After a grueling flight from Sofia with an eight hours layover in Istanbul, at 6:30 P.M., I landed at the JFK airport. Passing through customs control and catching the Air train to the subway station took me about half an hour. Then I took the subway train with the intended final stop the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It took me four hours to get there. I took a nap – not having had any sleep for 32 hours, and missed my stop, then transferred to another train, fell asleep again and missed the Bus Terminal again, instead of that, waking where I started from – the airport. I took another train and forced myself to stay awake. When I finally arrived at my stop it was 11:30 P.M. so I bought a bus ticket for 9 A.M. next morning to Binghamton and got out of the Terminal.

I didn’t feel like spending the night on an uncomfortable bench in the stuffy Bus Terminal, neither renting a hotel room for the night. It would be more interesting to take a walk around Times Square, which is a block away from the PABT. Thus I could see that emblematic place at night as I had never seen it before.

42nd street, which connects the PABT with Times Square was lit up like a Christmas tree. It was hot, muggy night in July. It had just rained, and the sidewalk was wet with a mist coming off the asphalt of the street. People passed me hurriedly by on the left and right. I bought a chicken skewer form a street stall and started cruising Times Square. My only luggage was a backpack, so I was mobile.

At that time all the stores at Times Square were open and it was crowded. I finally got tired of walking around, and when I found a tiny nook – a table on a small surrounded by flower pots space close to 42nd street, I sat down. People were passing me by, talking loudly, making it impossible to take a nap with my head lying on the table. Moreover, I was afraid that someone would steal my backpack with my passport and money in it.

As if in a dream, the pictures were changing on the huge video screens around. I memorized some of them by heart – the one in front of me was showing commercials of Citizen watches – I liked one of the watches but never remembered the model since the video changed too fast, or maybe I was too sleepy; further down on a another skyscraper Coca-Cola and some car brand had their commercials.

Around 2 A.M., the crowd shrunk. A guy with a hat with green bunny ears and a small speaker on his chest, connected to a microphone appeared onto the little square where my table was. From time to time, a late group of people passed us by, and the guy with the bunny ears would start singing an unintelligible song the chorus of which was a loud “Na-Na-Na,” accompanied by him vigorously banging of a small tambourine. He didn’t seem to be getting any money for that, so I concluded it was done for the sake of an invisible audience on Instagram, to which he was talking continuously on his phone. From the guy’s babbling to his online followers I realized that it was his birthday. He sat at a table further down the square from me. I wished him a happy birthday. He uttered an absent-minded “thanks” and continued talking to his phone. The bunny ears had entertained me for a while and kept me awake, but since he didn’t want talking to me and was not “singing”, I lost interest in him. At some point, I saw he was crying for people not wishing him a happy birthday on Instagram but there was no will on my part to try to console him.

At that time a young black guy – probably in his early twenties – with his girlfriend entered the square with a swagger. He was preparing for a trick; took off his T-shirt, put on different shoes, then made a few steps out of the square. He then charged and jumped over a big pot of flowers, turning in the air and landing on his feet like a cat. His girlfriend was filming the guy with a cell phone, and he went to her to check out the video. He didn’t like it and went on vaulting again. For the duration of half an hour he did all kinds of interesting, dangerous tricks in front of a modest live audience, consisting of semi-awake, akin to to me, late travelers or homeless people, leaning on the tables or sprawled wherever they found on the square who clapped from time to time – not that the performer seemed to care. He was more absorbed with the recordings on the phone.

The guy with the bunny ears approached and introduced himself to the performer, they “clicked” and exchanged their Instagram nicknames, then made a video together, in which the bunny ears shouted his “Na-Na-Na,” banged the tambourine, and the other guy jumped over a pot with flowers behind. They both seemed to be happy with the resulting video and parted their separate ways leaving the scene.

Their spot was taken by two black women who appeared from the direction of 43rd street. One of them started singing to the music of a speaker on wheels they dragged with them, while the other one was filming her. People rarely passed us by at that time, so there weren’t many to hear and appreciate the singing, and it was good. It seemed that similarly to the bunny ears and the jumping guy, the two women had come to dare themselves and do something “crazy,” on Times Square, even though it was close to four at night, so not too many people would see them. Anyway, they had it recorded for Instagram.

As the woman was singing a repertoire of 3-4 songs, three transvestites – two quite short and a tall one passed by my little square arguing about something, but when they saw me peeking at them, they made a comment of some sort and disappeared down the Times Square with a giggle. Someone had noticed me, I thought.

Late bar patrons or party-goers passed us by occasionally, wobbling. A man stopped to listen to the singer on my square, then went to a building with a big poster with an ad of a show with Sarah-Jessica-Parker, found a dark doorway underneath, and took a piss in it. I had to use a restroom too, but I wasn’t brave enough to use a doorway since police officers were patrolling around. I left my table and went back the way I had come before – down 42nd street. At 8th ave, I found an open pastry shop. After using the restroom, I bought a slice of cake, since the guy behind the counter had told me to or I wouldn’t have been able to use the bathroom. It turned out the cake was not as tasty as it appeared.

Back on Times Square, my table was still unoccupied. I sat at it again.

A garbage truck passed by emptying the trash cans, then a few police officers followed in a column as if escorting it looking at me suspiciously, but without bothering me. A few beggars sneaked between the tables of the semi-asleep patrons of cafe “In a Dream.” In a case one of them or another approached my table, I shook head to say that I didn’t intend to spare money for their cause. One of the beggars was more persistent – he sat on the chair across the table and started a long tirade about what happened to him to end up in that hour at the place – it was a horrifying story. At the end of it, he asked me if I had a dollar to spare so he can buy food.

“I have, but I usually don’t give money to people on the street, very rarely maybe. I am sorry,” I said apologetically.

The man looked at me strangely, thought for a second and then uttered:

“I wouldn’t keep my backpack on the back of my seat. Someone might steal it.”

With that, he rose suddenly from his seat and disappeared somewhere before I could ask if that was a warning or advice. Just in case I put the backpack on the table in front of me and leaned my head on it.

At about 5 A.M. it got lighter to the east. The store workers began preparing to open the stores. The morning shift employees unlocked the front doors. It was as if a movie reel was turning backward – I’d seen three or four hours ago how the night shift locked up the doors and left, and now everything was repeating backward.

More and more people started passing by around 7 A.M.; the sun was decisively chasing the night with a merry, yellow paint splashed over the top of the skyscrapers.

I got up from my harbor for the night and started for 42nd street feeling as if I carried away some secret from this square-heart of New York with me. It had lost a part of its mystery. I had seen a hidden facet of that place and had made it “mine.” Most of the visitors of Times Square pass through it carried by the crowd, and the crowd and the bright, video screens are all they see. I’d seen beyond that, I’d seen the mechanism beyond, which moves the clock hands hidden from most people’s eyes. I thought that Times Square, as it fits the heart of New York, never sleeps, but the clock hands move differently at night. Something surreal happens and a no-time period settles between two and five o’clock at night. Then strange people emerge from within the bright lights, and themselves flicker like fireflies and leave trails at a time measured with the tick of the changing commercials on the video screens and the count of the “likes” on Instagram.

In my state of a semi-dreaming, these Instagram celebrities, beggars and party-goers had come in my state of semi-dreaming grotesque and absurd, talented, and original, so alive making me feel more and more lost in an expired reality, which seemed to no more real for that time and place.

I left he Night Times Square with a strange familiarity and a vague sadness, bought a croissant and a coffee from a street vendor on 42nd street and sauntered towards the Port Authority Bus Terminal.