Dark Fun

So I wasn't being sarcastic at all. The blackout was fun or at least, it would have been more fun had we still lived in the city. Back in the day when we were freshly shacked up in his UWS studio with an open loft bedroom, we had a tiny college fridge that fit under the stove top so not anywhere close to being big enough to store anything perishable for any amount of time. Fuck, a pint of Haggan-Daaz® wouldn't even fit in the little pseudo-freezer part up top. So with those good old days gone (which, while bohemianalisticly romantic in that poor post-college student way, really weren't fun), we were left to watch as the city came alive and vibrant and fun in the helpful New Yorker in the face of adversity way. It helped that we weren't being bombed or exploited by terrorists in which case, I very surely believe all those nice people letting one another cross in front of each other would have in fact been trampling one another to get out of the way. Not that someone wouldn't have stopped to help eventually, but I'm just saying mad, panicky pandemonium rules the day.

But as I was saying, Jeff and I, all things considered (that being the eight hour session in our "hey these seats are comfortable...I'm glad we spent the extra cheddar on them" SUV) were having an OK time. We bought a $0.79 bottle of water from some nice goth chick for $2 who was wondering 11th street with a big,dripping bag of them. I gave her $3 just for being such a kitten in the face of pre-dusk adversity. Hot shirtless guys were roaming the sidewalks drinking open cans of beer, hooting at the tube-topped, big-boobs chicks and Jeff and I were playing "Fatty or Hottie" without much heart because on 11th Avenue and 45th Street, the guys tend to be a little more FedEx than UPS. We had our radio tuned to listen for all the cool bars throwing their doors open to the wandering public and I cooed in a subtle shade of envy when they interviewed some guy who'd emptied his cupboard and brought all this froi gras down to the bar to share with his neighborhood lushies before it spoiled. I thought to myself, if we still lived in the city, that's exactly where I'd want to be: drinking the last of the cold beer, eating froi gras, and hanging out with the other people who don't have enough sense to be raiding the groceries and pharmacies for water and batteries. This shouldn't be too surprising since I was a full participant back in the late 90's when a big ass hurricane came roaring up and over Cape Cod during our Labor Day vacation in P-Town. The tiny stores were packed with crazy people who were buying bread, peanut butter and water while our homosexual contingent was buying L'Oriel® Frosting kits, vodka, and cranberry juice. It wouldn't have surprised me to posthumously read the front page of the Boston Herald the next day regarding our deaths: "Naaa...'twasn't that bad a staam 'cept fer those bleached-hair ‘mos what got crushed by the house collapsing. Damn kids had the music on drinking Cape Cods instead of trying to find some safer shelter. F***ing tourists." That being said, I did score those two bananas right after I got out of the subway tunnel yesterday while I heard the Con Ed workmen heckling some guy riding his bike through the intersection screaming about the whole Easter Seaboard was blacked out. I realize two bananas, a cell phone, and a copy of "The End of Alice" hardly qualifies as any kind of reasonable disaster plan, though. Yesterday did get us thinking about our transistor radio back at home in the closet that didn't have any batteries so if nothing else, the Worst US Blackout EVER can be regarded as a gentle teacher. Go buy BATTERIES, Mister Man. Of course, that wouldn't have helped yesterday, but I can't legitimately, or with any sense of self, carry around a Goddamn transistor radio. I could have one at work, I conceded to myself, though even though, again, that wouldn't have helped me yesterday. It's those thoughts I pondered as I trudged up 3rd Avenue before cutting across 59th Street in front of the Plaza. Man, talk about some unhappy people. The Rich seemed to think the Blackout was just for us working poor. I mean, I don't know why they thought yelling at their limo drivers, shacking their Gucci and YL bags in a threatening way might get them out of the city any faster than the rest of us unless being rich carries with it a flying car or some such thing. The more I saw that kind of thing going on, the more I felt pretty good...almost blessed if I can say that without too much embarrassment. I wasn't stuck on the subway shedding significant amounts of water weight, I had a place to go if Jeff couldn't find me or we couldn't get out of the city, and everyone was being pretty nice except those rich Plaza people. Even today, watching the news reporting on vacationing tourists who found themselves being escorted to Bryant Park to sleep for the night, I thought I was pretty damn lucky and that carried the weight of yesterday instead of my impending sense of doom and dread. Even the cool chicks who obviously make butt-loads of money in publishing or advertising who had set down their Burberry purses to help the ice-slushy guy sell iced gelato out of his cart at the corner of Central Park made me smile. I thought it was a perfect way to sort of join in the whole atmosphere of the day. We're all in this together and it was that that kept any creeping anxieties about "what if..." at bay. I could fully understand why people were partying it up. When you're handed lemons, blah, blah, blah. I hate when pithy cliches are right, but you can't fight it. Bend like the willow, grasshopper.

Would I have skipped the long drive home? Sure, but you know, after that wasn't an option, you just settle back into it and take it as it comes. Jeff and I learned that we could NEVER be in The Amazing Race as his horrific sense of direction but highly-hones sense of righteous entitlement clashes pretty significantly with my general sense of knowing what direction we should be traveling and my laizé-faire attitude about whether we really get there or not. I'd never been to Fort Lee, New Jersey before so it was all new and shiny and exciting. Boy there sure were a lot of people who didn't know they have a major thoroughfare running about 50-feet off to the east of the town though. In a town called Palisades Park, you'd think by the time you asked where the Palisades ParkWAY was, you'd get someone who didn't look right then left then shrug their shoulders and walk away. But we found our way out of that pleasant hamlet, passing row house after row house with parties all over the front steps, candles lit, guitars strumming, grills cooking up all the meat before it goes bad and just the general sense of wonderment of being able to see the calm lull of living without electricity and all that industrialization entails, at least for a few hours.

And we made it home, eventually. To our unfinished driveway and grass that needed to be mowed and our kitties waiting for us to go turn on the bathroom sink so they could have a drink and keep ignoring the very expensive automatic pet watering fountain we bought for them. It all works out in the end, just as promised. And that’s a pretty good thought to fall asleep too when all is said and done.