'I did not have sex with that woman.'
I've had cause to issue that denial a few times before – we all have – not in reference to Monica Lewinsky necessarily, but certainly in denial of something we shouldn't have done with someone. Call it a little white lie; call it a big black lie; call it being economical with the truth, either way, rightly or wrongly, it's not entirely honest. At what point does equivocality turn into mendacity, sophistry into surreptitiousness? I am wondering this not because I have something to confess to my girlfriend (I didn't have sex with that woman, and she didn't suck me off either, in spite of my impassioned pleas for her to gobble my fat cigar), but because I have something to confess to my prospective new employers – or do I?
As some of you may know, I am a convicted criminal. A serially convicted criminal. Thus far in life, I have committed half a dozen offences for which I have been prosecuted, another 10,000 if you include every drug deal I've ever done, plus that time I thought it would be a laugh to kidnap Madaleine McCann until I sobered up and realised I'd forgotten where I put her. Although an inbred handful of offences isn't that many compared to my erstwhile colleagues, some of whom are into three figures, it's still probably six more than you've got. Indeed, if you wanted to be really harsh and write out my convictions in large letters using a thick black marker, you could probably go so far as to say I've got a charge sheet the length of my arm. There's the one for selling cannabis dating from 2005, and then the one for selling herbal cannabis in 2005. Getting caught twice in one year – how bad at dealing was I? Well, not quite that bad actually. The seemingly separate offences were actually the same crime listed twice; for some reason the filth saw fit to differentiate between herbal cannabis (weed to you or I) and cannabis (hash to you or I). Just as well they didn't sub-divide it any further or I'd also have convictions for selling red seal, pollen, white widow, sticky black, orange bud and purple haze.
Nestling snugly on my charge sheet with the foregoing crime(s) is a piffling possession charge for 0.1 grams of coke that the PF couldn't even put a value on, but could still prosecute me for. And then there's the additional offences that would show up on an enhanced disclosure, such as the £75 fixed penalty for getting caught with £75 worth of weed, and as for the driving convictions, well, let's not even go there. It would be fair to assume that there's not much chance of me becoming a Scout leader any time soon. If I want to molest young boys, it looks like I'll have to join the priesthood instead. They don't require full disclosure of anything, except to God, and he already knows that I'm a sick bastard.
Although none of my crimes are for offences that I consider to be offensive (in my warped mind, weed dealers are performing an essential public service by helping people chill out after a stressful week at work and should be knighted, not incarcerated), prospective employers may not be so kindly disposed to my selfless services to relaxation, and may even be so indisposed as to refuse me a job. No job equals no money, and no money equals going back to doing what I do best/worst, which invariably leads to going back inside and having to write more blogs about how no one will give me a job because I'm a multiply convicted drug dealer blah blah, and thus the vicious circle continues ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
How do I break this cycle of re-offending, of recidivism, or endless rejections from employers who can't see past my charge sheet? To them, I am essentially Adolf Hitler: yes, I may have some inspirational qualities, but no one is going to acknowledge them so long as they continue to be blinded by my own personal Holocaust that is to be known as an ex-dealer.
Of course one solution – one Final Solution – to this problem is to go down the Holocaust denial route: Convicted criminal? Who are you calling a convicted criminal? No boss, I'm a good boy, which is why there are no crimes listed in the Criminal Convictions section on my job application. I'm not averse to the odd lie – hell, the perjury conviction bundled in with all my drug convictions is testament to that – but in an ideal world, I'd like to be straight with people. I'd like to be able to look them in the eye and say 'My name is Kai, I'm an ex-dealer and I've spent two years of my life in prison plus another two on bail or on a curfew. Oh, and I like it when my girlfriend tickles my balls when we're fucking but if you give me this job I promise I'll be the best damn worker you've ever had, and moreover I'll never speak of my sexual predilections again.'
If the world we live in was like that depicted in the current Ricky Gervais film, The Invention Of Lying, perhaps I'd be able to get away with telling the truth. As it is, we inhabit a world of half-truths and white lies, of spin and distortion, of telling people what we think they want to hear instead of what we think. And so it is that I am supposed to pretend that I think drug-dealing is wrong, and that decent upright people like yourself don't like to get a little bit fucked up on a weekend. No, I'm supposed to tick the box that says Criminal Convictions and declare them in full and watch as someone with half my ability and half my personality gets the job instead, because my previous penchant for selling weed obviously impacts on my ability to sell tins of beans.
