Poutyface – "Never F*ckin' Know" (2021)

 

I guess we’ll never f*ckin’ know

I tried to piece it all together

I wish I could rеmember

The late David Cornwall wrote spy novels – including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley’s People, and The Little Drummer Girl – under the pen name John le Carré.  

Cornwall worked for British intelligence for several years before deciding to become a full-time novelist.  When he was 85, he wrote an autobiography of sorts titled The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life.  In that book, Cornwall talked about some of the real people and actual incidents that were the inspiration for certain of the characters and events in his novels.

Cornwall assures his readers that he never “consciously falsified” an event or story in The Pigeon Tunnel, and I take him at his word.

But he was keenly aware that the dividing line between fact and fiction in his books and those of other writers is blurry and full of holes.  From The Pigeon Tunnel: 

These are true stories told from memory – to which you are entitled to ask, what is truth, and what is memory to a creative writer in what we may delicately call the evening of his life? . . . To the creative writer, fact is raw material, not his taskmaster, but his instrument, and his job is to make it sing.

“Was there ever such a thing as pure memory?” Cornwall asks.  “I doubt it.”  He continues:

Even when we convince ourselves that we’re being dispassionate, sticking to the bald facts with no self-serving decorations or omissions, pure memory remains as elusive as a bar of wet soap.  Or it does for me, after a lifetime of blending experience with imagination. . . .

*     *     *     *     *

A lot of the stories I’ve told in 2 or 3 lines over the past dozen-plus years never happened that way.

But while they aren’t true in a literal sense, that doesn’t mean they aren’t true – or that I’m a liar.  

Do you believe the Bible is literally true?  If not, would you say that Moses and the Prophets and the four Evangelists lied?

It has recently come into vogue among journalists to make pronouncements that particular politicians have lied.  (Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.)  

Such pronouncements are just as misleading as the half-truths that are the stock in trade of most politicians.

Politicians almost never tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth – and neither do journalists.  Both groups are often guilty of giving their audiences part of the story and leaving out the rest – usually because they are trying to persuade that audience to take a side.  

*     *     *     *     *

The point I’m trying to make is that there is really no such thing as objective truth – truth is essentially subjective.

You’re fooling yourself if you think otherwise.

*     *     *     *     *

Poutyface doesn’t really lie in “Never F*ckin’ Know” but it’s clear that we can’t be sure that her account of the party she attended is accurate.

That’s because she got so drunk that she has no memory of what happened until she woke up the next morning.

Poutyface

She tries to piece the evening together from various clues she discovers the next  morning.  

For example, she knows she drank waaaaay too much not only because she can’t remember anything that happened in the last eight hours or so, but also because she is still drunk when she wakes up.  (I know that feeling, although it’s been many, many years since I had so much to drink that I still felt out of it when I woke up the next morning.)

Did she sleep with some random stranger while non compos mentis?  It’s certainly possible – her clothes are somewhat dishabille and someone has left Tylenol and a sympathy note on the nightstand that’s next to the bed she finds herself in.  

What is certain is that she has thrown up all over herself at some point:

I wash the puke out of my hair

It's like I wasn’t even there

As she is cleaning herself up, her hostess walks by and offers this cheery comment: “I’m just glad you didn't choke on your own vomit and die.”

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