I lost my wallet somewhere today, maybe in B's car, or in B's apartment, or in public someplace, which would be trouble. I've never lost my wallet before. I am usually hyperaware of personal items once I leave my home. I am constantly, neurotically frisking myself and fingering the items in my pockets, running through my mental checklist: Yes I am fully clothed, yes I have my wallet, yes I have my keys, yes I have my phone, no I am not saying this out loud. I called B's cell phone the moment I realized my wallet was missing but he hasn't responded to my message and it's been several hours. Where is my wallet. Is my wallet in the grubby hands of some stranger, are the meaty fingers of some dishonest stranger at this moment rummaging through its contents as he contemplates the true dimensions of his good fortune in coming across my wallet, stuffed as it is with cards that provide ridiculously easy access to my bank account and my sterling credit accounts, not to mention my laminated membership card for the Hickory Farms Championship Cheese Club and the photo of me with Lance Kerwin. Identity theft. I'll become a statistic, a very contemporary sort of victim, it will take years of struggle and red tape to fix everything and regain my good name in government and financial databases, credit bureaus, who knows where else. I'll be lucky if it's just white collar stuff, what if the identity thief uses my credit cards to molest children or my library card to smuggle narcotics, what then? You can't be complacent about your identity anymore, those days are gone. You can wake up in the morning and you're no longer you, someone else is, someone even less deserving of being you than you are is you and you're nobody anymore, less than nobody even.