Unreality

I didn’t sleep last night. I was up until after five in the morning — writing the previous blog entry, catching up on others’ accounts, answering e-mail, reading the New York Times on the Web.

Finally, at around 5:30, I got offline and checked my phone messages. Around midnight there had been a message from — of all people — Wes. (If you’re new here, that link will catch you up.) He had called me from vacation in North Carolina to see if I was okay.

In the midst of all this chaos I was relieved to feel ordinary human emotions for once. I was touched, and I felt a pang of guilt about my night with M. I had pretty much decided that things with Wes were over, but I listened to his message and now I didn’t know anymore.

It was absurd that I could be thinking about such things at a time like this. It all seemed so trivial. But it was nice to be reminded that such trivial things continue to exist.

After I listened to the message I crawled into bed.

I’d been up since — well — I had only slept sporadically on Monday night, because I don’t sleep well when I’m in bed with someone. So I wasn’t going on a full night’s sleep anyway.

And yet when I crawled into bed at 5:30, I tossed and turned.

I started getting these hallucinatory fears. I thought I heard a noise and I was convinced that Osama bin Laden and his henchmen were going to break down the door of my apartment in the darkness and get me. I actually had to open my bedroom door and make sure my apartment was empty. I guess I was just emotionally and physically drained.

At around 6:30, it was getting light out, so I put on some clothes and walked down to the harbor on the Hudson River at Exchange Place, which is directly across from lower Manhattan. It’s about a 20-minute walk east from my apartment. Jersey City has its own bustling financial district there — much smaller and newer than Manhattan’s, of course — and there’s a pier.

When I walked out of my apartment, it was the first time I’d seen the empty skyline in daylight. The Twin Towers were nowhere to be seen. There was nothing but sky. It was like someone had taken an eraser and just erased them away.

When I got to the water, there were police cars and emergency vehicles and officers. There was a yellow police line blocking off the pier and a cop was standing by, but a few people ducked under the line without a problem, so I did as well.

The sun was rising over the skyline and a cool breeze was blowing. Several amateur photographers had set up tripods and were snapping away. I leaned on a railing and stared. The smoke was still churning, and now it seemed to be floating west into Staten Island and New Jersey. As the sun rose, sunbeams pierced the smoke, turning it a sickly brown and a jaundiced yellow.

A few boats were in the harbor. A lone helicopter was flying back and forth, patrolling the sky. I could see it and hear it. It was unnerving.

To the south, in the distance, I could see the Statue of Liberty.

I looked back at the skyline across from me. No World Trade Center. Just a big gap, and all that smoke and ash still rising. I thought about the enormous amount of smoke and ash that has to have been created by two 110-story buildings, full of furniture and people, burning and collapsing.

I kept looking, and I realized I could see twisted metal sticking out from the side of one building. With my naked eyes.

Two men wearing hardhats that said Sprint came up to me, asking me if I could identify any of the buildings still standing. I couldn’t. Apparently they needed to know because they were they were trying to restore emergency phone service. I wasn’t sure exactly what they were doing, but it wasn’t my place to ask.

At around 8:00 a police officer came over and announced that anyone who wasn’t emergency personnel had to leave, so I left. On the way home I bought copies of USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the New Jersey Star-Ledger. As I walked back to my apartment I scanned the front page of the Journal. I saw a mention of Cantor Fitzgerald and I caught my breath, because that’s where my friend Doug worked. Apparently the people in the Los Angeles office had the people in the New York office on speakerphone, and the New York people were panicking about the plane that had crashed below them and all the rising smoke. I wondered what Doug had been doing at that time. Cantor Fitzgerald takes up — I mean took up — floors 101 to 108 of the building.

I almost cried right there on the sidewalk. And my eyes are welling up again as I write this. I just can’t believe it.

You graduate from college and so many of your friends go to work for consulting firms and investment banks and brokerages with these prestigious names. You send out resumés and go on interviews and get hired. You expect to make a great salary and get valuable work experience and start to build a terrific life. You’re young and you’re living in New York City. You go to work and you compile spreadsheets and have meetings and write on whiteboards and talk on the phone and meet with clients and send money to your college alumni associations. When you get a chance, you go out to bars in Tribeca with your coworkers and you hit on people and you talk about where you went to school.

You’re not supposed to be trapped inside a 110-story building that’s rapidly filling up with smoke and jet fuel from a hijacked airplane.

It makes no sense.

I went to law school. And I’m thinking to myself, what if I happened to work for a law firm at the World Trade Center? It’s totally possible. I keep imagining myself trapped inside the World Trade Center and calling my parents and being scared to death.

