Being in this place and in the hands of women ran counter to my main established refuge fantasy, wherein my father or uncle is a retired judge or captain of industry with a giant Victorian house in an area like Bucks County. He is there off and on. You can go to this house anytime and collapse there for as long as you like, no questions asked. There would be a staff. My father or uncle is powerful but also good, which is one reason the place is so safe. He has goodwill extending to him from far and near, either because his legal judgments were so wise and beloved or because of unspecified other benefactions touching everyone in that county. The food would be simple but good. There would be a farm attached to the house. My protector is very diversified economically, so that no depression would wipe him out. I could be a spinster if I wanted, live in my beautiful room, use the extensive library and the piano, or if I chose to I could moon around in my room and only come down for meals. There was no mother in this. My uncle, though, would be devoted to the memory of my mother. I once said to Denoon, after he denied he harbored any refuge fantasies whatsoever, I don’t believe you, but if this is true it’s because the thing you as a white male will carry to your grave is the feeling that you’re safe anywhere in the world, in essence, unless you have some particular physical handicap. I suppose my position was that everyone has refuge fantasies. I said Saying you have no refuge fantasies and even believing you don’t is not the same thing as really not having them in some way, shape, or form. He got mad. Was I saying he was lying? he wanted to know. Only partially, I said. Then god damn it, he said, I’ll tell you again I don’t and that I also doubt that any fully mature human being does and also that if you do, you belong to the one tenth of one percent of the female race who construct this refuge fantasy because the automatic marriage fantasy, which is the real refuge-fantasy people have until they try it, is repugnant to them somehow.