"I'm the only gay in the village."

Five words that should strike fear into the heart of any nascent New Yorker: I'm a new cab driver.

For those who haven't been paying attention, I have been in the Big Apple for two and a half months. I'm lucky if I can get myself back to Brooklyn without getting lost in Queens. So there I was in the car, doing laps around the Lower East Side, and trying to give my cab driver directions off the crumpled remains of a Map Quest printout.

Me: "No we want 210 Rivington Street."

Cabbie: "Is that near Delancy?"

Christ, I don't know, I muttered and stared out the window looking for a street sign. Aren't cab drivers supposed to know where they are going?

Nearly avoiding an unintended trip over the Williamsburg Bridge, I was this close to telling him to pull over and that I would be driving for the rest of the journey. When we finally did find Rivington, I decided to give up and walk the rest of the way. It was my first visit to the up and coming Lower East Side and the long walk towards Avenue C brought me unfortunately past the grim memorial for the recently slain actress, Nicole Dufresne.

The whole reason I was tooling around the Lower East Side in the first place was to meet someone for a drink at 7:30 pm. No, it wasn't a date, but I did get stood up. Yes, she didn't show. Instead I spent my evening (including dinner) with a lovely woman from London. It made getting stood up not so bad after all.