Studying My Death
I study death as one would an especially curious insect, part metal, part decomposing flesh. I am detached and cold as I contemplate my own demise. The death of others is but a statistic. I would have made a great American governor, or general, or statesman - sentencing people to a bureaucratic, emotionless, end. Death is a constant presence in my life, as I disintegrate from within and from without. It is no stranger, but a comforting horizon. I would not seek it actively - but I am often terrified by the abhorrent thought of immortality. I would have gladly lived forever as an abstract entity. But, as I am, ensconced in my decaying corpse, I would rather die on schedule.

Hence my aversion to suicide. I love life - its surprises, intellectual challenges, technological innovations, scientific discoveries, unsolved mysteries, diverse cultures and societies. In short, I like the cerebral dimensions of my existence. I reject only the corporeal ones. I am enslaved to my mind and enthralled by it. It is my body that I hold in increasing contempt.

While I fear not death - I do fear dying. The very thought of pain makes me dizzy. I am a confirmed hypochondriac. I go into a frenzy at the sight of my own blood. I react with asthma to stress. I don't mind BEING dead - I mind the torture of getting there. I loathe and dread prolonged, body dissolving, maladies such as cancer or diabetes.

Yet none of this motivates me to maintain my health. I am obese. I do not exercise. I am internally inundated by cholesterol. My teeth crumble. My eyesight fails. I can barely hear when spoken to. I do nothing to ameliorate these circumstances beyond superstitiously popping assorted vitamin pills and drinking wine. I know I am rushing towards a crippling stroke, a devastating heart attack, or a diabetic meltdown.

But I keep still, hypnotized by the on-coming headlights of physical doom. I rationalize this irrational behaviour. My time, I argue with myself, is too precious to be wasted on jogging and muscle stretching. Anyhow it would do no good. The odds are overwhelmingly adverse. It is all determined by heredity.

I used I find my body sexually arousing - its pearly whiteness, its effeminate contours, the pleasure it yielded once stimulated. I no longer do. All self-eroticism was buried under the gellous, translucent, fat that is my constitution now. I hate my sweat - this salty adhesive that clings to me relentlessly. At least my scents are virile. Thus, I am not very attached to the vessel that contains me. I wouldn't mind to see it go. But I resent the farewell price - those protracted, bilious, and bloody agonies we call "passing away". Afflicted by death - I wish it only to be inflicted as painlessly and swiftly as possible. I wish to die as I have lived - detached, oblivious, absent minded, apathetic, and on my terms.

Being There
I am often shocked when presented with incontrovertible evidence to an event in my past, something I said, or did, a person I knew, a sentence I have written. I do not remember having done, said, or written what is attributed to me. I do not recall having met the person, having felt anything, having been there. It is not that it looks alien to me, as though it happened to someone else. I simply have no recollection whatsoever, I draw a blank. Hence my enormous and recurrent and terrifyingly helpless state of surprise. These cognitive distortions, these lapses of memory are as close as I ever get to losing control.

My terror is mixed with voyeuristic fascination. Through the writings, through the reconstructed utterances, through a careful study of what that other, previous, "Sam" has done, or said, or written - I come to learn myself. I meet myself on numerous occasions, reflections in the shattered mirrors of my dysfunctional, selective memory. These frequent occurrences of dissociative amnesia - when I repress the painful, the irrelevant, the useless - are the fabric of the punctuated being that is I.

But what are the rules determining this ruthless and automatic censorship? What governs the selection process? What events, people, writings, thoughts, emotions, hopes are cast into my oblivion - and why do others etch themselves indelibly? Is the repository of my discarded reality - my True Self, that dilapidated, immature, scared and atrophied little child inside me? Am I afraid to get in touch with memory itself, spun from the yarn of pains and disappointments? In short: is this an emotional involvement prevention mechanism?

It's not. On introspection, I simply erase and atomize that which is no longer of use in the pursuit of narcissistic supply. I read books, magazines, web pages, research papers, official memoranda, and daily papers. I then retain in accessible long term memory only the facts, the views, the news, the theories, the words that can help me elicit narcissistic supply. Like the proverbial squirrel, I amass intellectual assets that yield the maximum astonishment, adulation, and attention in my listeners. All the rest I discard contemptuously, though, by now, after decades of self-training, unconsciously. I, therefore, rarely remember anything I read just minutes after having read it. I cannot recall movie plots, story lines of novels, a reasoned argument in an article, the history of any nation, or things I myself have authored. No matter how many times I re-read my own essays, I find them absolutely new, none of the sentences recognizable. I then proceed to forget them instantly.

