“What?” I squawked, genuinely surprised. It was the week of Thanksgiving. We were meant to be discussing favorite trimmings alongside the turkey, not armed robbery. “So you've lost everything. Keys, wallet, phone, etc?”

“No, he just took the phone. He said give me your phone or I'll shoot you.”

In his mind the story ended here, but for me it fell short of so much. “Tell me every detail. It’s the most exciting thing you've said in weeks!” Realizing my voyeuristic delight had unsubtly revealed itself, I added: “Exciting in a bad way, obviously.”

He obliged me. “I was listening to music. I opened my gate, went to the mailbox, heard it close again, looked up, the guy goes "give me your phone I'll shoot you." I said "pardon". I was stunned so he said it again. I'm like "fine" and took it out and he kind of ripped it from me. Then he was gone.”

I was amazed. I had never felt unsafe in his neighborhood or in its surrounding areas. He lives in Bed-Stuy. His nearest subway stop is Nostrand Avenue where the food choices are a fried chicken lover’s delight and the vibe is jostling and purposeful. There’s nothing particularly endearing about this strip of fried food joints, the Laundromat, the tired-looking liquor store and the stream of pedestrians and traffic, but I was fond of the streets further north where his apartment is snugly nestled. Stray in that direction and you’ll find the mood changes; it grows sedate, relaxed and more salubrious. The streets are broad and exquisitely sleepy. The neighborhood is gloriously settled and at ease with itself. Somehow it feels less gimmicky than Manhattan. Even the trees ooze age and wisdom. In the past I had wanted to perch on a step, sip my coffee and become a part of the scenery, although perhaps that wasn’t so wise hearing his story.

“I don't think he ran away fast,” my ex was saying.

“Thank god he didn’t want your wallet too,” I was trying to console him, but he was still stuck on pace.

“He must have walked fast.”

“Where’s the mailbox?” I was trying to picture the scene with limited success. I lived more centrally and I didn’t own two cats that liked to jump on people while they were sleeping, so we had almost always stayed at mine while we dated.

“Right in front of the apartment.”

“Did he walk up the steps?”

“No, it's before the steps.” He explained the set-up. “The landlord used to have a slot for everyone by the top of the steps, but now there are separate slots for all three of us at the bottom.”

“So did you have any mail?”

“No, if I hadn’t gone to the mailbox this wouldn’t have happened.” He paused for a moment before adding:
“You're the first person to ask me that question, it's a good one.”

“Well it adds a whole new layer of pathos to your story.”

It was too bleak a thought to linger over so we discussed whether he should move neighborhoods and if so, where? We drifted on to more random topics. We were flitting all over the place, discussing work, weather, whether it’s ever acceptable to wear socks during sex. And because he was no longer talking about it, not wanting to dwell on it, I was certain that he would move.
 

The woman had parked her shopping cart several yards away and was rummaging through the nearby garbage cans, gathering bottles and whatever other odd pieces of trash she found useful or interesting. I was gaping at her unabashedly, since, as I said, the reality of the situation wasn’t really registering. This seems to happen to me frequently: Reality doesn’t quite register—but when it does, suddenly and without warning, it crushes me.

Like right now, when to my surprise, the woman stopped, looked right at me, and spoke. Her teeth were black but her eyes were sharp and intelligent. I pulled my headphones out, embarrassed to have fallen into such a solipsistic trance. She smiled: “Have you been downtown yet?”

I stared at her, struggling to understand.

“The protest downtown,” she said. “You look like you’d fit right in.”

The protest. It was September 30, 2011. I’d heard about Occupy Wall Street, of course, but I was startled to hear myself being cast in this light. My hair and beard were overgrown, certainly—after all, at that very moment I was waiting for an appointment with my barber—but had things really gotten so dire? I tried to smile back at her as I shook my head “no.” In all likelihood, she meant it as a compliment, but my vanity was wounded. I’d like to imagine that my beard is much more grand, more regal, than the scruffy growth on some young protester’s chin. Not knowing what to say—how to defend myself, how to explain my extreme self-importance to this poor old woman—I fell silent, and eventually she shuffled back toward her cart.

I got up and hurried off to my appointment with the barber. Obviously it was long overdue.

*****

Several weeks later, on my way home one night, I got stuck behind a man on the 8th Street subway stairs with a bag on his back that was large enough to fit a small piano. Oversized bags of any kind in Manhattan are a pet peeve of mine: Rolling suitcases that drag like dead tails behind the crisscrossing hordes of office workers in Midtown; giant strollers with enough pockets for a baby and its mother to live out of for a month; piles of shopping bags so vast they take up two seats and the entire floor on a subway car. I loathe all of these things. But, for some reason—my arbitrary, peevish mood, perhaps—this guy with the enormous bag was more than I could stand. He was blocking the entire staircase, teetering slowly back and forth. I raced up behind him scowling, hoping he could feel my contempt. But when he turned to look at me, his smile was disarming. He was young, in his early 20s probably, with blue eyes and the scruff of a man who might one day grow a very respectable beard.

“Youfromzoocotty,” he said.

“What?” I said, although I wasn’t even sure he’d asked me a question. As always when I’m talking to a stranger, I felt like I understood nothing.

“Zuccotti,” he repeated. “You from Zuccotti?”

