Hampton Bays, 1973 – or – That Time I Met Cat Stevens

This is my story as I remember it.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” – Rumi

The bathroom at the party was down a hallway that smelled like cedar and patchouli, and on my way back I got turned around which, honestly, is the story of most of my life. I’d been following a thread of bookshelves that materialized out of nowhere, the way the best things always do, and before I knew it I was standing in a room that felt like it had been waiting for me.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves. Wood paneling warm as honey. A bay window with the Atlantic sitting right there beyond the dunes like it was posing for a painting. Someone had left a Cat Stevens record on the coffee table …. Tea for the Tillerman …. face down, which felt vaguely criminal to me. I picked it up.

“That’s mine, actually.”

I spun around so fast I nearly dropped it.

He was standing in the corner by the window, holding a coffee mug like it was the most natural thing in the world, which …. given that we were forty-five minutes deep into a party that had already consumed three kegs and someone’s entire dignity …. it absolutely was not. Dark curly hair. Beard. The kind of eyes that make you feel like you’ve already said something interesting, even before you’ve opened your mouth.

I knew immediately who he was.

I told myself: Do not drool. Do not drool. You are a grown woman who got high with Steven Tyler, kissed Dino Valenti in the center aisle of the Fillmore East, and laughed in the spray of Robert Plant’s sweat …. and survived. You can survive this.

“Sorry,” I said, carefully setting the record back down. “I wasn’t….”

“No, please.” He crossed the room and picked it up himself, turned it face-up. “Someone keeps flipping it over. I don’t know why it bothers me.”

“Because it’s rude,” I said. “To the art.”

He looked at me then. Really looked. “Yes,” he said. “Exactly that.”

We introduced ourselves the way you do when you both know the introduction is somewhat ceremonial. He said his name and I said mine and I shook his hand and my inner monologue was doing something completely unhinged that I will not repeat here.

“Do you know anyone at this party?” he asked, glancing back toward the hallway, from which we could hear the muffled thump of the stereo and what sounded like an argument about Vietnam.

“I met the girl who dated the guy who knows the people who live here,” I said. “So basically, no.”

He laughed. It was a good laugh. Unhurried.

“Same,” he said, “but I needed coffee and then the books called.”

He gestured at the shelves with his mug …. a vague, appreciative sweep …. and we both turned to look at them the way you look at a fireplace, like they were giving off heat.

I stepped closer to the shelves and ran my finger along the spines. Fitzgerald. Baldwin. A whole fat row of Steinbeck. Some poetry. A Bible, dog-eared and cracked spine, which told you more about a person than almost anything else you might find in a house.

“Do you read a lot?” I asked, though the second it came out I felt like an idiot, because what kind of question is that to ask?

“Constantly,” he said, simply. “More than anything lately. More than writing, even.” He paused. “That probably should worry me.”

“What are you reading?”

“Rumi,” he said, and then watched my face to see what I’d do with that.

I didn’t flinch. I’d read Rumi. I’d read Rumi on the subway while someone played the harmonica between cars, which felt like the correct setting for it.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,” I said, “there is a field.“

Something shifted in his expression. “I’ll meet you there,” he finished.

We sat down on the settee and we talked the way you can only talk to a stranger, which is to say honestly, without the weight of expectation. I told him I went to concerts every weekend. That music was the closest thing I had to a religion.

“What kind?” he asked. Not defensively. Just curious.

“Everything,” I said. “Rock, mostly. Metal. Some folk.” I hesitated. “I saw you, actually. At Carnegie Hall. Two years ago.”

He nodded, but didn’t make it weird.

“Was it good?” he asked.

“It was extraordinary,” I said. “There was a moment during “Wild World” where the whole room went completely still. Like everyone forgot to breathe.”

He looked out the window at the water for a moment.

“I remember that,” he said quietly.

Somewhere outside a woman shrieked with laughter and a glass broke. The sound punctured our conversation.

“I should probably….” he started.

“Yeah, me too,” I said.

We both stood there for a second in the amber light of that wood-paneled room, and there was something …. a held breath, a moment balanced on its own edge …. and then it passed, the way those moments do, gently and without ceremony.

He picked up the record and tucked it under his arm.

“It was very good to meet you, Nancy,” he said, and he meant it. You could tell when people meant things, and he meant it.

“You too,” I said. And then, because I had nothing to lose: “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

He smiled, warmly.

“I think I’m getting closer,” he said.

We walked back out to the party and the noise swallowed us whole, and in a matter of seconds I couldn’t see him in the crowd.

I’ve told this story maybe three times in my life …. to my best friend, to my kids, to my husband, of course, who was at the party with me. He’s the kind of man who can hold a story like this without deflating it.

I’ve never stopped wondering, in the idle way you wonder about things that don’t require an answer, whether Cat Stevens remembers me. Whether fifteen minutes in a library in Hampton Bays left any mark at all on a man whose life was so large and so full of searching.

Probably not. He’s met so many people. He’s Cat Stevens.

But I remember his eyes and the quiet of that room. I remember the record, face-down on the table. I remember that he finished the Rumi quote without effort.

And I remember thinking, walking back out into that party, into all that noise and light: That’s what real sounds like. Hold onto that.

I have.

NAR©2026

Nancy’s Notes: This is exactly the way I remember my chance encounter with Cat Stevens. While it may sound romanticized, I have tried my best to keep it as factual as possible. Fifteen minutes with this man had a profound impact on me, on my soul and my heart and my way of thinking. In the years that followed I never tried to reach out to him; to what end? No, I will simply relish those minutes with him until all the minutes of my heart have run out. Thanks for reading.

This is “Wild World” by Cat Stevens

^{Everything on the elephant trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thank you for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.}