I’m the kind of guy who only ever thinks of himself – I don’t actually care about other people at all! Sometimes I pretend that I do, just to impress someone or other, but I don’t really. It’s all just an act. When I say that I only ever think of myself this doesn’t mean I necessarily like myself however because very often I don’t. Sometimes I like myself and sometimes I don’t, but that’s neither here nor there; my job – as I see it – is to look after myself and take care of my needs and that’s all that matters. Life is simple, as far as I’m concerned. It’s simple, but not always the way I’d like it to be. I’m angry about the corrupted patriarchy, for example. I’m always so angry about the corrupted patriarchy. In my youth I was too frightened to ever stand up to them but I was angry about them all the same. I still am. On the outside I am meek and pleasant whilst on the inside I’m a seething mass of toxic resentment. I have a lot of insight into my own psychology, you say. I am well known for that – I am well known for that to myself at any rate. I am generally well known to myself, except when I’m not, I suppose – which is never. Nearly mad with fear, I run out of the room only to find myself face-to-face with my own worst fears. There is no way out, no way to pretend that it isn’t happening, which is what I usually do. Which is what I always do when I can get away with it. “Pretend it isn’t happening,” I tell myself urgently, “keep on pretending that it isn’t happening!” I am nearly blind with terror, I no longer know what I am doing. That’s what my life is like you see, so what am I supposed to do about it? What else can you do apart from what you can do? I’d be the first to admit that my life is both absurd and stupid. I won’t deny it – one minute I am exultant about some trivial bit of nonsense or other, the next I’m in the very depths of the darkest despair over something that doesn’t matter at all! That’s the way of the world however and I for one am not going to say anything about it. The world is always the way that it is, that being the way of the world. That being the way of things generally. One minute I’m wildly exuberant over some whimsicality, the next I’m roaring with fear, running for my life down corridors that go on forever, pursued by demons of my own imagining. One moment I’m speaking a language I myself have made up and the next I’m incandescent with impotent rage. And it’s all hidden safely away on the inside, as I have already said. On the outside, I betray nothing of this inner turmoil – my face is a carefully composed mask of polite disinterest. “What’s it like to be you?” you ask, holding a microphone up into my face, “What is that like?” I’m stuck for words though. I really don’t know what to say.
