It seems to me that everyone I knew in those days acted by a code chosen from books and films—or not even a code but a direct emulation of a specific character who was meant to be identified and attributed. No gesture was unselfconscious or undirected, all were modeled and formed with purpose. The alarming thing is that we were so obvious, that we all did it so badly, except Sam, who did it all too well. There was no cigarette lit, no itch scratched without a full awareness of the audience. If there was no audience, we rehearsed. If there was no prospect of an audience, we did nothing.

I have an insidious conviction that between the onset of puberty and the age of thirty, people, like the hypothetical painting in the desert, do not exist without someone looking at them. I didn’t. After thirty, I suppose we become a corporeal composite of what all our viewers have witnessed, a kind of community gelatin.

All those hours, alone in my peaked room, were spent in the grave. If I wasn’t asleep, I was miserable, lying in furious frustration beneath the skylight, not moving except to smoke. If I read it was to drown in somebody else’s life, or with the bald intention of using the information in some future conversation. I could never take it for long, being alone, and I would be forced outside by the need to be somebody, which was only possible in the presence of other people.

But now the goldfish and the gleam of the clean sink, and the four people who come here once a month or so, are enough. I thought once of getting a cat, but decided it might interfere too much. It might make demands, need something at a moment when I wasn’t in the mood to give it. Breakfast an hour early, maybe, or to be let out or in.

There is still for me a novel joy in the minor decisions that I make with no regard to any inclination but my own: What will I have for breakfast? Three cookies, two bananas, and a chocolate bar. What will I have for supper? If I don’t feel like it, I won’t eat. I may wait until bedtime and eat a bowl of laxative cereal and a peanut butter sandwich. Or maybe at three in the morning I’ll get up without disturbing anyone except the goldfish, who can’t complain. Even if they view my late-night visitation as a disturbance, they only move their mouths silently. I’ll fry an egg and make toast and hot cocoa and cuddle myself, with a book propped up in front of me as I eat. I read at every meal. What will I wear? Something comfortable. Am I getting fat? I don’t know, it doesn’t matter, the goldfish won’t complain.