City of Night

Wow. Now that was unexpected.

After therapy, the first incredible thing that happened was I headed down to the West Village in search of a parking space, and I found one right on Greenwich Street between West 10th and Charles!!!. So then, I made some phone calls. I called my Dad and said I needed to borrow $2500. I called my old job to request the number for the administrator of my 401(k) plan. I called the contractor down in Fort Leatherdale that I've been working with to tell him that I finally want to finish the renovation work ASAP. I called my real estate broker to tell her I'd hopefully be heading down there next week to finish the renovation work and put the place on the market. I need to sell my condo so I can go to welding school. It's been rampant inactivity since I realized this. Time to get the ball rolling.

Then I called UnFortunate. He was on the grass pier at the end of Christopher Street. I decided to join him before I met up with an AOL date (tentative new-to-all-of-this-S/M-stuff boy from Staten Island). I went to a place on Hudson to grab an iced latte. And then headed towards the pier.

Odd. The traffic light at Christopher and Greenwich seems to be out of order.

Odd. The traffic light at Christopher and West Street seems to be out of order.

I found UnFortunate on the grass pier, and told him that there seemed to be some sort of power failure in the West Village. We guessed a Con Ed substation had gone kaplooie, and tried to figure out where it might be. Maybe down on Varick Street.

Then I ran into Schlitz, who was, as usual, a barrage of mixed signals. We chatted for a bit. I met his sweetie of a new dog. Then off to make my AOL date at the Starbucks at 8th Avenue and 16th Street.

As I walked north, it became apparent that the power failure extended beyond Christopher Street. The streets were filled with commuters making their way northward from Wall Street jobs. None of the traffic lights were working. Stores were closed.

Starbucks was closed. My gym was closed. Police were directing traffic. The subways were shut down. I walked up and down 8th Avenue smoking a cigar.

I had a dinner date at 7pm with the Ancient of Days, and I was all set to be regaled with tales of What It Was Like being introduced to S/M through a lose network of motorcycle clubs in LA in the '50s. I decided to head over there. Perhaps the Ancient of Days was plucky, and we could find some coldcuts for sale at a grocery that refused to close, and head to a nearby park. I went over there thinking that the apartment number was 4K. As in, fourth floor.

The city became more and more surreal. I saw a dollar store doing business in batteries and flashlights through their burglar gate, frightened, I suppose, of looters. (There were about six people outside of the dollar store, most of them elderly, the rest looking like untenured NYU professors.) First Avenue was a sea of humanity moving northward.

At the apartment building of the Ancient of Days, I discovered that it was not 4K but 28K. As in, 28th floor. I actually headed up the stairs (in pitch blackness), and got to the sixth floor before I thought better of this. After 28 floors, Ancient of Days might feel obligated to entertain me, and he probably wasn't planning on a blackout, and lord knew how long it could last.

So I headed east, deciding to see what Times Square looked like with all the lights out.

Times Square looked ghostly, adding to the surreal quality. Surveying the darkened marquis and empty screens on the jumbotrons, a thought occured to me: what if the lights never come back on? What if that's it for Western Civilisation? What if New York City is forever plunged back into the Nineteenth Century?

I headed back down to Chelsea. On the way, I got some free yogurts. But, alas, no spoon to go with them. I briefly considered eating the yogurts with my fingers. I was wearing my leather pants and a short sleeve grey REI shirt that I had unbuttoned. I thought I would cut sort of a fetching figure licking and sucking gobs of creamy white yogurt from my fingers. Y'see, my thoughts had turned to the possibilities of Blackout Sex. After all, wasn't there a baby boomlet in the wake of the 1964 and 1977 power outages? Since we weren't going to be watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy tonight, perhaps I could get me some nookie.

On the corner of 8th Avenue and 23rd Street, I ran into the current president of GMSMA, purched atop a mailbox, surveying the crowd. We compared notes. I mentioned my yogurt-but-no-spoon dilemma, and he offered to lend me a spoon. We headed to his apartment where I helped him light candles and ate my yogurts. Then I headed down four flights of dark stairwell and out onto the street. At this point, it was night. The city was black, except for the headlights of passing cars and the flashlights that folks were carrying. Every gurl in Chelsea seemed to be out on the streets, many shirtless.