I got home and looked through the New York Times. There was a picture on page A7 or A9 that I’ll never forget. It’s a man, upside down, falling from the World Trade Center. One of his legs is bent and the other is straight up and he’s wearing a white shirt and dark pants. You can’t make out any features on his face, but his body looks limp, devoid of life. He almost looks like a scarecrow.

That picture terrified me. It’s going to give me nightmares.

I wonder what possessed him to jump out of a building. To jump out of a fucking skyscraper! I wonder what was going through his mind.

And yet apparently some other guy jumped off the 80th floor and held onto some debris and landed and survived.

You’re trapped high up in a burning skyscraper and the air inside is filling up with smoke and heat. Outside there’s fresh air. What would you do?

How the hell would you decide what to do?

Okay, I can’t write about this anymore.

At around 9:00 a.m. I had a bowl of Corn Flakes and went to bed. I was exhausted, but I didn’t sleep well.

I woke up at around noon and decided I was going to go to my parents’ house in the northern New Jersey suburbs. You know what? I’d planned to spend most of my two weeks off visiting various interesting places in New York. Now what was I supposed to do? Plus I wanted to see my mom and my brother and just get out of the area for a while.

First I spent a couple of hours on the phone with people. I talked with my mom. I talked with my dad, who’s stuck in San Francisco. My landlord called to see if I was okay. I called my “office mom” at my old job to tell her I was okay.

I talked with CanadaGirl, who works in midtown. She’s in that same close circle of friends with me and Doug. We talked about Doug and we were both near tears. We’d never had a conversation like this before. We’re in our twenties. We’re supposed to have lighthearted conversations. Hey, what movie should we see? What bar should we go to? What time should we meet up? I can’t wait for Tim’s wedding in November.

We’re not supposed to be talking about how our friend has probably died in a terrorist attack!

Then I talked with my friend Nick. Nick also works in midtown. He was supposed to have an interview at the World Trade Center at 6:00 yesterday evening with a Peace Corps recruiter.

Obviously that didn’t happen.

After I got off the phone I packed up four days worth of clothes and left my apartment. On the way out I checked my mailbox and found the latest issue of the New Yorker waiting for me. I took it with me. It seemed pathetically, woefully out of date.

I walked to the PATH station. There were signs on the turnstiles saying that the ride was free. I walked on through. Two transit officers were there to answer questions. I walked down to the platform.

Usually, when you’re waiting on the platform at my station and you hear a train coming, you have to look and see whether it’s the 33rd Street line or the World Trade Center line. But there’s no longer a World Trade Center line.

On the long, convoluted ride to my parents’ house in the suburbs — PATH train, Newark City Subway, New Jersey Transit bus — I nearly lost it several times. Many people were reading newspapers. Everyone looked tired. I’d close my eyes and think of everything that had happened. I couldn’t take it. My eyes kept getting wet.

When I got off the bus and walked down the block to my parents’ house, I noticed that my mom had put out an American flag. I smiled and I wanted to cry again. I went inside, put down my bag, went upstairs. Before she looked at me she said she was going to use the bathroom. I think she would have burst into tears otherwise. A few minutes later we hugged, and the puppy jumped all over me.

We walked the dog and then my brother came home, along with his girlfriend. We watched so much TV. Way too much. We ate dinner (thank god for mom’s food). I talked to my dad on the phone again. I talked to my best friend. I talked to my grandmother. She says that my 92-year-old grandfather has no idea any of this is happening. That’s a good thing. Nobody born in 1908 needs to see this.

Back to television.

Television during a crisis is painfully addictive. It’s like the Entertainment in Infinite Jest. You absorb more and more information and see more and more visual images and you can’t take it anymore, you want to stop thinking about it, but you can’t stop. You just keep staring, absorbing, a mindless zombie.

While we were watching, we learned that the Empire State Building had been evacuated because someone had called in a bomb threat on the 44th floor. They closed off traffic and they sent in a cop and a dog. It turned out to be a false alarm. Thank the Lord. What kind of a sicko would do such a thing?

I’ve been trying to avoid information overload. I’ve purposely avoided going to MetaFilter because I know I won’t be able to stop reading and it’s going to make my head explode. As far as blogs, I’ve been trying to stick to my regular reads, for the same reason. And among my regular reads, Choire’s photos and his story are fascinating. Ghostly empty streets? Military officers? ID checks? This is Manhattan!

You know, I feel so relieved to be in the leafy suburbs at my parents’ house after being so close to everything yesterday. But at the same time, I envy my friends who are still in the city. I envy Choire for being able to experience this and go around and take pictures. Things aren’t as exciting out here.

