iRony

It’s not a simple thing to teach the concept of irony to sixteen year olds at a struggling high school. I meet well-educated adults who aren’t able to wrap their heads around the idea. Still, I would try.

With a lesson on this complicated concept this early in the school year, though, I may have bitten off more than we all could chew. My first class on the topic did not hit home. I talked to a fellow teacher about it during common planning.

“What I do is play the Alanis Morissette song,” said Cara, a colleague who has one year of experience on me.

I have had a problem with this song since I first heard it. I was literally offended by the Canadian's crackerbarrel interpretation of my pet literary tool. What I found most disgusting about it was the fact that its popularity would cause a whole generation of pop music loving fans to misunderstand the definition of irony. I imagined my younger sisters (forced to rely on the radio as a role model due to my decision to live at college instead of at home) growing up thinking, “I was making an omelet and I dropped the eggs. Isn’t that ironic? Don’t you think?”

Who would even teach them how to make an omelet? Somehow, they made it through.

As far as the class went, I wasn‘t desperate yet, but another class like the previous one, and I would be. I found my copy of "Jagged Little Pill" and put it on my iPod touch.

In class I soldiered on. I announced, ”Alright, I’m going to play for you the corniest song in the world. You’re not going to believe that we used to listen to this crap. It was very popular about thirteen years ago. I mean, it was really popular. All over the place. MTV played it, and then played commercials that made fun of it. And you might make fun of it too. I did. Really, it’s the least cool song ever. But, it’s called ‘Ironic‘.”

As it played, I asked them to list things the song described, and we discussed why those things were or were not ironic. After third period, one student asked me to write down the artists’ name so he could find the song and put it on his own iPod. I wondered if he was being ironic.

After fourth period, I had to leave my classroom while another teacher taught a freshman health class in my space. This teacher had no control over his class. I would come back, and if the desks weren’t broken, they had been written on. I hid the speakers, put the iPod in my jacket along with my phone, and left to go to common planning, which was held in a large meeting room, Room 123.

Common planning ran late and when the bell rang, I left the room quickly. I didn’t realize until later that I had left my jacket in the room. The room was normally locked, so I didn't think it was very urgent. I waited until after school to retrieve it. When I got there, the jacket had been moved, and the pockets were empty. No phone. No iPod.

The next day I told my first few classes what had happened. I asked them to tell me what was ironic about my story.

“Aren’t you mad?”
“Of course I’m upset. Do you expect me to start yelling about it?”
“I’d be mad.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t any of you. You have a solid alibi.”
“So you want to know what’s alibi about it?”
“Ironic. Alibi is a story. Like an excuse that proves you weren’t at the scene of a crime. Ironic is…who can tell me?”
“It’s like when you being sarcastic.”
“Yes, that’s part of it, but that’s not the whole story.”
“That’s not the whole alibi?”
“Not exactly. Let’s talk about alibis in a few minutes. Let’s stick with irony now. What is ironic about the story I just told you?”
“Well, you took the iPod with you so it wouldn’t get stolen from this room, but it got stolen from the place you took it to.”

That is an example of the fourth best thing about being a teacher. The first is the benefits. The second is the summer months. The third is the large number of young females that become co-workers a yearly basis. And then comes the feeling of knowing that you can see the effects of your work helping people to get smarter and know more.

Not that that would bring back my fucking iPod Touch. Of course, I had brought that sweet piece of equipment to school in the first place so that I could teach my little darlings about irony. And for better or for worse, my students, if anyone cared to ask, would have one solid and unforgettable example of irony. So, I suppose, I had accomplished my goal.

Nine months later, I sat in the Denver International airport on a three-hour layover. My gate had no outlets, but I found one that did, plugged in, and finished writing a story that by this time you may have already read. Maybe you’ll read it next. You don’t have to go in order. While typing, I often look above my monitor to monitor my surroundings. I don't like to miss things.

Normally there is nothing to see anyway. But this time, I spotted a black video iPod on the ground near the next bank of seats. I saved my work, walked over and picked it up. 80 Gigs. If someone else had picked it up, they might not have done so with the benevolent intentions that I now had. I put it on the seat next to me so that when the owner inevitably came back to retrieve it, I could heroically show the worried traveler that I had found it and safely return it to her. Or him.

I resumed writing and looking around, but he or she never came back. Many people passed, and some people teased my by looking around in that area, but before a few seconds passed, each time, each person proved to be merely looking for a place to plug in too. A half hour passed and I wondered if there really would be any benefit to a lost and found at an airport. Its owner would now be 30,000 feet in the air and on his or her way to a place where iPods grew on trees.