That clicked. It was November 15 and that morning in a surprise raid the NYPD had cleared the protesters out of Zuccotti Park and removed their tents and other belongings, using the pretext that the park needed to be “cleaned” and made “safe” for other New Yorkers to “enjoy” as well. According to Mayor Bloomberg, “Health and safety conditions became intolerable.” I had laughed into my morning orange juice when I read that; it sounded so phony. I could have mentioned this to the man with the piano on his back, which I now realized was probably everything he owned (or at least whatever he’d brought with him to Zuccotti Park), but instead I just blurted out: “Oh, no I’m not!”

And I probably delivered it with some contempt. But not contempt for him or his cause. Once again, I was bristling at being misidentified as part of a group I had no actual relation to. And with that dismissive exchange, our inchoate bond was broken. He turned away, and I pushed past his giant bag and fled into the rainy night.

*****

Two days later, November 17, Occupy Wall Street held their national Day of Action, with marches throughout Manhattan (and other cities too) and a rally at Liberty Park that night. I watched the event streaming live on the Internet from my cubicle at a magazine in midtown, where I was freelance editing for the week. At first, I felt like watching a video of an anti-corporate protest from my desk at one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world was a bit too brazen. But as the hours passed and I got more and more excited text messages from friends, I thought, Fuck it, I don’t really care what these people think and I barely care about this job either.

In fact, I would have been thrilled to have been scolded for watching the video feed. I probably would have even escalated the situation myself. After all, quitting a job is one of the most life-affirming experiences a person can have, and I was itching to get up and leave this one forever. If I was being really honest with myself, I’d have liked to have been downtown, rallying in favor of better jobs, or better benefits, or something. The only thing keeping me at my desk was my sense of commitment: Despite the low pay, long hours, and endless frustrations, I had agreed to do this job and I would see it through for that reason alone. But I certainly wasn’t going to enjoy it.

The next morning, on the subway back to work, the gloomy silence of the commute—the rows of ears plugged with identical ear-buds and eyes trained on rows of indistinguishable electronic devices—was interrupted by the voice of a rabble-rouser: One of those bold men that sometimes takes advantage of a captive subway car to push his own crazy agenda. A hero! The speaker was a black man, middle aged, with a strong beard and a sly smile. He was wearing a high-school-football-style jacket, but on the left breast where a name is usually printed, instead it said simply: “Somebody.”

“Listen up, folks,” he said, looking up and down the subway car at a timid crowd that would not meet his eyes. “Slavery never ended! It has just been given a new name. You all think you’re important people, going off to your jobs, your careers … but you’re no better than slaves.”

He held up a copy of the Daily News. The cover photo was of the bloodied and distraught face of a protester at the previous day’s march, with a condescending headline that read: “For Cryin’ Out Loud.”

“You all work hard, right?” the man went on. “Forty, 50, 60 hours a week, and you think you’re lucky. Well, there’s a lot of people in this city who aren’t going to do anything today.” He smiled, and by this time I’d taken out my ear-buds and was smiling too, almost laughing. “You know what Mr. Bloomberg is doing today? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. Well, maybe he’ll have another press conference to remind everyone what a nuisance the people that do want to make a difference in this city are. And there’s a lot of other people doing nothing all day too. That’s what they have you for: To do the hard work, to slave away all day at jobs that make them rich.”

No one looked at him. Perhaps they were too ashamed, or angry, or they thought he was the nuisance, another crazy black man on the subway who ought to be ignored. I felt my body getting hot, starting to tremble. He was articulating my feelings so exactly: The dread I feel every morning when I get up to go to work, the despair I feel when faced with the complacency of so many of my peers, the humiliation of being stuck in what feels like a trap. The subway doors opened and people began filing off the train.

“I’ll tell you what,” the man said, still smiling, as people pushed past him, their eyes downcast: “You all should learn the words to Kumbaya. Trust me, it helps.”

As I passed him, on my way out the door to spend another eight hours staring at a computer screen, checking blogs and chatting online while intermittently doing a bit of work, I nodded, as if in solidarity, as I had something real in common with this man. Maybe I did. And maybe I’d had something in common with the man on the subway stairs I’d acted so contemptuously toward. And with the woman in rags who’d been so polite, so genuine in her assumption that I was part of something. Part of what, however, I still couldn’t say ... and I was worried that this, whatever it was, was already coming to an end, before I’d even had a chance to understand ...

Rob Williams is a mercenary copywriter and copy editor who lives above a meat market in the East Village. You can find more of his stories at www.itmustbebobby.com.

A Barney's window display of Lady Gaga's work has legendary multi-media performance artist Colette's notorious creations written all over it.

Colette, whose seminal performance art and multi-media installations originated out of New York City's vibrant art scene in the 1970's has traveled to museums and galleries all over the world; including the Guggenheim; MOMA; and The Whitney.

Upon seeing Barney's Lady Gaga window display in midtown, Colette takes to the streets in protest to send a clear message to the Gaga camp that Colette is standing outside the door and must be invited in and given proper respect.