It’s just my usual Manhattan envy coming back in a twisted form. An echo of the world as it used to exist, with ordinary human desires and dreams and hopes.

Jesus! My blog is supposed to be about my personal life, and my anxieties about jobs and romance, and wanting to live in Manhattan.

My blog is not supposed to be about life in a war zone.

Look at Choire. A few days ago he was writing about Fire Island and today he’s documenting armageddon.

It’s sort of like during World War Two, when you’d see all the Warner Brothers cartoon characters selling war bonds and fighting Hitler, totally out of context.

What the fuck is going on here? Life seems to be on hold. Wonderbar and the Phoenix and bar-hopping seem to belong to a long-lost world.

Everybody says that our generation has never known fear and death. The GI’s fought in a world war and the Baby Boomers had Vietnam, but we Gen-Xers were living our lives in blissful, innocent ignorance, with our dot-coms and our lattes and our cool music and our booming economy, safe at home.

That’s not true anymore.

The world has become real. Or is it unreal?

I’m not sure I know the difference right now.

I apologize for not blogging until now. I’ll get to that.

The World Trade Center has loomed large in my life for the past year. See, I live right here. That red star in the center of the map is where my apartment is. And the site of the World Trade Center is just southwest of that big black dot. (Yeah — where the blank space is. Eerily and presciently, Yahoo! Maps has always represented it with a blank space.)

Whenever I walk out of my apartment building and look to the right, I can see it looming across the river. Monolithic twins. From where I live, they’re enormous. Whenever I walk to the PATH station — in other words, whenever I go anywhere — they’re right there. During the day they gleam silver; at night, they light up the sky. They’re my connection to New York; they’re the only buildings in Manhattan’s financial district tall enough to be seen over the buildings in Jersey City. Whenever I hate the fact that I live in Jersey City, I can walk outside and look at the Twin Towers, and they reassure me that Manhattan is just a stone’s throw away. The World Trade Center is reassuring; it anchors me to New York, psychologically.

Even when you’re in Manhattan it anchors you. If you get off the subway and don’t know what direction you’re facing, you just look for the World Trade Center and you know you’re facing south.

The World Trade Center doesn’t just anchor me to the city psychologically. In order to get into Manhattan from home, I take the PATH train. It’s a four-minute walk from my apartment to the Grove Street station, and from there, there are two PATH lines into Manhattan. If you look at this map, you can see that one goes to Christopher Street, 9th Street, 14th Street, 23rd Street, and 33rd Street, and that the other goes to the World Trade Center. I travel both lines with equal frequency. It’s great to take the World Trade Center train, because it’s only a seven-minute ride, and when I get off there, I can hop onto the 1, 2, 3, 9, A, C, E, N, or R train, which take me almost anywhere.

At the end of every workday, I take the World Trade Center-bound train home, even though I get off before the last stop.

When I’m coming home from Manhattan on a Friday or Saturday night, I often prefer to take the subway down to the World Trade Center and take the train home from there, because it’s usually quiet and practically empty, while the other line is always filled with drunk loud people on the way back to Hoboken and takes forever.

There are tons of shops on the lower level of the World Trade Center, too. Because it’s so close, I’m there all the time. It contains my closest big bookstore — a Borders. I’ve been there a lot. There’s also a Gap and a J. Crew and a Sbarro’s and a Warner Brothers Store and a little cell phone kiosk. There’s a Duane Reade drugstore that’s open 24 hours; it’s a great place to pick up some random toiletry or candy bar while I’m waiting for the next train home.

In fact, I was just at the World Trade Center on Monday. Since I have two weeks off, I’d decided to take a walking tour of Brooklyn Heights. I took the train to the World Trade Center, bought a banana at a food shop right there in the mall, and then I hopped on the 2/3 to go to Borough Hall in Brooklyn. Such a convenient trip.

In the evening, on the way home, I stopped at the Gap at the World Trade Center because I really needed a new t-shirt. I rifled through a pile of them. I went into the fitting room and tried on several. And I finally wound up buying one. That receipt at the top of this entry is my souvenir. This is kind of weird, but I sort of feel like I saved the t-shirt from a horrible experience. I know, that sounds really bizarre.

All this writing and I haven’t even described my day.

After coming home from my tour of Brooklyn Heights on Monday, I planned to go back into Manhattan that night and hang out at a bar or club. So I logged into the New York City chatrooms and asked what there is to do on Monday nights. I wound up chatting with this guy for a little bit, and he was kinda cute, and eventually we decided to meet up. M just moved to New York a week ago from San Francisco and hasn’t started his new job yet, so, like me, he had nothing to do the next day. Therefore, we could stay up as late as we wanted. I changed, showered, took the PATH up to 9th Street and met him there.

