Many people leaving comments have assumed that I am white, which I am not, though I would question the relevance of this fact unless you assume that race should be a criteria by which we decide who receives public assistance. In any case, the word "hipster" as a pejorative seems to imply "white," and that reflects the larger race and class conflicts in this country -- the underlying sentiment behind many people's hatred toward artists is that art is purely the domain of the wealthy and the privileged. I can tell you that many of the artists I know in Baltimore work as dishwashers, baby sitters, house cleaners, movers and dog walkers. They temp, sling coffee and freelance. They teach inner-city kids and counsel rape victims to make ends meet. They come from all walks of life and from all parts of the country, they are black, white, Asian and Latino, and all of them struggle to varying degrees. What makes them less deserving of assistance when they need it than anyone else who qualifies, and why is it such a travesty that food stamp recipients have access to quality, healthy food?

This is, however, irrelevant because the core of this discussion is an ideological debate between those that believe private entrepreneurship and simple hard work are the cures for poverty, and those that believe that the the poverty line is permeable in both directions. Among the latter, there is yet a deeper debate about whether we can, in a deep recession with record unemployment rates, make the same old assumptions about class based on race, occupation and education, particularly when increasingly, only poorly paid, unprotected, insecure jobs are available even to people with master's degrees.

If someone with as many advantages as I've had can find himself unemployed and struggling to find a job, if traditionally secure people find themselves unable to keep their heads above water, you can either talk about our failures as human beings, or you can take it as yet another sign that our economy has some very shaky foundations.

By the way, a whole rabbit at Lexington Market is $10, feeds at least four people, and is healthier than factory-farmed chicken (around $6 for a whole one at the same market).

The two friends weren't tabulating the cash in their wallets but what remained of the monthly allotment on their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program debit cards, the official new term for what are still known colloquially as food stamps.

Magida, a 30-year-old art school graduate, had been installing museum exhibits for a living until the recession caused arts funding -- and her usual gigs -- to dry up. She applied for food stamps last summer, and since then she's used her $150 in monthly benefits for things like fresh produce, raw honey and fresh-squeezed juices from markets near her house in the neighborhood of Hampden, and soy meat alternatives and gourmet ice cream from a Whole Foods a few miles away.

"I'm eating better than I ever have before," she told me. "Even with food stamps, it's not like I'm living large, but it helps."

Mak, 31, grew up in Westchester, graduated from the University of Chicago and toiled in publishing in New York during his 20s before moving to Baltimore last year with a meager part-time blogging job and prospects for little else. About half of his friends in Baltimore have been getting food stamps since the economy toppled, so he decided to give it a try; to his delight, he qualified for $200 a month.

"I'm sort of a foodie, and I'm not going to do the 'living off ramen' thing," he said, fondly remembering a recent meal he'd prepared of roasted rabbit with butter, tarragon and sweet potatoes. "I used to think that you could only get processed food and government cheese on food stamps, but it's great that you can get anything."

Think of it as the effect of a grinding recession crossed with the epicurean tastes of young people as obsessed with food as previous generations were with music and sex. Faced with lingering unemployment, 20- and 30-somethings with college degrees and foodie standards are shaking off old taboos about who should get government assistance and discovering that government benefits can indeed be used for just about anything edible, including wild-caught fish, organic asparagus and triple-crème cheese.

Food policy experts and human resource administrators are quick to point out that the overwhelming majority of the record 38 million Americans now using food stamps are their traditional recipients: the working poor, the elderly and single parents on welfare.

But they also note that recent changes made to the program as part of last year's stimulus package, which relaxed the restrictions on able-bodied adults without dependents to collect food stamps, have made some young singles around the country eligible for the first time.

"There are many 20-somethings from educated families who go through a period of unemployment and live very frugally, maybe even technically in poverty, who now qualify," said Parke Wilde, a food economist at Tufts University who has written extensively about food stamp usage and policy.

The increase in food stamp use among this demographic is hard to measure, as they represent a cross section of characteristics not specifically tracked by the Agriculture Department, which administers the program.

But general unemployment figures among the group are stark: Between the ends of 2007 and 2009, unemployment among those aged 20 to 34 rose 100 percent, and between 2006 and 2009, unemployment among those with a bachelor's degree or higher was up 179 percent.

And in cities that are magnets for 20- and 30-something creatives and young professionals, the kinds of food markets that specialize in delectables like artisanal bread, heirloom tomatoes and grass-fed beef have seen significant upticks in food stamp payments among their typical shoppers. At the Wedge, a market in the stylish Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis; at New Seasons Market, a series of nine specialty stores in and around Portland, Ore.; and at Rainbow Grocery, a stalwart for food lovers in San Francisco's Mission District, food stamp purchases have doubled in the past year.