It took me a few moments to make sense of the situation. The man on the steps was a puppet-maker, and he was presenting a proposal to spend about $1,500 of the movement’s money on art supplies for the construction of large puppets. These puppets, he explained, would join the occupiers’ upcoming march on Times Square. Behind him, a ghostly puppet of the statue of liberty stood about 7 feet high, head and hands made of paper mache, body made of sheets. Many members of the crowd wiggled their fingers to show their approval of the plan.

“As an artist,” said a voice without a body. "AS AN ARTIST!" shouted the crowd. “I respect this proposal.” (I RESPECT THIS PROPOSAL!) “But as an activist” (BUT AS AN ACTIVIST!) “I can’t forget” (I CAN’T FORGET!) “That people are starving here.” (THAT PEOPLE ARE STARVING HERE!)

The puppet maker nodded sympathetically before responding. “But if we do not fund the arts” (BUT IF WE DO NOT FUND THE ARTS!) “my concern is” (MY CONCERN IS!) “who will?” (WHO WILL!?)

This was the human microphone, also known as “the people’s microphone”. One person speaks, and the surrounding people echo in unison; the crowd functions as a bullhorn for the individual.

The human mic imposes a set of formal limitations that shape the way communication is happening within the movement. If you want to say something, you have to know exactly what you are going to say and how you are going to say it before you open your mouth. That may sound, initially, like a self-evident prerequisite of speech. But think about all the particles and modifiers and interjections and digressions that normally punctuate improvisatory human speech: um, like, so anyway, whatever, uh, yeah, hmm, by the way, which reminds me, etc. There is no room for these at the General Assembly. You have to minimize waste and maximize content. You have to economize.

You also have to impose line breaks. The people (your microphone) can’t parrot more than a few iambs of unmemorized speech, so you must staccato-cize your sentences, pausing after each fragment for the crowd’s echo. The result is poetry. Witness the following stanza, extemporized by an anonymous woman:

As someone who used to work
In Times Square
I happen to know they have
A lot of horse cops.

Or this, spoken by a frustrated young man standing on a table:

I’m waiting for something to happen
And when that thing doesn’t happen
I’m disappointed.

At Occupy Wall Street, it’s hard to distinguish between functional and performative speech. If you close your eyes, a General Assembly can pass for a poetry reading, like the one I attended at the park on October 14th. The reading was organized exactly like a GA meeting: Anyone could stand up and read, and the surrounding audience repeated each line. Eileen Myles, former director of the St. Marks Poetry Project, performed a poem called “Anonymous”:

No I’m the poet
No you’re the poet
No he’s the poet
No they’re the poet
No she’s the poet
No that’s the poet
No this is the poet
No I’m the poet
(repeat)

Myles repeated this sequence several times over, and by the end she was jumping excitedly at each emphasized pronoun, and the audience was also jumping and shouting each line back to her, echoing her hoarse fervor.

She told me afterwards that she had written “Anonymous” specifically for this forum. “I was compelled by the human microphone as an incredible medium for writing for the group,” said Myles. “It’s kind of very ancient, to assume you have a chorus to read your lines. [Occupy Wall Street] is the first real talking back in a long and awful growing silence. So to be a poet writing into that space is to really have a job, and to have an audience that is the voice for the work as well.”

So in one sense, the human microphone is a crude, makeshift tool born of necessity: In New York City you need a permit to amplify sound electronically. In another sense it is an immensely powerful and multifarious metaphor. It is a metaphor for the vision of this movement, a governmental body that transforms the “I” of the individual into a larger, collective “I”. But even as it embodies the project of democracy, the human mic throws into relief the difficulties that plague its practice. Sometimes the individual “I” is  at odds with the collective.

From its beginnings in early September, the Occupy movement has been trying to model direct democracy, a form of government in which “the people” speak and decide for themselves, rather than appointing substitutes – congressmen, senators, lobbyists, commanders-in-chief - to speak and decide for them. Anyone can participate in the General Assembly, wherever it is being held; anyone can present a proposal and anyone can block a proposal, forcing the assembly to postpone a decision.

After about twenty minutes of redundant dialogue between the puppet-maker and the crowd, a man in a baseball hat suddenly leapt onto a chair and began yelling. “People are homeless! Do something substantial with the money, something that’s actually symbolic!”

For some reason the crowd did not repeat these words, maybe because his speech was too fast and passionate; he was not pausing to allow for echoes. “Let this man speak,” someone yelled, “he has something to say!”

Just like that, the order dissolved. The crowd was shifting and murmuring; strings of words, rather than being amplified and heard, were proliferating in distinct pockets. No one held the strings; the puppet was being pulled in many directions, about to be torn apart. “Mic check,” someone screamed. MIC CHECK! screamed the crowd.

Here was an ideologically diverse community of thousands, all with separate complaints, congregated in 33,000 square feet of park, the buzz of anger hovering in the atmosphere like charged particles after a big bang of creation. And this place was loud: Cars were honking, a jackhammer was hammering, there was a drum circle on the western steps. And you have a governmental model in which every voice counts equally. Abstracted, direct democracy is a breathtakingly simple idea. Standing on the corner of Broadway and Liberty, it was a logistical nightmare.

The facilitator of the meeting, a young black woman wearing an oversized striped sweater, spoke: “I personally respect this process!”