The odd thing is that M lives off Sixth Avenue and 10th Street in lower Manhattan, on the very same block as my therapist’s office. That’s kind of bizarre, huh? I always have therapy on Tuesday nights, so this would be great — I could hook up with the guy on Monday night, and then on Tuesday night I could go back to the same block and my therapist could help me work through the guilt.

We went to his apartment. We talked for a while. M was a nice guy and seemed intelligent. And eventually stuff happened. Oh BOY did stuff happen. It was… amazing. It was the best sex I’d had in ages. We made out for three whole hours. It was amazing, amazing, amazing.

At around 2:30 in the morning we fell asleep.

At around 10:00 the next morning, we woke up and had a little bit more fun. His air conditioner was on, but over it we heard some sirens and beeping coming from Sixth Avenue. It’s rare that I spend the night in Manhattan — let alone wake up there in the morning — so I figured it was just part of Manhattan life. We also heard what sounded like cheers. Since today was supposed to be New York’s mayoral primary, I figured there was a political rally or something. Then we heard what sounded like a woman’s scream. Yup, just another excited person in New York.

I decided to leave. I didn’t want to waste my vacation lying in bed. I planned to take the PATH home, take out my contacts (which I’d slept in), shower, change, come back into Manhattan to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or something, and visit my therapist in the evening. I put on my clothes and said goodbye to M. He seemed a bit disappointed when I said I was going to be on my way.

It was around 10:50 in the morning when I walked out of the building and walked toward Sixth Avenue. There were crowds of people walking by. I’m not usually in Manhattan at that time of day, but I didn’t think there were usually this many people walking along Sixth Avenue down here.

On a whim I decided to cross Sixth Avenue and then I turned south. I saw a huge mass of dark smoke at the south end of Sixth. Wow, a building is on fire, I thought. That must be why all these people are standing around staring south. Two women were staring at it and talking, and I went up to them and asked what building was on fire.

“The World Trade Center just collapsed,” one of them said to me. “It was a terrorist attack. Planes crashed into both towers and then they went down. Another plane crashed into the Pentagon.”

Holy fuck.

Now that I thought about it, it had seemed like something was missing.

I stared at the rising smoke, not realizing that if I’d been outside 20 minutes earlier, I probably would have seen the second tower collapse.

I went over to a van where people were gathered around and I listened to the radio with them for a while. They said that all transportation in and out of Manhattan was closed. Even the subways were shut down. Oh, so I’m stuck in Manhattan. Great.

I decided to go back to M’s building. I had his cellphone number, but the payphones weren’t working and I don’t have a cell. And when I got back to his building I couldn’t buzz his apartment, because there was no logical correspondence between the numeric keypad and any building residents.

So I did the next best thing. I walked over to my therapist’s building and buzzed her. I told her who it was and she let me up instantly. She was waiting for me when I got up the stairs. She must have thought I was in danger or something. But I just wanted to use her phone.

We went into her office. “Wow, this is highly unorthodox, isn’t it,” I said. There was a TV on, so we watched it for a little while, both in shock. Then I used her phone and called M — somehow managing to get through — and asked my therapist if our appointment that evening was still on. It was. Okay. I’ll just spend the day with M, I figured.

So I went back to M’s apartment. He’d already heard what had happened.

Shall I mention again that M just moved to New York a week ago?

We watched TV. He doesn’t have cable, and the local NBC and ABC affiliates had both been knocked out, so we watched CBS. CBS must have totally scored today.

With his cellphone I finally managed to get through to my mom in northern New Jersey, because knowing my mom, she’d be worried sick. My dad’s on business in San Francisco right now, so she’s alone. She said she’d left me two messages and had e-mailed me and had indeed been worried sick.

I told her I was in Manhattan.

“You’re in Manhattan?” she said weakly. “What the hell are you doing in Manhattan?”

Yeah, mom, like I knew the fucking World Trade Center was going to blow up today.

I lied and told her that I’d gone out with a few friends the night before and had crashed at a friend’s place in the city.

She wanted a contact number, so I gave her M’s cell number. (Um, that didn’t feel bizarre at all…) And she told me — well, basically ordered me — to call her later on.

I checked my e-mail on his laptop. Messages from various bloggers and other friends, asking if I was okay. I responded to every e-mail. I thought about blogging really quick, but I didn’t want the URL showing up in M’s Internet Explorer history.

I knew that one of my friends from college, Doug, worked in the World Trade Center. I have this very close group of friends from college — we’re like a family. He’s one of them. Most of us met up in June — but Doug couldn’t make it. And even though he lives and works in Manhattan, I haven’t seen him in over a year.

