I’m constantly mollifying my best friend’s city anxiety. I grew up in New York, but lived in Miami for most of high school, where Alexia and I met. She was the child of an international couple who’d settled in Florida. I felt pedestrian in comparison. We both found ourselves in New York for college, and have lived here ever since. After graduation, I joined the crowded ranks of half-Jewish, Manhattan-born, 27-year-old aspiring writers. In the absence of a successful career or relationship, my city upbringing is about all the caché I have. But in many ways, the last decade has made her a more authentic New Yorker than I am.

Alexia’s slightly Spanish-inflected, Swedish-Greek accent has taken on a Brooklyn edge, while my generic Upper West Side elocution leads most people to ask if I’m from the Midwest. She folds her pizza expertly, doesn’t gawk at celebrities and would never hail a cab going in the wrong direction. But I have her beat at affecting steely indifference to the city’s various brands of crazy person.

One night, we head over to Niagara, the East Village bar with a heavy bridge-and-tunnel presence, but also three-dollar beers at happy hour. The bar’s typical frat-boy clientele wasn’t of concern, as it was just after five p.m., light still streamed through the windows and we were two of a handful of patrons in the place. A bored, chatty female bartender in low-rise jeans wandered among the drunken regulars, deflecting their amorous remarks. One customer was seated next to Alexia, who had her back to him. He was in his late sixties, a Santa Claus type with a mop of gray hair and a nose full of telltale broken capillaries. He spent an hour passed out on his folded arms, snoring. Every 20 minutes he’d jolt awake, mumble unintelligibly and stare at us slack-jawed with an expression so lacking in subtlety that I had little choice but to laugh.

But Alexia didn’t find the situation amusing. Through gritted teeth she told me, “This guy is creeping me out.” I’d actually begun to feel a fondness for the lonely character. He seemed like your garden-variety granddad, with an undeniable strain of dirty old man in the mix. But Alexia’s mind was weaving a chilling tale about what dastardly crimes he might have planned for us.

“Harmless,” I assured her. “He’s just an old drunk.”

But her darting eyes continued to interrupt our conversation as she repeatedly checked the status of our semi-conscious predator. I tried to convey wisdom with my gaze, shaking my head dismissively when she became distracted. Eventually, though she didn’t forget her discomfort, we returned to chatting. The bartender bought us a drink. Alexia went to the bathroom.

Presently, our friend snorted awake and resumed staring in my direction with the helpless look that had scared Alexia so. Had it not been for her paranoia, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to defend such a pathetic character.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled, “I was just wondering if you and your friend would be interested … I’m a male submissive, and I do … housecleaning?” His sentence ended on an up note, as if to check if I needed more explanation. But years of exposure to Craigslist’s “Casual Encounters” section instantly linked the words “submissive” and “housecleaning” with the image of a paunchy, naked man with a feather duster taking pleasure in being shouted at while he whipped my Brooklyn tenement apartment into shape.

I struggled to respond while he looked at me expectantly. “Oh,” I stammered apologetically, “We both live with our boyfriends.” Only a partial lie; Alexia did. Undeterred, he moved forward. “I do couples too!” All I could do was shake my head sadly.

“I don’t think we’re interested. Sorry…,” I said as if I were declining to donate to a kid’s high-school basketball team. He returned to his drink, deflated, just as Alexia returned from the bathroom.

Moments later, he left the bar. I didn’t mention it for the remainder of our night. I was disappointed in myself. If her instincts for detecting sexual deviance trumped mine, I thought, than what did I have left to qualify me as a New Yorker?  And then: What was I thinking, turning down free housecleaning?