INVISIBLE MAN
33
out their realizing it. For instance, I have been carrying on a fight
with Monopolated Light
&
Power for some time now. I use their
service and pay them nothing at all, and they don't know it. Oh, they
suspect that power is being drained off, but they don't know where.
All they know is that according to the master meter back there in
their power station a hell of a lot of free current is disappearing
somewhere into the jungle of Harlem. The joke, of course, is that I
don't live in Harlem but in a border area. Several years ago (before
I discovered the advantages of being invisible) I went through the
routine process of buying service and paying their outrageous rates.
But no more. I gave up all that, along with my apartment, and my
old way of life: That way based upon the fallacious assumption that
I, like other men, was visible. Now, aware of my invisibility, I live
rent-free in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section of the
basement that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth cen–
tury, which I discovered when I was trying to escape in the night
from Ras the Destroyer. But that's getting too far ahead of the story,
almost to the end, although the end is in the beginning and lies far
ahead.
The point now is that I found a home-or a hole in the ground,
as you will. Now don't jump to the conclusion that because I call
my home a "hole" it is damp and cold like a grave; there are cold
holes and warm holes. Mine is a warm hole. And remember, a bear
retires
to
his
hole for the winter and lives until spring; then he comes
strolling out like the Easter chick breaking from its shell. I say all
this to assure you that it is incorrect to assume that, because I'm in–
visible and live in a hole, I am dead. I am neither dead nor in a
state of suspended animation. Call me Jack-the-Bear, for I am
in
a
state of hibernation.
My hole is warm and full of light. Yes,
full
of light. I doubt
if
there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and
I do not exclude Broadway. Or the Empire State Building on a
photographer'S dream night. But that is taking advantage of you.
Those two spots are among the darkest of our whole civilization–
pardon me, our whole
culture
(an important distinction, I've heard)
-which might sound like a hoax, or a contradiction, but that (by
contradiction, I mean) is how the world moves: Not like an arrow,
but a boomerang. (Beware of those who speak of the
spiral
of his-