I hoped Doug was okay.

M and I decided to go out into the world and see what was going on.

We walked south along Sixth Avenue. The smoke was amazing — an enormous, thick, black, churning, rising mass. It looked like a volcano. We just kept staring as we walked along. Ambulances and police cars and random vehicles with lights on top kept rushing north along Sixth. Every few minutes there were a few more. The sirens kept coming. People were walking along, talking into their cellphones, walking their dogs. Some people were walking north — from the direction of the explosion — with facemasks hanging around their necks. A vehicle sped up Sixth Avenue covered in white debris, leaving some of it in a trail on the ground. A restaurant was passing out cups of water. We listened to another radio.

We continued walking south, getting closer. Finally we got to Canal Street, where police barriers kept the crowds from going any further. So we walked east along Canal, stopping at every intersection to gape at the dark smoke again. Unbelievable — where there used to be these enormous twin towers there was now smoke. Tons of people were walking around in shock, many talking into their cellphones. It was like a war zone, it was like Armageddon, I felt like I was in a movie.

A few more debris-covered vehicles zoomed by, leaving trails of smoke.

We got to the Manhattan Bridge, where there was a mass pedestrian exodus to Brooklyn. It looked like the New York Marathon in slow motion. We decided to walk across the bridge to get a better view. And the view was stunning. Thick black smoke rose in a plume from Manhattan’s financial district, into the sky, blowing all the way to Brooklyn, where it was whiter. The sun was covered in darkness. I looked up and it was an orange ball poking through the dark smoke.

We were about halfway across the bridge and decided to turn back. But the cops stopped us. One way only. Oh, shit. First I was stuck in Manhattan, and now I’m stuck in Brooklyn?

My mom’s gonna kill me.

When we got to Brooklyn the crowd was still walking. Cops everywhere. People giving out free water.

Fortunately the subway was finally running into Manhattan, so we found a station, hopped on, and got off at Union Square. Phew.

Everything was closed. Even the huge Virgin Megastore. We were starving, so we walked along 14th Street back to Sixth Avenue. Everything was closed, everything. Restaurants, stores — all closed — on a weekday afternoon in Manhattan.

Miraculously, French Roast was open and it was bustling. It’s a coffee shop/restaurant on Sixth and 11th. We ordered food. I ate a hamburger and fries. I thought, here are all these people hanging out eating lunch, and the World Trade Center blew up today.

Then it hit me that I had my college friend Doug’s home number in my wallet. In my wallet there’s this little scrap of paper on which I have random phone numbers scribbled down. His is one of them.

I borrowed M’s cellphone and called Doug’s apartment. His roommate, who’s also his friend, answered.

“Is… Doug there?” I said awkwardly.

It turned out he wasn’t there, and his roommate didn’t know his whereabouts.

According to the roommate, Doug had gone to work that morning.

I asked if he knew what floor Doug worked on.

It turns out he worked on the 100th floor of the first tower to be hit. The tower was about 110 stories tall.

Doug worked above where the plane hit.

The roommate had talked to Doug’s mother. Apparently, after the plane hit, Doug called his mother to tell her that he was in the building and couldn’t get out. He also called his girlfriend, apparently.

It was 4:30 in the afternoon and the roommate hadn’t heard from Doug at all.

That’s all I know.

I left my number in case he learned anything more.

M and I finished eating. We talked about our bizarre day. He said he was glad I’d come back, because he’d hoped to see me again.

“I guess this is what they call a bonding experience, huh?” I said.

Afterward we went back to his apartment. I answered more e-mails. I desperately, desperately, desperately wanted to blog, but I just couldn’t risk doing it on M’s computer.

At 6:30 I walked down the block and went to therapy. There were no cars on the streets. Just some people walking around. It was like a ghost town. Almost all the stores were closed.

Anyway, I already had plenty I hoped to talk about this week in therapy, and now, on top of that, Manhattan was a war zone. Let’s just say that there were no lulls in the conversation.

After therapy I went back to M’s place. We watched more TV. It turned out the PATH trains were running again. Hallelujah! I could get home!

First we watched the president on TV.

I know we’re all supposed to rally around the president at times like this, but the guy looked like a scared little kid and exuded no confidence. I wonder how scared shitless he was.

I have never missed Bill Clinton more than when I watched Bush speak tonight.

After he spoke, M walked me all the way back to the PATH train. I’d thought the Christopher Street station was open but I was mistaken. We had to walk all the way up to 33rd Street. We walked past St. Vincent’s Hospital, where there were tons of ambulances and medical personnel and blindingly bright lights.

