I am at heart a lazy person. You need to give that statement the credit it deserves. It’s not just a generalized observation; being lazy is a trait that influences my entire life. Laziness is not the type of characteristic one normally brags about. If anything it would be considered a negative attribute by most. And I’d agree. Except that never being happy with the status quo, my extreme slothfulness forces me to be much more productive and industrious than a lazy person should be. There is a nice balance, a yin yang symmetry, to being both lazy and stubborn. Which is a good thing or I’d never get out of bed in the morning.

Being lazy is not necessarily a good thing when it comes to relationships. Relationships, most agree, take work. And when your natural inclination is to avoid work at all costs, the effort it takes to have a successful relationship is more of a bother than it is worth. I’m stubborn enough to force myself to do the little things that keep a relationship going. Those that take a modicum of effort, not so much. Even though it may not come naturally to me, I do make an effort to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, and kind in a relationship. Because I learned those qualities as a boy scout. I’d add being obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent to that list too, as they should be, but I was too lazy to learn and adopt the rest of those qualities into my life. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t my laziness to blame on that one but rather spending most of my time during camp-outs diddling the other little boy scouts. But you get the picture. And for some odd reason the boy scouts have never given out a merit badge for having learned what to do with someone else’s stiffy. Still, despite my willingness to exert the energy it takes to apply at least part of the Boy Scout Motto to past relationships, most of my ex-boyfriends would agree I was never in the running for a boyfriend merit badge either. Not that it matters. I would have been too lazy to affix one to my uniform anyway.

On the other hand one of the benefits of being lazy is that you tend to arrange your life to avoid doing anything more than is absolutely necessary – and that can have a positive impact on a relationship. I don’t know why being in love and being in a relationship so often requires being duplicitous. You’d think that love, being the holy grail of emotions that it is supposed to be, would be bathed in a white light of honesty and purity. Instead the building blocks that make up the foundation of most relationship are lies. From little white lies like, “No those pants don’t make your ass look fat” to those of historic proportions, “No, really, I was working late last night!” the longer a relationship lasts the more those in that relationship lie to each other. It’s a tangled web we tend to weave. All in the name of love.

They say trust is key to any successful relationship. And if you haven’t noticed from relationships in your own past, dishonesty seldom breeds trust. Unless you are a fan of lying to yourself too. Lying seems counterproductive to the success of a relationship, and yet it is the fall back option – often to avoid confrontation – most often employed by those in a relationship. Personally, I value honesty almost as much as I value being lazy. Which works well for me. ‘Cuz perpetuating a lie takes an enormous amount of effort and energy. More than I’m willing to exert. To be honest, it’s not that my moral compass precludes me from being dishonest, I’m just too lazy to bother with making the effort.

Noom, my bar boy friend and current love of my life, tends to take the Thai approach to lying. Which is generally being in favor of the act and practicing it as often as possible. Chill. I’m not stereotyping Thais. I’m giving them credit for something they do well. I don’t know what the Thai word for ‘lie’ is, but suspect just like the Eskimos having over 400 words for ‘snow’ the prevalence of lies in Thai culture means they have several dozen words in their language that provide for and carefully delineates the various degrees of dishonesty that are part of their daily life. So needless to say, Thais are experts at making relationships work too.

Noom and I started out our relationship with a lie. He told me he was 28. Which would normally be considered a little white lie. If it had been a decade closer to the truth. But that lie is a good example of the Thai view on telling fibs. He lied for my benefit, assuming that like most punters I preferred younger guys. It was more about indulging a fantasy – mine – than it was about lying. Even if truth be told 28 is considered far too old for most fans of Thailand’s gogo bar world. Sure, it also worked to his advantage in landing a customer. And the less generous might claim that was its underlying purpose. But to Noom that was just a happy coincidence: Thais will routinely lie to you when they know you’d prefer a lie over the truth. And that, in their mind, means it isn’t a lie. You hansum man.

