A question.

Do dishonest people know how transparent their dishonesty is?  Do they even care?  Is this some sort of M.C. Escher conversation about varying levels of consciousness?

This is actually a pretty serious question for me.   Is the basic impetus behind lying that the people that you lie to are idiots that won't understand that they're being lied to?   Or is it some idea that one can just wash one's hands and walk away if the lie doesn't work out?

I'm not sure how to phrase this any more concisely, but it's something that trips me up quite frequently.  I guess it kind of goes back to the story I'd related before about the coworker that fancied himself a player.  But talking to people often leads me to stare at the person I'm talking with and sit and think to myself - "Wow, you just managed to completely contradict yourself in the span of three minutes."

One of my favorite examples of this came from someone I was once pretty good friends with (or had thought at the time), though it took a bit longer than three minutes for his idiocy to be apparent.  I'd given this guy some ballet tickets and the keys to my house while I was in someone else's wedding rehearsal.

The guy had been acting pretty shady about who he'd be going with.  Evasive and dodgy and sketchy as all hell.  On the day of the wedding, as he made his way to the wedding, I'd asked him how he'd enjoyed the ballet the night before.  He told me it was great.  I asked him who he'd ended up going with.  "You don't want to know," he told me.

At which point I named the person he'd gone with, told him that I had no problems with him having gone with this person, and said that the fact that he'd lied to me about whom he was going with was more offensive than anything else.

Over a good chunk of time, he's offered any number of reasons behind his behavior.  Quite a few of you have heard this one before, but it's still something that completely baffles me.

He hadn't lied to me, he said, he just didn't tell me the truth.  And really, he didn't tell me the truth because he didn't want to hurt me.  And besides, he said, there was no way he could have know that what he was doing would be hurtful.  And anyway, he said, I couldn't be upset with him as I'd lied to him first.  (Mind you, there were a couple of interludes along the way here where he called me an asshole by way of apology.)

When asked what lie I had supposedly told him, I was informed that I had lied about being in the friend's wedding (another thing that really doesn't make sense to me.  Why would I lie to someone about the fact that I was in a wedding that they'd be attending?  What would be the point of doing that? It doesn't even seem to be a lie that would be particularly effective.  The wedding the next day kind of makes it obvious whether I'm lying or not.) 

When it was pointed out that he'd been given the keys to my house and ballet tickets to use while I attended the rehearsal dinner and that I'd asked him to come with me to pick up my tux, he then told me I had lied to him about the part that I was to play in the wedding (and given that I had no idea what part I was playing in the wedding and told him so, I don't see how that qualifies as a lie.)  But it basically seems that I was offered everything but the kitchen sink as a reason why he was a dishonest pile.  And I'm sure that if I'd continued the conversation, I would have gotten yet another excuse/reason.

My cousin and I normally shorten the conversation to "I never lied to you, and besides you lied to me first."

This is what I don't get, though.  At what level does even attempting any of that even make sense?