Tender effusions can just as often mask deadness of feeling as express genuine affection, which is why my kneejerk response to such outpourings is usually one of quiet suspicion. I'm constantly scrutinizing others for the first tiny signs of waning interest that will inevitably result in total estrangement. Since it makes me feel better to assume that my neuroses are merely commonplace expressions of ordinary human weakness, I've concluded on very little evidence that everyone feels insecure around everyone else at all times and in all situations. It doesn't matter how long people have known each other or how deep the relationship is, everyone is at every moment half-waiting for the other shoe to drop, to be dismissed with a wave or cruelly reassessed, to see a previously energized connection mysteriously sapped of vitality and reduced to perfunctory gestures and empty smiles. People feel this deep down and what shows on the surface are these oversized expressions of sublimated hysteria, grasping demands for reassurance. This is infantile but it never ends. Of course this is hilarious when it happens to other people and profoundly distressing when it happens to me.