Thais are not big on confrontation either. And telling a lie is often one of the most effective ways to avoid an argument. Peace, in any social interaction, is more important than honesty is. Farang, especially the American version, have a difficult time understanding this. We learn from an early age to stand up for our rights, to never allow a wrong not to be righted, to never allow someone to dis us. And so you often hear punters whine about the Thai predisposition to telling lies, about how dishonest they are, when all they are really trying to do is help keep your wa centered. When you get angry and loud over some perceived wrong, it’s embarrassing. Your pride is at stake. And if all it takes is a simple lie to keep you from making a fool of yourself, who wouldn’t? Certainly not a Thai.

Conversely, most Thai bar boys have learned that farang are all liars. And that’s not a good thing. You’d think that as adept as they are at spinning fantasies to keep the peace and/or makes someone happy, they would recognize that trait in others. But not so when a farang is involved. Because you are not Thai. And you are not supposed to be skilled in the ways of Thais. Of course that is a self-inflicted fantasy built on a lie that all Thais believe in, but that’s not the point. That farang can not be trusted is. Fortunately for Noom, my inherent laziness coincides with his cultural belief that farang are supposed to always be honest. Even when experience shows they are not.

I never called Noom on his lie about his age, even later when the truth came out. I was too lazy to. And it was more enjoyable making fun of his advanced age anyway. I told him he needed to find a new nickname because Noom means ‘young man’ in Thai and he no longer qualified. That’s one of my few jokes he got and thought funny. I repeat it every year on his birthday. Because Thais love nothing more than a joke they’ve heard a hundred times before. Not even lying. And because I’m too lazy to come up with a new one.

I’ve never called him on any other lie either, even those that are part of the standard bar boy repetoir. Because sometimes those are not lies. For example, I’m positive he does think I’m a hansum man. Okay, so I never claimed I’m too lazy to lie to myself. More importantly, I have never lied to Noom. I do think he is a hansum man, so that one’s easy. And while I may carefully couch the language I use to not offend, whether it is something small or of major importance, as in every other relationship I’ve ever been in, I am always honest with Noom. Sometimes brutally so.

That has not always worked well in past relationships. Okay, so that has never worked well in past relationships. And with Thai culture relying on lies as a form of appeasement, it shouldn’t in our relationship either. But amazingly it does. I think that is because farang are supposed to lie. It is expected of us. And the novelty of an honest farang – thanks to my laziness – far outweighs the calming benefits a few good lies would otherwise have. Whodathunk that a less than sterling personality characteristic like being lazy would result in being responsible for the very characteristic that Noom appreciates in me the most?

During a visit to Bangkok with some friends, who being the type of friends they are set out to grill Noom about our relationship, Noom, in attempting to explain why he loved me – even as a self-identified straight man – informed them the #1 reason in his words was, “He no lie me.” We’d already spent a few evenings at the bars on Soi Twilight and had all had a good laugh at the standard bar boy line of, “I lie you,” so they were a bit confused with his statement. It took me a minute to untranslate the translation too. Not being too lazy to go for the easy joke, I immediately began to wail about him not liking me. Noom, by now, is used to my antics. Usually, wisely, he just ignores me. But with a handful of farang in tow he decided a reply was required, stopped, gave me a big hug, and then an unheard of wet, sloppy PDA, putting a quick end to that lie.

Noom, like most of his countrymen, is proud to be Thai and embraces his Thai-ness wholeheartedly. Which is a polite way of saying the boy lies like a Republican addressing a gathering of the NAACP. Lying comes naturally to him, at least about those things that don’t really matter. So I give him a lot of credit for attempting to be honest with me in our relationship. It’s not easy for him. It is not his first instinct. And I can tell when he decides to speak the truth when a lie would serve just as well. His head makes a slight jerk. It’s like a mental rewind back to start over on a more honest path. And we both smile because we both know he was just about to tell a lie.

I don’t know that honesty is the best policy as that cliche goes, but do know, given my druthers, laziness is always the best route to take. It can simplify life. And occasionally benefit it too. But then I could just be lying to myself.

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