The iPod told me that its name was Stacy’s iPod, and then it told me that she had eclectic and fantastic taste in music. She had Green Day and Tracy Chapman on that iPod, and I was just returning from a trip on which I saw each of those acts in concert. She had Sufjan Stevens, who I had always been curious about, and Me’shell N’dege Ocello, who I had forgotten about. She had 10.9 gigs still available, and the other 29 were taken up by mixes, including one specially for Volvo drivers, and one specially for women. She had three episodes of Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, and three seasons of The Wire.

At this point it would be more accurate to say I had all these things. I would not try to find the lost and found, or the owner.

Once on my own plane and headed home, I saw that her contacts were mostly international, and that her calendar consisted of flight after flight, followed by daily reminders of what city she was scheduled to wake up in or travel to. There was no discernible home base, but she had clocks set for California, Amsterdam, and Melbourne. She kept track of birthdays, and would soon call make a call from Barcelona to a set of twins turning 47. At least, she probably would have done so if she had been more careful in Denver. I was certain, though, that Stacy would have all of this information backed up on her Macbook. She had International Talk Like A Pirate Day in her calendar, and that made me wish that I had met Stacy.

Not really, though, because if I had, she would have taken Stacy’s iPod back.

I had a simulacrum of Stacy’s life. I wanted Stacy’s life. I wanted to make her bi-weekly call to Stephanie. I wanted to go to the training session in San Diego and the sales conference in Brussels. Before Stacy’s video iPod fell near my lap, I had been happy with my two week trip to the Pacific Northwest and my replacement iPod. It was a Shuffle.

Stacy didn’t even watch movies. She had pod casts from The Economist, and took advice on how boomers should protect their retirement investments. Stacy would easily be able to replace her iPod and everything on it.

I wished that when I was younger, I had made the same careful choices Stacy had. She had worked hard and kept herself organized in college, had paid her dues, made her calls, and earned her place on the ladder. I could have been Stacy if I had had a mother like Stacy had had, who inculculated her with the value of savings and wise investments.

Stacy’s mom was not listed in her contacts. At least, she wasn’t listed as “Mom.” No Dad either. Perhaps her iCal was just for business. Perhaps they weren't close. After all, why would the twins’ birthdays be listed on a business calendar? Why didn’t Stacy have any photos? Why doesn’t Stacy have any appointments on any days, past or present, past 6 p.m. local time? Why is she spending Thanksgiving in Denmark?

Where are Stacy’s priorities, really? My parents showed me that what someone did when they went home was more important than what they did between their commutes. Why didn’t Stacy have a home? Why was she always commuting? Who the hell loses their iPod in the airport anyway? Why did she have 10.9 gigabytes left and why did she use none of it for photos of people that she cares about? Who cared about her? How many people had Stacy’s birthday on their iPods? Did Stephanie even look forward to those bi-weekly calls? I’ll bet she suffered through them then scoffed at them loudly with the co-workers in her Australian office as they all left a little early to get drinks and talk about things Stacy wished she was a part of.

I bet that Stacy had never taught anyone the definition of irony, and I was beginning to doubt whether she would even have been able to tell me what irony was. I would be able to teach her, if I were compelled to find her. She had lost her chance. I was compelled to find her for just a moment when I saw that she had Jagged Little Pill on her iPod.

Then I became sure that if I had found her to talk to her about irony, that Stacy would pretend to listen to me, and would then tell me irony was a black fly in her chardonnay. And soon after that, she would tell me that actually, she preferred shiraz. What she wouldn’t say is that she drank shiraz unapproached in hotel bar after hotel bar in cities she visited frequently enough that the bartenders would recognize her but would pretend not to so they could avoid the obligatory conversations that would come along with that type of acquaintanceship. I’ll bet all they wanted was Stacy’s tip. I wondered where she parks her Volvo.

And then I thought about the Touch. I wondered what had happened in that dark quiet room. It was supposed to have been locked. Had a student snuck out of class and into the room and found himself unexpectedly rewarded for his truancy? Or had it been a janitor who helped himself when he found his favorite secret break spot suddenly more interesting? Had he shuffled through my life? Had they liked the way I looked, smiling with my family at Thanksgiving? Had they bothered to find out what was on it, or had it gone straight to the fence?

Blah, blah, blog

I always saw writing for free as beneath me. I've been a writer by trade since the internet was the information superhighway. Why would I Blog?

More importantly, who would care? Why does it matter to you what I do on my vacation? What I eat for breakfast? What I think about Michael Jackson.

Then my agent suggested starting a blog as a way to promote the release of my upcoming book. Okay. I'm listening. Are you?

This is me jumping in. Cannonball. Corkscrew. Can Opener.