Similarly, I alter my biography at will, to suit the potential sources of narcissistic supply who happen to be listening. I Say things not because I believe in them, nor because I know them to be true (in truth, I know very little and ignorant of much). I say things because I am desperately trying to impress, provoke responses, bask in the glow of affirmation, extract applause. Naturally, I very soon forget what I said. Not the result of a coherent structure of deeply assimilated and integrated knowledge, or of a set of convictions - my utterances, judgements, opinions, beliefs, wishes, plans, analyses, comments, and narratives are ephemeral improvizations. Here today, gone tomorrow, unbeknownst to me.

Before I meet someone, I learn everything I can about him. I then proceed to acquire superficial knowledge that is certain to create the impression of genius bordering on omniscience. If I am to meet a politician from Turkey, whose hobby is farming, and is the author of books about ancient pottery - I will while away days and nights studying Turkish history, ancient pottery, and farming. Not an hour after the meeting - having inspired awesome admiration in my new acquaintance - all the facts I so meticulously memorized evaporate, never to return. The original views I expressed so confidently vanish from my mind. I am preoccupied with my next prey and with his predilections and interests.

My life is not a thread, it is a patchwork of chance encounters, haphazard exams, and the drug of narcissistic supply consumed. I feel like a series of still frames, somehow improperly animated. I know the audience is there. I crave their adulation. I try to reach out, to break the mould of the album of photographs that I became - to no avail. I am trapped in there forever. And if none of you chooses to inspect my image at a given moment, I fade, in sepia colours. Until I am no longer.

Physique Dysmorphique
For most of my childhood and adolescence I believed that I had an enormous, elephantine skull. I didn't. Actually, I am told that my head is unusually small in comparison to my body. This is especially true after I put on another 20 kilos in weight.

So, why was I wrong about the size of my head for such a long and critical period of my life?

I am a cerebral narcissist. I derive my narcissistic supply from people's reactions to my intellectual achievements - real or fictitious. No wonder that I exaggerated the dimensions of the site and exclusive source of my life sustaining gratification. Children draw adults as giants. Budding cerebral narcissists misconstrue the size of their skulls.

Possessing a distorted physical self-image is called a body dysmorphic disorder. All narcissists have it to some degree. Somatic narcissists are especially prone to misjudge their bodies - either positively or negatively. They believe themselves to be physically irresistible, exuding sex and energy, statuesquely shaped, and, in general, stunning hunks. This grandiose self-image rarely corresponds with reality, though.

Aware of this, the somatic narcissist dedicates inordinate amounts of time and effort to body building, exercising, mastering sexual advances and foreplay and the intricacies of the coital act itself. To enhance his belief system, the somatic narcissist co-opts others by forcing them to compliment his build, shape, constitution, health, sexual prowess, physical regime and attractiveness. The somatic narcissist is a compulsive consumer of "body complements or extensions" - objects that he thinks increase his attraction, irresistibility, appeal, and the value of his propositions. Fancy cars, flashy clothing, sumptuous residences, first class flights, luxury hotels, platinum credit cards, lavish parties, name-dropping, celebrity "friends", hi-tech gadgetry - all serve to enhance the narcissist's self-image and to bolster his grandiose fantasies.

Thus, this positive dysmorphic disorder serves to elicit narcissistic supply and buttress a distorted, unreal, self-image. But it is also a control mechanism. It allows the narcissist's False Self to manipulate both the narcissist and his human environment. It is as though by morphing his body - the narcissist moulds and designs his world, his nearest and dearest, his self in flux, his projected image and the reactions to it. By lying about his body, his health, his sex appeal, his longevity, his possessions (=his bodily extensions), his sexual prowess, his attractiveness, his irresistibility, his friends and lovers, adventures and affairs - the narcissist transforms the REAL world. To him, the REAL world - is how people PERCEIVE him to be. By changing their perceptions, by indoctrinating and "brainwashing" them - the narcissist secures a pathological narcissistic space in which his Self False can thrive, fully nourished.