Finally we got to the station, and we hugged and said we’d hang out again. He told me to call him. And I think I will.

I went down to the PATH train. Eventually it started moving. We zoomed past the closed stations — 23rd Street, 14th Street, 9th Street, Christopher Street — all eerily empty.

When the train got to New Jersey I felt myself exhaling. I’d never been so relieved to get back to New Jersey.

When the train got to my station, I walked up the stairs, got outside, and stared at the spot across the river where the enormous World Trade Center used to be.

There was darkness.

All these things have happened today and I can’t process it. Even if I break it down into smaller events I can’t process it. If one U.S. commercial flight had been hijacked, that would have been horrific enough. But four commercial flights were hijacked today. And two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. And the World Trade Center was destroyed. And a plane crashed into the Pentagon. And a plane crashed outside Pittsburgh. And every single commercial flight in the entire nation has been grounded for the first time in history. And Major League Baseball has been shut down. And the Emmys have been cancelled. And Broadway was dark tonight.

And Borders Bookstore, and all those books that I’ve browsed through, and all those t-shirts that I rifled through at the Gap yesterday — they’re all gone.

And one of my favorite ways of getting into Manhattan — with all its connecting subway lines — doesn’t exist anymore.

And my friend Doug is probably dead.

It’s been a crazy, crazy day. I can’t fully process any of this. I’m sure none of you can, either.

But in a perverse, voyeuristic way, I feel really lucky to have been in Manhattan today. The whole world was watching, and I was less than a mile from the scene. I’m going to remember this day for the rest of my life. Like that even needs to be said.

This was one of those rare days when Manhattan felt like a small town. A crazy, eccentric, shell-shocked town, but a small one nonetheless. Everyone on their cellphones. Everyone walking across the bridge. Everyone gathered around radios. Everyone staring at the smoke.

I’m a New Yorker by birth. I was born in Manhattan and spent the first three years of my life in Queens. And you know what?

New York is the best fucking city in the world.

I love this place. And if those assholes think they’re going to scare us — they’re not. We’re tough as nails and we’re not going to take it. We’re going to keep on loving our city and living in our city like crazy — partying our asses off and dancing the night away and going to museums and going to lectures and hailing cabs and checking people out on the street and bragging about how we wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world.

They think they can scare us? Hah. They think they can demoralize us?

Then they don’t understand New Yorkers —

or Americans —

or human beings —

at all.

Twilight in Reverse

I know I’ve already written a lot this weekend, but… whoa.

Last night was… amazing.

Stay with me here, because this is going to take a while. And this probably isn’t going where you think it’s going.

First off, Wes has gone on a week’s vacation with his parents. I think it’s good I have some time away from him. But yesterday evening I got an e-mail from him. Strangely, this was the first e-mail he’d ever sent me. See, we didn’t get around to exchanging e-mail addresses until about two weeks after we’d met, and we’ve never used them. Strange, huh? Actually, in a world in which e-mail is the primary form of communication, it’s pretty refreshing.

It said:

Hey —

Talk to you soon — [Wes]

Okay. Interesting. It looks like one of two things is going on here.

One: we’re not on the same page at all. He’s completely oblivious to what happened the other night.

Or, two: he knows full well that I was upset the other night, and he’s trying to do damage control because he’s concerned I might meet or hook up with someone else while he’s gone. Don’t do anything stupid, he’d said.

But in either case, all he can say is Had a really fun time with you last night. Oh, god. I think he’s one of those people who, instead of confronting problems, prefers to sweep everything under the rug and pretend everything is just peachy. I can’t deal with people like that. People who can’t communicate. People who aren’t emotionally aware.

A little alarm bell is starting to go off.

Anyway, moving on.

I decided to go back to the East Village last night by myself. In the back of my mind I intended to hook up with someone. After all, we’re not boyfriends.

Earlier in the evening, I’d got a much-needed haircut. My hair is now closely-cropped again, the way I like it.

After I changed into appropriate bar attire last night — jeans, a white ringer T, and contact lenses — I looked at myself in the mirror.

Hmm.

On a whim, I decided to shave off the goatee. I’d shaved it off for an interview a couple of weeks ago and had grown it right back. But last night I decided, screw it — I’m tired of it. So I took off my t-shirt, shaved, put my t-shirt back on, and looked at myself in the mirror again.

Wow.

In all honesty, I looked adorable.

I put on a dash of cologne and walked out the door feeling terrific.

I went to the East Village. First I went to Wonderbar, but it was way too crowded. I’m not as fond of that place as I used to be — it’s small, you can never move, and there’s never anyplace to stand or sit. So I left.

