February ended with an odd remark from Charlie.
“I searched online,” he said, “and found no evidence that you have ever written anything.”
In one sense this was reassuring. I write under an assumed name, after all. Yet it was also unsettling, because the remark revealed that Charlie had been looking. If he were ever to find my work, he might not appreciate how frequently he appears in it.
He forgets that I am blocked from viewing his Instagram page, though that obstacle proved easily solved with a hastily created fake profile.
“Some people prefer to remain anonymous,” I told him.
Charlie cannot understand this. The French boy dreams of fame and dabbles in anything that might propel him towards it. I, on the other hand, prefer the safety of obscurity.
My friend David, a successful author, has written under a nom de plume for decades. As he once explained, “If I knew a book would succeed, I’d happily publish it under my real name. But writers are haunted by failure. Imagine the shame of having that failure attached to the real you.”
I have never had the heart to tell him that his real identity can be discovered by anyone, anywhere in the world.
Charlie might have uncovered my secret already, had he possessed a little more information. A few weeks ago I typed the titles of several of my stories into Google. To my alarm, an AI assistant suggested that they might have been written by me. It had linked three titles to Spotify playlists of the same name on my profile. I quickly changed the account name, but the episode left me with an uneasy realisation: artificial intelligence will always be a few steps ahead of us.
Anonymity, it turns out, is fertile ground for paranoia.
Charlie later recommended that I watch a short film on YouTube.
“It is about a writer with a mental block,” he said, “who rents a summer house and becomes obsessed with a young boy on the beach.” Then he gave me a mischievous wink. “Watch it. It is very you.”
The film was Belgian. It followed Louis, an ageing writer who becomes fixated on Tommy, a young man who visits the beach each day with his girlfriend. The obsession rekindles Louis’s imagination, and in the novel he begins to write he conveniently drowns the girlfriend, leaving Tommy entirely to himself. At least, I think that is what happens. The ending leaves you uncertain whether the events belong to fiction or reality.
Charlie was right. It was “very me”, in the sense that I often begin with a person and build a story around them. What Charlie did not know was how close that description came to the truth. I found myself wondering whether he had somehow hacked into my laptop.
“Why did you search for my work?” I asked.
He hesitated.
“Well,” he said eventually, “I am curious about what you are writing—and whether it is good.”
That was the dilemma. Long ago I realised that I depend on acceptance for survival, and that my writing might reveal far more of my inner life than I would ever willingly confess.
“I’m not sure I could face the shame of criticism,” I said. “Or the possibility of being exposed as incompetent.”
It was meant as an offhand remark, yet it revealed more than I intended.
I half expected reassurance, perhaps even encouragement. None came.
“I suppose we are all afraid that people might see our flaws,” Charlie said thoughtfully. Then he smiled.
“Except, of course, when you do not have any. Like me.”
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 