“That’s because it benefits you!” These words came from the center of the crowd. The boy (or man) was in his late teens or early twenties. He was thin but strong-looking, with a ruffled brown mohawk and a raspy voice. He had been sitting on the ground, but he now stood up. “You are an academic,” he said.

Mohawk boy: I do not respect the mob.
Crowd: I DO NOT RESPECT THE MOB!
Mohawk boy: My humble request is that you stop speaking for me.
Crowd: STOP SPEAKING FOR ME!
Mohawk boy: Please stop.
Crowd: PLEASE STOP!

“Respectfully,” said the facilitator, “this is not the time/ to make proposals. This is the time / for clarifying questions / related to this proposal.” The puppet-maker nodded his approval.

The puppet-maker nodded his approval.

“There is never a time for love in this community,” cried the boy with the mohawk. A space had cleared around him, and he was swiveling in it, appealing to those nearby. No one repeated is words. “There is only a time for agendas. It’s an insiders' group,” he roared, as though he was going to cry.

“It’s open to anyone,” said the facilitator. IT’S OPEN TO ANYONE! echoed the crowd. “Lies!” screamed the mohawk boy. “Forgive my passion! Lies! Forgive me. Forgive me.” Then he headed for the periphery of the circle, where a young woman was waiting to give him a hug. After the hug he began talking heatedly to a tall blonde wearing a leather jacket.

The facilitator leaned forward and clasped her hands. “This is what / direct democracy looks like. / It’s not always easy, / it’s not always comfortable, / but right now/ it sure looks beautiful. / So thanks for sticking with it.”

“I’m still here,” said the boy with the mohawk, now standing at the edge of the crowd.

“And we love you for it!” said someone. Everyone echoed.

Jean Garnett lives in Brooklyn, where she grew up. She works at a literary agency and is pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction at The New School.

The first time I tired to pass as a senior I told the young man at Paragon Sporting Goods that I was 62. He asked me for ID. I said I didn’t have any on me. He asked me what year I was born. This is where my math skills messed me up. Even though I’d prepared for this question with a pen and paper before I’d gone to the store to try to save on my tennis permit by adding five years to my age, I gave him the wrong answer.

I said I was born in 1950. He punched a few keys on his computer and looked puzzled at the result. “It says you’re only 61,” he said.

I was sweating already because I’m out of practice lying to authorities. True, it wasn’t like lying to the IRS or unemployment, but still I was out of practice.

“Oh, so I’m too young? I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said.

My friend Trevor from the East River Park courts told me about the scam and said it was easy to pull off because you didn’t have to show any id. Plus the Paragon clerks who you have to fool didn’t care much one way or the other. The other thing that made it such an easy hustle, although I’d just blown it, was that for anyone in their teens or twenties, the difference in looks between anyone over 45 and a tennis player who has reached the magic age of 62 is indistinguishable.

I knew I’d never be as cool as my 57-year old English buddy, Trevor, from the courts under the Williamsburg Bridge. He is the charming scoundrel type of sometime painter, sometime photographer, sleazy in the best way, émigré artist type of New Yorker who’s scraped out a living in the city for the last few decades. He lived in the Chelsea Hotel, dated Madonna before her career got off the ground, and won a huge settlement from his landlord after not paying rent for years.

Now he works as a bartender at the hottest restaurant in the West Village, runs an antique lingerie web site and spends a few hours in the middle of most days at the East River Park tennis courts, or as he calls it, the East Village Country Club.

I think he is impressive in his way. And it is an approach that as we boomers get closer and closer, some of us are already there, to not having to scam for the geezer version of the city’s tennis license, that is disappearing. Trevor is a throwback to the Max’s Kansas City era and some of the more glamourous scenes from the city’s past. Plus he’s an expat who stayed, which to someone like me, who barely made it out of Jersey, also has a kind of allure

One of the things about aging is if you miss that chance to date Madonna in the 70's or to play in the NFL, Brett Favre aside, the opportunity, like all the years that add up to only having to pay $20 for your permit, is gone.

So while some of Trevor’s accomplishments are out of reach, no matter how much I might want to emulate his sleazy brand of cool, his reinvention of himself as a sophisticated, expat New Yorker, I thought, couldn’t I at least pull off his tennis permit ruse?

I did the math again. If I was going to be 62 in May 2011, I would have to be born in 1949.

This time at Paragon, there was a young woman running the permit desk. I said I wanted to buy a senior tennis permit. She asked me for ID. I said I didn’t have any on me. She asked me to spell out my name. She asked me when my birthday was. “November 2, 1949"

After some more clicks on her computer, she asked me to take three steps to the left and stand on the red line so she could take my picture for the permit.

A few days later I ran into Trevor at the courts. I showed him the plastic id-like card. It wasn’t as good as dating Madonna. It wasn’t as good as running an antique lingerie web site. But it was OK for me, a guy from Jersey who passed for 62 on only his second try.

Brent Shearer is the book critic for Long Island Tennis Magazine. He is the only reporter to have been kicked out of the 2008 U.S. Open.

When the company needed a production assistant, they hired one of my musician friends, a handsome Texan who went on to become so famous that years later, I learned about his death from an obituary on the front page of the New York Times. He’d played with everyone from Yoko Ono to Judy Collins, Bette Midler to the Talking Heads. But that was later. Back then, he needed a day job and we worked together in the studio, saw each other in the same West Village bars at night. It was a cash economy, before credit cards and ATMs, five and ten dollar bills passing from hand to hand.

