December 20, 2007. Staten Island Ferry. 3:51 PM.

Let me tell you how I didn't get my computer fixed.

My computer stopped working well a couple of days ago, and then it stopped working altogether, so I decided it was high time I stopped putting things off and got it fixed. I brought it to a little computer repair place a few blocks away from my apartment, and their quote was $275, twenty-five of which I had already paid for the quote.

With confidence, I told them "no thanks," and that I would be by later to pick it up. The reason being that my father had found a place online that specialized in exactly the procedure my computer needed for the low low price of $95. All I had to do was ship it there or, alternately, drop it off--the place was right here in Staten Island--and it would be ready the next day.

My father is in retail, so he has a keen eye for a bargain and a deep suspicion that everyone is trying to rip off somebody else off all the time. Especially me, usually, because I am hopelessly naive when it comes to such matters. I am a walking talking mark, basically. It's why I try not to talk to salespeople unless something I need is behind a glass door. But anyway, this place seemed to meet his standards.

"They do the same thing HP does," he said. "Everyone wants to replace the motherboard, because they don't really know what's wrong with it. But these guys say it's easy--$95 and it's done in 24 hours."

The 24 hours is what really did it for me, because I needed my computer, more or less. I felt out of touch with the world--even though I was probably more in touch with the world if anything, because now I was watching the news instead of reading about college basketball or indie rock or any of the other things I waste my time reading about online.

My dad told me to call the number to make sure it wasn't a scam. I wasn't sure what he meant because I had no idea what to listen for. When they answered the phone, would they just say "hi, how may I scam you today?" The place was called 800-Tech. They must have settled on the name before they landed the phone line, because it was an 888 number. This already screamed scam to me, but maybe I was just being extra cautious, and what did I know anyway, so I called.

No one answered, and a got a voice mail box. "Please leave a message," a robotic voice endowed with signifiers designed to affect femininity, "for" and then a long string of numbers that in no way resembled the string I had just dialed. I hung up and was about to call my dad again to tell him it was a scam after all--probably Mafia-run, knowing the neighborhood, which I didn't--and we were lucky to escape with out $95 and our lives, but I figured I'd dial again and try to find a pattern in the numbers, since there hadn't even been seven or ten as far as I could tell, and I was mystified.

But a man answered this time--a real man--and spoke so fast that I couldn't understand him, but it was clearly something he had said a million times before. "800 Tech," perhaps.

"Uh, yes, I need my laptop repaired."

"What's the problem?"

"It has a faulty DC jack."

He said something here, but enough fire trucks drove past my window to suggest that everything above 75th street must have been on fire, so I rushed to close the window. I am not a superstitious person and I do not believe in omens.

"I'm sorry?"

"What's your model number."

I gave it to him and he told me oh yes, that was covered under the special $95 offer--it would be done and shipped back to me in 24 hours and it came with a 6 month warranty. He launched into a description of how to go about shipping it before I stopped him.

"Actually, I'm in the city," I said. "Could I just drop it off?"

He sounded a little surprised, maybe because he could see my cell phone's area code. "Oh yeah. You could do that. In that case, you could wait and we'd be able to do it in an hour."

And hour! This was perfect. I could roll out of bed, take a quick shower, head down to Staten Island, hang around for a while and be back in my apartment in time for a late lunch. I asked him for directions and it was as easy as could be. Subway to Whitehall, Staten Island Ferry, the only train to New York station (I think that's what he said, though I couldn't get over the weirdness of the name--did they have a USA station too?) then this place was just a few blocks away at 9th street.

I called back and told my dad my plans. He was still suspicious. "Are you sure this place isn't a scam?" And I wasn't, but how could it be? Offering a great price on an obscure computer repair seemed like a high-risk low-reward proposition. How could you scam more than two or three people a year that way? And a scammer's got to feed his family, right?

The next day, I double-checked my little subway map to make sure I knew where I was going and grabbed a book, some extra cash and my checkbook. I hoped they took Discover, because it was my only credit card and it wasn't even mine--the bill was sent to my parents and it was only to be used for emergencies. What exactly constituted an "emergency" had never been exactly clarified; my definition was anything more than fifty bucks. I almost forgot my computer, but I grabbed that too and was on my way.

I was excited, mostly, for an excuse to see a different part of the city, because for too long I had been content to go to and from work and to and from the nearest grocery store, and I had a feeling I felt so unsatisfied with New York simply because I had only seen five or ten blocks of it. My range of experiences was such that I may as well have been living in the mall.

