Last week I watched the most frightening horror movie I've ever seen. It was about three hours long, and, incredibly, it all unfolded live. I'm talking, of course, about the inauguration of Barack Obama. Yes it was inspiring, yes it was uplifting ... but it was also genuinely terrifying on a very human level, because just like you I was watching it with the terrible nagging suspicion that he might get shot at any moment.

At this point it's worth stating unequivocally that I've never wanted to see anyone being shot, thank you very much, whether they're a president or the world's biggest arsehole or both. And fortunately, such things rarely happen. But I've seen too many films, and far too much 24. I've been conditioned to almost expect it. So now, whenever the news cuts live to a politician - any politician - making a speech, I'm gripped by an eerie sense of dread and have to change the channel.

Obama's inauguration, however, was too big to miss. All that hope and expectation distilled into one man whose election has, at a stroke, reminded the world of all that is good and remarkable and inspiring and simply downright wonderful about the most exciting nation on earth: America. For the last eight years, watching America at work was like watching the scenes in Superman III where Superman, under the influence of red kryptonite, goes "bad" and grows stubble and gets drunk and starts vandalising the city and shouting at kids. He's only stopped when his geeky alter ego Clark Kent magically fights his way out from within, and stands blinking before him, in his nerdy suit and thick glasses. Evil Superman scowls, and the pair have a cathartic bust-up in a junkyard - at the end of which Evil Superman is finally vanquished. As a battered but unbowed Clark Kent gazes up at the heavens, the theme music swells, and he pulls his shirt open to reveal - ta da! - a fresh, clean Superman costume he'd been wearing underneath the whole time. Then he flies off and beats up Robert Vaughn or something, which is a shame because until then it had all been a pretty good metaphor for the redemptive spectacle of last November's election. And now it's just a silly action movie I probably shouldn't have mentioned in the first place.

Still, Obama really has been elevated to the position of Superman in many minds, to the point where it's hard to keep a check on expectations; we're all yearning for him to single-handedly save the world. Hearing him referred to as "President Obama" on the news still seems too good to be true, like waking up the morning after falling in love and wondering whether you're dreaming.

But we're also aware he isn't a Man of Steel; painfully aware too that the world contains its fair share of racists and paranoid gun nuts, which is why many of those tuning into the inauguration did so with a mixture of joy and trepidation.

Everyone I know had voiced the same dark fears, even in the face of constant updates from the news networks regarding the mammoth security operation surrounding the day. We were told Obama would be travelling in a mortar-proof vehicle thronged by secret service vans, each filled with about 200 tiny Jack Bauers, packed in like sardines; there were radio jammers to prevent the detonation of bombs and a magic experimental gas enveloping the Mall capable of transforming bullets into harmless glitter. Nonetheless, the entire thing unfolded like one of those scenes in a slasher flick when the heroine heads into a spooky old house on her own, and it all goes quiet, and you tense uncontrollably in your seat, knowing that at any moment someone in a hockey mask is going to burst from a cupboard wielding a threshing machine or something.

The rolling news networks, which rarely shy from exploitative gimmicks, clearly missed a trick by not offering an alternative commentary option in which a jittery, paranoid viewer accompanied proceedings with jittery, paranoid narration. "Here's the presidential motorcade now ... oh Jesus, he's stepping out! He's in the open! Where's security, goddammit? Look at the size of that crowd ... let's hope they frisked everyone on their way in. He's approaching the podium ... That bulletproof glass is a bit low for my liking. Oh Christ I can't watch." And so on.

When the ceremonial cannons went off following the swearing-in itself, you could actually hear buttocks clenching around the world. Did they really have to do that? It just felt downright mean. Because, quite frankly, the vast majority of people on this planet would be far happier if, for the remainder of his presidency, Obama only makes public appearances encased within a gigantic iron-and-concrete ball, addressing crowds via a Wi-Fi link to a nearby tannoy. And even then, it'd be more comforting to assume that this was, in fact, a bluff: that the concrete ball was empty, and the man himself was actually speaking to us from a deep underground bunker, ideally one situated on a different planet, made of cotton wool, in another universe altogether, unmarked on any map, somewhere round the back of our most peaceful and powerful collective dreamings.

This week Charlie got halfway through Self-Made Man, by Norah Vincent, a real-life story about a lesbian who disguised herself as a man for a year in a bid to discover what makes males tick: "It was described on the back as 'the most talked-about book of 2006', which was news to me, but it's fascinating nonetheless."