I entertain that abhorrent and impermissible idea wholly for myself, amusing myself with its horror, as she goes about her work. She cares for my skin, having different thoughts from those required by the job she is doing, her hands performing routine actions which leave her mind free, and she may not want anyone, especially her clients, to know what she is thinking, maybe about the glowering man waiting outside this small room for her, wanting to date and fuck her, or she may be reliving carnal scenes in which she dominates the strong man, sits astride him, her well-tended skin glistening with sweat, or she may be concocting a plan for her future, since people often desire a future different from their present, which may be painful or lackluster. It's better not to complain in many situations, servants know this, and everyone is sometimes a servant, even the very wealthy can become servants, insecure in love and fearful of rejection. Louis-Ferdinand Celine said that ten percent of galley slaves were volunteers, because people want masters, since existence is painful, though no one wants to die, or very few want to die, and it's often better not to say anything at all. I don't remember mentioning my dread and anxiety of the gray camp and bunk to my counselors, though I might have after lunch, when I tried but couldn't nap on the rough brown woolen blanket, which irritated my skin, desperately waiting for the amnesia of sleep, sorrowfully longing for mail from my mother who didn't write, because she expected letters from me first. I had learned to write but had no familiarity with the protocols of correspondence and didn't answer her initial letter, and I didn't think about it, or I can't remember what I thought, since I didn't know what to think, and didn't know the dangers of unawareness. But when I was asked to steal the howling pin of the enemy team on the last day of Color War by the head counselor of the team to which I was assigned and which, like my family, religion, and sex I didn't choose, having heard that anyone who is captured in enemy territory will be thrown into jail, I dropped to the ground and wailed, No, please, I don't want to go to jail, please don't make me, please. The head counselor suddenly, and only then, comprehended my chronic, active distress and said, to quiet me, that she'd ask my cousin, the one I haven't seen since my favorite uncle died, to do it. Soon my cousin sneaked across enemy territory, risking capture and jail, and succeeded, making her the hero and me the coward. But her cowardly, brutal older brother didn't go into the textile business, as mine didn't, and I didn't, though I often wish I had, because I would like to be around fabrics, examine patterns, and study threads rather than be around many other things, in an endeavor at which my uncle and father were successes, then they weren't, and which compounded my father's sense of innate failure and made it nearly perfect. I can remember my uncle trying to cheer him up, urging him to accompany him on vacations, to lose himself far away from the bolts of beautiful fabrics of their own design that increasingly lay unsold on the deep shelves in their stockroom. The stockboy, Junior, whose skin was a deep brown, who was muscular and short, shorter than my father-my father often rested his arm around junior's shoulders-had taken the bolts off the truck, unpacked and set them on the long, deep shelves in the stockroom, and when potential customers visited, when business was good, a phrase I heard often, a few words belying their heft-business is good-Junior stalwartly carried the bolts to the showroom, and my father would sometimes slap him on the back and joke with him, but I don't know where Junior went after the business failed. I remember him, indistinctly and distinctly, especially that he was called a stockboy, had an impressively compact body, a round, brown face, a seemingly cheerful demeanor, and wore colorful shirts, maybe of my father's material, when he was not wearing a T-shirt, denim jeans, or some other uniform for manual labor. I wondered what he thought of my father, his boss, when I was young, but I never asked, and then he disappeared, so I suspected my father and uncle of giving him away, like our cat and dog, but instead my father said, We had to let junior go, because business is bad.
In Tutankhamen's tomb, there was a linen shirt, which is now housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where I lived briefly during a period when I was also among strangers, though some of them became friends, lovers, or enemies, but I don't know what happened to most of them. I had no cat in London, but in Amsterdam, where I stayed longer, I found a stray, and then found homes for her and her sole surviving kitten when I left for the place I call home. The earliest textiles had pictures of animals on them; there are images of animals being tamed on Byzantine silks of the 6111 or 7th century, and they are not sentimental, though today animals on clothes would be considered sentimental, any animal on a shirt, cup or postcard is in some way sentimental, though everyone loves their animals and their farts. If I were to tell the story of my dog, how she was adopted from a shelter when she was pregnant, how my father disliked her-my mother demanded we keep her anyway-how he came to love her, because of a special feat she performed, how we found homes for every one of her puppies, if my story included the dog's many exceptional acts, or a description of her tail twirling in gleeful circles as she ran toward me on the grass, it might seem a sentimental story. But I feel worse about the fate of my dog than about anything else in my life over which I had some control, however puny, since most of the significant things in life can't be controlled, and about them I had no choice, though in retelling them, I could also be accused of sentimentality, and I expect such accusations. Still, I never wear clothes that have pictures of animals on them.
Altobasseo was a special, luxurious velvet, made by the Genoese, who also developed a way of crimping the threads of the pile, and used gold thread, too. Velvet has varying heights of pile and touching it is pleasurable, though I haven't worn it with much pleasure since I was a child, when a black velvet dress and jacket, with white lace trim at the neck and sleeves, felt urgent to buy and wear. I was aware, then, that the design of the dress was old-fashioned, but I wanted it anyway, since it might announce to my circumscribed world that I wasn't of it but another one, which others couldn't inhabit or touch. Since then, I have kept small pieces of cloth cut from cotton T-shirts and other favorite clothes I wore as a child that shredded from wear and tear and nearly fell off me, evidencing the demise of their function, but which I never wanted to stop wearing or throw away. Similarly, I regretted losing a tan, when I didn't worry about the damage the sun could do, cancer, aging, or have much concern about my skin, except for the many heat rashes and irritations that flared from being clothed in rough wool sweaters or leggings during the winter. The redness and the stickiness caused by one moist inner thigh clinging to its twin was awful, and I don't now know why this torture, which is how I experienced it, continued day after cold day, and why I was unable to convince my mother of my discomfort, when its effect, the unsightly rashes, should have been apparent to her naked eye.
When I awaken, I anticipate, often with foreboding, the others at breakfast, like the demanding man, in front of whom I might say the wrong thing, declaim vociferously, and for no reason expose a passion I don't necessarily feel but which is horn in opposition to the presence or even the undeniable fact of the existence of someone like the demanding man, who calls forth in me adamant, unwanted feelings, or I might also let out a malodorous fart. If something slid off my tongue or from my body that shouldn't have, which I felt I had to say or about which it appeared I had no choice, especially when I have just awakened-I once heard that the French don't prosecute people who commit crimes of passion twenty minutes after waking-I would be embarrassed, so I malinger in bed, listening to the radio, which can be turned on and off. I often turn it on and off, simply because shutting off those voices, disposing of the news and others' incessant opinions, is pleasant. On occasion, I have missed breakfast, malingering maliciously, turning on and off the radio many times, but breakfast is regularly the best meal of the day, and if I remain in bed, if I haven't merely overslept, I ruminate anxiously about how I will pass the time until lunch and whether I will become hungry and regret my decision. Time passes, quickly or slowly, but always independently of me, while I turn over and over in bed, caught in my sheets, my pillow a triumph of regrets, as I fret about avoiding people, missing breakfast, and the consequent long, hungry aftermath until lunch. I may also be checked up on. But I like breakfast best and can also feel touched by the inevitable presence of other people who, like me, have traversed a night of deep sleep, wakefulness, ecstatic or conflicted dreams.