Lynne Tillman - American Genius - A Comedy

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.

I may be the cause of waking some of them, but no one says anything, to me, at least, though lately I learned, to my piquant chagrin, that a man who was here briefly, whose face I can't remember, whom I never again thought about and who in a sense didn't exist for me, took exception to my telling him that his early morning showers woke me, which surprised me, since I was, then, entirely unaware that my complaining, with a dull annoyance, probably, that his showering at 6:30 a.m. in the bathroom next to which I slept, the old pipes rattling like thunder, was the cause of his abrupt departure.

Sometimes in the morning the cook is in a talkative mood, and her smile and her moderately stained teeth both disquiet and cheer me, so I might stay a while in her kitchen, its odors reminiscent of other times, many of which were probably unhappy, but whose smells are still redolent, the ordinary aromas saturate remote or vivid events bittersweetly. I wait for her to describe her life, but she is usually circumspect, having worked many years for other people, and probably she knows it's often better not to say anything, especially statements that admit to or betray dissatisfaction, that risk exposing her to censure, ridicule, or disrepute, especially comments that reek of bitterness, like a fart, though some might anyway nurse their foulness and he profligate with their bitter complaints. But an enemy's bitterness is never foul, an enemy's complaints are revelatory. Inadvertently, I've marched into enemy territory, unprotected on a street, encountering persons I hate who hate me, but I fought the instinct to run into a doorway or collapse onto the sidewalk, to pretend I was faint or about to vomit, and kept walking, as if I were fearless, which I'm not. Once, I strode past two treacherous dissemblers and waved, pretending there wasn't a great, mysterious enmity-enduring hatred runs like water, elusive in its origins, as Chekhov shows, more mysterious than its opposite, since in love we love ourselves, while a hater's chiasmatic relationship to the despised one and to herself or himself is not precisely self-hatred and more difficult to plumb. Between the dissemblers and myself, there grew a steep, eternal divide, which has a kind of magnificence, specifically, its venerability, and which, if we could have, if it were appropriate, if we lived in a different place among different people, we might fight about, physically, or go to war to settle, though it wouldn't ever be settled. Sometimes there is nothing to do other than resist or tight, but some people are locked inside their own wreckage and can't do either. Sometimes an individual must fight or flee, if able and not already irrevocably ruined or paralyzed by a past that can't be recovered, because there is no other possibility to survive than to fight, in some way, for what's needed or wanted, though some people would never fight or don't ever feel personally threatened, but when they do, when an ominous threat occurs, they might take up arms in some sense. And in some, these fears or emotions might be considered skin deep, for which they could find treatment. But skin lets us know that a surface often isn't superficial. Dermatologic diseases recognize no national or hemispheric boundaries, doctors confront a global dermatology, since an exotic disease might appear in the Congo and Los Angeles. There are resurgences, of syphilis, for one, and a peculiar diagnostic sign of unilateral congenital syphilis-called Higoumenakis' sign, discovered by its eponymous Greek doctor-is a raised or protruding collarbone. Serologic tests for syphilis can reveal an individual's immunologic condition, but not whether he or she is currently infected. Other conditions that indicate congenital syphilis are the saddle nose and Hutchinson's teeth, or peg-shaped upper incisors that are centrally notched. These teeth never occur outside of congenital syphilis. It was a Dr. Hutchinson who also noted opacities of the cornea and eighth nerve deafness that, together with the teeth, form the diagnostic Hutchinson triad. Less dramatic skin eruptions can become violently infected-around a cuticle, say, but there is no stigma attached to it, unless it goes untreated. A had tooth, untreated, its infection appearing first as an inflamed gum, might descend farther under the gum into the jaw and ultimately infect the brain and cause death. Many people died of tooth decay before the 20th century particularly and still do. Skin is not what it appears to an untrained eye, and for this I appreciate my dermatologist who carries within him, after much training and research, an ability to read texts I can't. Skin is a parchment for the body. He can spot something inimical to me when I can't and what appears benign may also be harmless for a time, but then a small spot on the cheek can grow into a murderous melanoma.