PHILIP ROTH
169
I can't believe anything is better. An end to all the forbidden ele–
ments and clandestine aspects. To all those insane fuckers and their
malicious perversions . To all the little people who get where they
want by attacking me. One's mother, for example. Detachment,
which I begin to get an inkling of watching you . It isn't
confusing
here. It's daylight. I said , "I think we should go to Colorado and be–
come legally brother and sister. You can apparently become any–
thing legally in Colorado. Men marry men and people marry their
dogs out there, I hear. You would be happy ifI were your sister. We
could give serious assistance when needed, and fuck each other with
added spice . Better still, you could just adopt me. Please take me to
Colorado. " He said, "Yes, Colorado sounds like the state to live in ."
He has a terrific face, good taste, is beautifully-spoken, elegant, re–
fined. So intense. In those good old days when I sat across from him
and he was so funny. Holding my muff with his face buried into it in
that terrific hat he wears . He said to me, "Miss, you evidence a
strong desire to stay here overnight." Living twenty times the size of
life. Creeping around in the morning seeing how dismal I look from
the slant of light through his bedroom shutters. Some old lady who's
been through everything twice. I kissed him sleeping. "Thanks," I
said, "for making sure I can't die ."
The sun can be enormous in the morning. I loved leaving his
building with sunglasses on . I felt like a hooker and I think the cab
driver thought I was because he didn't speak to me. Cab drivers
don't like hookers, I guess; don't know why . I'd go home and call him
seven hundred times. My fire department. "I miss you unreasonably ,
enormously, and I only just left. I feel hungry to send you some–
thing. I am in the grips of enormous good fortune . We are, I know ,
such different people. I am all cowardice, dragging old chains, and
you are so unfraudulent and brave. I don't even know how you got
that way. I could never do it. But I will. I will!" Well, I had a time
and that time is over. With men there seems to be a warranty . You
get thirty days or thirty months, and after that it's too late . But what
about the long pull? Shortchanged in the long pull. He asked for a
lot and I did a lot of what he suggested . I think all any woman or any
person is afraid of is losing someone or being cuckolded. I read books.
He said, "The artist is the custodian of the fantasy life of people, and
the fantasies of people determine everything." It was a reason for
reading no one mentioned before . He hands me
Harper's Magazine,
which has to be the most deadly piece of writing ever calculated to