This phenomenon is not limited to the somatic narcissist. The cerebral narcissist also deforms the true image of his body in his mind. He may exaggerate the dimensions of his head, the height of his forehead, or the length of his (sensitive) fingers. He may attribute to himself ailments and syndromes typical of high powered intellectuals - consumption (tuberculosis), tendonitis, headaches. The cerebral narcissist almost always lies about his IQ, his mental capacities, his skills. He tends to completely ignore and belittle the rest of his body. To him, it is a burdensome and unnecessary appendage. He may complain of the need to "maintain" the flesh and of the derided dependence of his magnificent brain on his abject and decaying body. "I would have willingly placed my brain in a laboratory jar, to be artificially nourished there, and given up my body" - they may say. They rarely exercise and regard with disdain the activities, proclivities, and predilections of the somatic narcissist. Physical pursuits - sex included - are perceived by them to be bestial, demeaning, common, wasteful, and meaningless. This is also a result of body dysmorphic disorder. The cerebral narcissist underestimates the needs of his own body, misreads its signals, and ignores its processes. The body, to him, becomes abstract, a background noise, or nuisance.

Cerebral narcissists sometimes go through somatic phases and somatic narcissists - if capable - adopt cerebral behaviour patterns. Their attitudes change accordingly. The temporarily somatic narcissist suddenly begins to exercise, groom himself, seduce, and have creative and imaginative sex. The somatic made cerebral tries to read more, becomes contemplative and a-social, and consumes culture. But these are passing phases and the narcissist always reverts to true - or should I say, false - form.

The Disappearance of the Witnesses
I live through others. I inhabit their memories of me. Bits and pieces of Sam are strewn across continents, among hundreds of casual acquaintances, friends, lovers, teachers, admirers, and despisers. I exist by reflection. This is the essence of secondary narcissistic supply - the secure knowledge that I am replicated in the minds of many. I want to be remembered because without being remembered I am not. I need to be discussed because I have no being except as a topic of discussion. So, passive memory is not enough. I need to be actively reminded of my achievements, of my moments of glory, of past adulation. The constancy of these streams of memories smoothes the inevitable fluctuations in primary narcissistic supply. In lean moments, when I am all but forgotten, or when I feel humiliated by the gap betwen my reality and my grandiosity - these memories of past grandeur, related to me by outside "observers" lift my spirits. It is the main function of people in my life: to tell me how great I am because of how great I was.

I was a precocious child. Always the wunderkind with oversized spectacles, the freak. I befriended only men many years my senior. At the age of 20, the youngest of my best friends - among which I counted a mafia don, a political scientist, businessmen, authors, and journalists - was 40. Their age, experience and social standing made them ideal sources of narcissistic supply. They fed me, hosted me in their homes, bought me reference books, introduced me to each other, interviewed me, and took me on expensive trips to foreign lands. I was their darling, the subject of much awe and adulation.

Now, twenty years and some later, these are old people and they are dying. Their kids are in their late twenties. They are out of the loop. And when they die, their memories of me die with them. They take to their grave my secondary narcissistic supply. I slightly fade with every passing one of them. They, the dying and the dead, are the only ones who know. They are the witnesses of who I was back then and why. They are my only chance at ever getting to know myself at all. When the last of them is interred - I will be no more. I will have lost my stab at proper self-introduction. It feels so sad never to know Sam. It feels so lonely, like a child's grave in autumn.

The Ubiquitous Narcissist
The narcissist feels omnipresent, all-pervasive, the prime mover and shaker, the cause of all things. Hence his constant projection of his own traits, fears, behaviour patterns, beliefs, and plans onto others. The narcissist is firmly convinced that he is the generator of other people's emotions, that they depend on him for their well-being, that without him their lives will crumble into grey mediocrity. He regards himself as the most important part in the life of his nearest and dearest. To avoid painful contradictions with reality, the narcissist aims to micromanage and control his human environment.

But this only one aspect of the pathology.

The second aspect is malignant cynicism. A healthy modicum of doubt and caution is... well... healthy. But the narcissist is addicted to excess doses of both. To the narcissist, all people are narcissists - others are simply hypocritical when they pretend to be "normal". They are weak and fear society's reactions, so they adhere to its edicts and behavioural-moral codes. The narcissist magically feels strong. immune to punishment, and invincible and thus able to express his true nature fearlessly and openly.

