The Best and Worst of Liars and Cheaters

I still remember the yelling, the screaming, the crying. I still remember where we stood in the hallway, how we looked at each other, what you said to me. We stood under a blue shade—the light of the early morning sun was filtered by the clouds, then the windows, then the doors. Every little detail, I remember. 15 years old. March 28th, 2006. 7 AM. Getting up and getting ready for school. I stood in my doorway, and you stood in yours five yards away. Your grief, versus my stoicism. This was the moment where I was no longer your son.



Linh just had to bring up Trung.

Something sinister stirred inside me. I saw vulnerability in Linh, and I wanted to see how much I could exploit it. He was uncomfortable with the idea of me being really close with Trung, my ex, so the question was, how uncomfortable could I make him?

I still have everything he has ever given me. Didn’t matter to Linh.

I still carry around our prom photo in my wallet. Nothing but a picture.

We share the same bed when he sleeps over.

There we go; that last one rattled up Linh quite a bit. You two are still obviously holding onto something, he said.

We argued it online and it ended with him telling me that he needed time to think. I shrugged it off and knew that he just needed time, time to get himself together and finally break up already.

As expected, I found a message from him sitting in my Facebook inbox the next day. It was the same old overdramatic accusations of my selfishness and vague allusions to his traumatizing past. I don’t think it’s a good idea to even talk anymore—his last words. Next.



I had needed twenty dollars. It was your birthday weekend. I needed it for someone else’s birthday present. I plotted. What would usually get me twenty dollars? Straight A’s on my report card. Too bad mine was blotted with B’s and C’s here and there. Not a problem with some craftiness. I opened up Microsoft Word, and I replicated. Your birthday dinner was at six. I gave you my master piece, and you gave me your money.

You weren’t stupid. I was stupid for letting you hold onto it. You called school the next day and found out my real grades. You were hurt; I knew it. I came home late that night, past midnight. You had already locked yourself way in your room, and I locked myself in mine. I wrote an entry in which I deflected, and then I slept and woke up the next morning, the morning of March 28th, 2006.

We stood in the hallway and stared each other down. You lifted your finger and began to speak, cry out, howl.

“How could you? It was my birthday! I can’t be your mother. You can’t be my son. How could you do this? How could you do anything like this? Brian, you are a bad person, a bad person!”

Unabashed and nonchalant, I streamed past her tears and down the stairs. Bad person—I’ll keep that in mind.



After a long day of Black Friday shopping all over Irvine, Trung and I settled down at my kitchen table, and sipped from our cups of pearl tea.

“So you and Linh didn’t work out. Didn’t I predict that when you guys tried to make up?” Trung gloated.

“Don’t inflate your ego,” I told him. “I knew it was permanently over between me and Linh the moment Shaun and Tyrone laid their luscious lips on my dick. The only reason I tried to make up with Linh in the first place was so that we could break up for a reason that was a little less damaging to my reputation. And look, I succeeded in what I had set out to do. Breaking up because he couldn’t handle my friendship with my ex sounds a lot better than breaking up because I had a threesome with two other guys at his party in his house’s bathroom and broke his towel rack.”

Trung nodded. “So all those affectionate moments you had with him this past week—”

“All faked,” I declared.



Between March 28th, 2006, and October 2007, we were bad, then good, and now we were bad again, this time much worse. I rummaged through the cabinets trying to find the last packet of some insignificant spice; instead I found a bottle of Zoloft. Depression medicine. Recently prescribed to you. I held in my hand what I had done to you.

I fell back into the kitchen chair and I could feel tears collecting in my eyes. Why can’t you just talk to me, fucking shit! Why can’t you just ask me what was wrong? The way I’ve been treating you like shit, never talking to you, never coming home from the mall until late, never taking the car with your permission, never coming to dinner when you’re there and always leaving plenty of leftovers sitting on top of the garbage pile in the kitchen to let you know that I didn’t eat any of the shit you cooked—all that was to provoke you into finally talking. Why? You had to be provoked because back when I would try to initiate a conversation, you would nod your way through the whole thing and wake up the next morning as though we never even talked. I’ve been doing all this because you and dad are terrible parents. Don’t you fucking care about the reasons why you are terrible parents? Instead you just take depression meds and pretend that we’re a happy fucking family!

Depression medicine. You were taking depression medicine now. I had taken this war too far. My guilt boiled. My conscience killed me. Time to quit?

No, sorry, this war was too far important to quit. It didn’t matter how I felt as long as I could logically rationalize the reasons I was right to fight. Guilt and a conscience—I had suppressed them before, so I could do it again. There would be more games to come. It hurt me as much as it hurt you, but the difference between me and you was that I could live with it.

After all, you said it yourself a long time ago, I was a bad person.



What an awkward dance workshop. In a ten-person class, Linh stood five people away from me, and two or three of those five were his friends who all knew who I was. At first I tried making eye contact with him to see if he would acknowledge me, but then I gave up after no avail. It’d been three weeks since we split, and this time it looked like he was serious about staying that way.

When we were all split up into smaller groups at the end of class, I watched Linh dance in his group. I made no effort to mask that I was staring right at him, focusing on him and no one else in his group. He did amazingly; his cleanliness, performance, and execution—all great as usual. The piece was a femme piece, which I guessed was his specialty (not surprising considering his favorite type of Sunday outfit).

There were three more classes after, but I had to leave soon for PD practice. I stood at the side, packing up my backpack and watching Linh. Half the time his friends were coming up to him to greet and congratulate him, and half the other time he was just standing there waiting for the next class to start. Go say good job to him, Brian. Go. Just tell him and leave. I had the opportunity. I could’ve done it. But I didn’t. I texted him instead after I left; I mean, well, half of our dating phase and all our arguing were done behind a computer. Good job killing it today. This is Brian, btw, in case you deleted my number.

I checked my texts after PD practice. No response. Next day, no response. Nothing ever came. Yep, looked like we were done for sure.

I wondered if telling him good job in person would’ve made a difference.