"The use has gone way up in the last six months," said Eric Wilcox, a cashier who has worked at Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco for 10 years. "We're seeing a lot more young people in their 20s purchasing organic food with food stamp cards. I wouldn't say it's limited to hipster people, but I'm certainly surprised to see them with cards."

Young urbanites with a taste for ciabatta may legitimately be among the new poor, but their participation in the program is far from universally accepted. A New York Times story in late November about the program's explosive growth generated a storm of comments online, with many readers lobbing familiar accusations of laziness and irresponsibility.

But there seems to be a special strain of ire reserved for those like the self-described "30-something, unemployed, ex-fashionista, EBT armed, post-hipster, downtown mom" from New York who, in January, drew nearly 500 comments on the Web site Urbanbaby.com, many seething with fury at her for trying to maintain the trappings of a materialistic, cosmopolitan life while using an Electronic Benefit Transfer card -- food stamps -- to feed her family. (Her blog is now password-protected.)

"You're hosting dinner parties and buying cases of wine -- on taxpayers' money!" one person wrote. "Your attitude is so objectionable that you're like a trainwreck; it's hard to look away." (One cannot, in fact, buy wine with food stamps, though dinner party ingredients are fair game.)

And on the blog Stuff Unemployed People Like, along with "not showering regularly" and "sleeping in while your significant other goes to work," a post last year touted "buying Perrier with food stamps" and sarcastically claimed that "the fancier the food, the more glee there is in knowing the government has once again helped in enabling a lavish lifestyle." Of the reader responses that poured in, many were food stamp users who defended their shopping choices (including, yes, Perrier) while others attacked them.

"While one person works their butt off," one wrote, "another is just waiting in line so they can recieve [sic] their 'luxury' food stamps and recieve [sic] basically whatever they want."

But among young food stamp recipients I spoke with, there's less glee than traces of embarrassment about their situations; few want to be seen handing over applications at the human resource office, and they can be sheepish about presenting their snap cards in a checkout line.

Josh Ankerberg, a 26-year-old who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., started getting food stamps a year ago as an AmeriCorps volunteer, a group that has long had special dispensation to qualify for them, and he has continued using them while he job hunts. He uses his $200 in monthly benefits at Trader Joe's, Whole Foods and a local farmer's market to maintain his self-described healthy flexitarian diet, and notes that two of his roommates -- a graduate student in poetry and an underemployed cook, both in their 20s -- also started getting food stamps in the past two months, as have other friends and acquaintances.

Still, Ankerberg said, "There's a sort of uneasiness about it. A few friends that are artists in Williamsburg are like, 'Don't say we're on food stamps too loudly. Just keep it between you and me.'"

At the same time, there seems to be little moral quandary about collecting a benefit traditionally thought of as intended for the downtrodden. In a nondiscriminating recession that laid waste almost across the board, the feeling is that anyone who meets the near-poverty level requirements for collecting food stamps shouldn't feel guilty about doing so.

Controversy about how they use food stamps marks an interesting shift from the classic critique that the program subsidizes diets laden with soda pop and junk food. But from that perspective, food stamp-using foodies might be applauded for demonstrating that one can, indeed, eat healthy and make delicious home-cooked meals on a tight budget.

And while they might be questioned for viewing premium ingredients as a necessity, it could also be argued that they're eating the best and most conscious way they know how. They are often cooking at home. They are using fresh ingredients. This is, after all, a generation steeped in Michael Pollan books, bountiful farmer's markets and a fetish for all things sustainable and handcrafted. Is it wrong to believe there should be a local, free-range chicken in every Le Creuset pot?

At Magida's brick row house in Baltimore, she and Mak minced garlic while observing that one of the upsides of unemployment was having plenty of time to cook elaborate meals, and that among their friends, they had let go of any bad feelings about how their food was procured.

"It's not a thing people feel ashamed of, at least not around here," said Mak. "It feels like a necessity right now."

Savory aromas wafted through the kitchen as a table was set with a heaping plate of Thai yellow curry with coconut milk and lemongrass, Chinese gourd sautéed in hot chile sauce and sweet clementine juice, all of it courtesy of government assistance.

"At first, I thought, 'Why should I be on food stamps?'" said Magida, digging into her dinner. "Here I am, this educated person who went to art school, and there are a lot of people who need them more. But then I realized, I need them, too."

I held my breath as he shut off the engine and opened his door. I was in my boxer shorts, splayed across my stain-speckled carpet like a scarecrow toppled by the wind.

As I listened to what sounded like a pair of Gestapo jackboots approach the driver-side door, I thought about how I'd almost gotten away with it. For two whole months, I had been secretly living in my van on campus.