Consider generosity and altruism, the daughters of empathy - that which the narcissist is absolutely devoid of.

I cannot digest or fathom true generosity. I immediately suspect ulterior motives (though not necessarily sinister ones). I ask myself: Why the helping hand? How come the trust placed in me? What do they really want from me? How (unbeknownst to me) do I benefit them? What is the disguised self-interest which drives their perplexing behaviour? Don't these people know better? Don't they realize that people are all, without exception, self-centred, interest-driven, unnecessarily malevolent, ignorant, and abusive? In other words, I am surprised that my true nature does not show instantly. I feel like an incandescent lamp. I feel that people can see through my transparent defences and that what they see must surely horrify and repel them.

When this does not happen, I am shocked.

I am shocked because altruistic, loving, caring, and generous behaviours expose as false the hidden assumptions underlying my mental edifice. Not everyone is a narcissist. People do care for each other for no immediate reward. And, most damaging of all, I am loveable.

No One Counts to Ten
I make it a point to triumphantly ignore and belittle figures of authority. Knowing that their options of retaliation are rather limited by my official position, or by law - I abuse them flagrantly. When a security guard or a policeman halts me, I pretend I haven't heard him and proceed with callous disregard. When threatened, I go unpredictably wild. In doing so I (very often) provoke repulsion and pity and (much less often) fear and amazement. Often I find myself in danger, always punished, forever the losing party.

So, why do it?

First, because it feels great. To experience immunity, shielded behind an invisible wall, untouchable, and, therefore, by implication, omnipotent.

Second, because I actively and knowingly seek to be punished, perceived as the "bad man", the corrupt, no good, vile, heartless, villain.

Third, I project my own shortcomings, deficiencies, pain, and rage onto these mother and father substitutes. I then react to these behaviours and negative emotions I perceive in others with righteous and furious indignation.

My inability to work in a team, to be instructed, to accept orders, to admit to ignorance, to listen to reason, and to succumb to social conventions, or to superior knowledge and credentials - transformed me into a reclusive and clownish disappointment. People are always misled by my intelligence into predicting a bright future for me and my work. I end up shattering their hopes. Mine is a heartless march to heartbreak.

So, what now?

I am a little over forty and a lot overweight. My teeth are rotting and my breath is bad. I am entirely celibate. I am a ruptured nervous wreck. I communicate almost exclusively through rage attacks and vitriolic diatribes. I cannot go back to my own disintegrating country - and am trapped in another. I desperately seek narcissistic supply. I delude myself regarding my achievements and status, fully aware of my self-delusion. It is surrealistic, this infinite regression of mirrors, true and false. Mine is the on going nightmare of reality itself.

And beneath it all, there is an ominous spring of sadness. The flotsam that is my being in the murky puddle of my pain. I do not feel it anymore, I just recognize its existence, like a presence in the dark.

I am devoid of energy. I am denuded of defences. I stumble. I get up. I stumble again. Floored, no one bothers to count to ten. I know I will revive. I know I will survive. I just don't know what for.

That Thing Between a Man and a Woman...
... I lack.

That moistly energy, the hungry eyes, the imperceptible tilt of bodies lusting, that magnetism. I do not have it. I do not know the frequency of the silent broadcasts of sexuality. My face is handsome in a man-child way. My features broad but quite agreeable. Sometimes I am rich and powerful or famous. Women are curious.

Until a few years back I was able to disguise my illness. I mimicked the behaviours, the intricate messages, the subtle bodily perfumes, the long and longing looks. But now I can't. I am exhausted. These rites of procreation drain me of the energy I need so abundantly in my pursuit of my supply. Freud called it sublimation. I am a prolific author. My seeds are verbal. My passion is abstract. I rarely fuck.

In women I induce confusion. They are attracted, then repelled by something they cannot explain, nor name. "He is so unpleasant" - they say, hesitantly - "He is so... violent... and so... disagreeable". They mean to say I am not a healthy person altogether. The animals we are, they sense my illness. I read somewhere that female birds avoid the sickly males in mating season. I am one sickly bird and they avoid me with the hurt perplexity of the frustrated. In this modern world of "what you see is what you get", the narcissist is an exception. A packaged deception, a diversion, a virtual reality with awry programming.

