Two days before the election was called, I called the election. I listened to the playlist that had been brewing in my head for four years, danced in the streets by myself, had a moment of doubt by the Hudson River, and returned home feeling not quite satisfied.

The first thing I heard on Saturday, November 7th was a smattering of applause outside my Manhattan window. At first I thought it was something else to be forgotten and I rolled over in my sleep. Then Alex, my flatmate, came in playing Frank Sinatra’s unapologetic anthem from her phone: “Theme From New York, New York.” The race had been called and at that first moment I was unaffected, but agreed to go out at Alex’s urging. After getting dressed and coffeed, we went out to soak in the occasion. Even from the stoop in that late morning heat, the streets felt bubbly with the rising feelings of release. The music of people banging pots and pans was enough to turn a political agnostic into a last-second Biden devotee.

The first person we saw was a man who was confused by the ruckus. We explained to him that the race was over and he asked if it was official. He supported Trump. I had no clue what to tell him. I told him that the results were beyond doubt and to please take care of himself, before skipping down the street like I had just discovered ice.

It was somewhere around noon when we reached Sheridan Square. This was where the first hint of a party and the resulting COVID-19 indifference revealed itself. Seeming strangers shared wine arm in arm on a park bench. There was a man dressed in cutoff denim shorts, a white tank top, and aviator sunglasses, carrying a tote bag and shooting off confetti at every passing car. He would reach into his bag to pull out popper after popper as cars promenaded by with hands hanging out of windows. USPS trucks blared their horns and were applauded like they had just scored the winning run in the World Series. At this moment, as the day was just starting to take a hold of us, but before it fully held us in its grasp, there was an understanding that in some not-so-distant places, people were mourning. Frankly, we didn’t care.

The most mild celebrations that day would have been considered outrageous at any other time during the pandemic: a window designer canceling work for the day to enjoy Prospect Park, a cyclist sacrilegiously ending a ritualistic ride mid-workout to race back to the city, Senator Chuck Schumer leaving his office to stop by Barclays Center to enjoy the festivities. Every server was called in from their lives so that restaurants could keep up with the carousing.

My uncle gleefully sprayed champagne at people eating their brunch and then immersed himself in an hours-long lunch with family and friends where we toasted the sky, the sun, the fact that Stoke City F.C. won today, doctors and nurses, and talked for unrushed hours, where different groups of people sitting around tables burst into applause again and again, causing the street to erupt as if the news just broke. The whole day, the city was a cacophony of noise ranging from waves of applause and bellowing horns to masses of people attempting to sing “Empire State of Mind.”

The day definitely had elements of a self-celebration, as if New York City swung the election at the last possible moment and we were the heroes of the day. But the victory had nothing to do with us; it had everything to do with the exhaustive work done by Black and Brown organizers across the country. No one was under the pretense that Joe Biden would save us. Even in the midst of celebration, we were all keenly aware that only the people around us might save each other.

Every passing stranger was seraphic for the day. The sense of community with people who yesterday were random strangers and tomorrow would be once more, is something I wish upon everyone at least once in their life. Cars cutting off pedestrians were forgiven and forgotten without a second glance, every wave of noise was a call and response asking if we would be okay, always answered in the affirmative. Everyone was thanking the bus drivers, the delivery people, the street sweepers, each other. Chants oscillated from “U-S-A” to “U-S-P-S” back to “U-S-A” and back again to “U-S-P-S” and then faded into the background as people re-remembered the reason for their revelry. There was not a universal moment when the city’s rising feelings of release were uncorked, but somewhere between the outstretched arms of strangers fist-bumping in the streets, the breaks between the words in chants of—“FUCK TRUMP!”—“WE JUST DID!!” and nightfall, the city had combusted.

Jazz in the streets. DJs on balconies. Violins and flutes that made every step feel like a pirouette forward. Open brownstone doors and an overserved actor inviting anyone from the street inside for a drink or five. It was easy to find quiet streets but just as easy to stumble into a party. It was the type of day where you might see a DJ playing on a second-floor balcony and you would start dancing and within five minutes, there would be fifty people in the street all dancing alongside you.

It would get to the point where you might be uncountable miles from sobriety and lie down on someone’s car, and the owner would glance at you and then burst out laughing and lie down on the car next to you and you would hug each other with the relief that the sky had not started to fall.

Or your friends would be leaving and so you would go outside to catch a breath of fresh air and not thirty feet away, there they are with dozens of other people packed into an intersection where cobbled streets meet pavements and everyone is dancing to a group of musicians you think you recognize from the most scattered places—Jimmy the drummer from Washington Square and is that Adam from KGB bar? And they are playing Bon Jovi of all things and for a moment everyone is believing and everything is only happening because Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania grew beyond the mandatory recount threshold and all of that feels five thousand miles away because in front of you beautiful strangers are staggering to the music, and you are feeling sublime as heels get stuck in the gaps between cobblestones and glide across concrete. And the world is so vividly alive with the sense of possibility and you swear up and down that you are sober and only life-drunk and it is the piano that has been drinking.

At some point in the evening, Kamala Harris was going to speak. We found a laptop, a website, and put the speech on but nobody gave a damn what she or Joe Biden was going to say. Alex put it best, saying: “Who cares what they say? No matter what they say it’s fucking brilliant!” None of us caught a word of Harris’ or Biden’s speeches, but we raved about their poetry and sharpness and the intelligence of their vision. They were the best two speeches I never heard in my life.

With the world coming and going, people lost and found, and one last taste of summer sweat and urine lingering in the air, we danced well into the morning before we returned to find Washington Square covered with what remained of NYC’s spontaneous race to drink itself dry: mountains upon mountains of trash lay next to overfilled garbage cans where we only slept after one final waltz through the village exhaling: exalted and exhausted. Even the streetlights were waning because they too had been up celebrating and needed their rest.

The next morning, there was just about enough jubilation lingering to soften the accusatory glares traded between pedestrians and drivers into glances filled with good-humored resignation.

To be entirely clear: my actions that day were plainly irresponsible from a COVID perspective. I put myself and others at risk, as did everyone involved in these reckless mass gatherings. Despite knowing that there is a tangible possibility that others are suffering as a result of my actions, I still cannot completely cast the memory of the day aside. It’s the type of memory that you bring back when it’s been raining for a week and the last hints of possibility have seemingly all vanished, and you have just as many messages with or without do not disturb turned on and each moment of each day trudges on—and with the recollection, the promise of the unknown tugs you toward the next moment.

And so we wait once more for the next moment to come.

Faucet Theory: “After the passing of irresistible music you must make do with the dripping of the faucet.” -Jim Harrison.

Drip.