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In his depiction, we drank an insane amount of Busch beer, argued incessantly, and watched every episode of The Real World at least three times. This was essentially accurate.

In another essay, he labeled me his nemesis. This was also essentially accurate.

He wrote a lot about that summer, but here’s a single sentence:

Perhaps this is why we were both enraptured by that summer’s debut of MTV’s The Real World, an artistic product that mostly seemed like a TV show about people arguing.

All memoirs lie, to some degree. But nothing in Chuck’s book is exactly false. I remember certain events slightly differently, but who’s to say if my memory is better than his? That’s not really the point.

No, it was something else that began to annoy me about his account. When I reflected on my years in college, I started to realize that I often told the same stories that he told in his books. Over time, I began to forget other details from the summer we lived together. My girlfriend lived with us, but she has somehow disappeared from my memories of that year. I had a job mowing lawns on campus, but I can’t recall anything notable about it. I took a Classical Mythology course that summer, but would probably lose a final Jeopardy! question about Prometheus.

However, I can remember with crystal-clear perfection the arguments that Chuck recounted in print—such as whether water has a discernible taste. (Shut up, it does not.)

Over time, Chuck’s memories of that summer began to supplant mine. His version eventually became my version. I believe my nemesis stole my memories.

This pissed me off for a long time.

Not long after the The Real World became a yearly television experiment, a fourteen-year-old boy from Washington named Chris was asked to participate in a scientific experiment. He was given four stories from his childhood, all culled from his relatives. After reading the stories, he was instructed to recall the events and write about them every five days, offering any details he could remember. If he didn’t recall anything, he was told to write “I don’t remember.”

One of the memories was about being lost in a shopping mall in Spokane, where his family often shopped. Though he’d been only five years old at the time, Chris remembered the event, describing the man who rescued him as “really cool.” As he retold the event, his memory became increasingly clear. He remembered being scared, and he remembered his mother scolding him for getting lost.

A few weeks later, Chris was told to rate how well he remembered the four childhood events on a scale from 1 to 11. (Apparently the researchers were fans of This Is Spinal Tap.) He rated them 1, 5, 8, and 10. The shopping mall story received the 8.

But the thing is, Chris never actually was lost in a mall. It was a story planted by cognitive psychologists, based on small narrative details supplied by his parents. Chris was part of a study that tested whether memories could be created by merely telling someone an event happened. It turns out they could.

The “Lost in a Mall” study was later reproduced on twenty-four people as part of a University of Washington study. One-fourth of them became convinced that they were also trapped in a mall as a child. Later, their family members all confirmed that none of them actually were.

Scene opens. A head is lying sideways on a couch. It occupies the entire screen. His eyes are closed. He might be dead.

Cut to firemen who are pounding down a door. “Fire! Fire! Get out!”

Cut back to the face. His eyes suddenly open, his head lifts. He reaches for his glasses, places them on his face, and runs toward the door.

“So that’s you? Why didn’t they get a real actor? Why do you look fat?” Those may sound like questions you’d ask a person, but Cynthia is speaking to the television, which at this moment is showing me being loudly awoken from a nap.

“Yes, I got to play myself in a video reenactment of my harrowing escape from a fiery inferno.”

“Why have you never told me this?” she asks.

“Because it actually was