For some, van-dwelling may conjure images of pop-culture losers forced into desperate measures during troubled times: losers like Uncle Rico from "Napoleon Dynamite," or "Saturday Night Live's" Chris Farley who'd famously exclaim, "I live in a van down by the river!" before crashing through a coffee table, or perhaps the once ubiquitous inhabitants of multicolored VW buses, welcoming strangers with complimentary coke lines and invitations to writhing, hairy, back-seat orgies.

In my van there were no orgies or coke lines, no overweight motivational speakers. To me, the van was what Kon-Tiki was to Heyerdahl, what the GMC van was to the A-Team, what Walden was to Thoreau. It was an adventure.

Living in a van was my grand social experiment. I wanted to see if I could -- in an age of rampant consumerism and fiscal irresponsibility -- afford the unaffordable: an education.

I pledged that I wouldn't take out loans. Nor would I accept money from anybody, especially my mother, who, appalled by my experiment, offered to rent me an apartment each time I called home. My heat would be a sleeping bag; my air conditioning, an open window. I'd shower at the gym, eat the bare minimum and find a job to pay tuition. And -- for fear of being caught -- I wouldn't tell anybody.

Living on the cheap wasn't merely a way to save money and stave off debt; I wanted to live adventurously. I wanted to test my limits. I wanted to find the line between my wants and my needs. I wanted, as Thoreau put it, "to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life … to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."

It wouldn't be hard for me to remain frugal. After buying the van and making my first tuition payment, I was only a few dollars away from having to rummage through Dumpsters to find my next meal. I was -- by conventional first-world definitions -- poor. While I faced little risk of malnutrition or disease like the truly poor, I still I didn't own an iPod, and I smelled sometimes.

My experiment began in the spring semester of 2009 when I enrolled in the graduate liberal studies department. Months before, I had just finished paying off $32,000 in undergraduate student loans -- no easy feat for an English major.

To pay off my debt, I'd found jobs that provided free room and board. I moved to Coldfoot, Alaska -- 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle and 250 from the nearest store -- where I worked as a lodge cleaner, a tour guide and a cook. Later, I worked on a trail crew in Mississippi in an AmeriCorps program. Between jobs I hitchhiked more than 7,000 miles to avoid paying airfare. When I couldn't find work, I moved in with friends. My clothes came from donation bins, I had friends cut my hair, and I'd pick up odd jobs when I could. Nearly every dime I made went into my loans.

I hated my debt more than anything. I dragged it with me wherever I went. While I was still leading an exciting, adventurous life, I knew I could never truly be free until my debt was gone.

I finally got out of the red when I landed a well-paying job with the Park Service as a backcountry ranger. Finally, after two and a half years of work, my debt was gone. I had four grand in the bank that was mine. All mine. It was the first time I had actual money that hadn't been borrowed or given to me since I was a 13-year-old paperboy.

The more money I had borrowed, I came to realize, the more freedom I had surrendered. Yet, I still considered my education -- as costly as it was -- to be priceless. So now, motivated to go back to school yet determined not to go back into debt, I had to think outside the box. Or, as Henry David Thoreau might suggest, inside one.

In "Walden," Thoreau mentioned a 6 foot-by-3 foot box he had seen by the railroad in which laborers locked up their tools at night. A man could live comfortably in one of these boxes, he thought. Nor would he have to borrow money and surrender freedom to afford a "larger and more luxurious box."

And so: I decided to buy a van. Though I had never lived in one, I knew I had the personality for it. I had a penchant for rugged living, a sixth sense for cheapness, and an unequaled tolerance for squalor.

My first order of business upon moving to Duke was to find my "Walden on Wheels." After a two-hour bus ride into the North Carolinian countryside, I caught sight of the '94 Ford Econoline that I had found advertised on Craigslist. Googly-eyed, I sauntered up to it and lovingly trailed fingertips over dents and chipped paint. The classy cabernet sauvignon veneer at the top slowly, sensuously faded downward into lustrous black. I got behind the wheel and revved up the fuel-funneling beast. There was a grumble, a cough, then a smooth and steady mechanical growl. It was big, it was beautiful, and -- best of all -- it was $1,500.

I bought it immediately. So began what I'd call "radical living."

I removed the two middle pilot chairs to create a living space, installed a coat hook, and spent $5 on a sheet of black cloth to hang behind my front and passenger seats so that -- between the sheet, tinted windows, and shades -- no one would be able to see me inside. I neatly folded my clothes into a suitcase, and I hung up my dress shirts and pants on another hook I screwed into the wall.

I at first failed to notice the TV and VCR (that I would never use) placed between the two front chairs. Nor did I know about the 12-disc CD changer hiding under the passenger seat until weeks later.

Just when I thought I had uncovered all the van's secrets, I found a mysterious button toward the back. When I pushed it, the back seat grumbled, vibrated and -- much to my jubilation -- began slowly transforming into a bed. I half-expected to see a disco ball descend from the ceiling and hear '70s porn music blare from the speakers.