Of course, I appreciate that there is a recession on and nice guys who've never broken a law in their lives can't even find a job, so I should stop whining about my plight. The thing is, I'm not asking for special treatment; just a chance. When even bottom of the barrel employers won't take me on, the sort whose workforce is made up of incontinent geriatrics and the mentally handicapped (yes Asda and B&Q, I'm talking to you), what hope is there? And all the while, I know that I could make one phone call and be on my feet again with enough product to have the entire country calling in sick on Monday.
If lying on a job application to secure gainful employment would enable me to avoid relapsing into the only job I know, would that lie be justifiable, to serve the greater good? It's like that conundrum where a gunman takes your family hostage and orders you to fuck your mum or he'll shoot you all. (I often have that fantasy, though quite what it's got to do with this blog, I don't know.) Am I speaking any sense here, or am I just spouting disingenuous piffle, the equivalent of explaining that you were muffing a skank down the back stairs of Exodus so as to improve your cunnilingus technique and thus better pleasure your own girlfriend?
One place in which I have been economical with the truth – as we are entitled to be – is on my CV. This week I drew up a curriculum vitae that was probably more honest than most. It contained no lies, no embellishments and no fictitious qualifications. The only point at which the facts met with a concave mirror was when it came to explaining my whereabouts for the majority of 2009. After some consideration, I elected for the following summation: 'Earlier this year, I quit my job in order to travel the world and to devote time to writing a novel, a project I am on the verge of completing.' I didn't bother explaining that by 'the world' I meant the route between Craiginches and the Sheriff Court, but the statement was essentially true. When I phoned Careers Scotland to check that they'd received the CV I'd emailed them, the woman told me it was one of the best written CVs she'd ever seen and that I sounded like an interesting character to work with.
'Is this you just back from your travels then?' she asked breezily. At that point I broke down and confessed that the majority of my travels this year had taken place inside my 6 ft x 12ft cell.
When I was released from prison in 2006, I was frank about my convictions on every job I applied for, not out of an overriding obligation to tell the truth, but as an experiment to prove to myself that no one would have me. And I was right of course, and thus after a while I went back to working for myself, the only employer who doesn't discriminate against me. This time round, I've tried lying on a few job applications, also as an experiment to see if it will get me any further. It's what my fellow convicts – the few who have jobs – do, and they swear that no one ever checks up. Their employers may be gullible, but I imagine even they must get suspicious when their staff keep foning in sick for 12 months at a time. Thus far, lying on applications has gotten me as far as my previous post-prison experiment of telling the truth has – nowhere.
One of the other problems I face in getting a job is that were any prospective employer to Google my name, they would probably be brought straight to this page, and thus learn that not only do I have multiple convictions, but I lied on my job application and – most heinously of all – I like having my balls tickled during sex. They would also know that this lascivious, duplicitous reprobate has the potential to become the most eager, hard-working, lucid and erudite employee they have taken on, a credit to the company and to themselves. But what image do you think will be in their heads when they navigate away from The Trash Whore Diaries – me beaming as my Employee of the Month foto is taken, or me sniffing coke off my girlfriend's tits while screaming 'Oh that's it baby, tickle those cojones, tickle 'em real good!'
I guess, just as with Bill Clinton and all the other people out there who've ever found themselves in a sticky situation, I have only myself to blame. And if, when I tire of banging my head against brick walls, I go back to the job I know and love and get caught once more, I will also have only myself to blame. I like writing but I don't want to write about prison life any more. I like working but I don't want to work for anyone who is too prejudiced to give me a job anyway, so as Steve Stifler would say, 'Fuck those fuckers.'
I guess there's a third option that I have yet to explore: remain on the dole for the next seven years, by which time my convictions will have expired and I will no longer have to scribble porkies on job applications in a vain attempt to convince employers that I am the decent person that I actually am. Then there'll just be the small matter of explaining away the seven-year gap in my employment history. For now, while I ponder whether to lie or not to lie, to deal or not to deal, I will continue with my writing therapy, the blogging equivalent of attending Narcotics Anonymous and uttering the words 'My name is Kai and I'm an ex-drug dealer. I've been out of the game for 12 months now and god, I miss that bitch.'