the corner of 35th and broadway? When he handed me my steamy cup and exclaimed, “You’re early today!” should I have had to ask him to repeat what I had missed – three times? I was expecting our usual back and forth that always followed the following, informal yet rigorously enforced rules:

1) Observe and comment on the weather without referencing the specific impact it is having on any present individual;
2) Inquire as to how the morning is progressing (on the typical ‘stay in bed’ versus ‘face the day with gusto’ scale);
3) Impart some banality that implores the other to seek safety until the next morning – or – if Friday, shelter through the weekend. This exchange is often looping around to reference the weather: “Stay warm! (insert pause to reinforce feigned enthusiasm here)” or “Enjoy the spring-like morning that will turn into a blizzard of an afternoon! (ironic chuckle)”

Is it so hard to believe that this man with a gentle a demeanor and an endless supply of inexpensive breakfast wares is the only person I’m not PAID to see everyday? When I think about why I was engaging in the usual banter, almost 45 minutes early, I couldn’t help but be grateful that there was SOMEONE who recognized the inconsistency in my schedule. My roommate, as I write this, probably still doesn’t realize I’ve already left – and if she has the late shift, then she wouldn’t have expected to see me anyway. My latitude friends were probably not focused on my whereabouts at a quarter to 8 in the morning and I didn’t run into anyone I know on my way to work – though I looked! I mean, I didn’t look because I expect to know someone in this city I’ve been tripping around in for over two years, but because I know ONE person who happens to have a similar morning commute within that exact (early-for-me) timeframe and the chances of being on the train with her were staggering. (Staggering by the informal survey that I performed with bias and without any other information than time of day and a pathetic count of express trains flying by.) I digress.

This morning I had the uncomfortable revelation that my as caffeine dealer commented on my shifted morning schedule I was uncharacteristically tempted to crawl into the cart and sit down at his feet and fill him in on the happenings in my world beyond the corner of 35th and Broadway. If I could have broken the shackles of propriety, when he said, “You’re early today!” I would have said, “I couldn’t sleep last night and then I up woke up at 6am after which I couldn’t fall back asleep because I knew that this girl I had a thing for (I would use that phrase as an irreverent and cavalier understatement) was getting up at exactly 6am and I laid in bed thinking about how she was faking out her morning by sleep-standing through the shower, sleep-staring in the mirror, sleep-dressing, sleep-uggs-shuffling down the street, sleep-passing within a block of me and sleep-commuting to work.” And he would say, “Wow, what happened? What brought her to the absolute center of your reality at 6 in the morning?” And I would say, “She crushed me. I begged her to lie to me and in the face of a masochistic interrogation wherein I was verbally assessing her fidelity in light of our established non-monogamy clause, my heart was begging her to lie to me. I grilled her because I wanted to hear that she hadn’t slept with the girl she ‘wouldn’t marry but is fine for now.’ And in the middle of this interrogation it became clear that she was a selfish truth-teller and refused to lie to me and/or wasn’t capable of lying to me and/or was consciously/subconsciously giving us both an exit strategy for this lesbionic maze we’ve been breaking our faces on. And as I heard everything I never wanted to know, I almost hurled. And then I couldn’t sleep. Because the finality of the situation is something I haven’t had to face and never wanted to face but this fence I’ve been perched on is getting really uncomfortable and before I could pick a side it damn near sliced me in half.”

And he would pause, reflectively, and I would take the moment to sum up why the situation itself (misapplying the term 'infidelity' to a relationship that is completely unrestricted) isn't nearly as damning as the implications inherent to the situation and I would continue with: “When you choose to risk the thing you love, you’ve lost it before you began.” And he would say, “Two dollars, please.”

After all, it IS a recession, even therapy should be cheap.