Secrets

Can you keep a secret? I can’t. To me, secrets are like viruses, I only need to be three feet away from someone before they fall from my mouth like middle aged drool. I never set out to divulge their details on purpose, it’s just that I have to purge my body of them, before they eat into my subconscious and terrorise my dreams.

Friends that know me well realise this and stay well away from sentences that begin “You can keep a secret can’t you?” Casual acquaintances and complete strangers though, have a habit of confiding in me at the drop of a hat. Perhaps to them I’m a sort of low-rent father confessor with time on his hands? It’s not that I’m at all religious. I suppose I’m what you’d call a lapsed agnostic. People often remark “I don’t know why it is, but I can tell you things I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone else.” If I’m being perfectly honest, this excites me. When they say this, I can’t resist probing a little deeper; in the hope I may be privy to some big juicy revelation.

A psychoanalyst might interpret this as an attempt to fill a void in my own unremarkable life – where I become a kind of ‘secrets magpie’ collecting bright and shiny confidences from anyone who’ll let me have them. The frustrated actor in me also likes playing the role of ‘considered listener,’ or ‘covert interrogator ‘where I lure them in with invented secrets of my own in an attempt to disarm and relax.

I shouldn’t really be telling you this, because by doing so, I’m blowing my own cover, which is foolhardy to say the least. I could never be a spy anway. I wouldn’t last five minutes. Signing the official secrets act would be akin to signing my own death warrant. While Agent X was whispering the secret co-ordinates of some death laser I’d be flicking through my double agents address book seeing who I could ring first.

A mole, now that would be more up my street - playing the part of an unassuming nobody who infiltrates the highest echelons of some evil organisation with a catchy acronym. I can see the newspaper headlines now – UNDERCOVER JOURNALIST EXPOSES THE SECRETS OF JOBCENTRE PLUS. That reminds me, I must take the complete ‘Spooks’ box set back to the library before I get another fine.