Today’s soundtrack: [NBC News lead-in music]Today at 8:02pm: chilling



T.G.I.F. But Still No A/C

Friday morning I’m almost surprised I wake up at all. If Al-Qaeda had their shit together you’d think they’da done something fucktacular last night. I think these sleeper cells are gonna get reamed at their next performance review.

I still keep my jump bag by the front door, in case Blackout Day Two has any surprises that announce themselves with explosions or radio reports of noxious clouds.


When the Going Gets Tough...Get In Your Air-Conditioned Car and Go Someplace Else

The news radio says we should start conserving water, that there’s a chance it will run out, which means we won’t be able to flush the toilets. It’s imperative that that situation never comes to pass, or Mike will obviously let himself into our apartment and leave “presents” in our toilet.

Hoping for the best, I get dressed and walk around downtown Manhattan to enjoy the deserted city. My favorite thing in the world is large public spaces that are deserted.

It’s a ghost town, alright. Nothing’s open and very few people are in the way to fuck up the pictures I like to take. I sit on a curb and snap away.

The novelty wears off when it starts to get hot and I realize I can’t have any ice coffee. I mean I can make the second ingredient but the first ain’t gonna happen. Me and thirteen million of my closest neighbors lack the technology to make ice.

I could spend another night here “roughing it,” but why bother? This is a big country and I’ve got a fuel-efficient car. Traffic looks nonexistent and there are other ice-coffee-serving cities within range. I want A/C, CFCs, ATMs, CNN and all those initials that everyone but the Amish currently enjoy. I’ve got a friend in Boston, maybe she’d be free this weekend.

I head back to my apartment to dig her number up and see if we can’t get our long-postponed chess game, hopefully in an air-conditioned Dunkin’ Donuts. I want to throw pawns at her Queen with donut glaze all over my face and ice coffee rings all over the table.


Score: Lam - 110, Rain - 0

My cell phone comes in and out of service, and before I can call Boston Lam finally gets in touch with me. He’s back at his place in Queens.

“How’d you make it back?” I ask.

“Yesterday I was sick, left work early,” he says. “Got home at 3:30.”

“Lucky you,” I say. “Do you know when the power’s coming back on?”

“You mean you don’t have power?” he asks.

“You mean you do?”

Western Queens, it turns out, has power. Which means Lam, Ben, Eumi, Hae-Sun, Jenny and all those guys are sitting in air-conditioned apartments. Whereas I am sitting in a puddle of my own sweat and soon, perhaps, my own filth.

“You know they’ll probably turn Chinatown on last,” Lam points out. It’s a well-known fact that during the last big blackout in 1977, Spanish Harlem was the absolute last to get power back. Minority communities are considered economically low-priority.


Queens Time for the Straight Guy

Mike, Logan and Shady’s brother all take off to different parts of the city to check on parents and girlfriends and whatnot. Mine are upstate and assure me they’re fine. I call Hae-Sun to see if they have space, then head up to the garage, confirming along the way that traffic is nothing like yesterday’s; I should be able to get out of the city no problem.

The garage guys have hoisted the electric door open, and after fumbling around in the pitch-black basement garage I manage to find my car. I feel like a god turning the headlights on, illuminating the entire room.

Driving back to my building requires I pause judiciously at each intersection, since none of the traffic lights are working. Running a dead light is no fun; it’s more thrilling when it’s red.

I park next to my building and run upstairs to grab my jump bag, laptop, and something I could use to cut a mutant’s throat in case Queens turns out to be a clever zombie trap. On the way out I run into Shady, coming back from checking on his grandfather in Chinatown.

“Where you off to?” he asks.

“Queens,” I say. “Jenny and Hae-Sun got power.”

“Maybe I should go too,” he says, considering it.

“What do you mean ‘maybe?’” I say. “It’s like a garden paradise over there. They’ve got A/C, cable TV, internet access, couches with little flowery blankets on them and there’s a Dunkin’ Donuts down the block.”

“Let me grab my shit,” he says, running upstairs.


Ciao, Suckers

Coming over the Williamsburg we see the strangest damn thing--cars are lined up to get into, not out of, Manhattan. Lined up like lemmings running over a cliff.

An hour later I’m sitting in Dunkin’ Donuts, sucking down a heart-attack sandwich like it’s nobody’s business. Thirty minutes later I’m reading nytimes.com in Eumi’s air-conditioned apartment.

There was some looting here and there but nothing major. Amazingly, the Times reports, there were 850 arrests in the past 24 hours. It’s amazing because the average, as the article points out, is 950. Which means 100 people outran cops last night or people actually behaved themselves.

We ate inexpensive Korean food, then watched cable TV. So that’s how my blackout experience ended, climate-controlled and anti-climactically. In this day and age I love both of those things.