People have stopped crying when we talk. I think mid-month might have been the last one: a guy in his twenties, longish red hair, polar fleece hat. I was leaning against the door on the downtown 2/3, he was holding the bar above the guy sitting to my left.

There are two cities in New York City: Have City and Ass Busting Town. I’m from Have City, where the women walk around in yoga pants all day and the men “pull down” big incomes. But every day I walk through Ass Busting Town.

This sign-carrying has all been a selfish act. An attempt to turn my depression and hopelessness into anger and action.

The gift box was small and square, and my face flushed as my boyfriend handed it to me. How perfect, that he would get me a ring for my twenty-seventh birthday; how excited he looked, handing it to me first thing that morning, as I propped myself up on my elbow in bed.

(Ed. note: In 2011, I was asked by a friend to participate in a storytelling show for a Jewish cultural organization. The theme was “escape.” Here’s a transcription of the notes I took while trying to come up with an “escape” story.)

When I heard last spring that Darin Strauss was coming out with a novel about Munchausen’s by Proxy, a syndrome whereby caregivers cause or feign illness in their charges in order to get attention for themselves, I didn’t know whether to be threatened or overjoyed.

So I guess we’re doing this today. 11 am, just took a small tiny bit to start. Why does everybody hate the taste? Tastes like getting fucked up to me. If David Chang used it in a dumpling people would wait outside in the rain for an hour just to look at one.

I had what I thought was a meeting, which turned out to be a “social lunch,” and I was freaking out the whole time because talking without an agenda with strangers is precarious.

When I was six or seven years old, waiting in bed to fall asleep at night, I used to imagine that bad guys wanted to kill my parents.