PRAISE FOR PETER KISPERT’S
I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO I AM
“Engrossing, unsettling, full of characters in search of their place in the world, I Know You Know Who I Am reminds me in the best possible way of the debut collections of Mary Gaitskill and Adam Haslett, in tone and talent and the promise of what will come next.”
—David Ebershoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife
“This debut collection has a wisdom and a tapestry of language far beyond the author’s years. Loosely linked unreliable narrators remind us that we might find religion in the most unlikely places—such as the space between a truth and a lie.”
—Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of A Spark of Light and Small Great Things
“Peter Kispert’s dazzling collection is a reminder that fiction tells lies in order to discover truth.”
—Garrard Conley, New York Times bestselling author of Boy Erased
“If I could give the characters in Peter Kispert’s expansive, funny, and moving collection the forgiveness and recognition they seek, I would do so wholeheartedly. These unforgettable stories look head-on at the spectacles we make of our lives and the impossibility of turning away from them. A talent to watch.”
—Danielle Lazarin, author of Back Talk
“Sometimes you read a collection and you wonder how a mere mortal wrote it because the language is so pure, the depth of emotion so profound—Peter Kispert is a wizard, creating a collection of liars and lies that will ring true in the heart of any reader. A tour de force: read this book.”
—Nick White, author of How to Survive a Summer and Sweet & Low
“Lashed by years and bound by love, the liars in this incredible debut punish themselves as their compulsions and betrayals tremble across time. Cut crosswise, their lives show these pathologies at work, just as hard and irradiating, superheated and sad, as the prose in which they’re rendered. Above all, it is through Kispert’s immense talent that we come to understand, and even love, who they are.”
—Patrick Nathan, author of Some Hell
PENGUIN BOOKS
I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO I AM
PETER KISPERT’s fiction and nonfiction has appeared in OUT magazine, GQ, Esquire, Playboy, The Carolina Quarterly, The Journal, Slice, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of Indiana University’s MFA program, where he taught undergraduate fiction writing workshops, and an assistant editor at American Short Fiction. He lives in New York.
peterkispert.com
PENGUIN BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2020 by Peter Kispert
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
The following stories were published previously in different forms: “I Know You Know Who I Am” in The Journal; “Puncture” in Ninth Letter; “Aim for the Heart” in Slice Magazine; “Audition” (as “Audition #21”) in Devil’s Lake; “Please Hold” in Joyland; “Be Alive” in Passages North; “Breathing Underwater” in The Carolina Quarterly; “Diving, Drifting” in South Dakota Review; and “Double Edge” (as “The Vanishing”) in Tin House.
Excerpt from Welcome to My Country by Lauren Slater. Copyright © 1996 by Lauren Slater. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Kispert, Peter, author.
Title: I know you know who I am : stories / Peter Kispert.
Description: New York : Penguin Books, An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2019. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019016016 (print) | LCCN 2019019392 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525506058 (ebook) | ISBN 9780143134282 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Gay men—Identity—Fiction. | Deception—Fiction. | Intimacy (Psychology)—Fiction. | Psychological fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3611.I8726 (ebook) | LCC PS3611.I8726 A6 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019016016
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: John Gall
pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0
For Brick Kyle
CONTENTS
Praise for Peter Kispert
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part I
I KNOW
I Know You Know Who I Am
Puncture
River Is to Ocean as ___ Is to Heart
Human Resources
Aim for the Heart
Audition
How to Live Your Best Life
Part II
YOU KNOW
Please Hold
Be Alive
Breathing Underwater
Signs
Rorschach
Goldfish Bowl
Diving, Drifting
Part III
WHO I AM
Master’s Thesis
Touch Pool
Clearwater
Tourniquet
In the Palm of His Hand
Double Edge
Mooring
Publication Credits
Acknowledgments
Mistrust is the fuel for so much mental pain, so many mental disorders. I am not talking here about the suspicions we sometimes have of one another, the distant but lurking sense that perhaps our lover lies to us, our best friend whispers behind our back. I am talking about a belief that betrayal inundates the atoms of the universe, is so woven into the workings of the world that every step is treacherous, and that below the rich mud lies a mine.
— LAUREN SLATER,
Welcome to My Country
Part I
I KNOW
I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO I AM
It’s a true story because it’s a story I tell myself. But you want the story with the true facts, the stuff I can prove, and even though that’s impossible—well, here it is.
* * *
—
When I asked a stranger to pretend to be Finn, just for ten minutes, I was surprised he agreed to. Turns out he was an actor with some small theater—always up for a challenging role.