Fortuitously, I was assigned a parking lot in a remote area on campus next to a cluster of apartments where I hoped campus security would presume I lived.

Over time, my van felt less like a novelty and more like a home. At night I was whirred to sleep by crescendos of cicadas. In the morning, I awoke to a medley of birdsong so loud and cheery you would have thought my little hermitage was tucked away in a copse of trees. During rainstorms, I listened to millions of raindrops drum against the roof and watched them wiggle like sperm down my windows.

I loved cooking in the van. As an adept backcountry camper, I could easily whip up an assortment of economical and delicious meals on my backpacking stove. For breakfast, cereal with powdered milk and oatmeal with peanut butter became staples; for dinner, spaghetti stew with peanut butter, vegetable stew with peanut butter, and even rice and bean tacos with peanut butter. Without proper refrigeration, I cut out meat, dairy and beer from my diet entirely. I became leaner, got sick less and had more energy than ever before.

By buying food in bulk I reduced my food bill to $4.34 cents a day. I was meticulous with my expenditures. I saved every receipt and wrote down everything I bought. Not including tuition, I lived (and lived comfortably) on $103 a week, which covered my necessities: food, gas, car insurance, a cellphone and visits to the laundromat.

The idea of "thrift," once an American ideal, now seems almost quaint to many college students, particularly those at elite schools. The typical student today is not so frugal. Few know where the money they're spending is coming from and even fewer know how deep they're in debt. They're detached from the source of their money. That's because there is no source. They're getting paid by their future selves.

My "radical living" experiment convinced me that the things plunging students further into debt -- the iPhones, designer clothes, and even "needs" like heat and air conditioning, for instance -- were by no means "necessary." And I found it easier to "do without" than I ever thought it would be. Easier by far than the jobs I'd been forced to take in order to pay off my loans.

Most undergrads imagine they'll effortlessly pay off their loans when they start getting paid the big bucks; they're living in a state of denial, disregarding the implications of a tough job market and how many extra years of work their spending sprees have sentenced them to. But "facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored," as Aldous Huxley famously said.

I have sympathy for my fellow students. I did many of the same things when I was an undergrad. Plus, escaping student debt -- no matter how frugal they try to be -- is nearly impossible. Even if they do resort to purchasing a large creepy van, most will still have to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt to pay for tuition.

While I found a way to afford graduate school, I by no means had the same financial responsibilities as the average student. I was so poor when I applied that my department took pity on me and significantly reduced the cost of my tuition. I even found a well-paying part-time job working for a government-sponsored program, tutoring inner-city kids.

Governments and financial aid departments normally aren't so helpful. For decades, the government has let legions of college students -- students who wished to better themselves and contribute to society -- go into soul-crippling debt. Schools don't make it any easier with steep hikes in tuition and baffling room and board costs. Students are oftentimes forced to pay for insanely priced meal plans and are barred from moving to cheaper housing off-campus. At Duke, the cheapest on-campus meal plan charges them 3.5 times more a day than it cost to feed me. Their dorm rooms cost 18 times more than my parking permit.

Here, the average undergraduate student who's taken out loans graduates with more than $23,000 in debt -- about the national average. The cost of education at Duke, as at most schools across the country, is disgracefully high. Tuition costs (not factoring in financial aid)  more than $37,000 a year. Additionally, students have to pay at least another $10,000 for books, meal plans, fees and dorms.

Duke's egregiously hefty price tag is no anomaly. Nor is it unusual for students to unflinchingly take out massive loans that'll take them years, sometimes decades, to pay off. Willingness to go into debt, of course, isn't just confined to students; we're a nation in debt, collectively and individually. Going into debt today is as American as the 40-hour work week; or the stampede of Wal-Mart warriors on Black Friday; or the hillocks of gifts under a Christmas tree. An army of loan drones we've become, marching from one unpaid-for purchase to the next in quest of a sense of fulfillment that fades long before the bill arrives. We're little different from the Spanish explorers who dedicated their lives to the quest for El Dorado, which was always just around the next bend in the river, yet never there at all.

I refused to join those ranks. I became a deserter, an eccentric, an outsider. At Duke, I felt like an ascetic in the midst of wealth, a heretic in the Church of the Consumer. I had to hide.

Because I was so paranoid about campus security finding out about my experiment, I kept myself apart from other students. Whenever I did talk with a fellow classmate, I found myself souring the conversation with preposterous lies -- lies I'd tell to protect myself. Whenever someone asked me where I lived, I'd say "off campus," or I'd make up an address before changing the subject. I found it easier to avoid people altogether.