I got off at Whitehall and looked for signs pointing to the Staten Island Ferry. Instead, all I saw were signs pointing me to the South Ferry. Was this the same ferry or something entirely different? I hadn't a clue, but it stopped mattering quickly when I followed them up to the street, where there were no signs or ferries to be seen in the immediate vicinity.

What I did see was a McDonald's, and though it had been my plan to hold off on lunch until I got back home that afternoon, I considered grabbing something off the Dollar Menu and collecting my thoughts. But I saw a woman asking a parking attendant for directions, and the park attendant pointed her across the street and I figured what the hell, so I followed her. And sure enough, hidden behind a temporary fence, was a grand sign labeled "STATEN ISLAND FERRY."

I had no idea what to expect out of this ferry, to be honest. It could have cost anywhere between two and forty dollars and I wouldn't have blinked--but free! This I had not expected. Things were looking up, there was no doubt about that. Hell, if it's free, I thought, I should jsut ride it for no reason some day, just because anything free that took me out of the apartment couldn't be a bad thing.

Waiting to board, I caught a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. The first since I had moved here, and probably the first since I had climbed up to its crown in eighth grade. What a strange thing, I thought, sitting all alone out in the water like that.

I arrived in Staten Island at 1:00 or so. I looked on a map to try to find 9th street or something called New York station, but it was an unreadable swirl of looped blue lines and names I didn't recognize and no numbers. I went back to the information booth and asked the woman there how to get to 9th Street.

"9th Street Manhattan?" she asked. This woman clearly didn't think very much of me. That or I was really truly fucked.

"No, Staten Island?" I asked.

"Oh, that's--where's that?" she asked the man working with her in the booth. "New Corp," I think he said, then she told me "Neugrolf" or something. "But hurry up, that train is leaving," she said. I rushed out to the platform just in time to see the train disappear around the corner. I slunk back into the station, hoping the woman wouldn't see me, and waited for the next departure, which wasn't for a while, even though there were seven or eight trains sitting in the station, all going to the same goddamn places.

Finally, I boarded and found a map. It was one of those straight lines with little dots representing each stop, with the names printed underneath. All maps should be like this. Location and destination--the rest was scenery. I was on a fucking train, I didn't need to know if I was going north or south or left or right, just that I was in this place and I was going to this other place and there were that many places in between. Had there been one of these maps in the station, I wouldn't have had to ask that unpleasant woman and I wouldn't have missed the first train and I wouldn't have had to wait twenty minutes for this one. I tried not to get too mad, though, because I had a book to read, and I had time.

Anyway, I looked for a stop that looked like the one I was supposed to be headed for, and saw one called "New Dorp." New Dorp? Could that be it? I was skeptical. New Dorp sounded wrong for about a dozen reasons, not the least of which was that I had never heard of the original Dorp and I thought too much of the Europeans to believe they would have the poor taste to give such an ugly name to anything.

The train filled with people, all of whom had thick New York accents. It made me keenly aware of how out of place I was. I identified so strongly with New England that even the heaviest Boston or Rhode Island accent felt like mine--like I had been born with the accent and I just chose not to speak with it--and even in my limited time in the south, my unaffected Connecticut speech was more like a badge of honor than anything, and even my untrained ear could discern so many varieties of drawl that I fit in by virtue of being unique. But I felt alien around these people, and I felt compelled to apologize for being on the train in the first place.

A group of girls got on the train, talking loudly. They were wearing your classic Catholic schoolgirl outfits--white sweaters, plaid skirts, the works. It made me wonder, who sanctions these outfits, in 2007? They might have signified serious Christian scholarship back in the day, but the twisted American consciousness changed all that long ago. It seemed to me you'd have to be exceedingly stupid or stubborn to ignore this today. My daughter will go to public school dressed like a slut before she wears one of those things. At least that way it's other snot-nosed little teenagers I have to worry about, not perverted old men leering from the bushes.

It was about 1:45 by the time the train pulled into New Dorp. I found the street just a block from the station. The computer repair store was located at 22 9th St., though once I found it, I found that "store" wasn't really the right word. The door had signs for Star Realty, House and Land Magazine (which seemed like a conflict of interest to me) and another little sign that said "800 Tech, second floor."

