I'm filling in my esteem indicators, I tell W. Oh yes, what are they? He could do with a laugh, says W. How about humiliation indicators? Or soiling yourself indicators?, says W. Write about the history of your humiliations, says W. Write about dragging the rest of us down. Write about spoiling it for everyone, because that's what you've done.
Every chance I've been given, I've not only shown myself a failure, W. says, but redefined the parameters of what failure means. I've destroyed those parameters, W. says, like some great marauding wildebeest. I've exhausted his good will, W. says, and the good will of everyone.
Take his attempt to create a new kind of intellectual forum, W. says. What happened there? It went along fine for a number of years, everyone was impressed and pleased to be involved, and then what happened? I invited you to speak, didn't I?
How could he dream of what happen next?, W. says. I antagonised everyone, he says, him first of all as the organiser of the event, and my co-presenters next, by destroying any intellectual credibility the event might have had. It was a travesty, W. says.
It was as though I'd become a kind of mirror in which everyone could contemplate their own horror. They understood what they were becoming, W. says. They understood where the world was heading, and it was all too much. In your direction, that's where the world was heading!, W. says. Everyone knew it! Everyone sensed it!
And take our participation in a collective blogging enterprise, W. says, you ruined that as well, didn't you? Go on, remind me what happened. Tell me in your own words. He had to sort it out as usual, W. remembers. He had to sort out the mess I'd created.
You single-handedly brought the whole thing down, W. says, with your incessant, obsessive and ridiculous writing. You drove everyone crazy with your writing mania, W. says.
No one knew what to do, so they left it to him, as usual, to handle me. He had to get the message through, W. says, that I'd spoilt it for everyone, and especially him. He had to stop me somehow, which was well nigh impossible.
Sometimes, W. feels like Dr Frankenstein, unleashing a monster on the world. Sometimes, though, he wonders if he's the monster, and that I might be the diabolical inventor and destroyer of all things, including the world.
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