One evening, as Don and I rode the elevator heading to the southbound 8th Avenue subway, I handed him the $5 I had borrowed the night before. He grinned and said, in his Texas drawl, “I may not be free, but I am extremely reasonable.”

And the elevator full of stone-faced New Yorkers laughed aloud.

At first I planned for a Netbook to do my writing on the go. Keyboard, long battery life and reasonable price were the enticing factors. I checked out a Netbook on display inside the Staples store on 6th Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan. It radiated heat like the Arizona desert on a summer day, while a nearby HP Touch Pad, an iPad-like tablet, felt only slightly warmer than room temperature. The price tag for the TouchPad screamed from the tag $99! But hastily handwritten text in small letters below whispered that it was sold out.

After Hewlett Packard announced the fire sale of discontinued Touch Pads at $99 apiece, the TouchPad rush commenced on the web and in store. My next stop was Office Depot down the block. “Do you sell tablets?” I asked two Office Depot employees,  tall, muscular men leisurely conversing in the empty store. Unsure whether I was inquiring about computers or medicine one of them said reluctantly - “Check downstairs” - a vague reply worthy of my vague question.

Instead I went to Best Buy located on 5th Avenue and 44th street. “If you want the $99 HP tablet, come tomorrow at 9AM”, the Best Buy employee assured me, “We will have 250 of them.”

9:30 AM the next morning, I was there, eager as a boy scout on a treasure hunt. The line spanned about 300 feet, from Best Buy’s front door to the corner of the block. Most people in the line looked young (below 40) and relaxed. They were peering into their smart phones and simultaneously talking to people next to them. It looked like a friendly meeting of like-minded people preferring for some reason to stand in a line instead of a circle. People here owned more than enough computer equipment. Some of them hoped to make a quick dollar but most, it seemed to me, came to buy something that was slated to become an instant antique.

Waiting in line I could not take my mind away from the diminishing supply of the Touch Pads. But soon the serenity of the crowd overtook me. I befriended a young man, a Help Desk team leader at the MBC who arrived here at 7:30AM. He was seventh in line when the store opened. He got his first TouchPad and now was back in the line hoping for one more catch.

Tourists glanced at us and some stopped to inquire what was happening. A tourist with an Israeli accent would not believe that anything with the plug would sell for less than 100 dollars. “99 dollars, 99 dollars” he repeated in disbelieve. “Join us friend, Empire State Building will not run away”, I felt like saying to him.

My biggest surprise was how efficiently the Best Buy people were managing the line. Patrons could get into the store without waiting but the only way to the coveted TouchPads was through our line. The Best Buy man at the door let people from the waiting line inside the store in groups of five. “Go to the man in the yellow shirt “he guided aspiring TouchPad owners in the commanding voice, “don’t deviate”.

Someone tried offering a bribe for the TouchPad to a Best Buy employee who flatly declined. Another employee stopped a teenager who tried to cut into my group of five. The group-of-five idea was a stroke of  Best Buy genius. You may swallow an offence if someone cuts in line in front of you when you're alone, but the party of five together as a group will not tolerate a 6th intruder.

I ended up spending over $200. I bought more memory (you always end up spending more on memory), a wireless keyboard and the docking station for the Touchpad. Still it was a good deal considering it costs HP more than $300 to make one.

At work colleagues looked at my TouchPad with envy and they tried ordering from different websites. They are still waiting for vendors’ assurances that their product is not sold out.

This is the 21st century, but at times there is no alternative to good old legwork.

Stas Holodnak originally from Ukraine now lives and writes in Bay ridge, Brooklyn. Links to his stories can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/stasholodnaklinks/.

She asked if she could talk to me, was pretty, had eyes that were open and interested. Our faces nearly touched. Hers filled my vision completely, as though in an effort to block out all thought of the thriving city around us. She spoke fast. Her lips frothed with stats that I could barely hear, stats that meant nothing at all but SADNESS, though of course my head was nodding and—I discovered, hearing myself—I was making mm-hm sounds and even, on occasion, whenever the music of our exchange required it, saying the word "wow." I volleyed with her that way for an amount of time that felt significantly longer than any exchange in recent memory.

The clipboard that suddenly appeared in her hands was covered in stickers for her organization and cause. She was circling dollar amounts. I took it that these were my options.

When she stopped speaking her pen was resting on the smallest amount, the amount she said I could just give—as opposed to the higher amounts, which, if chosen, constituted an unqualified and fuller kind of giving. I then realized with not a little dread that she had mistook the sounds I had been making and the motion of my head as indicators of real interest, of sympathy or willingness, or—her eyes widening further—that I was a person on whom her words had had impact, a good person.

Now came the feeling that I had often felt before, one that I built my life, largely, to avoid—that I had committed myself falsely, that I had made promises I could not keep. It was a feeling, the fear of which had kept me from ever having once responded, either in the positive or negative, to a single e-vite. I did not know what I was going to do and liked very much to keep it that way.

How wretched and embarrassing it was for both of us that she had read me so closely and not taken heed of a person’s natural inclination to nod thoughtlessly to the tune of another’s speech. My head began to move the other way now, laterally, the side-to-side direction of no progress at all, a movement of the head that could have worked well in a modern art museum as a performance piece called Status Quo Keeping.

