No one had any faith in me but W., he reminds me. No one expected anything; I was never a figure to watch. Quite the contrary, W. says, they tried to ignore me, and I, sensing that, was forever placing myself in the field of their attention. 'There you were', says W., 'bobbing up and down, and everyone doing their best to ignore you'. In the end, what was there left but for me to skulk off to my room?
'You became a skulker', W. says, 'and that's what you are still, though you've long since given up getting anyone's attention'. What would I have been if it hadn't been for him, W. wonders. Has he helped me? Hindered me? Has he prevented something from running its course? It's not as if I am waiting in darkness to make my return, W. notes. But perhaps something's waiting in me.
Why was he drawn to me?, W. wonders. What was it about me, when there were so many others? He has certain instincts, W. says. He's sure of certain things. But in this case? It's not that I'll achieve anything, W. says, he knows that. Everyone does. But there's something about the extent of my inability. He wonders whether I am an entirely new kind of failure. Whether there is something symptomatic about me, from which could be deduced great truths about our age.
How is it I've got anywhere in life?, W. wonders. How was I able to make any progress at all? Somehow, the world parted for me. Somehow there were openings, opportunities. I thrived, in my own way, though no one else could call it thriving. Of course I couldn't be called a success. That least of all. But the way in which I failed … It's enticing, says W. It drew him to me, he's no doubt of that. I'm like a living car-crash, W. says. A catastrophe entirely unto myself. What process is completing itself in me? What world is coming to an end?
Sometimes W. wonders if I am a living allegory, even a kind of warning. My life is a cautionary tale, or it should be. But who is there left to warn? I've outlived any kind of decency, W. says. We both have. Who could understand my significance except W.? And even he's beginning to lose sight of it. 'Your shamelessness', says W. 'Your laziness. Your inability to see anything through. Your endless appetite for celebrity gossip'. Towards what does it point?
The eschatologist would see me as a sign. 'You're a sign of the End', says W., 'of the very end'. History has run amok. The skies have turned red and the oceans are boiling away. 'And you are writing post after post in your corner'. Is this what it's come to? Are things really this bad?
It was worse when I wanted attention, W. says. When I bobbed up and down. And now? It as though someone had flicked a switch. The disaster is ON. 'It's never going to end, is it? You're never going to finish'. And I'll drag W. down with me. W., who must have wanted to be dragged down, he says. Who must have wanted to hang out with the Son of Perdition.
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