Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Split in Two
- 2 Hypocrisy and Jesus
- 3 Antihypocrisy: Looking Bad in Order to Be Good
- 4 Virtues Naturally Immune to Hypocrisy
- 5 Naked Truth: Hey, Wanna F***?
- 6 In Divine Services and Other Ritualized Performances
- 7 Say It Like You Mean It: Mandatory Faking and Apology
- 8 Flattery and Praise
- 9 Hoist with His Own Petard
- 10 The Self, the Double, and the Sense of Self
- 11 At the Core at Last: The Primordial Jew
- 12 Passing and Wishing You Were What You Are Not
- 13 Authentic Moments with the Beautiful and Sublime?
- 14 The Alchemist: Role as Addiction
- 15 “I Love You”: Taking a Bullet versus Biting One
- 16 Boys Crying and Girls Playing Dumb
- 17 Acting Our Roles: Mimicry, Makeup, and Pills
- 18 False (Im)modesty
- 19 Caught in the Act
- Afterword
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
16 - Boys Crying and Girls Playing Dumb
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Split in Two
- 2 Hypocrisy and Jesus
- 3 Antihypocrisy: Looking Bad in Order to Be Good
- 4 Virtues Naturally Immune to Hypocrisy
- 5 Naked Truth: Hey, Wanna F***?
- 6 In Divine Services and Other Ritualized Performances
- 7 Say It Like You Mean It: Mandatory Faking and Apology
- 8 Flattery and Praise
- 9 Hoist with His Own Petard
- 10 The Self, the Double, and the Sense of Self
- 11 At the Core at Last: The Primordial Jew
- 12 Passing and Wishing You Were What You Are Not
- 13 Authentic Moments with the Beautiful and Sublime?
- 14 The Alchemist: Role as Addiction
- 15 “I Love You”: Taking a Bullet versus Biting One
- 16 Boys Crying and Girls Playing Dumb
- 17 Acting Our Roles: Mimicry, Makeup, and Pills
- 18 False (Im)modesty
- 19 Caught in the Act
- Afterword
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
The stories i am about to tell are a prequel to the preceding chapter; they are about the faking that goes on when we are first experimenting with what it means to be in love as an adolescent and about the presentation of self in courtship.
The tale that follows is also one of great gender anxiety, and it is true. I even think it happened exactly as I will relate it, for the events are so vivid in my mind's eye. I know – vividness has no necessary relation with veracity, at least where memory is concerned. I have told stories about myself that were largely true, but I remember altering the details to make them funnier, more suspenseful, or less boring, or to present myself as either wittier or more endearingly pathetic than really was the case. Now for the life of me I can no longer construct what really happened. I see it as I have told it, though I remember – no, I know – that I fabricated parts, but I no longer know which parts. My intentions are good, and, even if they were not, I take the refuge of the postmodern scoundrel: whether true or not it makes no difference. The tale raises the same points whether it happened exactly as I remember or not.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Faking It , pp. 186 - 194Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003