Still our faces were near touching—the distance at which people stand at the end of a date, when the walk home has come to its inevitable end. I told her this was not the way I wanted to do this, that it had no value, now, except as the submission of one person to the persuasiveness of another, that it could constitute nothing but my own weakness, that this wasn’t at all about children who are hungry—it was about her and I and the erasure of one another’s personal space. I told her that she was a woman and that I was a man. I suggested, unattractively, that these things were not coincidental but essential reasons for what was happening, for the closeness of her eyes to mine. Her pen waited there, still, on the brink, possibly, of her daily quota.

She said she was good at what she did and that because of this goodness she would try not to be offended by what I was suggesting and I had the feeling that this was something for which I was meant to be grateful. She said that she was an actress and that she could have done something more lucrative to support herself while pursuing her craft but this was what called out to her as needing more than anything else to be done.

I told her that if I gave her my credit card number—which I seemed already to be in the process of doing, my hand entering my pocket—it would not be for any child in any country anywhere, but for her. And if that was the case, I asked, did she still want it? Her eyes blinked. She stepped back.

After a moment, she said, well, I think you’ll be happy once you’ve done it, that you’ve made a difference.

I said, no, I won’t, I will feel like a person who has caved in to carefully applied pressure—that, in fact, by taking my money then, she was depriving me of the good feeling that might have come from going home and making an online donation on my own initiative. But then I realized she was busily copying my credit card number onto her form—not really listening anymore, just nodding.

A couple weeks later another young woman stops me—this one with beautiful tattooed trees climbing up her arm. I tell her that I have already been got and she says, “you’re awesome! High five!” Walking on toward the train, I do not feel awesome, but I do feel satisfied at having solved the problem of how to deal with these people: give them what they want. If you do, some kid somewhere might even get to eat, and a struggling actress too. I wonder how she’s doing.

Mac Barrett's fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays have appeared in Salt Hill Review, Hanging Loose, The Brooklyn Rail, on Anderbo.com, Salon.com, and on the radio for WBAI. He works at CUNY TV as a producer of book-related programming.

I entered Prospect Park at Grand Army Plaza and headed south towards 9th Street where there are some picnic tables I could make use of. I was shifting gears and beginning to pick up speed when I saw it flash by below my tires. Just a blink of green and white, geometric patterns and sharp angles amidst the chaotic cracks and non-repeating lines of the bumpy charcoal-grey sheet of asphalt. In the same instant I made eye contact with Washington, he was gone.

I hit my brakes and oozed to a stop (rather than screeched, as I lost my front brakes a few days ago and my rears were hanging on just barely). Fearful of losing my bounty to the next passerby, I used the last of my momentum to whip my bike around to the right, hoping to ward off any other pursuers with my stern glare. An all-to-serious-looking biker in red and white spandex whom I had cleverly distracted by making him veer sharply to avoid hitting me was the only person nearby. “Yeah, keep moving, “I thought as I watched him pedal by.

Not wanting to allow time for the wind to take my treasure, I gently dropped my bike without bothering to kick the stand. I ran back to the dollar only to find that there was in fact several dollars! Unfortunately, in addition to my newly multiplied wealth, there was also a New York State Driver’s License.

It belonged to a woman in her late 30’s, a Christmas baby like me, who lived on Vanderbilt, a few blocks away. I felt angry, robbed of my guilt-free money! I knew I would never be able to enjoy spending it, even if it was only a few bucks. A happy hour beer. A soft-serve chocolate vanilla swirl ice cream with chocolate jimmies. All would be as ashes in my mouth, knowing that returning it to its rightful owner was fully within my abilities.

I briefly cursed myself and my parents for raising me right, but finally decided that returning the lost money would be worth it and possibly more fun than keeping it as long as I pretended to be a detective on a case.

Looking at the facts before, I decided she must be biking, as cash and cards do not just squeeze out of a back pocket unless as the result of some kind of repeated action, force or pressure, like that of gyrating gluteus muscles rubbing vigorously against a bicycle seat. I also deduced that she couldn’t have passed by too long before, as unattended money doesn’t sit unnoticed on the ground for too long. Also, judging by her license picture, she was a little on the pudgy side so I figured I could probably catch up to her.

I saddled back up and continued on my way. I wanted to catch her on this side of the park because to not do so, would mean going down a big hill and then having to come back up an even bigger hill. On a bike that is rapidly ageing like Mel Gibson at the end of Forever Young, it is not a pleasant prospect.

I pumped away, overtaking most people pretty quickly, craning my neck and checking bikers who made likely candidates and also a few who made less likely candidates, but I wanted to be thorough in my search.

I really enjoy finding lost objects (not just money), whether I am able to return them or not. There is a kind of magic to them, like they have many stories to tell but no words to tell them, leaving us to wonder and guess. They are mysteries to be solved, and naturally, I take it upon myself to solve them. It’s the perfect outlet for my inherent desire to be a private eye- to track down some missing dame or in this case, track down the dame who owns some missing thing that I have found.

