Two-faced his/her way of life

The Boston Herald

July 30, 1991

He won't recognize himself. Neither will she. That's the tragedy. No one has ever videotaped a day in his life. She has never been tape recorded on the phone, in a crowd, talking to someone at work.

Neither one knows how nasty they sound, act, behave, ARE. So they go on undermining friends, castigating co- workers, talking about people they pretend to like, all the while with a smile on their lips, as if other people's intimacies, insecurities, secrets, and problems are fodder for public entertainment.

If they could see themselves, if they could watch their behavior, listen to their negative remarks, feel the impact of their words, would they change? Would they be stunned to discover how cruel and hurtful they are?

I don't know.

She was at a gathering not too long ago, surrounded by semi-acquaintances, relating a story that should never have been told.

"I thought you were this person's friend," I said, trying to intercept the tale, trying to make her step out of herself for just a second and hear what she was saying. "I'm her best friend," she said without missing a beat. "That's why she tells me things. But she isn't my best friend." She turned back to the group and picked up where she'd left off, holding court by embellishing, with quips and asides, a tale whose base was pure tragedy.

He does the same thing, but in a different way. He's a one-on-one man, sideling up to you before work or at lunch or at a party to share his candid opinion, for which you didn't ask, about someone you both know. "Can you believe so-and- so," he'll say. "Look at him over there. He looks like he's in a coma. He doesn't have any vision or imagination or even a spark of creativity. I don't know how he holds on to his wife or his job."

But to this guy's face, the man is Mr. Affability, all warmth and charm. "Good to see you," he'll say. "So what's new? How's work? How's the family." And he'll listen with rapt attention, nodding and shaking his head and saying all the right things, then go on to tell this worker about someone else who isn't working up to snuff, or whose job security is threatened, or whose wife is having an affair, creating an air of intimacy with this news, pretending to be a friend of a guy he neither likes nor respects.

People catch on after a while. You stand next to a person and listen to him eviscerate someone else and you know you won't be halfway across the room before he starts in on you. So you don't take what he says seriously. But the damage is done anyway, more damage than you like to think. Because what happens is, you pull back a little, not just from the obvious gossips, but from the not-so-obvious ones, too. You begin to distrust your instincts because so-and-so seemed like such a nice person at the beginning, so friendly and funny. Yes, his humor was at someone else's expense, but you didn't notice this for a while.

So what other things haven't you noticed? How do you know who to trust? How can you be sure that what you say in confidence to a "friend" won't wind up as dinner conversation?

You learn after a while. Or at least you think you learn. You stay away from the obviously two-faced. But you can't really get away. Even when you don't tell them anything, they have something to say. "Get a look at that hair. Can you believe she walked out of the house looking like that?" or "Did you hear about his kid? I could have told you it was going to happen. He gave her too much."

"If you don't have anything good to say about someone, don't say anything at all," is an old adage our parents told us, which, if imposed today, would put a stop to most conversation. For we all talk about people, all the time, in conversation, in print, even in song.

But most of our words serve a purpose. We talk to analyze, inspect, ponder, share, wonder. We talk to understand.

The gossip, on the other hand, talks simply to be heard. He betrays because he wants attention. She berates because she wants to make herself look good.

The sad thing is that they're making themselves look bad and they don't even know.