Late to the Dance Floor

There’s a stretch of Metropolitan Avenue that runs from Ridgewood to Williamsburg that I became familiar with in the summer of 2022. But only at night when I would take a CitiBike, intoxication be damned, all the way to the Bedford stop because the L would skip this part of east Brooklyn for some reason, and I needed to get across the East River to get home.

The road was usually not that crowded, though every now and then, I’d have to make sure to steer clear of semi-trucks so that I didn’t become roadkill, surrounded by warehouses with large Chinese lettering on their edifices. I remember thinking, under clearly impaired judgment: ‘If I die, then it’s because my time has come.’

In retrospect, that sounds like stupid teenage mindset. But then again, it was the summer of 2022, a weird time. The first normal summer after COVID since 2021 was so rudely interrupted by the delta variant. Though I’d never been a summer guy, nearly 2 years of social distancing made me all too aware that what little was left of my youth—if you could still call it that—couldn’t be wasted. That’s when I got this helix piercing. Damn thing took 2 years to heal, too.

It was a random Thursday night in late September when I headed back to some new little club that had opened in Ridgewood. I’d been invited again by a friend who’d previously been my shroom guide and had given me a complimentary reiki healing. He was back in the city with his girlfriend to embark on DJ careers together. Though I don’t really like clubs, I’d been out to several that summer in order to support them.

I had very low expectations for that night. The last time I’d been to this venue, it’d been dead. And it’d been a Friday night! The place was right by the water and reminded me of bars where fishermen would grimly down their last whiskies before heading out for what might 50/50 be the last time they got to be on dry land. But that night, I would meet Maddie.1

Several relationships ago, my girlfriend at the time had spotted a folder on my computer, one with a suspiciously vague name. I know she must’ve seen it because shortly after we broke up, on the night when we both thought might be the last time we’d ever see each other, I felt compelled to confess to her what that folder contained: a screenshot of every woman’s profile that I’d ever matched with on a dating app.

I first began using dating apps in late 2013, after I found myself newly single. Law school wasn’t proving to be the most romantic environment and the prospect of cold-approaching women in bars terrified me. The first few matches I got, I was flabbergasted: there were women who, based merely on a handful of photos and a short bio, had a romantic interest in me? So of course, I had to document it.

People have fake “unpopular opinions” all the time. So here’s one that’ll actually draw everyone’s ire: I think dating apps are great. If they’re good enough for our mayor, they’re certainly good enough for the likes of you. I get why people have their gripes with them. They can be impersonal, finicky, and create the illusion of limitless options. But people also concoct some fantasyland of the pre-app era as one where the average night out meant countless witty bantering back and forth between men and women, worthy of a Cary Grant screwball comedy. Having lived through those times, let me remind you that pick-up artistry became a huge thing in the 2000s.

So dating apps have been good to me, relatively speaking. I’ve just never been that good or lucky with meeting women IRL. That’s always made me wonder what it’d be like to just walk into a bar, meet an alluring stranger, and be so into each other we’d end up in bed together that same night. Because that’s what cool guys did. And I think I was a cool guy.

I only began talking to Maddie because she was already chatting with my DJ friend, and he was the only familiar face I saw on the dance floor. At some point, I realized that my friend had left us, and it was just her and me, continuing to chat.

Both men and women spend a lot of time and energy trying to decode signals of interest. But when you’re hitting it off with someone, it’s usually pretty obvious. All these little things they do add up to tell you that at that moment, there’s nowhere else they’d rather be.

She was there because she’d done the video art that was being displayed on the walls. We eventually sat down at a table, where over drinks, I hung onto her every word as she talked about the books she loved, the poetry she wrote, and the cosplay she liked to do. Her sky-blue eyeshadow made her eyes look even bigger, making her look like an anime version of Blondie/Courtney Love. She told me about how her mom used to be something of a local rock star where she was from, and how she was scared that she was about to turn 30 (Maddie, not her mom). At one point, I noticed her nails and reached out for her hands. She let me touch them. I was fairly certain then that I could stand up, lean over the table, and kiss her. But I remained rooted to my spot.

Eventually, she led me to the dance floor, where we began dancing close enough that if I didn’t kiss her, then I’d be a disgrace forever. When the kiss turned out into a makeout, I pulled back, noting to her how sparse the crowd was and how conspicuous we were being. She laughed at me for being such a prude. I couldn’t believe what I’d just said either. We went back to making out.

Shortly after, we decided to ditch the joint. On our way to the next place, we had to stop by a railroad track on which a long yellow freight train plodded on by with seemingly no end in sight. I was pretty drunk by then, so I don’t quite remember what we did as we waited. I like to think we kept on dancing. I do remember looking at the train and wondering what’d happen if she and I hopped on together. Months later, I’d look through my phone, convinced that I’d taken a picture of that train. But I couldn’t find any. I was disappointed. Then again, some things remain more beautiful in just our memories.

She’d spend the night at my place (and no, I didn’t make us take CitiBikes), though by the time we got home, we were both so exhausted that we immediately fell asleep. We’d go out a few more times after. She wasn’t looking for anything serious, and I was fine with that.

A little over a month after Maddie and I’d met, I went to Korea, which provided a natural end to whatever it was that we’d had. I saw my parents for the first time in 3 years. It was a rather tumultuous visit, breaking the COVID time warp, making me fully realize that my parents had gotten older, and so had I.

With age comes experience and wisdom, hopefully. Looking back at my journal entries from 2022, even if 3 years isn’t exactly a ton of time, I was reminded of how different I was back then. That night I first met Maddie had meant so much to me, and still does. The next time something similar happened, it wasn’t the same. And I know it never will be. I can’t tell if that’s a good or bad thing.

This was written for and read at the LATE TO THE PARTY PRESS Reading Series on Nov. 18, 2025 at KGB in NYC