Approaching the downhill slope I saw a potential and coasted after her. It was not long before I realized it was not her and just kept coasting. I was fairly certain at this point I wouldn’t find her here, but I had come this far so wanted to see it through to the end.

In my head I begin to compose the note I will drop off with the cash and ID at the address on her license – several versions, some admonishing her carelessness, some hoping to kindle her faith in the good of humanity, all signed with my first and last name so that she can find me easily enough if she happens to be a millionaire dowager who wants to reward me for my honesty.

Once in Washington DC, I found a digital camera on the ground and tracked down the owners by looking through their pictures to see where they had been that day and figuring out where they were likely heading next. I caught up with them four blocks or so from where I found it. They hadn’t even noticed it was missing- nor did they speak any English, so I couldn’t even impress upon them the amount of deductive problem-solving energy that I had expended upon the camera’s return. That was the real tragedy! They never knew my brilliance! They probably thought I saw it fall out of their pocket thirty seconds before and just picked up and handed it to them.

I finally came to the foot of the giant uphill struggle to the end of the loop, and kicked it into an easier gear. It is the same hill on which Colonial soldiers felled an enormous oak tree across the road and held off advancing British and Hessian soldiers during the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776. I will concede that it was probably harder to get up then, but it is still a pain in the ass to get up on a falling-apart, 3-gear bike.

I started to climb, thinking of how much smarter it would have been to have turned around and done the loop in the opposite direction when I found the money, thus cutting her off halfway around, as opposed than chasing her like an electronic rabbit around a track.

The end of the loop was just beyond the top of the hill, and I did not plan on making the rotation more than once. Chasing some phantom that may not even be there around and around and around. But finally, sweaty and winded, I approached the hill’s crest and saw her. There was a garland of nylon flowers on the back of her bike. I could see she was wearing glasses like the ones in her picture, and her hair was up. She was standing astride her bicycle at the very top of the hill, patting and searching the back pockets of her Spandex pants.

She looked around her a bit and got back up on, riding slowly and unsure, no doubt distracted. I finally caught up with her and came along side, making cautious eye contact a few times as she started to pick up speed, no doubt wondering why I was not just passing her.

“Marika?” I said, still out of breath from the hill. She turned her head and looked at me as I reached out with the bills and license, and said, “here.”

She saw it and took it from my hand with a smile and with obvious relief said, “Oh thank you! Oh my God, thank you!” I smiled and nodded her welcome and sped up without looking back to say anything else, make awkward eye contact, or even to see if she got off the path at the end of the loop.

I didn’t see the point in telling her about my chase around the park, other than fishing for praise I suppose. She seemed sufficiently appreciative of my handing it to her without knowing where exactly she dropped it- unlike those snooty Germans back in DC! I’d been tracking her for 20 minutes, but to her, she had been in trouble for less than 30 seconds. I don’t know. Maybe she would have been happier in knowing that there are some people who would go to those lengths to return her lost property. Or maybe she would have been creeped out that some sweaty guy on a bicycle had been following her around the park and planning to go to her house if he couldn’t find her there.

I biked on past where I’d found the cash, into a nice small grove of pines near 9th street, sat down on the ground, and began to write.

Connor Gaudet is an unemployed, 27-year-old writer/musician, living in Brooklyn and surviving on government assistance. He keeps track of his triumphs and humiliations at thedailyhell. He also runs the Mr. Beller's Neighborhood reading series.

I could pretend that it was because business was changing, as the notice letter said, or that there was a need to make more cuts, as my manager—I’ll call him John—explained to me, but I knew better. The company I worked for had reported profits that quarter. On the other hand, trouble had been brewing around me for months and I knew that my position would be eliminated as soon as it was safe to let go of an older woman with a disabling condition.

Earlier that year, a departmental restructure had brought in a new management team that believed in aggressive deadlines and absolute job dedication.

“I come in at 7 a.m.,” John explained to our team as a manner of introduction, “and I leave at 7 or 8 at night. And if something needs to be done during the weekend, I make myself available.”

At first, I stood up to them. “I have a medical condition,” I said to John. No, I cannot work 12-hour days. No, I cannot be available day and night, weekdays and weekends, at the ring of a cell phone or the touch of a remote connection.

“Everyone in this business unit is ranked according to a Bell curve,” John replied, “and every year, 10 percent of employees are rated as ‘need improvement.’” If I couldn’t meet expectations, I would automatically fall into that category and then, “When it’s time to decide on raises or when it’s time to reduce the work force, well,” he added, letting the obvious answers hang at the tip of his outstretched hands, palms up, in a nothing-I-can-do-about-it gesture. He had the flat emotionless tone and the slight smirk that showed up whenever he set ambitious expectations or redefined goals. That’s the way it was going to be. Period.

I had worked as a computer programmer for all of the 12 years I had multiple sclerosis, and had always received satisfactory reviews and raises. Now, for the first time, I needed to find out what my rights were. The country has laws to protect the disabled, doesn’t it? Multiple sclerosis is recognized as a disabling condition, right? It does and it is, but the protection that offers is, as I discovered to my dismay, very limited.

According to the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), a company should make reasonable accommodations to ensure that an employee with a disability can perform her job. So if someone uses a wheelchair, the employer should provide a desk space wide enough to accommodate it. If an individual’s vision is impaired, the employer should provide large character software.