Okay. Gay men wandering around shirtless in the dark. Pretty Meat Rack-y, huh? I was juiced. I decided to head to Ty's.

It occurred to me that New Yorkers who had a really hard time with September 11th must be having flashbacks. But, possibly this would be an antidote to that. Because, y'know... it was all pretty fine. Everyone was sort of friendly and civil. Citizens were taking it upon themselves to direct traffic. A few bars were open, lending the evening a festive atmosphere.

I dropped off my gym bag in my car (no lifting for me tonight), and there heard Mayor Bloomberg address the city. There was no looting. There was no crime associated with the blackout. People were encouraged to look in on elderly neighbors and blow out their candles before they went to bed.

Huh.

I remember the story in Time magazine about the blackout in '77. It made New York City seem like a howling hell. There was none of that. Not a bit.

Christopher Street was all but deserted. Ty's was shuttered.

And then I ran into a guy that I've been cruising for the past three years. We chatted briefly, agreed that this was pretty awesome, and proceeded to stroll around together through the darkened streets of Greenwich Village, working our way up to Chelsea.

I noticed that the Penn South Co-op, along 8th Avenue in the 20s, was lit. They must have their own generator. (There was a Twilight Zone episode that came to mind, where a small town has a blackout, but some of the houses stay lit. Folks jump to the conclusion that it's the Russians--made at the height of the Cold War--and that the folks that still have lights must be Commies. A riot ensues. Cut to two space aliens up on the hill, cackling at the success of their experiment, and thinking of how perfectly it will work when they try it on a major metropolis.)

Those four yogurts I had were pretty much all I had eaten that day, so at this point I was starving. The Guy and I decided to see if in the Penn South complex there was any place selling food.

And there was. Pita Pan was open for business. Penn South had Power. Pita Pan was Part of Penn South, so Pita Pan had Plenty Power. (...ten times fast.) Alas, the whole of Chelsea seemed to be waiting in line at Pita Pan. And, sadly, the staff at Pita Pan were not used to having so much business. While waiting on line (for two and a half hours), UnFortunate was able to call me. I told him my location and he headed that way.

I managed to score some falafel (really good falafal) and some lentil salad and drinks for The Guy, UnFortunate, and me. We walked down to The Guy's stoop on 19th Street, and sat drinking and eating, talking about the blackout, talking about past blackouts, and finally talking about life and death. Sitting there in the darkness, the moon and Mars (which is the closest it will be in our lifetimes) overhead, with a lucious breeze blowing... it was all pretty sublime.

UnFortunate had visited the East Village and Tompkins Square Park. In Tompkins Square, there was apparently attempts made to incite a riot, burning trashcans and all. I voiced surprise that riot-y types still lived in the East Village. UnFortunate said that it didn't 'feel' like the Tompkins Square Park riots of old. This felt more like a frat party.

I was exhausted. UnFortunate and I bid goodnight to The Guy and walked south. At this point, the bars were closed. The streets were empty save for folks who like us, just couldn't get enough of the weirdness.

The Holland Tunnel was dark. (Well, we all had our headlights...) This, too, was a little unnerving. I thought of the chapter in Stephen King's The Stand where the actor character escapes from New York City through the tunnel, and finds it filled with corpses in cars.

And then I was back in Beautiful Downtown Jersey City. And guess what? We got Power. Right here in Jersey City. We got Power with a capital 'P' and that rhymes with 'C' and that stands for City, as in Jersey City.

And so, of course, even though UnFortunate and I plan on going to Sandy Hook tomorrow to work on our no-tan-line-tans, I decided to blog.

While I was walking around, I took some pictures. I'll post them sometime soon here on Singletails. Sometime when it's not 4:11 a.m. when I'm getting ready to head to the beach tomorrow morning.

Don't be afraid of the dark.

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