I worried that if students caught wind of my experiment, a Facebook group would be created for "People who've had a confirmed sighting of the campus van-dweller." Campus security would find out, deem my lodgings illegal and promptly kick me out of the van and into some conventional and unaffordable style of living, wherein I'd have to buy a rug to tie the room together.

Deprived of human companionship, I cloistered myself in my van and in libraries where I was alone with my thoughts and my books. Time for self-reflection, study and solitude was what I thought I'd wanted all along.

But of all the things that I gave up for "radical living," I found it fitting that the one thing I wanted most was that which couldn't be bought. When a trio of laughing males drunkenly stumbled past my van, probably hoisting one another up like injured comrades after battle, I thought of my friends back home. On winter nights, when the windows were coated with a frosty glaze, I'd wish for a woman to share the warmth of my sleeping bag.

While I have plenty of good things to say about simplicity, living in a van wasn't all high-minded idealism in action. Washing dishes became so troublesome I stopped altogether, letting specks of dried spaghetti sauce and globs of peanut butter season the next meal. There was no place to go to the bathroom at night. I never figured out exactly where to put my dirty laundry. Once, when a swarm of ants overtook my storage containers, I tossed and turned all night, imagining them spelunking into my orifices like cave divers while I slept. New, strange, unidentifiable smells greeted me each evening. Upon opening the side doors, a covey of odors would escape from the van like spirits unleashed from a cursed ark.

But no adventure is without bouts of loneliness, discomfort and the ubiquitous threat of food poisoning. I loved my van. Because of it, I could afford grad school. So naturally I was nervous as I listened to the security guard's weapons jingle as he ambled by my windshield.

But he just kept walking.

I was overcome by an odd sense of dissatisfaction. Deep down, I think I wanted him to discover me. I wanted a showdown. I wanted to wave my arms at the dean and cry, "Impound my van? Over my dead body! I'll take you straight to the Supreme Court!" Fellow students would rally behind me. We'd stage car-dwelling protests and after winning back my right to remain voluntarily poor, people would begin to consider me the campus sage. I'd wear loose white clothing, grow my beard, and speak in aphorisms to the underclassmen who journeyed the mile on foot to my sacred parking space where I'd serve them tea.

Today I still live in the van. I haven't taken out loans or borrowed money from anyone. Really, the only thing that's different is that I've set up my laundry area by the passenger seat. Also, after another summer with the Park Service, I have more money than I possibly need. Now, instead of being poor, I am radically frugal. Sometimes, though, I think it would be nice to have an ironing board, plumbing and a wood stove.

It would be nice. A middle-class family might think it would be nice to have an in-ground swimming pool. A millionaire might think it would be nice to have a yacht. The billionaire, a private jet. Someone, somewhere might think it would be nice to have food to feed her family tonight. Someone, somewhere might think it would be nice to live in a van in order to afford to go to a wonderful school. I could begin satisfying my desires and buying comforts, but I've learned to appreciate what little I have instead of longing for what I do not.

Admittedly, now that I have money I buy the fancy peanut butter from Whole Foods, and I've even purchased an expensive pair of hiking boots. But most things are the same: I still cook spartan meals, I don't have an iPod, and I park in the very same spot. And I still have my secret. Well, that is, until now. 

On paper, the business is pretty straightforward: A house is assigned from the bank that has foreclosed on the property. Find the house. Take numerous pictures before, during and after the cleanup process. Go to the next house. It sounds so simple; in fact the Internet is filled with get-rich-quick tutorials on how to make money doing it. What's not on paper is how you feel cleaning up behind a family's dead hope.

In the beginning I would ask, "How did they lose their house?" What I really meant was, "Was it their fault?" But Joe doesn't know the answer. It simply isn't part of the paperwork. So I would try to extrapolate from the evidence: My first was a double-wide on a dirt road in the woods, filled with empty prescription bottles, a hospital bed, boxes of Depends, insulin needles. Maybe someone died, I thought. But the neighbor said no, the woman had just been unable to pay her bills, so they foreclosed on her. After a dozen houses, I stopped wondering what happened. People's lives take crappy turns. It happens to everyone, especially these days.

At the beginning, Joe and I were oh-so-polite to each other on the job. He gave me the easiest tasks, and I was so eager to please that I would knock myself out making sure the bathroom was the cleanest bathroom in America. We were still trying to impress each other back then. But the good manners wore away as the housing market meltdown tripled our workload. By summer we were openly yelling at each other. I started complaining about him to his crews, who spoke absolutely no English. They would offer me puzzled, vaguely sympathetic looks and bottles of water from the cooler we keep on the truck. "Agua, senorita?"

