I talked to a lot of strangers on the evening of August 14, 2003, probably more than I have in one night for almost two years. Without the use of our cell phones or public transportation, we all had to resort to alternative social arrangements, and without air conditioning or electric entertainment, we needed to drink. Even the mayor advised New Yorkers to "Open a bottle of wine."

When the lights first went out, I thought it was just in my apartment. The fuse had already blown three times that week. So, I went downstairs to find the super. Instead, I found the whole building standing out front, trying to use their cell phones. The super's wife saw me and said "Manhattan too." Everyone seemed to have taken to the streets, so I decided to walk around and see how everyone was reacting and maybe get some news.

I came upon a minivan full of people with all of the doors open and the radio on at the highest volume. People were gathered around the van, listening, just as they did on September 11th. The woman in the driver's seat beckoned me to stay and listen. "It's everywhere" she said "Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto." She furrowed her brow and looked carefully at my face when she said this. I must have looked as worried as I felt because she said "I know, it's scary." I wanted to stay and talk to her, but I was afraid I would get too emotional. There was just too much déjà vu. I stayed long enough to hear them say that there was no evidence of terrorism, said goodbye, and walked on.

I realized that my plans for the evening, to celebrate a friend's birthday at a bar in Manhattan, weren't going to happen. So I went to get supplies. I was surprised to find Metropolitan Liquors, open and empty. I walked in and said "I think today calls for red!" The owners, fanning themselves behind the counter, laughed. I asked them if they knew what was going on. They didn't. When I told them about all of the other cities affected, I could see the alarm in their faces. I picked up two huge bottles of cabernet and headed home, hoping friends would soon join me.

On my way, I passed a new café on my street. People were gathered there trading rumors, so I got a Coke and sat down to listen. I met the owner of the café, Ruby. She had sent one of her friends out for beer, lining bottles of Corona up on the counter and offering them for free to anyone who popped in. After a while, I decided to go home and wait for my roommate.

An hour later, I was on my balcony with my roommate and my friend Sarah Balcomb, who had pedaled all the way from Fort Greene, because she knew my front door was seldom locked and she might be able to find me home. Our across-the-hall neighbor, who we didn't know, heard us out there and popped her head out to say hi. We invited her over for wine. Her name is Becca and she told us she had just walked home over seven miles from midtown, over the Queensboro Bridge to Queens, and then on to Brooklyn. We listened to the radio and shuddered at the thought of being trapped under the river in a subway car. We were wondering about the still-busy flight path above us when we noticed something: the stars! We realized that the stars hadn't been this bright or visible in the sky above New York since the last blackout, in 1977, incidentally the year I was born. We decided to ride our bikes down to nearby McCarren Park to get a better look. No sooner had we packed up the wine, than Becca's boyfriend, Paul, came home on his bike. Soon, the four of us were pedaling down a completely darkened Union Avenue. It was like that scene in E.T., or that scene in Donnie Darko that was an homage to that scene in E.T. We rode past people gathered in packs, reveling on the sidewalk with barbecues lit and open beers in hand.

Miraculously, we made it to the park without killing ourselves, and went around the track a few times, the only light from a fat red harvest moon. After an incident in which I felt it necessary to ride my bike across the field half-naked like Lady Godiva, praying the huge stadium lights wouldn't come on just as I got to the middle, we settled on a park bench, leaning our bikes on their kickstands in front of us. People would walk by in groups, some holding candles or flashlights. We decided we probably knew half of them, but nobody could see anyone's faces.

The next stranger I talked to didn't talk back. He was furiously pedaling Sarah's bike as fast as he could through the park as Sarah and I chased him on foot, screaming expletives. He had jumped on the bike right in front of us as we sat talking on a bench. We didn't catch him. Her bike was gone. Some Good Samaritans stopped and used their flashlights to help me find my sandals which had flown off while I was running. Sarah was bummed, but nothing could ruin this night. We decided to go down to the East River to see what Manhattan looked like dark.

About a hundred people had had the same idea. When we got there, it was a party, complete with a huge bonfire next to the water. We sat on a jetty and drank wine from a communal glass, dangling our legs over the side and gazing at the eerie dark silhouette of Manhattan across from us. We talked about how we couldn't make this vision appear before us even if we tried, and how sad we were for people who were away from the city that night.

I was staring at a barge being slowly pushed by a tugboat when I saw something in the water. As it got closer, people on the shore started to cheer. It was a canoe with three people in it. They had come across from Manhattan in a canoe! They pulled it up on the beach amid cheers.

There was a couple sitting next to me on the jetty, and I offered them sips of the wine and asked them where they had been when the lights went out. They laughed and admitted that they'd been at the Gap on Broadway and 8th Street and were working on a good lie to cover that up since it was "the lamest possible place to be."

After a while, a cop who should have been preventing bike thefts came up and asked us all to move off the jetty and over to the empty lot next door where the bonfire was.

We slipped through a hole in a chain link fence and sat down on driftwood on the beach next to the bonfire. The kids at the bonfire were very young. We sat and listened for ten minutes while a very drunk young man put the moves on an equally wasted young woman. He drawled loudly in the background.

"Lemme see your tits. Come on baby, I'll show you my stuff."

At one point, someone turned on a radio and we heard Mayor Bloomberg's nasal whine for approximately two seconds before we all loudly protested and the radio owner sheepishly switched it off.

When we finally came to the end of the last bottle of wine, I shook it out on the beach and we took out a pen and paper and wrote notes to put in the bottle. Sarah's said "Have you seen my bicycle?"

Mine was a rambling description of the night and the scene, with the word "beautiful" used at least eight times because it was the only adjective I could think of. I ended it with my email address and phone number, popped it in the bottle, secured the cork, and waded into the East River so Sarah could take a picture of me sending it out to sea.

Sarah and I would end up staying out until dawn, walking from bar to bar as each ran out of booze, and gathering a bit of an entourage of single-serving friends -- in this case, drunk guys whose faces we couldn't see who were trying fruitlessly for some Blackout action. All night, we heard people say this night was like September 11 with all of the closeness and none of the fear, that it was magical, exhilarating, an unexpected gift. What seemed at first like a crisis became the opportunity to break down the boundaries that separate people, to do silly crazy things because all of the usual rules were suspended, and for the love of god, to finally see the stars.