Begging for Reality

I found the passage where the narrator is begging for change. It is right after he leaves Daubenay's office and is headed towards the stock broker. He just got this huge sum of money, and hasn't blown it on fantasy yet, and he chooses to stand on the side of the street and passively beg. He starts this facade because it makes him feel "intense" (44). That language, I believe, is indicating that he feels more than fake at that moment. His actions to beg are making him feel placed. He says how "I just wanted to be in that particular space, right then, doing that particular action" (44), but what does that particular place and action gain him? What can he feel or imagine as real from this? He can feel "so serene and intense that I felt almost real" (44). Something that he does not know yet but will consume him later on. He has a connection to all the people milling about and passing to work, a tangible monetary connection. The begging is allowing him to feel himself and the people around him based on the fact that they could give him money; he is attempting to occupy a "space," as he calls it, in which the community supports him which in turn dictates that he belongs to a community.