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low—allowing me to have a studio and work on my art. And the fund money, along with sales of my photographs, did support me for the past couple of years.
    I think, as I often do, of the thousands of other Madoffcasualties. Many have far worse troubles than I. Some are very old and fragile and truly penniless, with not even a relative to turn to and with no conceivable way to make a buck. Some will be forced to leave their homes and what will happen to them? At least I’ve been told I can stay for the near future in my sunny apartment. You might expect that thinking about these poor souls would make me feel better, but somehow, perversely, it turns my own outlook darker and blacker and more self-absorbed. My fate may become their fate. You’re going to lose your edge, I think, you’ll be walking around with swollen ankles, you’ll be holding your moth-eaten layers of old clothes together with rusted safety pins, your hair will be grayish yellow and dirty and stringy and you’ll be cold and lonely and alone.
    It’s very clear I need to learn meditation immediately, because I just don’t have the mental discipline to stop thinking obsessively about myself and about the future. I will check the Yellow Pages as soon as I reach my destination. Cars are murderously swerving in front of me as I hold to a steady 65 mph in the right-hand lane. I again try to concentrate only on driving, but my racing brain will not cooperate.
    But wait, here’s the worst thought of all: people are going to feel sorry for me. I can feel that pity right now, right here in my gut.
    I don’t want to feel like an object of pity, a damaged person who’s marked down like a “second.” This, I suddenly see, is what a real bag lady must feel like: a person who has no standing in society, a lone woman who trudges along with her ragged bags or pushes her creaky shopping cart with allher sad belongings. Where does she go to the bathroom? Where can she wash her hair? She has no place to call home. No place to cheer her. No one to love her.
    No way is that going to happen to me! No effing way! I’ll keep up appearances with my self-ironed white shirts and my self-applied nail polish (feet are no problem but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of doing my right hand yet). And I will keep up my spirits and my belief in kindness and decency until I can’t anymore and my soul starts to shred and shrivel—and then it will be time to call it quits. But not yet. Not by a long shot.
    Â 
    Eventually, the old dented wagon has carted me all the way to North Carolina and I pass several large peeling yellow-and-red-lettered road signs that advertise Café Risque in a hamlet called Dun, right off I-95. Café Risque! It’s a topless bar/sex-shop/adult video place that offers “trucker showers.” I have a huge urge to steer off the highway to investigate further. My mind has clamped onto a wild visual image of what trucker showers must look like. What a great location for the girls! I’m positive they would shine at their best in Café Risque. I pass the exit by, but am grateful for the temporary distraction.
    The road is so straight and monotonous that, once again, my thoughts snap back to my life AMF (After MF). My brain replays the words a woman left on my answering machine a few days ago. She mumbled in an intimate semi-whisper, “I heard of your recent problems and would like to buy your jewelry.”
    Ugh! What a creepy message. I know generally what my stuff is worth—I was the only one who ever bought me earrings and rings and bracelets. I have a couple of good gold watches, also self-purchased, and I often sport a white Chanel J12 that was a gift from a generous girlfriend as a thank-you for some photographs I took of her children. I know exactly what I have and my jewels, however much I love them, don’t add up to that much. For all I know, this jewelry-buying scheme may