I went inside and up the carpeted steps. The first thing I saw was a bathroom with a shower. Like the kind of bathroom you'd see in a house, which made sense, because all the signs in the world couldn't change the fact that this was a house. There was a little sign in the bathroom that went something like this:

BATHROOM CODE
ONE KNOCK means, "Just Saying Hello!"
TWO KNOCKS means, "Hurry Up, I've Gotta Get In There!"
THREE KNOCKS means, "Get Outta There Before It's Too Late!"

There was a door open at the far end of the hall. I approached it slowly because it didn't look right at all. There was a fish or a little shark or something mounted on a wood plaque hanging in front of the windows. The shades were drawn. There was a leather chair upside down in the middle of the floor and there were drawers pulled out of their cabinets and papers scattered everywhere, like the place had been ransacked. I took a few steps back down the hall and saw the door to 800 Tech. They were French doors, but the windows were papered over so I couldn't see inside. What could they be hiding in there? Was it just a mess? The door was locked and the lights inside weren't on.

I headed back downstairs and peeked into Star Realty. A man and a woman were making copies and discussing business.

"Uh, is the computer repair upstairs?"

"Yes, upstairs," the woman said.

"Oh, well they're not in right now, do you--"

"Oh, I'm sorry. They're in and out."

Ugh, I thought. "Oh, OK. Thanks."

"I'm really sorry," she said, like she had just given me some terrible news about someone I loved.

I figured these people were at lunch and would probably be back at 2, and I had seen a Subway down the road, so I decided to get some food of my own. I ate and it was 2 and I went back and still, no one was back. In fact, the people who had been in Star Realty had cleared out too, and I was the only one in the building.

I walked outside and found a bench across from old 22 9th St. so I could see if anyone walked in. I called my dad and told him what was up and he asked me what I was going to do.

"I don't know," I said. "It took me two hours to get here, so I might as well stay for a while. Maybe if no one's here in an hour I'll head back then."

"Yeah, no more than an hour," he said, like if I left at 3 I had been wronged and if I stayed a minute longer I was a sucker.

I went back up to 800 Tech, even though I hadn't seen anyone go in. I dialed their number so I could hear the phone ring on the other side of the door and make myself angrier, but there was only silence, and I was confused.

I headed back outside to the bench, but it was cold and I had finished the last few pages of my book, so I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood. It was a nice little suburb to tell the truth. I wouldn't trade the city for anything like it now, but growing up in a semi-rural wasteland like Burlington, I had always wanted to live in a suburb that actually had sidewalks that people actually used. I hadn't even been sure such things had existed outside of the '50s. I probably would have disliked living there pretty quickly. In theory, though, it was very nice.

I walked down New Dorp Lane for a while. Just about everyone I passed was chewing gum. The businesses were small--no chains. There were two stores that sold prom dresses right next to each other. On the next block, there was a store called "Everything 99 cents and up." That could describe most stores, I guess, as long as you didn't have a gumball machine in the corner or something, but most of the items on display were clearly on the lower end of the spectrum. I was desperate to find a Barnes & Noble or a Starbucks--one of those bastions of urban yuppiehood I had come to detest in Manhattan. In my defense, I really just wanted to find a warm place where I could sit.

I headed back again to 800 Tech again and still no one was there so I left them a message with my phone number. Maybe that was a bad idea, I don't know. Even if they didn't use my phone number to open several bank accounts in my name, I could imagine how this story was going to end already: the Staten Island Ferry pulls away from the dock and my phone starts buzzing and 800 Tech asks me when I'm bringing the computer by. That hasn't happened, though.

I called my friend from Staten Island. She was in the airport, waiting for her flight, which had been delayed. It turns out she had gone to high school just a few blocks from where I was. She told me it was very surreal to imagine me walking around her neighborhood, and I tried to picture her or anyone else walking (or driving, more realistically) through Burlington. I couldn't do it. Boston and Burlington are two separate places, existing in entirely different dimensions, basically, and I'm still not sure how I'm allowed to go back and forth between the two without a passport.

In the midst of catching up, my friend directed me to a plaza with some of the old familiar standbys. I sat in a Starbucks until 3, tried 800 Tech one last time without expecting anything and after finding it was still empty, I headed back to the train station.

I was disheartened by this defeat, and by the hours I had wasted. I've had my share of success and defeats in this city, but the victories were hard-fought and well-earned while the defeats have been weird and arbitrary and unexpected and therefore utterly exhausting. Maybe it's just my perspective, but Boston always felt like a fair fight. New York is more like ancient Greece--the best you can do is try to live a quiet, humble life without pissing off the gods, because once they notice you, there is no dodging their careless thunderbolts.