A scandal

Looking over his life, X is embarrassed, he tells me, and sorry for everything he’s said, done and felt. He now realises he’s basically stupid. He’s in one of those moods, he says, when his whole life seems shameful, as if he’s an absurd interloper who has no place here, wherever that is, he says). And of course this thought is shameful in itself, he says, it’s shameful that he should have to feel this way, yet it’s right and proper, because he’s a scandal, a scandal against nature.