If you met anyone as whiny, as disobliging and ego centric as the average narrator of a novel in real life you’d find them unbearable. You’d give them about five minutes before you excused yourself to get another drink, or moved to a different carriage, or asked to be transferred to an alternative department so you didn’t have to work with them anymore.

I’m not like that.

I love life. I love being alive.

Sometimes I don’t. That’s not unusual. You don’t always love being alive. Nobody does.

I’m an actor.

That’s just something I wanted to get out of the way at the beginning.

It is also why I will speak to you in present tense. The silliest tense. And also the closest we come to talking directly to God.

I will have little choice over what I choose to include or omit.

I will be completely known.

At the moment, for instance, I am waiting to cross the road to meet my friend Claudio at a Middle Eastern restaurant called Indigo Mood.…