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Current mood:  contemplative
Category: Life
It looks pretty certain the day after my birthday, I'm riding out a
hurricane. Odd, for the Austin area. Where I grew up, it was more
common: I'd been through three by the time I was a teenager, the last
one I've been through being Allen back in 1980 (I think it was). Not a
big deal, really. By the time Ike hits here, he's gonna be a lotta wind
and rain, really.
But, come on, Ike: Could your timing be any worse?
It's
kinda par for the course, right now. Something about this decade and my
birthday has meant disaster for me. There was the girlfriend who
decided to break up with me the week of my birthday, just because that
would sting the most, I'm sure. Then, there was the birthday on which
Johnny Cash had the misfortune of dying. That really sucked.
But
I think the coldest was the group of middle eastern gentlemen who
thought it would be really cool to fly a couple of airplanes into the
World Trade Center the day before my birthday in 2001.
I slept
through it. I was homeless at the time and staying with a friend on 7th
and Ave. B, probably three or four miles from the Twin Towers. She was
out of town, and I was house-sitting, soon to move in with my friend
Sami Yaffa and his girl Karmen. I was working at the time as a
professional dog walker, and I got up at 11 AM. It was supposed to be
just another day: I was thinking about coffee, looking over the
schedule, wondering who the first dog of the day would be, etc., etc. I
turned on Howard Stern's show, as was my wont back then (until he said
something completely insulting about John Lee Hooker on the day Hook
died, and I swore I'd never listen to the tasteless bastard again). And
judging by the hysteria I was hearing, it was the end of the world.
I called my boss to find out what was going on. That was when I found out the towers had been hit.
From
there, people were calling in left and right, canceling walks; most of
our customer base worked in the financial district, so they were now
gonna be home. I was getting all kinds of bits and pieces from there:
The doorman at the building on Irving Place where a few of my dogs
lived looking up and seeing the first jet flying so close to the
ground, he could see its' markings. My friend Mark who lived two blocks
away calling me up and telling me he was on the phone, talking to his
mother, looking out his panoramic view of the southern end of
Manhattan...and seeing that same jet fly right past his building, shaking him and the whole building. And getting a front row seat at watching it crash straight into Tower Number One.
These
calls were going on for three hours. I couldn't sit down to eat.
Finally, about 2 PM, I was able to leave the apartment and walk down to
Ave. A, in search of breakfast. Every joint in the neighborhood was
crammed to the rafters, it seemed. There were hand-written signs in the
windows, advising that the Red Cross needed blood, go to this hospital
or that one, go to Bellvue, go someplace, we need blood. The air
smelled awful, like burning tires or hair, but worse. It would be that
way for months. And can you imagine what it does to a mind, knowing
that what you're breathing might be friends of yours'?
I finally
squeezed into Sidewalk Cafe, ran into friends I knew from the local
rock circuit. The waitresses and bartenders looked like they were gonna
have coronaries. My waitress confided in me that they were severely
understaffed, especially with the crush they were experiencing, and
people due to work that day who lived out in Brooklyn or wherever were
calling in because the subways were now shut down and they couldn't
make it in. She looked like she was about to cry. Seconds later, some
jerk at the table next to me started cursing her out about how long it
was taking for him to get his eggs. I slammed my fist on his table and
shocked him: "DUDE, DO YOU GET IT? CAN YOU LOOK AROUND YOU? DO YOU SEE
HOW OVERWORKED THESE PEOPLE ARE RIGHT NOW? CAN YOU TURN AROUND AND SEE
THE COLUMN OF SMOKE WHERE THE WORLD TRADE CENTER USED TO BE? CAN YOU
FOR ONCE IN YOUR GAWDFERSAKEN EXISTENCE STOP THINKING ABOUT YOURSELF
AND TRY TO PUT YOURSELF IN THE SHOES OF THE PEOPLE WORKING HERE AND THE
PEOPLE AROUND YOU?"
"What are you getting mad at me for?" he
whined. "It's not my fault they don't have enough people working. I'm
hungry." I just stared at him.
I decided to wander a bit after
eating and having coffee. People were then walking up from around the
disaster site, walking because the subways were shut down, and no cabs
can be found. They were covered in soot, looking like some ancient Jack
Kirby panel out of a '60s Marvel comic. I ran into Jesse Malin, on his
way to buy a protein bar and a newspaper. We started talking about The
Strokes' debut album, which had just been released a few days before.
(Or maybe that was only in the UK? Well, copies were obviously getting
around on import.) And I remember at the time thinking, "Why are we
talking about The Strokes in the middle of this?!"
My
cellphone rang. It was my mother. She'd been trying to reach me for
hours. The satellite dishes for the cellphone companies were based at
the Twin Towers. Finally, a provisionary satellite path was opened, and
she could know I was alive. The family were scared shitless: They had
no idea of the geography of Manhattan, and for all they knew, I could
be dead.
I went back to the apartment and finally turned on the
news. For hours, my eyes were raped with endless repeats of the footage
of those planes crashing into those towers. It was relentless. I
finally had to turn it off and order pay-per-view porn. After all,
what's amoral here: Being bombarded with footage of the WTC being
penetrated hard and fast by terrorist-commandeered planes? Or being
bombarded with footage of Jenna Jameson getting penetrated hard and
fast from various angles?
The days and weeks after were like
nothing I'd ever experienced. I remember having to wear a filter mask
as I did the dogwalks for a long time, and suffering massive headaches
from the air quality. For awhile, you would be forced to present ID at
two different checkpoints to MPs if you lived in the East Village, just
to get to and from your apartment. Armed personnel carriers would be
going up and down Houston St. The middle eastern guys who ran the deli
downstairs looked at me with pleading, fearful eyes that told me they
were already getting harassed for the color of their skins and their
accents. Probably by the same louts I heard that Friday up and down
Avenue B, drunkenly chanting, "U! S! A! U! S! A!" I feared those clowns
more than I did potential terrorists.
I can remember my mother
and I talking, and she kept telling me, "We all understand. We all are
with you. We're all going through this together." And I had to tell her
that no, there was no way she could understand unless she was here. She
got to watch this from the safety of her living room. This wasn't TV
for me or anyone else in NYC. This was our life. And it wasn't fun, and
I hoped that she (and everyone else who didn't live here) never had to
find out what I was going through.
The worst was finding out how
one of my dearest friends was affected by this: Johnny Heffernan was
one of my local brothers in rock. His band The Bullys was one of Napalm
Stars' brother bands. Johnny was frequently there when I needed him,
whether I needed to borrow an amp, or whether I was having to fend off
an obnoxious and violent stage invader. I considered him one of my best
friends. He was to have left on my birthday to go on tour with The
Toilet Boys, doing their lighting.
Johnny was also a NYC fire fighter.
He
was not supposed to be on duty on Sept. 11, 2001. It was supposed to be
his day off. He was working instead, trying to get in overtime before
he left on the road, to support his wife and young stepdaughter. His
company was among the first to repsond when Tower Number One was hit.
From what I remember, most (if not all) of his company was buried when
the tower collapsed. Johnny's bandmates, family, friends, we all held
hope that he was still alive. They pulled Johnny's crushed body out one
month later.
We all know who killed my friend, as well as the
many others who died that day. America invaded Afghanistan shortly
after, gunning for Osama Bin Laden. Over time, our leaders began
telling us Iraq had some connection with the WTC attacks, that they had
weapons of mass destruction, that Saddaam Hussein had something to do
with this. This, of course, turned out not to be the case. We are still
at war in Iraq. Osama Bin Laden, the man who commanded the men who
killed my friend and all those others, remains free.
Happy birthday. |