| Each day this week, we’re featuring short essays from our latest issue on the possibilities and perils of people coming together.  Illustration by Leonie Bos During my mid-twenties, I hit what you might call a bottom. Since college, I’d partaken too liberally in wine and song, although in this case the wine was cheap beer and street drugs and the song was my self-sabotaging punk band. When the band broke apart, I cleaned up and moved back in with my mother. I got a job as a substitute teacher. One period I might be covering a history class, the next running a chemistry lab. I was grateful to the student who said, “Mr. Lipsyte, I really think you should wear protective goggles during this experiment.” I was not as grateful to the one who said, “My dad told me all subs are losers.” Not all subs, I thought, but quite possibly me. I was eager, in fact, for a quiet, unambitious existence, a long, boring, soul-mending sojourn. I didn’t foresee that two events would infuse this period with an intensity I haven’t quite known since. Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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