WYSIWYG last night was such a blast. I hadn’t performed in front of people in years, but once I was up there speaking, I was less nervous than I thought I’d be. I miss performing — I’d gladly do WYSIWYG again, or something else, even.

Anyway — here’s what I read last night.

* * * *

A few years ago, in late summer, I had a bad experience at a bar called the Phoenix with someone I was dating. The Phoenix, if you don’t know, is a gay bar not too far from here, on 13th Street and Avenue A. I was there with a guy named Wes — not his real name – who I’d been dating for about a month. At the Phoenix we ran into a few gay acquaintances of mine from my college. Eventually, Wes had his arm around the waist of one of them, and vice versa, and they were looking deeply into each other’s eyes, their faces and lips were only about an inch apart, and they were whispering things to each other that I couldn’t hear. Eventually my acquaintances left, including that guy, but not before he gave Wes his phone number.

Wes and I then had an argument right there at the Phoenix, and it was then that I decided things weren’t going to last between us. After that night we never dated again.

The next day I sat around in a sullen mood and tried to sort things out. By nighttime I was tired of sitting around, so I decided I’d go out again and try to forget about things. I looked at myself in the mirror, shaved off my goatee (which I’d had for five months), put in my contact lenses and decided I was going to go back to the Phoenix. I figured that instead of associating the Phoenix with a traumatic experience for the rest of my life, I should replace bad memories with good ones. Like the Phoenix, my love life would rise from the ashes.

So I went to the Phoenix and wound up meeting a really nice guy and talking with him for about two hours. There wasn’t any dating chemistry, but he seemed like a potential friend. Already the previous night’s events were fading away. Eventually the guy decided to go home, and after hanging around the bar for another 20 minutes, looking for I don’t know what, I decided to leave, too.

I decided next to go to Wonderbar, which is on 6th Street, so I walked down there. I stepped into Wonderbar, but it was too crowded, so I stepped back out. But I still didn’t want to go home.

So right then and there I decided to fulfill another goal of mine. I hadn’t done it before, so I was a little nervous. It’s probably something that not a lot of people would approve of, but I was feeling adventurous, so I figured, what the hell.

My goal… was to walk around Manhattan all night long until the sun came up.

It had always been a dream of mine to do that. There was something romantic and soothing about the idea. It made me think of Catcher in the Rye. The ducks in Central Park and all that. I decided this was the perfect night to be Holden Caulfield. I was only wearing a t-shirt and jeans and a pair of black Kenneth Cole shoes but I didn’t care.

So from 6th Street I walked all the way over to Broadway. Then up Broadway. Through Union Square. Onto Park Avenue South. Park Avenue seemed the safest bet at this hour, because once you get north of Grand Central it has block after block of luxury buildings, each with a doorman just inside the lobby, so I figured nothing bad could happen to me.

So I walked up Park Avenue. After Union Square I walked up into the East 20s, into the 30s, into the 40s. I saw random small groups of loud drunk straight guys, probably on their way back to their straight cars so they could drive back to straight New Jersey, where I was from.

I kept on walking and soon the streets were nearly empty. It was, in fact, romantic and soothing. I walked slowly, thoughtfully, taking the time to look at everything around me. I reached the Met Life Building and made a detour around Grand Central Station, then continued north 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. When I went into the men’s room there was a big separate, private bathroom with its own door. So spacious. Luxurious. 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? In the window of the bookshop there was a first edition of Huckleberry Finn. And a first edition of the score to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurenberg. 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 noticing it. It was from “Guys and Dolls”:

My time of day is the dark time
A couple of hours before dawn
When the street belongs to the cop
And the janitor with the mop

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

It was still dark. I kept walking. I walked past a travel company with a huge, 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 co-op, his long life of experience, his business meeting in Stockholm. But hey, I had 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 wasn’t the only one awake.

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 on the West Coast – the only other people awake right now were teenagers speeding along highways, gay people, 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, and I didn’t want to go there.

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

I was at 96th Street. I’d walked ninety blocks.

I turned left and walked along 95th Street toward Fifth Avenue. As I turned onto Fifth, a flotilla of bicycles appeared out of nowhere. There were hundreds of them. Rider after rider. They kept coming and coming. I later found out it was Bicycle Awareness Day. I’d never heard of it before. The bicycles wouldn’t end. They went on and on, hundreds of cyclists riding silently down Fifth Avenue.

I got to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and walked up to the top of the steps. Right there, at the exact center of the top of the steps, I sat down. The steps of the Met are usually jam-packed, and it was surreal to sit on the front steps of the museum completely alone, not another person in sight. You should all do it sometime.

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. My feet were killing me. I’d probably worn out my Kenneth Coles completely.

I went back down the steps to the sidewalk and walked east along 82nd Street, past Madison Avenue, and then south onto Lexington. I wanted to either go to the subway or find a diner.

So I walked down Lexington and got to 77th. 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 outside his store.

I thought about going down into the subway, but across the street I saw a diner and a small bagel shop. I decided to cross over.

As I crossed the street, at 6:30 in the morning, I saw another guy crossing from the other side. Just like me, he was wearing a short-sleeve ringer t-shirt. He was pretty cute.

As we crossed paths in the middle of the street, I looked at him. I realized he was looking at me, too, and there was a faint smile on his face. I kept walking.

Wait! Whoa! He just smiled at me!

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,” I replied.

“What are you up to?”

“Oh, just walking,” I said.

“Cool… where have you been tonight?”

“Well,” I said, “I was at the Phoenix, and then Wonderbar for a bit.” This far north of the Village, I felt like we were speaking a secret language. “Then I just felt like walking around the city and I wound up here,” I said. Uh, right. Seventy blocks north of Wonderbar.

He asked me where I lived.

“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 him.

He said, “Connecticut.”

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

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

We got to 72nd Street, and then 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.

It had been a magical night. I’d seen the city asleep, and vulnerable, and quiet.

I’d finally gotten to be Holden Caulfield.

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