Originally published June 11, 2005
My older sister's visit supplied a few more theories circulating about me back home. My born again Christian brother and sister-in-law, no doubt emulating Christ's well-documented malicious speculation about people he didn't know, have publicly declared the following:
- When I psuedo-married Elan in Vegas, I lied. I really got married.
- A decade ago when I took my friend Tammy to my sister's wedding, she wasn't really my friend. She was someone I hired from an escort service. (Although stunning runway models will secretly marry me, I apparently have no friends I can use as wedding dates.)
- The Approval Whore wasn't really my girlfriend. She was a friend who was lying for me for four years and is now suddenly gone. (I apparently now have friends and no longer need to hire escorts, which I guess is progress. I haven't figured out where Elan went that a fake girlfriend became necessary, though. It's all so confusing.)
- My house is not really my house. It's a rental I use to fool Julie when she's here...because I'm a druggie, you see, and I couldn't afford both the house and the drugs...because I gotta be on drugs...because there's no other possible explanation for my disliking people as kind as them.
- They know me better than Julie, the only family member to see me in the last eight years, the only one to come to my home, and the only one who's spent more than a couple hours in my presence in 18 years. Because she's gullible, you see.
As you can see, they are fantastically central to my universe. Like Annette observed: "They think they're so damn important that you'd bother to put on that dog and pony show for them? No matter how you swing it, it's a me, me, me thing."
I can't help but see parallels between these intellectual giants' zealous, truth-be-damned beliefs about me and their equally zealous, equally spurious religious beliefs. It's all about being right, about being better, about telling everyone—damn the abundant evidence to the contrary. And you know they must be right, 'cause they agree with one another so fervently.
Praise the lord and tighten my blinders, honey!
In trying to explain their zeal—why their John mythology is so obviously more important to them than John himself—Julie offers the following explanation: "They just don't understand why you don't want anything to do with them."