Carla opened a cabinet in the kitchen and showed me a big box of brown rice barely opened and told me I was welcome to it. Me and my stuff lived in her walk-in closet at the time. If she told her live-in fiancé, I must have been out of the apartment. Otherwise I'm sure I would have heard him exclaim, "You gave him the box of brown rice?! Now he'll never leave."

He was basically right.

I worked as a foot messenger. Actually I was an independent contractor who supplied such services to the company that arranged everything, in a crappy little walk-up office off Time's Square where we all had to report every morning, despite our independence.

I had no wage. I got a 50% commission on what they charged for what I walked. You could get an extra 5% if you brought in over a certain level, but that never happened for anyone except the week or two before Christmas, when the spiderworks of Manhattan business started sending kissy-kissy packages to each other. Isn't it beautiful how Jesus was born so we can all make so much fucking money?

I set 80 bucks a week aside to a stash figuring from the ads I could get or maybe share a place on Avenue D for around $320 a month. Back when even the most daring didn't live much beyond B. I was hoping for free steam heat and water, and a monthly miracle to help pay the Con Edison.

I never touched that money, knowing there'd be deposits and such. The sum was sacrosanct; it didn't exist. Except as a slight bulge to a boxed set of books that served as my safe.

The schedule worked well when I cashed 120 a week. But then there were lags of several weeks where it was hard to hit three digits.

After eight hours on the pavement I had to walk the forty blocks from a crummy office to the closet I called home because I literally did not own enough money to buy a token for the subway. I spent my workdays scavenging long cigarette butts from the sand-filled stands by the elevator banks.

For dinner I'd simmer up a cup of brown rice. I couldn't possibly eat all that! The remainder would go in a Tupperware container, dolloped with soy sauce before sealed. Put in the same brown paper sack with the fork I likewise never forgot to bring home.

We always got called back to the office for lunch. There was a large dorm fridge hardly anyone used because it was so gross. I'd open it up and sit down and eat my lunch of cold brown rice and read Rimbaud.

I knew brown rice was pretty healthful. But I also knew the history of stupid hippies on brown rice diets dying of malnutrition.

It was glorious--to me--to have something to eat.