 Why might the narrator feel that he is "so dirty, so very dirty that I could never get clean if I bathed every hour for the rest of my life"?
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I admit it: I didn't know if I was coming or going—but I know that if I stuck to the old man, I was a comer ... even if he was a goner! The golden Moon and the silver ship, symbols of greed. I came alongside and carefully started to lever the old man loose, one finger at a time. If a half dozen winos in Seattle hadn't helped me get them loose, Doc and I would have been wanted for the murder of a North American Mountie. All my great-grandfathers have it. I told the human no, thanks, and walked Doc toward the flophouse three doors down. It had happened a few times right after I first found him, but now it was worse. I tried not to think about it and helped Doc through the fly-specked flophouse doors. "Had a quarter all along and yet you Martian me down to twenty cents." You don't have any quarter, not if I say so. There was a wino singing on the left, a wino praying on the right, and the door didn't have any lock on it. My shaggy scalp still smarted from the alcohol I had stolen from a convertible's gas tank to get rid of Doc's and my cooties. Lucky that I never needed to shave and that my face was so dirty, no one would even notice that I didn't need to. I stared at a jagged cut-out nude curled against a lump of dust and lint, giving it an unreal distortion. I was bent double, but I got from the floor to the chair and found my notebook and orb-point in my hands. I found I couldn't focus both my mind and my eyes through the electric flashes of agony, so I concentrated on Doc's voice and trusted my hands would follow their habit pattern and construct the symbols for his words. They told everything I needed to know to become the most powerful man in the Solar Federation. When I got to thinking it was just a dream and that I was dragging this old man around North America for nothing, I remembered who he was. I remembered that he was somebody very important whose name and work I had once known, even if now I knew him only as Doc. Pain was a pendulum within me, swinging from low throbbing bass to high screaming tenor. He shut up at last and I laid him down again and put his arm back across his face.
 Because he unknowingly feels debasement in desiring something material.
 Because he is homeless and unclean.  Because he has cooties.  Because his addiction prevents him from bathing.  Because he unknowingly feels debasement in desiring something material.