Faking it

From Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body:

Ripping through this harmless reverie, a pair of hands seized mine and started banging them together as if they were cymbals. I realised I was meant to be clapping in time to the beat and I remembered another piece of advice from my grandmother. ‘When in the jungle you howl with the wolves.’ I slapped a plastic grin on my face like a server at McDonald’s and pretended to be having a good time. I wasn’t having a bad time, I wasn’t having any time at all. No wonder they talk about Jesus filling a vacuum as though human beings were thermos flasks. This was the most vacuous place I’d ever been. God may be compassionate but he must have some taste.