HUMOUR: On truth

An example of my column writing:

My grandmother died a couple of months ago. She was too young to go, and her passing was marked by massive public demonstrations of apathy and general disinterest. Never the most popular of women (she was a staunch Methodist with a side-order of Jehovah’s Witness, meaning that she’d go door-to-door smashing up people’s drinks cabinets), Gran was nevertheless my closest blood relative and therefore worth a nice bit of grieving. She was also the only person to whom I could address questions about my past, though because she always swore she’d never tell me the whole story until my fortieth birthday I guess now I’ll never know.
As far as I am aware, I was born in a commune on the outskirts of Grimsby in 1972. My birth certificate indicates that it was called ‘The Rainbow Collective House Of Free Love And Inexpensive Gonorrhoea’, and apparently I was left outside its gates with the empty milk bottles three days after my birth, a sign around my neck reading simply: ‘Karmic Discharge’.
Is that true? Until I started primary school I was convinced that it was, but then the sheer otherworldliness of my life, its absolute lack of commonality with that of my peers, began to convince me that mine was a fairytale existence. Grimm.
More to the point, does it matter whether or not it’s true? It’s my truth, and I’m happy to live by it. For truth – real, genuine, sun-sets-in-the-west truth - is a dangerous thing. The FBI knew that. At the dawning of the Cold War, with McCarthyite paranoia in full swing, they filed a report detailing a series of experiments entitled ‘Reality Understood Now!’ (RUN!), including several remarking on the development of a truth drug. Early tests proved successful, as the report - recently released under the 50 year rule - testifies. The following is an extract taken from an interview with a fan of the hit TV show ‘I Love Lucy’.
FBI Agent Henson: “Is ‘I Love Lucy’ funny?”
John Doe: “Yes.”
Henson: “Is the show funny?”
Doe: “Yes.”
[Henson administers truth drug]
Henson: “Is ‘I Love Lucy’ funny?”
Doe: “Well, no, but it provides a comforting façade of moral certainty and low-level sexual titillation at a time when growing socio-economic tension and continued racial inequality will likely expose the American Dream for the bunch of bullshit that it is.”
Henson: “Good. Very good. Agent Sanders, we have ourselves a truth drug. Oh, and arrest this man.”
Recognising the catastrophic potential for social implosion should the drug fall into enemy hands, successive administrations banned all further research into its capabilities, though each for varying reasons: Marilyn Monroe, some rather awkward tape recordings and a 1977 personal health report headed ‘Diagnosis: Dementia’ to name but three.
Only President Clinton demanded a continuation of the trials, telling his wife “I may just be a country boy from the backwoods of Little Rock, but my grandmammy always used to say ‘the man who fishes on the east of the river will always come home to apple pie and cookies’. No, I don’t know what she meant either, but whatever, truth is good and lies are bad. Hey, you look hot.”
Concerned FBI officials persuaded the President to ingest the drug and record a second take of his infamous videotaped testimony to the Starr Report, and a solemn faced Clinton announced to an unseeing public the following: “Today, your President, the man to whom you have entrusted your very future, is on trial. So I want you to listen to what I am about to say, and I want you to listen well. I did have sexual relations with that woman. And boys, I gotta tell ya [Clinton leans back in chair, folds arms behind his head], I took her over the desk in the Oval Office and pumped her ass like she was a jammed pinball machine. God bless America.”
The drug slipped back into obscurity, but in late 2000 came word that blueprints for its manufacture had been smuggled out of the country. With the Presidential election in full swing, the oft-denied ‘shadow government’ demanded that both main candidates immediately be given covert tests. The results for Al Gore were alarming.
“Save the planet? Hell, why not? Chloroform? Sure, I'll try anything once."
George W. Bush followed. “Hell, I wouldn’t know who Vladimir Putin was if he jumped up and bit me on the ass,” chuckled the Republican candidate, winningly. “Or is that elbow?” he added.
The assembled agents breathed a collective sigh of relief and headed off for a hastily arranged vacation in Florida.
We’d be mistaken if we only considered the truth to be a bad thing in politics, however. In a lie-free world, great swathes of the everyday conversation we have come to cherish would be lost forever. Example.
“Was it good for you?”
“Good? Well, if by ‘good’ you mean was it over blessedly quickly and I’m not so sore that I can’t go and meet Simon, my lithe young fitness instructor then, yes, it was good.”
And do we really know what truth is? I think it was Camus who said “One man’s truth is another man’s let-off.” Which may well be the case, but shouldn’t such a singular concept be in receipt of a singular definition? Of course it should, and yet any account professing to have unveiled the truth is veiled by thick sheets of subjectivity and, often, ambiguity. Consider this extract from the soon-to-be-published Woody Allen Diaries.

July 14, 1982: The truth finally dawned today. Or at least it seemed like the truth – it may just have been indigestion. Afterall, what is truth anyway? Is it simply a felicitous extemporisation on the very nature of our being, or can I put it in my pocket? And, if the latter, what price can I get for it down the market?

To return to my original point, does the truth really matter? All pontification aside, the one immutable fact regarding the subject is that the truth hurts. In the meantime, to paraphrase Disraeli, there are lies, damned lies, and damned good lies that hold together relationships, keep us in work and allow us to toss aside thoughts about the bleak, endless, unbroken tedium that is life with the words “mustn’t grumble.” It’s been a pleasure talking to you.