I decided to go back to the Phoenix, site of the previous night’s trauma. I figured that instead of associating the Phoenix with trauma for the rest of my days, I should replace bad memories with new ones. The Phoenix will rise. So I walked in — and it, too, was packed. I don’t really like being in bars by myself, so I thought about leaving. But then I spotted a guy from Twentysomething and went up to him and said hi. He was with a friend of his, someone who’d just moved to New York a month ago. The three of us talked for a while.

Eventually, the guy from Twentysomething went home, but his friend and I continued to talk. And talk. And talk.

He moved here four weeks ago from Pittsburgh, where he’d just received an MFA in poetry at the University of Pittsburgh. Before Pittsburgh, he lived in Boston. He’s just begun a job here in New York as an editor for a publishing company. He grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family in West Virginia. I wouldn’t have known — he didn’t seem at all like I’d expect someone from a fundamentalist Christian family in West Virginia to seem like. He had no accent and didn’t seem at all rural. I couldn’t figure out his background.

After much talking, we looked at our watches. It was three in the morning. Holy shit. We’d been talking forever. He decided it was time to go home to Brooklyn, but he seemed worth knowing, so I asked him for his phone number. We exchanged digits, and he left. He’s planning to start going to Twentysomething, so I’ll probably see him there at any rate.

I was still horny. I bought another beer and stood around the Phoenix for a while. By some weird logic I figured it might be easier to meet someone now that it was getting late and people were getting more desperate to pair off. Low self-esteem, party of one?

I drank my beer and stood with my back to the bar and looked around. But nothing happened. Nobody came up to me, and I didn’t see anyone who was both alone and attractive. So I finished my beer and left.

From there I went back to Wonderbar, where I had some water and ran into an acquaintance and a friend of his. We chatted for a while. It was now four in the morning. I decided to leave.

And at that point I decided to fulfill another goal of mine.

See, I’d always wanted to walk around Manhattan all night long until the sun came up. There was something romantic and soothing about the idea. It made me think of Catcher in the Rye. Since I’m on vacation for the next two weeks, I don’t have to worry about screwing up my sleeping schedule, so I decided this was the perfect night to be Holden Caulfield.

I left Wonderbar and walked over to Broadway, up Broadway, past Union Square, and up to Park Avenue South. Park Avenue seemed the safest bet, because the street has row after row of luxury buildings, each with a doorman just inside the lobby, so I figured nothing bad could happen to me.

I strolled up Park Avenue, leisurely. I walked up into the East 20s, into the 30s, into the 40s. I saw random small groups of straight guys wearing their straight clothes after picking up straight women in straight clubs, probably on their way back to their straight cars so they could drive back to New Jersey. Blech.

I continued walking and soon the streets were practically empty. It was indeed romantic and soothing. I walked slowly, thoughtfully, taking the time to look at everything around me. I reached the Met Life Building and walked past Grand Central Station, then continued along Park Avenue.

I really, really had to go to the bathroom, so I stopped into the Waldorf-Astoria at five in the morning to use the men’s room in the lobby. There was a big separate bathroom with its own door. It was so spacious. I sat there in peace. After I was finished, I washed my hands with Caswell-Massey Almond and Aloe Liquid Soap. It was truly one of the most satisfying restroom experiences I’ve ever had.

I walked around the lobby. Did you know the Waldorf-Astoria has a rare bookshop? Did you know that in the window of the bookshop there’s a first edition of Huckleberry Finn? And a first edition of the score to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg? And a first edition of Plato’s Republic in English? And a first edition of Wordsworth’s poetry, opened to a page containing an autograph from Wordsworth himself? And an early edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost?

Way cool.

I left the Waldorf-Astoria and continued walking up Park Avenue. I felt like I was in New York in the 1940s, or maybe the 1950s. After I few minutes I realized that I’d had a song going through my head, for who knows how long, without my realizing it. I realized it was from “Guys and Dolls”:

My time of day is the dark time

And the janitor with the mop

…and the homeless people sleeping on the steps of St. Bartholemew’s.

It was still dark. I kept walking. I walked past a travel company with a detailed model of a Cunard Line cruise ship in the window. I walked past a banking company with brochures in the window about how to make the transition to retirement. Outside a luxury building, a middle-aged man in a suit with a suitcase and a briefcase was getting into a cab, presumably on his way to the airport. I imagined his holdings — his stocks, his investments, his Park Avenue condominium, his long life of experience, his business meeting in Stockholm. But hey, I’ve got stuff too. Student loans and credit card debt.

