Cheap Lies, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Truth

by Gwen Cooper — July 18, 2007

Cheating is a subject that, obviously, has been on my mind constantly the past couple of weeks. They say when you're "looking" for something you tend to see it everywhere, which may be why I found myself glued to a recent report on one of the local New York morning shows about a Web site called AlibiNetwork.com, which purports to provide ironclad alibis for a variety of miscreants--people cheating on their significant others, people who want to claim to be in one place when they're actually someplace else, people pretending to have a job more important than their real one, and even people who want to call in sick to work.

The crack team at the Alibi Network have posited the following sample scenarios on their Web site wherein you might choose to avail yourself of their services:

• You ran into an old friend and decided to meet to catch up. You have no intentions to stray, but your partner is suspicious and you are embarrassed to ask your friend to explain the situation. We can pose as a friend and talk to your partner.

• You like the person you are dating, but you need your space and can't spend as much time with as him as he'd like. We will help you find an excuse, so that your partner is not hurt.

• You have a business idea, but you are suspecting your partner is selling it to the competitor. We will pose as a competing firm and set up your business partner.

• It's a matter of principle and neither you nor your ex are willing to make the first step to get back together. We will facilitate the meeting.

• You know for a fact that your friend is being cheated on, but you don't want to be the one to tell him/her.

• You have tickets to the ball game, but it's also your neighbor's birthday and you need an excuse to deny the invitation.

This is all well and good. (Although it seems to me that most of these "problems" are best resolved with good old-fashioned honesty, as in: "You need to back off and give me a little space!" or "I'm so sorry, but I already bought tickets to a ballgame for that day. I wish I'd known about your party sooner.")

More troubling are the packages that allow you to, for example, claim to be attending a business convention in one city when you're actually trysting with your lover in another. Alibi Network claims they can create phony flight and hotel confirmations, and re-route calls to and from your cell phone to make it seem as if they're coming to/from a hotel reservations desk in any city in the world. In other words, they can make up a fake phone number for a fake hotel in, say, London, give you a record (including phone number) of a "reservation" at said phony hotel and, when your unsuspecting partner tries to call that number, the call is answered by a fake hotel desk clerk with a British accent, who then transfers the call to your "room," i.e. your cell phone.

I like sex as much as the next girl--but is it just me or does all this seem like an extraordinary amount of effort to go through just to get a little off-limits nookie?

Any discussion of the morality (or patent lack thereof) of such a service seems self-evident enough as not to warrant any discussion here. What I don't get is how people stage elaborate lies like this and manage to live with themselves. I mean, I kissed a guy spontaneously and without premeditation in my own city behind my boyfriend's back, and it took me all of three days to crack under the strain of not telling him the truth. Does it take nerves of steel, or just a complete lack of anything resembling a conscience, to hold a scheme like this together?

And that's not even to mention the money involved! Good lord! Isn't paying this much money to buy a lie that lets you have sex really only a hair's-breath away from actually paying for sex? My mom used to say that lies were cheap--but, then, she probably never got a close look at the Alibi Network's price sheet.

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.