Not long ago, I was still able to control myself, to hide my vile thoughts, to play the social game, to mimetically engage in human intercourse. I can no longer. I am the denuded narcissist - bereft of old defenses. This transparency is the ultimate - and psychopathic - act of sheer contempt. People are not even worth maintaining my defences anymore. This frightens women. They sense the danger. Psychic annihilation is often irresistible, the brinkmanship of self-destruction luring. That evil is aesthetic we all know. But it is also so alien, like waking from a nightmare into its continuation in reality.

But I am not an evil man, I am simply indifferent and wish not to be bothered. This schizoid streak conflicts with my narcissism and with my virility. The narcissist devours people, consumes their output, and casts the empty, writhing shells aside. The schizoid avoids them at all costs. As a man, I am very much attracted to the opposite sex. I am imaginative in my fantasies and prone to sexual abandon. But to a schizoid, women are nuisance and annoyance. Obtaining voluntary sex requires too much effort and waste of scarce resources.

Most narcissists go through schizoid phases in their inexorable orbits of gloom and mania. Sometimes the schizoid prevails. A narcissist that is also a schizoid is an unnatural hybrid, a chimera, a shattered personality. The push and pull, the approach and the avoidance, the compulsive search for the drugs that only humans can provide and the no less compulsive urge to avoid them altogether... it is a sorry sight. The narcissist shrivels and withers as the battle is prolonged. He becomes almost psychotic at the tug of war inside him. Alienated even from his False Self by his schizoid disorder, such a narcissist is turned into a gaping black hole, out to suck the vitality of those around him.

So, you see, that thing between a woman and a man - I lack it.

The Ghost in the Machine
I have no roots. I was born in Israel but left it many times and now have been away for five years. I haven't seen my parents since 1996. I have met my sister (and my niece and nephew) for the first time last week. I haven't been in touch with any of my "friends". I haven't exchanged one additional word with my ex after we split up. I - an award winning author -am slowly forgetting my Hebrew. I do not celebrate any nation's holidays or festivals. I stay away from groups and communities. I wonder, an itinerant lone wolf. I was born in the Middle East, I write about the Balkan and my readers are mostly American.

This reads like a typical profile of the modern expatriate professional the world over - but it is not. It is not a temporary suspension of self-identity, of group-identity, of location, of mother tongue and of one's social circle. In my case, I have nowhere to go back to. I either burn the bridges or keep walking. I never look back. I detach and vanish.

I am not sure why I behave this way. I like to travel and I like to travel light. On the way, in between places, in the twilight zone of neither here not there and not now - I feel like I am unburdened. I do not need to - indeed, I cannot - secure narcissistic supply. My obscurity and anonymity are excused ("I am a stranger here", "I just arrived"). I can relax and take refuge from my inner tyranny and from the anxious depletion of energy that is my existence as a narcissist.

I love freedom. With no possessions, devoid of all attachments, to fly away, to be carried, to explore, not to be me. It is the ultimate depersonalisation. Only then do I feel real. Sometimes I wish I were so rich that I could afford to travel incessantly, without ever stopping. I guess it sounds like escaping and avoiding oneself. I guess it is.

I do not like myself. In my dreams, I find myself an inmate in a concentration camp, or in a tough prison, or a dissident in a murderously dictatorial country. These are all symbols of my inner captivity, my debilitating addiction, the death amidst me. Even in my nightmares, though, I keep fighting and sometimes I win. But my gains are temporary and I am so tired...:o((

In my mind, I am not human. I am a machine at the service of a madman that snatched my body and invaded my being when I was very young. Imagine the terror I live with, the horror of having an alien within your own self. A shell, a nothingness, I keep producing articles at an ever accelerating pace. I write maniacally, unable to cease, unable to eat, or sleep, or bathe, or enjoy. I am possessed by me. Where does one find refuge if one's very abode, one's very soul is compromised and dominated by one's mortal enemy - oneself?

I Cannot Forgive
I am cursed with mental X-ray vision. I see through people's emotional shields, their petty lies, their pitiable defences, their grandiose fantasies. I know when they deviate from the truth and by how much. I intuitively grasp their self-interested goals and accurately predict the strategy and tactics they will adopt in order to achieve them.

I cannot stand self-important, self-inflated, pompous, bigoted, self-righteous, and hypocritical people. I rage at the inefficient, the lazy, the hapless and the weak.

