On Getting Lost

This week I'm wrong about the value of having no idea where you're going, plus accepting my inevitable mortality

No, I didn’t decide to write about a tennis-adjacent subject again because I can’t stop thinking about Challengers.

When Hurricane Ida hit New York City on September 1st, 2021, I had moved in to my new apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn about two weeks earlier. I was attending a tennis match at the US Open with my aunt near Flushing, Queens. The first set between the comical pairing of 6’7 Kevin Anderson and 5’7 Diego Schwartzman had just ended in a thrilling tie-break, Schwartzman prevailing, when both players started complaining about the rain and asked for a delay.

It was, in fact, raining, which was surprising mostly because the match was indoors. Louis Armstrong stadium has a full retractable roof that was completely closed, but the gale-force winds from the hurricane were blowing so much rain through the open sides of the arena that fairly soon everyone inside was soaked. The match was delayed indefinitely at 9PM.

My aunt and I fled to the subway, a trek of about 200 yards that left us both completely soaked and almost bruised from the sheer violence of the rain. We crammed ourselves onto the 7 train, which limped a few stops until eventually ejecting everyone at a station I would later learn was Jackson Heights/Roosevelt Avenue (which is surrounded by some of the best Nepalese, Bengali, Tibetan, and Indian food in the city, among other cuisines, and all at affordable prices) and announcing trains would not be running for the foreseeable future. A small tennis stadium worth of people milled around the platform, unsure of what to do or how to get home.

My aunt, a resourceful and confident women who knows New York City fairly well, quickly made friends heading to the same region of Manhattan as her hotel. When I assured her I was fine to wait for the trains to restart and would make it home, she hugged me goodbye and left in search of a bus (she would make it to her hotel a few hours later).

I then spent a harrowing two hours wandering the fully-flooded subway station, failing to get a taxi to take me to Brooklyn, hiding from the rain in various bodegas, and wading through waist deep water to search for an operational train (which was incredibly dangerous and also obviously stupid, in that no train would be running on a flooded platform). An incredibly kind man offered to let me stay on his couch for the night as I searched for a place to charge my phone, which had died just after my aunt left and meant I couldn’t call a friend with a car to come get me (I am notorious for not charging my phone). I declined out of an entirely unearned sense of optimism that I would figure something out.

Finally, hours later, the 7 train started running. I excavated space for myself in the most crowded train car I’d ever seen, and mercifully got to Grand Central around midnight, when Schwartzman was closing out a 6-3 second set in a restarted match moved to the completely waterproof Arthur Ashe stadium.

I checked every platform in Grand Central, but the 7 was the only train moving and I didn’t want to go back to Queens. I knew I would never get a taxi in that area under the circumstances, so I decided to start walking south (I knew just enough about Manhattan at that point to understand the grid system) and hopefully find a cab eventually.

I walked for over an hour through the intermittent rain wind—through a quiet and vaguely haunting midtown, a neighborhood I just recently realized was Kips Bay when I returned to visit its AMC movie theater, and eventually to the somewhat familiar East Village (where my best friend used to live) which was full of undeterred NYU students braving the hurricane to get to various bars and parties. I was getting weird looks in my drenched Kirkland Signature collared shirt and khakis (I’d met my aunt right after work) and was having no luck with the few taxis I saw race by.

When I hit Delancey Street, I checked the subway one more time at the station next to another adjacent AMC theater which has become one of my favorites (nothing was running, still). I also didn’t realize several of my friends, who I couldn’t call or contact, lived a few blocks away, or that the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, which landed in Brooklyn relatively close to my apartment, were just a few blocks further south. I did see what I vaguely recognized as the Williamsburg Bridge. I knew Williamsburg was in Brooklyn. My apartment was in Brooklyn.

At about 1:30 AM, as Diego Schwartzman closed out the third set 6-4 for a straight-set victory, I started running. I was still soaked, wearing loafers which were absolutely not meant for physical activity, but I was tired of waiting to be home. I ran across the Williamsburg bridge, taking note of the downtown Brooklyn skyline which I knew was somewhat in the vicinity of my apartment, and then tried to run in that direction when I emerged on the ground. I ran past the music venue where I saw my brother’s former-roommate perform with her band a few weeks ago, and past the apartment buildings where I’ve since attended intimidating rooftop and halloween parties. As I weaved my way through Fort Greene and Navy Yard (in what I later realized was the least efficient route possible), I probably passed nearby coffee shops and restaurants and speakeasies where I’ve since spent pleasant mornings with old friends and a few blind dates.

When I recognized the distant silhouette of the Barclays Center, finally, I almost cried. I staggered the last few blocks, past my already-familiar bodega and a since-closed bagel shop that got me through a few months of Saturday afternoons, and took a warm shower at about 4 in the morning before collapsing in bed. I had walked and run about ten miserable miles.

When I woke up the next morning, I felt fully at home in my new apartment for the first time. New York had thrown everything it had at me and I’d survived. I had found my own way, however roundabout and exhausting, home.

In a way, that comfort was unsurprising. I have always loved getting lost, and getting lost as a way of getting my bearings in a new place or bonding with someone close to me. My favorite memory from my brother and I’s trip to Rome a decade ago is wandering the streets with our our clothes for two hours, unable to find a laundromat because I refused to look up directions. My friendship with my friend Kat was cemented when I repeatedly led us the wrong way to a poetry reading in Middlebury, Vermont. My first year out of college I drove my friends Aya and Laura from Connecticut to DC, and I think we all enjoyed our unplanned diversions to Long Island and rural Pennsylvania, even if we arrived a couple hours later than planned.

Aya and Laura and Kat and my brother would probably all tell these stories to make fun of my delusional but unshakeable confidence—and they would be right to! This blog is called Confidently Wrong for a reason. I am notably, very often, an extremely stupid person. But the people and experiences and stories that come into my life from these unplanned excursions, even when they can be stupid and frustrating in the moment, are invaluable to me.

In the two-and-a-half years since Hurricane Ida, my journey through the rain and darkness has continued to be a foundational reference to my life in the city. I recognize a street corner where I argued with a cab driver in Queens and realize I was standing right outside what is now my favorite Momo spot. I walk with a friend and their dog through a small, beautiful park and remember forlornly jogging along its perimeter in the middle of the night. Getting so completely and totally lost gave me a fuller sense of the scale and geography of the city than I could get from any map. A horrible night has become one of my best memories.

In the past year I’ve finally had the time to regularly get lost again—to walk down a new street, to stumble on a new corner shop or restaurant, to grab a slice of pizza that wasn’t recommended by an article or google or even a friend, but that was just there when I was hungry. Those small adventures have deepened my sense of belonging in my neighborhood and in New York.

I hope you take a moment to get lost sometime soon.

I Am Old

A month or so ago, I wrote about running into a former student at a bar (another coincidence made possible by getting lost). As horrific as that experience, and the existential dread it induced, was, I have slowly become comfortable with the fact I’m completely washed up and my former students are now accomplishing great things in the adult world.

Last week, the student I bumped into let me know another former student, Khat—a brilliant writer and thinker I’d been fortunate enough to have in a personal essay writing class—was pursuing a music career and performing at a small venue in the Bowery. I decided to go see her perform, and was blown away by her song-writing and charisma, and also faced my fears by having a drink with my former charges afterwards. Khat was truly spectacular, so I’m letting you all get in on the ground floor of her fandom.

Khatumu only has one song up on Spotify at the moment, but I believe more are coming soon—check her out!