My boyfriend Luke had been in the bathroom fixing his hair while I appraised potential Finns in the coffee shop—the kind of man, I imagined, whose careful attention to his sideburns suggested his biting sarcasm. Having spent the last three weeks trying to cast him over the Internet, the Finn I’d hired was a no-show, which left me minutes to find and coach. I was searching for a particular face, one that simultaneously read I’ve seen some shit and I’m pretty hilarious. I was also looking at a lot of eyebrows; the more expressive, the better—it was the one physical detail about Finn I’d accidentally let slip.
“Here,” I said, sliding a black-and-white photo of a model toward the man: dark, swooping hair, a smile that seemed impossibly sincere (though now he seemed to be
laughing at me), a chiseled chest. I’d clipped the photo from one of the magazines Luke shoots for, or used to shoot for, before the incident that got him fired. “Go off this.”
“Is this him?” he asked.
“That’s you.”
He smiled. The man clearly hadn’t seen success as an actor. A teenage girl looked on, witnessing the bizarre transaction. I rolled my eyes at her, letting her know I saw.
The story behind Finn had been stitched irregularly and out of necessity into a complex fabric of a lie, a thing so false it now seemed absolutely true. Where I was in the story of Finn depended on who I was with. He became an excuse to miss work, to cancel plans last minute—fleeting moments that held small thrills at their candy centers. The story of Finn with Luke had been mostly written; just never entirely finished. I planned to cut ties with him in a few weeks, or to maybe kill him off somehow, in a car crash or by way of some little-known cancer, an accidental overdose, something like what happened to my father. This was all to say: I had lied. I had made him up.
“Okay,” I said, trying to relax. “In a few minutes, my boyfriend will be out of the bathroom, and he’s going to ask you questions. He just wants to make sure you’re real.”
I briefly summarized Finn’s situation as Luke knew it: He is living with two friends here in New York; he misses me; he is sick but pretending to be on the mend; he listens to indie rock and doesn’t need to honor questions about our relationship, citing instead that he is still processing a recent fight over why he isn’t considering chemo. He once fell off a canoe with me at midnight while wearing only a plastic gold smock. But that’s not important.
“Ian!” Luke’s voice carried over the hiss of the espresso machine.
“Found him! Hiding behind a newspaper,” I called back, giving the man a You’re on look. I tapped the back of the chair, thinking of that beautiful smile, trying to replicate it as I slid the photo back into my pocket. I looked to Luke, who walked toward me, drying his hands on his jeans. My breath hitched in my chest.
“Typical Finn,” I said, and watched as they shook hands.
* * *
—
Finn was born on one of our first dates—or, the idea of him was. We were eating at a new chain family restaurant, its walls covered in faux-dated decor, worn horseshoes and skis. Luke asked if I had friends in Burlington, and I said I did. Truthfully, I didn’t. I’d resigned myself to being alone, managing a bakery, living a largely abstinent gay lifestyle, and watching bad reality television religiously every night. My loneliness embarrassed me deeply, constant proof of my unlovability. Luke asked what my friends’ names were, and suddenly imagined people came bursting forth: Jessica, Lindsay, Andrew (who goes by Andy), Finn.
“Finn,” he said, flicking condensation off his glass. “I like that name.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s a pretty cool guy.”
As it turns out, Pretty cool guy is dangerous territory. Pretty cool guy is lighting the fuse.
It wasn’t that I’d never lied before, or even that my lies weren’t frequent. They were. The problem was that I’d made this person, this ghost, who could walk through the walls of my life, disorienting and rearranging, forcing me to recalculate every time Luke asked about him, which was often. And even more of a problem—it was working: Luke believed me. If I wanted him to think I was generous, I could work into conversation that Finn had been in some trouble with his landlord and I’d bailed him out. If I wanted him to think I had self-control, I’d explain that there had been another incident and Finn needed to learn I couldn’t do everything for him. After a few months, I had given Finn his own, terrifying breath. Luke said he wanted to meet him, maybe take some headshots for casting calls. (At that point, Finn was trying his hand at acting.)
Pretty cool guy.
“He’s kind of a loner,” I’d said. I was very aware it wasn’t true, that even this particular ghost of a human would be loud and inviting, unrestrained.
“Well, when he’s back in the area,” he’d said. And I’d nodded like I meant it.
The moment ended and I watched him eat, the careless way he considered his plate comforting me into the knowledge he had believed me once more. Luke finished his meal, and I pushed my potatoes around enough to look like they’d been at least seriously considered.
“Wonder whose family this is,” he said, pointing to a photo fixed to the wall behind a stand of menus. I knew instantly it was posed: a bunch of restaurant employees fitted in old uniforms, filtered through grayscale. The kids didn’t look like the parents at all. The photo’s edge had a hard diagonal crease. I could see someone making it, easy.
