The whole human condition is about sex, money, and power, or some derivative of the three; to deny any of them is just to be enslaved more so by the others.

These were Sam’s thoughts as he entered the elevator with his colleagues, in the older office building on Cortlandt Street this Monday morning.

Greed was heavy on his mind. The necessary evil, fueling capitalism and the free market system – which not inconsequentially earned him his grocery money and paid his mortgage.

But greed was just a driver of the other three vices.

When people asked Sam what he did, he sometimes had trouble answering the question in a way in which his mother, or the average man on the street, might understand.

After all Sam really didn’t do anything. Not in the sense that a farmer plants crops, or a mechanic fixes cars, or a plumber lays pipe.

Sam crunched numbers. Financial numbers specifically.

At the end of the day the numbers existed, the same as they had at the beginning. Sam’s gift was analyzing the numbers and making recommendations and predictions to his superiors.

He knew this information netted his firm huge rewards. He knew this, not from first hand manipulation of the markets, or tallying the day’s gains and losses. He knew this because the firm paid him more and more money each year. And a lot of it.

But other than his paycheck, Sam took very little satisfaction from his job.

Sam might have felt better about his lot in life if he knew that the data he provided day-in and day-out was an important lubricant to the economy; as important as the oil the mechanic put in the cars he serviced.

But Sam was more preoccupied with the general human condition this morning, than the part he or his firm contributed to its well being.

Sam was dating an attorney, that is until the previous Sunday, when they mutually decided to call it off.

They met in the Starbucks on Fulton, a place they both frequented as part of their daily routine, that is, until last week.

One morning he asked her if she would like to meet him after work for a “decaffeinated” drink. She laughed and agreed.

That was over a year ago, and this morning Sam wondered if either of them had laughed since.

Brooke was what Sam would describe to his friends as a superpower attorney. She was smart and attractive and confident.

She was the daughter of an autoworker who spent 31 years in the General Motors plant in Metuchen, earning a decent enough wage that he could send both of his daughters to Ivy League schools.

Ironically Brooke’s upbringing in a liberal, union household led her straight to Wall Street.

She would insist to Sam time and time again, that she wasn’t in it for the money.

No, he reflected this morning, probably not. She was definitely in it for the sex and the power.

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2015 Kirt Van Buren