But Joe and I do share a curiosity about the people who once lived in the house. It's tempting to reconstruct their lives from the items they leave behind -- the wedding album discarded in the garage while the used condom sits inside a nasty pizza box in the living room. The stacks of unopened bills beside the "Get Rich in Real Estate" books. Empty liquor bottles. The crayons scattered in the bedroom with the peeling princess mural. Military uniforms. Family snapshots, more than you would think. Do I really want a visual of the people whose mess I am cleaning up? I don't care to study those pictures anymore.

Repo Joe is made of tough stuff. Good thing. It can be tricky tossing out belongings from houses people have been forced to leave. And we do this in plain sight, in the neighborhood where these people's friends and family may live. Or we are in the backwoods where land may have been owned by a family for centuries. Places where no one would hear you scream or even look up at the sound of gunshot. Sometimes the previous owners show up while we're working, and on these occasions, I am grateful for Repo Joe's toughness and Southern charm. My Yankee attitude doesn't work as well. Where I am curt and dismissive he will take the time to listen and commiserate. Anything to get the guy moving along so we can get on with our job. I'll keep working in the house while Joe chats with the man outside. He'll go on about crooked lawyers and evil ex-wives until the former homeowner feels like he's talking with a buddy. Someone he could go fishing with, not the man paid to fish out the trash he left in his wake.

One time, in a bad neighborhood, Joe and I made a point to arrive early -- "before the crackheads wake up," as he put it. The house was neat, no debris in the yard, and I was relieved to see all the furnishings and personal items gone from the living room. But then we opened a bedroom door: Hypodermic needles ankle-deep on the floor, a bloodstained mattress littered with disposable cameras, the kind you get at wedding receptions. Big glass containers meant for iced tea were filled with more used needles. Hundreds, maybe thousands of needles. Repo Joe pushed me out of the room and told me to get my gun.

Yes, my gun. I am licensed to carry a concealed weapon in South Carolina and have what we call "the work gun," a very small and very lethal .380 pistol that fits in my hand. My hands were shaking, but I got my gun out of the truck and put it in my front pocket. He gathered the safety equipment needed to clean the needle room (heavy gloves, a garbage bin and a large shovel) and got to it while I cleaned the rest of the house. I never touched anything more dangerous than a paper towel.

It's weird what we find in people's houses: loaded guns (promptly turned over to the police), abandoned pets, empty snake cages, dog carcasses in freezers, massive amounts of porn, evidence of drugs, and any variety of sex toys. We bond over these strangers' secrets. We lead a pretty straight vanilla life, so judging others comes easy to us. Our friends always ask about what we find, but after one or two stories they never want to hear any more. Like the small child's artificial leg I once discovered under a pile of clothes in a bedroom. (I don't tell that story anymore.)

"Don't you feel bad for the people?" everyone always asks. The short answer to that is, "No." But I do feel bad for the kids, the kids whose parents left behind their toys and their artwork, the kids whose school pictures I have tossed into a garbage bag. And for all the kids whose bedroom doors had locks on the outside.

At one point I left the repo field and took a "good" professional job. But I missed the work. I missed pulling up to a house and wondering what was inside. I missed the physical labor. I missed the camaraderie of the crew and the uncontrollable laughter that rises when you are sweat-soaked and exhausted and the funniest thing you have ever seen is someone spilling used motor oil all over their clothes. Even if the person is you.

And I missed the way working together made Joe and me tighter. Neither of us is very vocal about our feelings. We're not physically demonstrative. But doing this work has brought us closer. We are aware that some consider us the bottom feeders of the housing meltdown. So maybe we just need a witness, a witness to our goodness. Someone who knows we're just trying to clean up after others. Someone who knows we weren't the bad guys here. 

Even before then, we hadn't been planning a lavish event. The typical American wedding budget -- around $29,000 including the honeymoon -- was never an option for us. The prospect of spending my entire year's salary on a single day was surreal, even in boom time. But now our budget would be smaller -- we settled on $8,000, thankfully subsidized by our parents. Yet even with their financial support, we knew we'd have to be creative with money. We didn't even bother with an engagement ring. When people asked to see it, I told them the truth: "I haven't got one. But there is an engagement coffee cup."

I had no idea how to start planning my wedding. Like so many starry-eyed brides before me, I turned to books on wedding planning and bridal magazines as thick as a phone book, but my enthusiasm curdled into panic as I read expansive lists of "essential" wedding gear: Favors. Programs. Three-tiered centerpieces. A band that can play the Wedding March and "We Are Family." And that was before I saw a single price tag.

It's easy to criticize the astronomical amounts people spend on weddings -- until you actually have to plan one. I'd eye the Italian silk radzimir of a goddess gown from J. Crew only to start gulping for air when I saw the price: a mere $1,950, or one-quarter of our budget. Tell vendors the event is a wedding, and watch the price tag balloon. Even our city parks department was guilty of cashing in. To reserve a spot for a family gathering: $35. To reserve the same spot for a wedding: $110.

