Our Secret Shame: Creative Editing with Our Friends

I didn't start watching the HBO show Girls when it first came out because it looked sort of tragic and ridiculous.  Eventually I heard a few people say it was good, so I checked it out.  (Plus, it's on HBO, and I've never seen an HBO series that I didn't like.)

Basically, HBO and Showtime should just make all the shows.  Like, all of them.  Like this:

or this:

I've watched about half of the first season now, and it is, in fact, both tragic and ridiculous.  But it's also sort of awesome.  And scary.

This is Hannah.

Profoundly insecure, yet firmly convinced of her own emotional depth and sharp wit.

This is Adam.

Profoundly douchey.  Enough said.

I love watching Hannah screw around with this absurdly bizarre guy and then seeing the altered version of events she recounts to her friends.  She never actually lies to them, but what she conveys is never the whole truth.  She gets creative with her editing, keeping the really fucked up bits a secret, and telling them only the parts she can bear mixed together with the little glimmers of hope he gives her.

In one episode, she gives him "THE SPEECH."  Any girl who has ever had a not-boyfriend knows this speech.  This is the "what are we, what are we doing, no, I'm not pressuring you to be a boyfriend, but can't you do all the things that boyfriends do and we just won't call you that, I can't do this anymore, because I don't think you give a shit about me, but please, I beg of you, tell me I'm wrong" speech. 

Not that I've ever given this speech or anything.  Ahem.  Moving on...

As she's delivering her touching little monologue, Adam just stands there like an asshole, shirtless in all his pasty white glory, pants unbuttoned, staring at her while she's talking with a blank expression on his face.  As soon as he sees an opportunity, he starts touching her.  He doesn't even really pull her in for the kiss either.  He just kind of touches her, like he's unbuttoning her shirt or something.  The poor girl stands there, lip quivering, and then she is the one who moves in and kisses him.  You can see the expression on her face when she knows she is going to give up and give in and undo everything she just did and have sex with him.  Because once you've poured your heart all over the place and had a guy stare blankly back at you for like five minutes straight, what the hell else is there to do but have sex? 

When she tells the story later to her friend, she focuses mostly on the part where he touches her face and says, "Be who you are."  She leaves out the fact that the conversation actually went like this.

Hannah:  Why didn't you text me back?
Adam:  After you sent the picture?  Well I jerked off to it.
Hannah:  You jerked off to it?
Adam:  No, you looked like you were getting fucked by a cucumber.
Hannah:  I can't take a serious naked picture of myself.  It's not who I am.
Adam:  So be who you are.

All she gets out of that is that he touched her face and said, "Be who you are."  It doesn't matter that he talked about jerking off and getting fucked by cucumbers or that when she first got to his apartment, he told her that her eyebrows made her look like a Mexican teenager (although to be fair, that was not an inaccurate assessment). 

You be the judge.

But anyway, the rest of it doesn't matter.  She holds on for dear life to "Be who you are" and that's the version that she tells her friends later.  It's enough for her to even say that they are "basically together."

Dear.  God. 

Is this what we are ALL doing?

I will admit, I've gotten creative with editing before.  I, too, dare I say it, am a writer, after all.  I've left out absurd things guys have said to me when telling the story to my friends because of embarrassment and because I wanted to remember the edited version of how it happened instead of the less pleasant true version.  I've been trying to do that less, because what I'm learning is that it's the absurd bits that make for the most interesting story-telling. 

But it can't just be us writers and wannabe writers who are doing this. 

I had to ask a couple other friends for confirmation, and sure enough, yes, people are leaving shit out all over the place. 

Guy to Girl:  You're like the prettiest thing ever.  I'd like to spank you with a Trapper Keeper.
Girl to Guy:  Um...what?
Girl to Her Friends:  He basically told me that I was the prettiest girl in the whole world!

...

No.

Although, the Trapper Keeper does have interesting textures...

Could be fun?

There are firm believers out there that say it's important for things between two people in a relationship to remain between those two people, but so many of us can't help but tell our friends every little detail.  For me, if I haven't shared it, it didn't happen. 

Furthermore, if you are dating a creative type, you're really in for it. You will surely end up written about in a book, a movie, or a song, and only if you're lucky will names be changed to protect the guilty.

Now I was told once by a guy who was concerned about the way he was being portrayed to my friends that people tend to have a handle on the good stuff so they don't talk about it as much.  They don't have a handle on the bad stuff yet, so they need to talk it out.  He was right, to an extent, but after seeing this episode of Girls, I realized that the flip side is also true.

Bottom line is:  if you're going to share your business with your friends, whatever business you choose to share, paint an accurate picture of the situation--the good, the bad, and the ugly.  You owe that yourself, to the person you're talking about, and to the friends whom you trust enough to hear these details.  Otherwise, you'll end up convincing yourself that the version you told your friends is true, which could really backfire later.

Or, you could act like a grown up and keep your business to yourself.  But let's not get crazy.