The Super Apostles' Buffing

In 2 Corinthians 12 Paul continues his full speech, in which he has adopted a persona to beat the so-called super apostles at their own game. He cleverly subverted the boasting of the super apostles by boasting about the greater sufferings and indignities he has suffered for Christ. Now he takes this further to a dangerous point, where he might risk tipping over into actual boasting as it is harder to establish a clear distance between himself and his fool's speech. Speaking of these visions more directly in his full speech would be unfitting and would easily seem like actual boasting. So Paul chooses to relate the vision that he received in the third person, speaking of a man in Christ, while clearly