The Storm Inside

Love and anger in a hurricane

In the four days after Manhattan’s Financial District was evacuated because of Hurricane Sandy, I became one of five people crammed inside a one bedroom in Riverdale, a neighborhood in the north Bronx. Many people had their lives wrecked during the hurricane. Fortunately, I was not one of them. Instead, I dealt with more trivial problems, like wearing the same clothes for a whole week, eating  nothing but pasta and watching my friend get his heart broken when his love interest fell for one of the other guys staying with us. And I slept with a guy I had never even met before — true, we were fully clothed and he was closer to making out with the far wall than with me, but it was awkward nonetheless.

In a city that never stops, Hurricane Sandy left restless New Yorkers isolated in their homes, or in the homes of others. People were forced to reassess their priorities and their relationships. Some relationships came close to an end, friendships were strengthened, and some people even found love.

Refinery29, a fashion and beauty website retold the story of a woman who woke up in her Chelsea apartment with a guy with whom she had only been on two dates. Spending the night with him was no indication that she wanted to spend the next few days with him. But after she received an evacuation notice because of the storm, the guy — being considerate —  said she could crash at his ‘super-safe apartment.’ Soon, the woman found herself stuck in an apartment with chain-smoking, video-game playing, action-movie watching guys. As soon as the subways were back in service, she fled.

The love triangle I witnessed, and the situation this woman found herself in, are certainly not the only cases of awkward hurricane-living situations. Take the case of Rae Charles, a 21-year-old dancer and choreographer, and Brooklyn resident. She saw Sandy as an opportunity to spend a romantic week with her boyfriend — and then his cousin showed up. The only extra space was on a couch in her bedroom. “Goodbye romance,” she said.

And as if the cousin wasn’t enough, after spending all that time in close quarters, the couple began to bicker. They ended up fighting about whether or not they saw themselves getting married. “He’s more hesitant than I,” said Charles. “We nearly broke up.”

The storm also allowed time to test out the would-be, could-be relationships. “I have an on-and-off again thing which has been driving me insane for the last few months,” a Brooklyn resident told Refinery29. She was shocked when her quasi-boyfriend evacuated to an apartment in Zone A. She was even more shocked when she heard it was to stay with another woman.

While some relationships fell apart, other people rekindled old flames. David Thompson, a 24-year-old assistant stylist, was evacuated from his Williamsburg apartment and ended up seeking refuge in his ex-boyfriend’s uptown Manhattan studio.

“Once we were in a room together, we were sort of forced to tell each other how we really felt and accept our problems instead of getting angry,” said Thompson’s ex-boyfriend, Alex Englert, 22, who works in public relations.

During a natural disaster, our true personalities are exposed; social norms fall to the way side. It is much easier to get to know someone when you have something in common, like braving a hurricane together. Just imagine all the #sandyproblems that encouraged bonding.

Mallory Brennan, 26, a Parsons junior and William Street resident, chose to stay at her friend’s apartment even though it was without power. “We called it urban camping,” Brennan said. “[We] played some intense games of scrabble, ate a lot of crackers, and he even read essays on Japanese aesthetics as bedtime stories.”

“We were friends before the storm but I don’t think I could have spent a week holed up in a room with just anyone,” she continued. “It definitely made us closer.”

Christine Lee, 20, Lang sophomore and resident of the Upper East Side, spent the week taking care of a friend’s friend who was living in the Financial District and had lost power. “I hated it,” Lee said. Even though she did not know the other person very well, she felt guilty saying no. The 20-year-old mutual friend wouldn’t even touch the dirty dishes and refused to sleep alone, because she was afraid of the dark. “I was literally babysitting a friend’s friend my age,” said Lee.

Sandy not only allowed for people to reassess their relationship with others, but also their relationship with themselves. For Cassie Kise, 20, a second year BAFA student at The New School, residing in Bed-Stuy, her time off school allowed her to make a big decision.

Kise stayed in her four-bedroom apartment during the storm with 12 people in total, eight of whom did not permanently live there. Her friend who stayed over got into an argument with his boyfriend, who came to stay too. The toilet was clogged for 14 hours.

“I looked into the dark of the night and it was silent,” said Kise. She and her roommates had heard so much about the hurricane, but never witnessed any of the chaos firsthand. Soon, Kise realized that there was so much more out there for her to see.

“All things helped me to confirm that I wanted to take a year off from school, which I had been thinking about for a while,” said Kise.

Sandy also led one man to a wonderful new discovery. Ian David Garcia, a 21-year-old Lang junior who had just come out of a long-term relationship, met a girl from California who was stranded in the city during Sandy. Their isolation sparked the romance he had been longing for.

“It took the end of the world as I knew it to restart my romantic life,” he said.

With reporting by Lauren Dunlap