As soon as the elevator doors open in the mid-rise apartment building in Hell’s Kitchen, the host is there, in the doorway directly across from me, clipboard in hand. He is round, probably in his early forties, in a gray tank top, with close-cropped, thinning, graying hair and goatee; long, coarse hairs sprout from his shoulders and flabby upper arms as well. I follow him inside, past a dark sheet draped straight across the entryway and into a tiny, dirty kitchen to the left. He asks my name. I say, “Dan.” Immediately I say, “Shit.”
As has become a norm and especially in these situations, we’d made our acquaintance first virtually; I’d found his “party” via a Google search, which precipitated a brief e-mail exchange. Over the span of three Saturday nights, I’ve been sent out across New York in pursuit of some of the ways its 8.5 million inhabitants pursue each other. Of course, I cannot tell him this.
-NY Mag