Of course we weren't alone in our sticker shock. The sprawling multibillion-dollar wedding industry has bred a whole subculture of DIY wedding bloggers and Web sites devoted to creative, budget-conscious couples trying to navigate around the money pit of that "one perfect day." In Portland, Ore., the East Side Bride assured me it would be OK to wear Converse sneakers if that was my thing, while from Seattle, the Offbeat Bride encouraged me to join her online social network of "kick-ass, independently minded couples." After hours of scrolling through these kinds of sites, I felt confident that our ideal wedding (whatever that was) could still happen. I stopped hyperventilating, and I dusted off those purple Converse.

We wanted to throw the best party we could for our friends and family, to thank them for getting us to this point in our lives. With this purpose in mind, some things were easy to cut, while others required a downgrade and a personal tweak. Favors? We didn't need to print up tacky magnets with our picture that would end up in most people's junk drawer. Stretch Hummers? At a couple hundred dollars an hour, no thanks. Since we're avid cyclists, we chose a $200 bicycle parade instead, complete with bicycle rickshaws for anyone like me who didn't want to ride in their fancy duds. How about champagne? At $80 a bottle, we opted out. Being lovers of good beer, some friends agreed to spend several evenings teaching us the craft of home brewing. A five-gallon keg costs about $45, so we'll all be raising a rich dark stout for the toasts.

It was only after we'd slathered glue onto homemade lanterns and watched them harden into a glumpy mess that we realized we needed more help. So we started asking people if they wanted to participate. Anyone with a good idea, and a willingness to get their hands dirty, was welcome to contribute. That's when, like a good old-fashioned barn-raising, our wedding day really began to take shape. Instead of an $800 cake, my fiancé's grandmother wanted to bake our favorite berry pies. My mother cut the fabric for the hand-sewn invitations. My mother-in-law the gardener promised to grow and arrange the flowers. One sister-in-law designed my dress while my brother's wife practiced her harp for when I walk down the aisle. The best part has been telling each person to be creative with their choices, from the song selections to the dress seams to the flowers. We only ask them to do what they think is beautiful or celebratory, or that reminds them of us. All of which makes the day a more old-fashioned communal celebration, as opposed to an exhibition of how much money we burned through. Which, frankly, feels like a nice alternative to the game of status-seeking brinksmanship that has defined weddings over the past decade and given the world such dubious self-satires as "Bridezillas" and "Bride Wars."

Sure, there may be some wrinkled suits after the bike parade. Martha Stewart may not approve of the mix-and-match wedding party. Our wedding day will not fit into a nice, neat rose-and-lavender theme. Then again, neither have our lives. Our friends and family have shaped us and carried us up to this point. So will it be with our wedding.

“You can come clean tonight?” the woman asked. “Two bedrooms. Should be an easy job for you. Please.”

I gave her a number that seemed fair and sped off with my vacuum and a gallon of Clorox to a spanking new Ye Olde Village-style mall. I got a lost a few times; every building looked exactly alike.

A tiny, pale woman with a baby on her hip greeted me. She looked at once exhausted and imperious. She'd just come back from three months in New York, and her husband hadn't cleaned anything – he never so much as wiped the kitchen counter during the 90 days he spent alone in the condo. He didn't tidy up after shaving and left tiny pieces of hair on every surface. I could probably have braided the bathtub had I but time and inclination. (That tub alone made me want to kill myself just a little bit.) I instantly regretted giving my quote over the phone, but I’d given my word. And that’s how I ended up spending Sunday on my knees in front of someone else’s commode.

I clean strangers' toilets for money. I have two college degrees, and I sold a book to an overseas division of Random House. The money hasn’t come rolling in (though I pray to Oprah on a regular basis), so I clean houses as a way to pay the bills between royalty checks.

This toilet was particularly brutal: It mocked me with all its nasty human feces stains and the dusting of wiry black hairs around the base. White surfaces and human hair have become the bane of my existence. Hair clings to the outsides of toilets like Romeo to Juliet, Brad to Angelina, or me to the strawberry vodka and cranberry juice that this work makes me crave.

My college friends have prospered, and they worry about investments. The last guy who dumped me (“I can’t do the boyfriend-girlfriend thing,” he told me as we snuggled together in bed) drove three hours to Columbus so he could rescue his money from Charles Schwab. As I detail the rim of the bowl with a toothbrush, I think about Barack Obama.

I went to see him speak just before the election. Funny how politicians love to visit Ohio in the fall every four years or so.

“Your 401K might be a 101K,” he quipped. “The question isn’t, Are you better off than you were four years ago? but, Are you better off than you were four weeks ago?”