Perhaps this is because I recognize myself in them. I try to break the painful reflection of my own flaws in theirs.

I home in on the chinks in their laboriously constructed armours. I spot their Achilles hill and attach to it. I prick the gasbags that most people are. I deflate them. I force them to confront their finiteness and helplessness and mediocrity. I negate their sense of uniqueness. I reduce them to proportion and provide them with a perspective. I do so cruelly and abrasively and sadistically and lethally efficiently. I have no compassion. And I prey on their vulnerabilities, however microscopic, however well-concealed.

I expose their double-talk and deride their double standards. I refuse to play their games of prestige and status and hierarchy. I draw them out of their shelters. I destabilize them. I deconstruct their narratives, their myths, their superstitions, their hidden assumptions, their polluted language. I call a spade a spade.

I force them to react and, by reacting, to confront their true, dilapidated selves, their dead end careers, their mundane lives, the death of their hopes and wishes and their shattered dreams. And all that time I observe them with the passionate hatred of the outcast and the dispossessed.

The truths about them, the ones they are trying so desperately to conceal, especially from themselves. The facts denied, so ugly and uncomfortable. Those things that never get mentioned in proper company, the politically incorrect, the personally hurtful, the dark, ignored, and hidden secrets, the tumbling skeletons, the taboos, the fears, the atavistic urges, the pretensions, the social lies, the distorted narratives of life - piercing, bloodied and ruthless - these are my revenge, the settling of scores, the leveling of the battlefield.

I lance them - the high and mighty and successful and the happy people, those who possess what I deserve and never had, the object of my green eyed monsters. I inconvenience them, I make them think, reflect on their own misery and wallow in its rancid outcomes. I coerce them to confront their zombie state, their own sadism, their unforgivable deeds and unforgettable omissions. I dredge the sewer that is their mind, forcing to the surface long repressed emotions, oft suppressed pains, their nightmares and their fears.

And I pretend to do so selflessly, "for their own good". I preach and hector and pour forth vitriolic diatribes and expose and impose and writhe and foam in the proverbial mouth - all for the greater good. I am so righteous, so true, so geared to help, so meritorious. My motives are unassailable. I am always so chillingly reasoned, so algorithmically precise. I am a the frozen wrath. I play their alien game by their very own rules. But I am so foreign to them, that I am unbeatable. Only they do not realize it yet.

Pseudologica Fantastica
In "Streetcar Named Desire", Blanche, the sister in law of Marlon Brando, is accused by him of inventing a false biography, replete with exciting events and desperate wealthy suitors. She responds that it is preferable to lead an imaginary but enchanted life - then a real but dreary one.

This, approximately, is my attitude, as well. My biography needs no embellishments. It is chock full of adventures, surprising turns of events, governments and billionaires, prisons and luxury hotels, criminals and ministers, fame and infamy, wealth and bankruptcy. I have lived a hundred lives. All I need to do is tell it straight. And yet I can't.

Moreover, I exaggerate everything. If a newspapers publishes my articles, I describe it as "the most widely circulated", or "the most influential". If I meet someone, I make him out to be "the most powerful", "most enigmatic", "most something". If I make a promise, I always promise the impossible or undoable.

To put it less gently, I lie. Compulsively and needlessly.

All the time.

About everything. And I often contradict myself.

Why do I need to do this?

To make myself interesting or attractive. In other words, to secure narcissistic supply (attention, admiration, adulation, gossip). I refuse to believe that I can be of interest to anyone as I am. My mother was interested in me only when I achieved something. Since then I flaunt my achievements - or invent ones. I feel certain that people are more interested in my fantasies than in me.

This way I also avoid the routine, the mundane, the predictable, the boring.

In my mind, I can be anywhere, do anything and I am good at convincing people to participate in my scripts. It is movie-making. I should have been a director.

Pseudologica Fantastica is the compulsive need to lie consistently and about everything, however inconsequential - even if it yields no benefits to the liar. I am not that bad. But when I want to impress - I lie.

I love to see people excited, filled with wonder, bedazzled, dreamy, starry eyed, or hopeful. I guess I am a little like the myth spinners, legend tellers and troubadours of yore. I know that at the end of my rainbow there is nothing but a broken pot. But I so want to make people happy! I so want to feel the power of a giver, a God, a benefactor, a privileged witness.

So, I lie. Do you believe me?