I strolled up through the East 50s. Then the 60s. Occasionally I’d stop and stare up at the half-moon in the sky. I’d see a solitary window lit up on the otherwise dark facade of an apartment building.

I zoomed out from a mental map. I saw the entire island of Manhattan from above, and then the entire city, and then the entire East Coast, and then the entire nation. An entire nation filled with people asleep in their homes. In the Mountain Time Zone it was 3:30; in the Central Time Zone, 4:30. Across the nation — except maybe in L.A. — the only other people awake right now were gay people, teenagers speeding along highways, families sitting anxiously by hospital beds, and solitary beings worrying about failing marriages and how to pay the bills.

The sky was turning from black to dark blue. Doormen were outside, spraying sidewalks and watering plants. I walked up through the 70s. In the east, over in Queens, the dark blue started to become light blue. It was twilight in reverse. I walked up through the 80s. And then into the 90s. I knew I’d have to stop soon, because I was getting closer to the edge of Harlem.

Finally, at East 96th Street, the luxury buildings ended, really abruptly.

I’d walked from 6th Street all the way up to 96th Street. Ninety blocks.

I turned back and walked along 95th Street toward Fifth Avenue. I felt like doubling back and sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As I turned onto Fifth Avenue, a flotilla of bicycles appeared out of nowhere. There were hundreds of them. Rider after rider. They kept coming and coming. Apparently it’s Bicycle Awareness Day. It wouldn’t end. They went on and on, hundreds of cyclists riding silently down Fifth Avenue.

I got to the museum and walked up to the top of the steps. I sat down at the exact center of the very top step. Do you know how surreal it is to sit on the steps of the Metroplitan Museum of Art, completely alone? The steps of the Met are usually jam-packed.

A few dog-walkers walked by. The sky grew lighter and lighter. One by one, the automatic street lamps shut off.

I stood up again. Oh my god. My feet were killing me. I’d probably worn out my Kenneth Coles completely.

I descended the museum steps and walked along 82nd Street, past Madison Avenue, and turned onto Lexington. I wanted either to go to the subway or to find a diner. I wasn’t sure.

I walked down Lexington and got to 77th Street. The sky was light now, but it was a weak morning light; the sun wasn’t up yet. A woman was walking into a deli. A man was unwrapping newspapers.

I thought about going down into the 77th Street subway station, but across the street I saw a diner and a small bagel shop. I decided to cross over. It was 6:30 in the morning.

As I crossed the street I saw a guy crossing from the other direction. He was wearing a ringer T as well. He was pretty cute.

As he approached, I looked at him. I realized he was looking at me, too. A faint smile appeared on his face. He walked on.

Wait. Whoa!

I turned around to look back at him. He was looking back at me, too. He stopped walking, turned around, and walked back toward me. He followed me to the corner.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“What are you up to?” he said.

“Oh, just walking,” I said.

“Cool… where have you been tonight?” he said.

“Well, I was at the Phoenix, and then Wonderbar for a bit, and I just felt like walking around the city and I wound up here,” I said. Um, yeah. Seventy blocks north of Wonderbar.

“Where do you live?”

“Jersey City, actually, across the river,” I said, a hint of apology in my voice, like, I know, how pathetic.

“Okay. Let’s go back to my place,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. Oh my god. I can’t believe this is happening.

We walked down Lexington. I was hard. I asked him where he lived. He said 70th and First. So, not like right around the corner.

“What’s your name?” he said.

“I’m Jeff.”

“I’m Kevin.”

He sounded like he had a slight accent, almost East European. “So, where are you from originally?” I asked.

“Connecticut.”

Oh.

“Have you done anything tonight?” he asked me. I assumed he meant had I fooled around with anyone. But I was wrong. “Drugs,” he said.

“Oh. Uh, no,” I said, because I hadn’t, I never have, and I never will. “Have you?”

“Ecstasy.”

Oh, great. Should I still do this? What does ecstasy do to a person? Is ecstasy a capsule or a tablet? Will there still be some on his tongue if I kiss him?

He said he needed some water, so I felt better. If he had some water, that would probably wash anything away.

At 72nd Street he said, “Jeff, I don’t think this is such a good idea after all. I’m kind of fucked up right now.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey, not a problem.”

So we went our separate ways.

At 77th Street I’d been picked up and at 72nd Street I’d been dumped. It was a five-block romance. Ah, New York.

When I finally got back to Jersey City the sun was up. It was eight in the morning. I crawled into bed and fell asleep.

Wow. What a magical night.

I finally got to be Holden Caulfield.

Except Holden Caulfield never got picked up by a cute guy on the corner of 77th and Lexington.
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