My drop foot and weak right leg make me limp but they don’t prevent me from sitting at a computer terminal, and the numbness in my fingers doesn’t affect my typing abilities. And I can focus, concentrate and multitask as well as any of my peers. But I do get tired. Fatigue is my vulnerability. I need a regular workday and enough rest in order to tackle the next day’s workload.

I also get an injection several times a week. That requires that I medicate myself an hour before, that it be done at a scheduled time and early enough in the evening so that the flu-like symptoms it generates have time to dissipate before the next morning. How could I factor that into 12-hour workdays?

Also under the ADA law, an employee must be able to perform the job functions she was hired for. If I were an hourly employee, I couldn’t be forced to work overtime. But I was a salaried employee. The definition of my responsibilities was “job done,” and if that meant long days and weekend work, as the new management team expected, that’s what I should be able to do. I wasn’t sick enough to go on disability, but not well enough to be recognized as a competent employee.

What did other people with MS do in those situations, I wondered? I roamed the blogs and talked to my friends, hoping for guidance, but found out that there was no simple answer. Some had understanding managers who accommodated their needs or helped them obtain a disability status. Some worked as hard as they were expected to and lived with the consequences. And some quit or were laid off, many falling into destitution and despair as a result.

“Compromise,” the counselor from the MS Society told me after reviewing my situation with a lawyer. “Arrange to work from home several days a week and use the hours saved from traveling to accomplish more of your tasks.”

This would help, but it wouldn’t be enough for a manager who equaled “job done” with “whatever it takes.”

A compromise of sort is also what my manager offered me after I discussed the issue with the Human Resources department. “It’s best if you look for an internal transfer,” he said. “But not in IT,” he added, showing not one iota of appreciation for my skills and my years of experience, “that won’t work for you.”

So I set out to look for another position and found out that, even in this difficult economy, there were several thousand openings. But few were in the location I worked at, (was I willing to move to Mumbai?) and, of those, many were IT related. I knew that even if I got an interview and did well, a single phone call to John was all it would take to dismiss my candidacy. All I was left with were entry-level jobs which would mean a huge pay cut, or training for a different career; neither of which I was willing to do as I was entering my 7th decade.

I trudged along then, working hard while keeping a close watch at both my health and the milestones our team reached. Would I be dismissed after we completed an upgrade to new software, after important tasks were automated, after routine activities were transferred to another group?

But how could they not need me anymore when I was so busy, all day, every day, and when there was so much more work to be done?

I also went through endless mental calculations. How much money would my husband and I need to live comfortably now that he was retired, our children were grown and we had no large debt to worry about? How much longer would I actually need to work? My husband would get Medicare in seven months; I could collect early social security in ten. Would I get affordable medical coverage as a retiree? Would the Obama health plan pass congress and would it be good enough to make a difference?

When John stopped at my desk that July morning and said, “May I talk to you for a minute,” I knew what it was about and I was ready. I understood that my fate had been sealed the moment I said, “I have a medical condition.”

Using the excuse of the economic situation to lay me off was not simply about the new management team’s expectations. The company was taking advantage of the business climate to get rid of employees who were considered trouble, who earned too much, or who did not fit into the mold. In light of my fine working record, finding a reason to let me go would have taken longer and would have been hard to prove. Letting me go with a package was quicker and it eliminated the possibility of a legal case because of age, gender or disability discrimination. The language of the notice letter was tight in that regard. To protest, comment, publicize or disclose any of it would make me lose the benefits I was getting.

I don’t believe that things happen for a reason or that when a door closes another one opens, as many of my friends told me. But I do think that I was lucky. The best thing would have been for me to choose when I wanted to stop working. The next best thing was to be laid off and get a few months of severance pay followed by 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. Together they would bridge us to our 7- and 10-month family milestones. We would not be rich but we would be OK. Compared to families with young children, credit card debt and a mortgage, we were fine.

That evening, my husband took me out to dinner to a family-run restaurant with a friendly Provence atmosphere and the best desserts in the neighborhood. Later I sent a collective email to my children and their spouses. “My job problems are solved,” I wrote. “Cheers.” Better to welcome the next phase of my life.

Before going to bed, I turned off the clock radio. For decades, I had woken every weekday at 6:15 a.m. to weather and traffic conditions, but now my time was mine. I could read late into the night and wake up late in the morning. I could spend lots of time with my grandchildren and my friends. I could be active on issues that mattered to me and do more than signing petitions and sending emails in support of a healthcare public option, more to combat climate change beside using reusable bags and shopping locally. And I could work to improve job protection for people with disabilities.

I thought of my friend and coworker—I’ll call her Sally—who had helped me empty my desk that morning. She was well aware that the workload had not changed and that, with one less person in the team, more duties would fall on her already overburdened schedule.

“It might not feel this way to you right now,” she said, “but you are the lucky one.”

Again, I thought of the possibilities now opened in front of me, the chance to rediscover my aspirations, the time to deepen my commitments. And MS would not be a hindrance. It left me with plenty of strengths; strengths that I had mobilized over the years to remain a diligent and effective employee and that I would now garner to reach my redefined goals.

Emily Azur is the pen name the author uses to avoid retribution from her former employer. She is delighted with her new found free time and continues to enjoy life.