Three Times A Maybe

In a city of strangers, there's more than one way to get lost

From Beginners, a lovely film by Mike Mills

I was walking home from Soundtrack where I’d stopped to buy the new Elvis Costello release. I bought it on CD, the year was 2003, and, of course, Soundtrack is long gone. Napster was my obsessive go-to for music then. The rising cost of vinyl records and compact discs superseded my good intentions (supporting the artists), despite the time it took to download mp3s (I was on dial-up).

At the corner of 7th Avenue, somebody behind me said in a gentle baritone, “Excuse me…”

I knew what was coming. This person was about to ask me for directions. It happened all the time. Strangers asking me for directions on the street, on the subway, standing on the platform. What they can’t tell by looking at me is that I have no sense of direction. Even when it’s a familiar route and I know the way, I misremember or miscalculate. Instead of saying “I’m not really sure,” I spend the rest of the day thinking about the hordes of innocent people wandering around, lost in New York City, because they’d all asked the same person the wrong thing.

This time was different, though. I was a mere five blocks from my house in a neighborhood I’d been in since just before 9/11. I was ready. I felt confident. My time to shine.

When I turned around, there was a brown man standing at my height, by which I mean short. He wore a brown suit and an early-aughts goatee.

“I just saw you in the record store,” he said. “I wanted to say hello.”

I searched his face. It was rare to see another black or brown person in Park Slope.

“Forgive me,” I said, “but do I know you?”

“I’m Joseph,” he said.

He reached out to shake my hand and asked for my name. I said Felicity. I don’t know. It was the first thing that came to mind.

“It’s a pleasure,” he said. “I wanted to ask you if you’d like to go out with me sometime.”

I smiled politely and told him I was married.

Sometimes when I rode the subway or walked alone I’d transfer one of my rings, a silver band, to my left ring finger to ward off unwanted attention. It worked most of the time, except for strangers in need of directions. But I hadn’t done it that night.

Joseph looked disappointed and awkwardly expectant.

He held out his hand as though he hadn’t held it out one sentence earlier. “Still,” he said. “It’s a pleasure.”

When I turned onto my street a minute later, I placed him. He’d approached me a year earlier, in the same way, on the same street. The details were coming back.

I was walking home after I’d been dumped for a woman named Vanessa who was cheating on her husband with my boyfriend. (Later that week my therapist would roll her eyes and say, “of course her name is Vanessa.”) So I was feeling pretty good about myself, my future, and just, you know, life in general. Then a man appeared out of nowhere.

He said excuse me and introduced himself. I said hello.

“I saw you walking down the street,” he said. “I actually wanted to ask you if you’d like to go to Santa Fe with me.”

I looked at him the way you probably would have if you were me.

“No, no. I mean Santa Fe Grill. For dinner.” He laughed.

“Thank you, but no. I’m sorry.”

“Well, I’m Joseph. It’s a pleasure to meet you anyway.”

It was a shitty night and I was heartbroken. I just wanted bed, ice cream, TiVo, and the balls to tell the husband about his wife and my boyfriend.

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I was perturbed by Joseph. Then I felt empathetic. Then something akin to what the fuck.

Sometime in the late 90s, around the time I first moved to New York, he came up to me when I was on my way to work.

“Excuse me,” he’d said. “I’m sorry to stop you so abruptly this morning. I saw you walking to the subway and I wanted to say hi.”

He handed me a piece of paper with his phone number on it and he told me his name was Joe.

“Sorry,” I said, “I have to get to work.”

He told me it was a pleasure meeting me.

Maybe Joseph just never recognized me. Or maybe he did, but he assumed I wouldn’t remember him. Maybe he said to himself, THIS time.

I wonder how many women he approached in the same manner over the years. Was he strictly Brooklyn or did he cover all five boroughs? New York is big and lonely and full of strangers, and a lot of ways to get lost.

I wouldn’t know that guy if I saw him now. Not unless he introduced himself.

Blaise Allysen Kearsley is the creator of the How I Learned live show and magazine. For writing workshops, write-ins, select essays, and how to pronounce all of her names, visit blaiseallysenkearsley.com