Jesus' Son

“The Other Man” deals with the motifs of memory and identity. F**khead meets two people in this story: First, he meets a man on a ferry who lies to him about being Polish. Rather than being annoyed by this, F**khead is interested and doesn’t get angry. Since F**khead so often hides who he is and what he’s done, he clearly feels some sympathy for this man. However, unlike F**khead, the man pretends to be Polish not to hide Substance Use Disorder, but rather because of embarrassment about his old identity. Unlike this man, the woman who F**khead dances with in a bar also lies about her identity, but for a different purpose. She considers lying about her identity in order to create a situation in which F**khead could stay with her without her husband being suspicious. To do this, the woman plans on having F**khead lie about his own identity, pretending to be her cousin. In lying, the characters are granted the opportunity to reinvent themselves and feel like different people, which is also something that substance use disorder can simulate—the illusion of being someone else and forgetting the past, present, and future for a moment.

Emphasizing The Slipperiness of Time, what connects all of these different lies and fake identities are the selfish reasons behind them. The man on the ferry wants to seem more interesting than he actually is, F**khead is looking to make a connection with someone but feels as if he can’t do that as himself, and the woman in the bar is pretending to not be married, and then pretending that F**khead is related to her, so that she can cheat on her husband. In all cases, the lies are connected by the selfish desires of the people involved. However, F**khead sees beauty in these connections despite the lies, writing in the final passage that “It was there. It was. The long walk down the hall. The door opening. The beautiful stranger. The torn moon mended. Our fingers touching away the tears. It was there” (93). Despite all of the lies and false identities, F**khead feels as if he and the woman were actually able to have a real connection, though F**khead’s unreliability as a narrator calls his perceptions into question. This story highlights the idea that when the ugliness of the truth is hidden, the characters experience a relief that enables them to truly connect.