Events, dear boy, events

I have almost def­in­itely, almost cer­tainly, come to the con­clu­sion that his life is far more inter­est­ing than mine.

I know this for a fact, because he keeps telling me — in not espe­cially well-disguised terms — how very inter­est­ing his life is. I get the feel­ing that he wants and expects me to be impressed.

So I pre­tend to be impressed. I smile and nod. Smile and nod. I tilt my head slightly to one side, as if I’m listen­ing intently. While I’m doing it, I know full well that I look like a puppy dog lap­ping up every word spoken by its mas­ter or mis­tress. I remem­ber how he often used to tell me that I was a good listener. Why do I become so com­pli­ant so quickly? Kill me now, please.

The only thing that I can’t work out is whether he does this because he simply can’t help him­self, or if it some­how does won­ders for his self-esteem to incess­antly talk about him­self and his excit­ing life or, more obliquely, whether he thinks he’s doing me some sort of favour in encour­aging me towards his path of right­eous­ness. Maybe it’s his big-hearted and bene­vol­ent idea of social work — the hope that I too might dis­cover a life as excit­ing and won­der­ful, if I hear all about his in excru­ci­at­ing and tit­il­lat­ing detail.

Well, for your/his inform­a­tion, my life is excit­ing. It’s just that it’s excit­ing in a quiet, reserved and prob­ably ter­ribly Eng­lish way. It’s excit­ing in an over-sensitive, intro­ver­ted way. Some­times it’s even excit­ing in a men­tally unbal­anced way. And I don’t talk about it much. I don’t like to brag — I’m far too shy for brag­ging, as he knows — but if he had even the slight­est ink­ling of what goes on in (what he prob­ably con­siders to be) my rather piti­ful excuse for a day-to-day exist­ence, his jaw would hit the floor in amazement.

Of course, I will grant him the con­ces­sion that, yes, my life is almost com­pletely in my head these days. That is a little wor­ry­ing. Maybe I should get out more. Maybe he should stay in more. I don’t know.

But inside this mind, some­where or other, it’s a seat-of-the-pants roller­coaster ride filled with twists and turns and thrills and spills. That’s what he sin­gu­larly fails to appre­ci­ate. And that’s why, increas­ingly, I want to shout at him and shock him into silence.

He would be amazed, if only he listened for a moment. But he isn’t amazed, because he never listens. And he never listens, because he’s too busy talk­ing about him­self and his excit­ing life. Circle. Fin­ished. End. Pause. Restart.

Aside: I’ve wanted to say all this for weeks, but I hate myself for it. I hate get­ting hate­ful, but some­times hate­ful is how I have to be. That’s a lot of hate, as you can tell. But at least it’s cath­artic. Hopefully.