Times Square

Last night, on the way to see The Seagull, I passed through Times Square. It was about 6:40 pm, and there were a few election results on the big screens. The big screens, I should say, that were everywhere: scrolling and fading and bleeding and flashing. People were looking up, taking photos of the screens, taking photos of themselves in front of the screens. People were watching a huge CNN screen, and when the CNN cameras trained on them, they erupted into screams. Times Square at night always has a particular humming energy, but this was different.

Yes, I escaped into a theater rather than glue myself to the television! Nothing like a restless, clashing, depressing play to take your mind off the making of history. (It didn't take my mind off writing, though. In Trigorin's longest monologue, he says: "No sooner have I finished one story than I am somehow compelled to write another, then a third, after a third a fourth. I write without stopping, except to change horses like a postchaise. I have no choice. What is there brilliant or delightful in that, I should like to know? It's a dog's life!" What if I were so compelled....)

At intermission, we checked our phones. Someone yelled out "He's got Pennsylvania!" Clapping. Then it was back into the drama.

At about 10:30, when we were let out, the crowds in Times Square were even bigger....and the election tally was in the 180-to-50 range. We felt confident enough to take the W down to Union Square and grab dinner at Republic. The kitchen was almost closed. There was a little bit of pressure to order, like, now. The food flew out of the kitchen. The place emptied. As we drank wine and checked our phones again, someone dropped off the bill and said, "Some of us want to watch the election results." 'Scuse me! More wine. Beef skewers. Eggplant. And we checked our phones again: Just like that, we'd won. (We. How strange does that sound?) When people someday ask me, "Where were you when history was made?" I can say I was being watched by nine impatient waiters and cooks at an echo-empty New York noodle joint—and sharing it with a great friend.

But out to the streets! People were dancing. Taxis engaged in honking conversations. Cyclists rolled by, yelling and ringing their bells. We high-fived strangers. It was a beautiful warm night—perfect, it turns out, to duck into a straight-outta-Mad-Men subterranean speakeasy bar called Little Branch, where there are pressed tin ceilings but no TV's, and they crack the ice with the back of little metal spoons, and the bourbon cocktails take long minutes to make and much longer to nurse, and halfway through the first one someone starts playing 50's tunes on the piano.

By the time I got back to Park Slope, it was too late for anyone's good, but Veronica and I watched TV and shook our heads with amazement and got four hours of sleep and then woke up to make sure it really happened.

It did. It happened. And how cheesy and weird it feels to be proud to be from this country again.