“Probably no one’s,” I said. “Probably fake.”
On our way out the door, I noticed that same photo above the doorframe—the same crease, the same family. On the drive back to my apartment, I said, “You know, I think that was a real family photo.” I had no idea of what prompted me to say this, but something in me wanted to inch closer to showing that I had the truth; only I knew those people could not have been related, and that I could prove it.
“Yeah, I think so too,” he said, nodding. The light turned green, and the truth stayed behind us.
* * *
—
We were hiking in the Adirondacks when Luke caught the first lie.
Overhead, sunlight shone through the leaves in mottled greens, and wind rushed through the trail. It had been nearly a year since we had begun dating, and I was falling for him—had been since I first saw him, really. Luke was talking about how he’d get the perfect shot at the marble crown of the mountaintop, how he wanted us to take a photo together, something to remember the day by and to prove to his friends on the coast we were dating. I found it funny those friends didn’t, couldn’t, believe him when he’d told them about me, weeks before—a kind of endearing vulnerability, though I wasn’t sure if he saw his admission that way. I guessed, swatting a fly away from my ear, that he was just telling me the truth.
“That’ll be nice,” I said. “We do need a photo. This is my first real hike, you know.”
He gave me a look, figuring something out, and paused. I wasn’t able to tell if he was catching his breath or catching me, in the middle of my story.
“I thought you said you went camping with Finn. That time in New Hampshire.”
A flock of geese passed in formation overhead, their caws echoing. He furrowed his brow.
“Oh, that,” I said, summoning a laugh to suggest some funny memory, some distant thing I’d only now brought into focus. “Yeah, but I mean really hiking.”
Luke squinted, suspicious for a moment.
“Okay,” he said, and lifted the lens to his eye. “Turn to your left. Two steps back. Watch your arms. Good, just like that. And smile.”
* * *
—
“So, how long have you been in New York City?”
Luke had a list of questions, and with the delivery of each came a quiet shudder. If the lie collapsed, if Finn was revealed to be the empty shell he was, Luke would stop seeing me. It was only after he figured out I wasn’t allergic to dairy like I’d claimed that he demanded he meet Finn. His suspicions about god knows what else I’d told him had led him to ask me to get ice cream with him one night, at a place next to a mini golf course. Beetles and moths dumbly buzzed and struck the tall lamp next to the counter, which cast a harsh orange glow onto us as we waited for our cones. I could tell something in him had shifted then, saddened, and he explained what I had mentioned, months ago, about the time my neck swelled up from only a sip of milk. On the way home, the air in the car constricted me. As we pulled up the driveway, he said that he needed to know I was not capable of such flagrant deceit.
So there I was: willing a lie into being.
“Oh, four months or so,” the man said. It was—astonishingly, thankfully—an acceptable response. He did some we
ird stage flourish with his hair. It looked like acting.
“Are you living around here?”
“Yeah, with a few friends.”
“And how’s the acting going?”
“Well, it’s—it’s going.”
There was a moment of real sadness in his face, when this stranger was quietly revealed. Through the heart of the moment, all I thought was: Thank God, something genuine.
A family moved to the small table next to us, crowding with extra chairs.
And that’s when I saw her.
Of all the coffee shops in New York, of all the people, my high school prom date, Diane, was sitting among them—her blond hair like a bird’s nest, her sputtering laughter, her fit frame all still intact, though weathered, aged. My stomach tightened, as if I’d ingested bad milk. If I really had met Finn as a sophomore like I’d said, Diane would’ve known him, even just his name, his vague presence. I considered how I might obviate the problem—maybe Finn had changed his name? Who did this man look like, and why could I not summon him among my old classmates? I felt pale, vulnerable, caught in the crevasse between truth and fiction.
Turning back, I saw Luke nodding at something Finn said, strangely at ease, and I began to wonder whether he’d figured out the whole thing was a ruse. When given the upper hand in the past, though, Luke had always made a point to show it—mentioning how bad my chess move was or how I could’ve saved more money at a restaurant. I moved my chair carefully away from Diane, which placed me directly opposite Luke.
“So,” Luke said, ripping a straw wrapper. “Tell me about Ian.”
And then: me. Of course.
* * *
—
Luke had lost his job in a fit of rage for being “too honest” with a model about her poses, which he considered stiff and ugly. This from the same man who slept with me, a “stocky” (his generous word for it) five-foot-six ex-wrestler who tried and gave up yoga on several different occasions for being unable to hold even basic poses.
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