Gotta get me some fireproof pants...

(This isn't a story about lighting farts, it's a reference to "Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire...")

I tell the truth too often and it takes a lot of my free time, i'll explain.

For those of you who don't know me (as if anyone who doesn't know me reads this crap...) for the last 7 years i've been living in a small town in the Bolivian jungle, mostly working in tourism. since not a lot of people decide to throw away their "normal" lives and move to Rurrenabaque, i've become somewhat of a tourist attraction, and each person i talk to seems to think they have the full rights to my whole life story, or just a few questions, just to throw in some numbers, in the last 7 years i've personally sat down and had a chat (while trying to sell whatever product i was working with at the time (Jungle Tours / Pampas Tours / Coffee / Sandwiches / Alcohol / fancy food, etc.) to somewhere between 32000 to 40000 people.

So, when each one of those 30something000 people wanted to know EVERYTHING about my personal life and my ideas about the Israeli - Palestinian situation among other things, i told them the truth and often i think to myself, and sometimes actually tell people, "you know, if i lied to you this would all be over quicker"...

For example, in my current job i run a fancy chef's restaurant. people come in, i sit them down, give them the menu and ask if they'd like a drink to start with, in response they say "so how long have you been in Rurrenabaque?" and i answer "7 years" which is then followed by a barrage of questions "Why? Who do you live with? Aren't your parents worried about you? What about  university? Don't you get bored? Are you married? Why not? Don't you want to go see Machu Pichu?" etc.

Since i don't like lying, i answer "why not, nice place ; i live with my girlfriend (aka The Mrs.); my parents are Jewish, they've been worried about me since the day i was born; don't feel like university; i'm getting bored of answering these questions; no i'm not married and frankly it's none of your business why not; Machu Pichu's been in the same place for the last few hundred years, it ain't going anywhere..."

Where as, if i was a better liar, i could say, "oh, i was born and raised in Rurrenabaque by a tribe of Cannibals, i have 7 wives, my parents are dead because i ate them as a manhood test our people do to teenage boys so they can become men, what's a university? when i get bored i lick poison toads and get high and i've actually walked all the way to Machu Pichu and back barefoot when i was 6"

You'd be surprised how gullible some tourists are and some of the answers mentioned above are actually things other people here have told tourists and they bought it...

Some of my friends here lie all the time, take "Fox" (pseudonyms for everybody) a man in his 70s, speaks 7 fluent languages but curses in 9. One day, we're both standing in line at the municipality, chatting about something or other when a man comes along and start bothering my friend, "i know you from somewhere, what's your last name?" to which fox, without even blinking says something that sounds like a Russian last name but roughly translates as "stick your cock in a cup of tea" to which to annoying man just went "huh, guess i was wrong, goodbye", if it was me, i'd still be stuck talking to that man...

The jungle guides i used to work with are the worst, ask any guide where they're from and you'll get jungle cannibal tribes 15 days boat ride into the jungle, stories about battling jaguars as kids and other tribes as a teenager, which is much better than the truth "oh, i live around the corner on the main street, lived here my whole life..."

Or my chef, who everybody knows by a very french sounding name (i promised pseudonyms for everybody, so let's call him Antoine) but his real name is  (pseudonyms one again) more like: Ahmed Yussef ben jamal nasraoui... I'd love to make up a different name for myself but i can't lie to random strangers... (i'd love to make up a different name,  nationality or change some parts of my personal background (like here BBBB)

One of the things i really want to do is lie about my nationality, it's sometimes funny to see the reaction on people's face when you say you're from Israel (for those of you who haven't traveled enough, in a lot of places, saying "I'm Israeli" might get you the same response as "I'm a Pedophile kindergarten teacher with a Viagra addiction and a video camera..." because of the bad manners of travelling Israelis, or for those more interested in what they think of as Politics, saying "I'm from Israel" is like admitting to killing Palestinian kids on a regular basis as a hobby and a full time job...

So i'd love to be able to lie about my nationality, but i fail miserably every time, the thing is, i confuse people with my accents, so even when they don't guess i'm Israeli, a perfect opportunity for lying, i fail,  for example:
- "so, what State are you from" (damn my American accent), the best answer would be "Denial", now, i could just make up one of the 50 plausible answers, but declaring oneself American automatically makes you a Capitalist Pig, polluting his way across the globe and personally melting the polar ice caps while admitting to killing Iraqi kids on a regular basis as a hobby and a full time job...

2. "You say cheers all the time, so you must be Irish or English", tempting, i could claim i'm from hamleishphagleicestershire (pronounced Chester) but then there might be someone else from that village and they'll insist on using our normal accent or even worst their slang, and the conversation becomes something like " Oy, Guv, get us a couple of badgers and nips wi' bells and a bo'lle of jdskhgjkfhg"

3. "You speak good spanish, your restaurant serves french food, you must be french", nope, sorry, i just didn't have time for a shower today so i smell a bit, the only french thing is my fascination with chopping people's head off, especially if they just called me french...

4. "Your Spanish accent sounds Argentinian, which team do you like Boca or River?" what the fuck do i know about football, especially considering the fact if you give what they consider the wrong answer they'll slice you up and make an amazing steak out of you...

For a while i was looking for some random island where people speak English with an American accent, are tall, skinny and tan, yet have enough money to travel to south america... no luck with that one... if anybody reading this has suggestions, please send them in...

The point is, i'm tired of telling people about my personal life, and i'm definitely tired with talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Just Bomb Jerusalem, that's my motto), but i cannot afford to be rude to my costumers, so i either keep answering, or start lying.

so, as my new year's resolution for 2012, i've decided to start lying to strangers more.
no offense dear friends and family (once again i assume you're my only readers), but in the near future i'm  planning on killing you guys or denying you ever existed to see what the reactions would be, i always wanted to see what happens when someone asks me "don't you miss your family?" and i reply "my family were all killed in a car accident in Belgium when a pickup truck driven by a drunken priest crashed into our RV, i'm the sole survivor..."

THE END