I have no 401K. I have no mortgage and am lucky to have rent money about half the time. I've struggled with disability all my life. I once weighed almost 600 pounds, leaving me chronically broke and underemployed. After having gastric bypass surgery and dumping most of the excess weight, I still rely on disability and the health insurance it provides. But I struggle. I had minus $200 in the bank as Obama promised to help send my (nonexistent) children to college.

Walking home from that speech, I passed a pawnshop, doubled back, and sold the gold necklace I’d put on that morning on the off-chance that I might appear in news photos or in television footage of the crowd. The pawnbroker counted a fifty and a hundred into my palm, and I deposited most of the money, bringing my total net worth up to an awe-inspiring minus $87.

Months later, with Obama in office, I'm certainly not the only one struggling. Even with the recession in full swing, though, my clients can still afford me. People who have money to keep their dogs in daycare can splurge for a Craigslist cleaner every once in a while to spare the lady of the house the indignity of scrubbing her own toilet. I meet compact, perfect women, their biceps toned and tan, and I feel large and shabby by comparison. They usually hire me only once; given the uncertainty in the job market, no one wants to make any long-term commitments.

I suppose I could find other ways to make ends meet. But cleaning has a physical aspect I relish. I could never have done this work before I lost the weight. I also like the feeling of having done something. When you transform a filthy hellhole into a clean house that smells faintly of orange furniture polish, you know you’ve accomplished something.

Cleaning a house will teach you a lot about its occupants. I clean a minister’s house and find propaganda videos about Muslims and their evil plans for Christendom. I find pornography. So much pornography. Almost none of my clients, even the very wealthy ones, own books. People have all manner of weird bedroom habits, too – habits that have nothing to do with sex.

“When the girls were young, I told them they had to make their beds. So they started sleeping on top of the bedspreads,” one client, 40-something and a doctor’s wife, tells me. She shrugs. Her daughters are 15 and 17 and they don’t remember what it feels like to sleep under clean bedsheets. Or how to clean their own bathroom vanity. I find a bowl of elderly body wax next to their sink, tiny pubic hairs thrusting up from the surface like a thousand football fans doing the wave.

Very rich people want the cheapest price for household service. A dainty blond surgeon shows me her home. Every hard surface gleams with marble or imported hardwood.

“I need windows spot-cleaned, I’d like the litter boxes emptied, and you’ll need to buy a canister vac. They’re the best on my floors,” she tells me. She wants me to clean her 4,000-square-foot house for $80. Cleaning a house that size could take as long as six hours. Between gas, supplies and equipment, I need to charge $20 an hour to turn a profit. I give her my estimate – $100 if I can do it in five hours. I never hear from her again.

My friend Adam got a divorce, and I clean his place once a month. We dated briefly. I liked him that way, and he liked me like a pal. But I've dated other men, too. In the last year, I’ve been out with a guy who was afraid of soup (“too much stuff … overwhelming”), a serial shoplifter, and a man who once faked his own death. Adam has a steady girlfriend. I wish him well. I tell myself I do. I pick up his-and-hers pairs of shearling slippers in Adam’s bedroom. I stare out the window for a long minute before turning on the vacuum.

The house full of husband hair made me long for all those wistful moments picking up children’s toys or hating Adam’s (very sweet) new girlfriend. The john seemed like the worst that apartment could do to me till I saw the stove caked with grease and the rotted remnants of a hundred spilled sauces. It was so wretched there was no way I could finish it all in one night. The client agreed, and I offered to come back the next day to tackle the rest.

It took me two hours to do the cook top alone. I scrubbed till my hands went numb. My nails looked like I’d stuck my fingers in an electric pencil sharpener and the wounds were saturated liberally with oven cleaner. The smell of chemicals burned my nose and eyes, and I wondered about the health effects of inhaling an entire bottle of Easy-Off. I could swear I felt a tingle in my ovaries. I can probably only make flipper babies now.

“Take these to the Dumpster,” she said, waving one manicured hand at a pair of enormous trash bags. I grabbed one bag – all I could carry with the vacuum and my bucket of cleaning supplies – and took it outside. I got in my car and hauled ass.

I drove a steady 80 miles an hour from the far 'burbs into the broken-concrete heart of the city and then the artsy neighborhood where I can afford (barely) a charming apartment in a building across from a vacant lot. I pass a burned church, a huge sign in front bearing the slogan “On Fire for the Lord!”

On the way up the stairs to my third-floor apartment, I calculated my profit. Eight hours of cleaning and two hours of travel time. $12 on gas and another $10 on supplies. My profit: $78 and a ruined home manicure.

I opened the door and was greeted by the stink of the cat box. My living room looked like a rogue nuke hit it. I should clean, but I'm not going to. I'm taking a long bath and having a large glass of pink vodka. If anyone asks, it's the maid's day off.