The smell of smoke, as if something is burning, is the first odd thing I notice on the afternoon of Thursday, August 14.

I am sitting with a friend, enjoying a late, lazy lunch at a popular gay and lesbian café in New York City’s Greenwich Village, when the acrid smell starts wafting through the room. At the same time, the ceiling fans overhead cease rotating, and the staff fling open the doors, letting all the air conditioning escape into the humid New York afternoon.

My lunch date and I are so engrossed in our conversation about the ongoing war in Iraq and the dour economy that it takes us half an hour before we feel how warm the restaurant has become.

I hasten the waitress to bring us our check, and we ask why the air conditioning has been switched off. She tells us the electricity is out "everywhere."

We have no way of knowing yet that "everywhere" includes parts of Canada and eight

Northeastern states, and that we are smack in the middle of what will turn out to be America’s worst blackout in history.

It isn’t until we step onto the street that I get a sense of just how big a deal the electricity outage is. The streets of the Village are throbbing with pedestrians.

The two of us walk to Christopher Street, where shopkeepers stand in the open doorways of darkened stores. People have already started forming long lines at convenience stores, to snatch up what is left of cold beverages and fast food.

In front of one shop, a small huddle of people gathers around a transistor radio, listening to the news. We pause to join them, and immediately a young gay man with bleach blond hair and a necklace of rainbow beads blurts out "It isn’t a terrorist attack!"

The radio announcer echoes the guarantee, but warns that the subways and trains are shut down. His advice: start walking home.

It is just after 5 p.m. at this point, and the sun is still strong and hot. The lack of electricity hasn’t yet translated into a lack of light, and I don’t feel the need to hurry. I want to linger, to

take the temperature of the city during this crisis.

It isn’t hard to imagine some of the worst-case scenarios. People might still panic, and turn on each other in mistrust. It is clear the lights won’t be back on before dark. Will the city once again be plundered and looted, like it was back in the blackout of 1977? Will the once-infamously dangerous streets of New York City again turn violent when everything goes pitch black? Will there be enough food and water for the tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, stranded in the streets? Will this turn into the ultimate Survivor reality program?

I pop into a convenience store, and grab two bottles of still-cold water. The long lines are orderly, and people are even friendly. The store-owner is doing his best to make the right change, but no one is fussing over a few dimes or nickels at this point.

Back on the street, I start walking down Christopher Street, to the riverfront. There, the packed park looks almost like gay pride day, with so many men running about pumped and shirtless in the afternoon heat. There is no panic here, no sense of impending doom. On the contrary, it is actually fun. Everyone seems happy for an excuse to take the afternoon off.

There is, of course, a lot of cruising going on. But there is a larger sense of camaraderie, too, an unspoken bond among New Yorkers.

All of us, I am sure, are thinking about the last time a crisis pushed tens of thousands into New York’s streets. There is an odd sense of relief. But there is determination, too—as if we share an unspoken pact, a quiet agreement that we will not let our city spiral into tragedy. Instead, it’s as if we all want to work together, to show that crisis can bring out the community in all of us.

That sense seems to be shared by tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, the rest of the evening.

As night falls, I begin my long trek home, what will turn out to be a three hour and fifteen minute walk into the borough of Queens. The gay bars up and down Christopher Street are almost all open, lit from the inside with candles. Some bars are selling drinks; others are simply acting as communal gathering places.

I march north, up Sixth Avenue, toward the 59th Street Bridge. Every step of the way, I come across people barbequing on the sidewalk, and singing in the streets. It’s like one block party after another. The lobbies of many large buildings—some of which have electricity thanks to emergency generators—have become "rest stops" for weary walkers. Entrepreneurs with their own small generators sell ice-cold waters and sodas from makeshift stalls on the street corners. The Mr. Softee ice cream trucks boast lines half-an hour long (I know, because I waited in a couple of them.) And civilian volunteers with nothing but glow sticks direct traffic at the intersections.

People on the streets are talking to each other in an unguarded way that New Yorkers rarely experience. Somewhere near Bryant Park, a young, lanky gay man and I start a conversation.

We walk 20 blocks together, before our paths part. In that time, I learn how he moved here from small town America to be an artist, the troubles he had with his ex-boyfriend, that he lives in a tiny apartment on 109th street, and how he hopes he won’t have to go to work in the morning. We will never see each other again, but it is a moment we will share forever.

As I cross over the 59th Street Bridge, I pause and look behind me. The view from the bridge is one of the best of the city skyline, and many films, television shows and photographs use it as a vantage point. I stare at the shadowy big buildings normally bathed in electricity, now dark. On this night, they seem to absolutely glow.