Overpraise

Overpraise is the key, W. says. We should only speak of each other to others in the loftiest terms, he’s always been insistent on this. These are dark times, after all. No one’s safe. Look what happened to him recently! These are the last days, W.says. No one could think otherwise. It’s all shit, it’s all going to shit. It always will have already been shit, I say, laughing, as I take a photo of him underneath a sign saying ‘end times’.

Overpraise is all we have, says W., that and sticking together. We have to be a pact, a phalanx who are prepared to die for another. I’d die for you, says W., quite serious. What about me – would you die for me? That’s what friendship demands, says W. Of course, I would never say I would die for him, says W. He knows me. I’m incapable of that kind of sincerity. Or love. I’m incapable of love, W.’s always been insistent on that.

In a moment, I would break the phalanx and be off somewhere else. I’d betray him in a moment, W. says. Whereas he’s always been very careful to overpraise me to others, he says. You have to. There are enemies everywhere, he says. I have enemies and so does he. And then there’s the whole system, says W., which creates enemies instead of friends and enemies of friends. Betrayal is his greatest fear, says W.