If you need someone to go into orbit around you—to prop up whatever image of yourself you’re trying to maintain — I’m your man. I have a lifetime of training in that art. I can intuit the persona you’re trying to be, and I’ll improvise exactly the alter-ego most useful for pulling it off.

But sadly — and inconveniently — beneath that useful exterior, I can’t stop being who I actually am. I’ll accommodate you up to a point. But past that point, I’ll break character and act as my unalloyed self — and neither of us will like that at all.