Book-Chapter 3

Dana and I got to the elevator at the same time. He pushed the button. He was the only person I knew on the floor anymore, besides Old Willie down the hall, and Old Willie only acknowledges me about half the time. Dana was a good guy. We went to the same gym. We went to each other’s parties. I had first met him in the same spot two years earlier.
I had thought of him as something more than all the other elevator button buddies for the past year. At that time, we ran into each other in a crowd at the Seaport. I had gone to the Seaport for a free G. Love concert. He had gone because it was nice Sunday and he needed to wander and he just followed the music because he was still tweaked out on two hits of ecstasy from the night before. He mixed well with my friends. Someone said it was beautiful. I think it was him. At the time the coincidence seemed to be the universe nodding to us to tell us we should be friends, but we hadn’t yet realized that was just how things happen in this world. And it was by no means magical. But it did make us better friends. Ecstasy is a powerful drug. It makes you friends with other people.
It had been a while since we’d sought each other out for parties, but there we were at the elevator buttons. We both had an interest in keeping the friendship alive, and we both knew that, tired as we were, if we didn’t speak to one another, the friendship could spiral towards acquaintanceship. We would become each other’s Old Willies.
“Hey Dana.”
“Good Morning.”
“How you?”
“Alright. What you been up to?”
Ball in my court. Well played, man. I told him I was on my way to the second rehearsal of The Women. It was positively the theatrical event of the moment and I was hired to help out. The director, Scott Eliot, had been one of my favorite directors for a few years running. I admired him so much that I was willing to work for next to nothing to run his errands and was thoroughly convinced that I was experiencing a step forward in terms of the career. In the first day, I had already learned so much from him. I learned he liked his bagel before his banana and his coffee iced. He was willing to live with Starbucks. He was able to be vaguely specific when giving direction, and seem communicative and articulate with sentences that were punctuated by entire clauses: “You know what I mean? Does that make sense? You agree with me, right?
But Dana wasn’t gay, and therefore wouldn’t be impressed by Scot. I wasn’t either, so I told him something that might impress him while conveying the fact that although I was in fact working on Broadway, I was not, in fact homosexual. I gave up a few of the names of the actresses. It worked. Touche, my friend. Ball’s in your court, now.
“She’s so hot. You’re working with her? Like, you’re going to see her now?”
“Want me to give her your number?”
The elevator had arrived and taken us to the lobby, and we got to the corner and we had saved friendship. He went down the street, ostensibly to mail a letter. There was a closer mailbox in the other direction, but I didn’t tell him that. He probably knew. Good match, man.
I didn’t want to be late but I really didn’t want to be hungry. I stopped at the sidewalkside bagel and lox place. It didn't have a name, or a door, but the facing surrounding the opening had stickers on it. Large, cup-shaped stickers reading “Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice $2.99” I called it the breakfast store, and the previous year it had been the smallest Pomme Frites in New York City, and before that it had been a Belgian waffle stand. I never patronized in any of its incarnations but when I saw they were making lox and bagel sandwiches, I became a regular. It took me three weeks to realize that it was, in fact, operated by twins, and that I had not been flirting with the same girl every day. Apparently, only one flirted back, and it was not just one bipolar girl, as was understandably my assumption. I didn’t know their names, but I imagine them to start with the same letter.
The grumpy one didn’t have change for a twenty and she had to go to the shoeshine shop next door for smaller bills. I waited, though I knew I had no time for this. I looked down the street and up at the Twin Towers, and I was again struck by their size. Five years I’ve lived right down the street, and still I can't get over them. “If they were lain on their sides, would they reach my building?,” I had often wondered but had never sought evidence to bring about the unavoidably unexciting end to the wondering.
I think they’re just about tall enough to crush me if they were to fall. Some days I can walk through the Trade Center plaza without thinking about it, but if I let my eyes wander up, I’m done. I’m walking slow and gawking like a tourist.
She came back but not soon enough. By the time she handed me the money, Dana was there. He had mailed the letter, I guess, and sought a sandwich and coffee, just like me, and we talked about what a find the place was. Our whole breakfast for $3.25, after tax. We talked about the girl loud enough for her to hear, and she may or may not have had enough of a grasp of English to understand, but we both understood that we had the same flirting game with the girl, and now we’re all in on it. We’d now gone beyond saving the friendship; we’d reminded each other that we were neighbors, in this together. We New Yorkers love our neighborhood secrets. It was no longer new for us, so even and maybe especially at this time, we wanted something to help us feel at home.
Dana’s twin must have made his sandwich, and his eyes must have drifted down the block and up the towers. He’d been in the neighborhood as long as I had, but used to work in one of the towers, and was less enchanted by them since his company moved to Broad Street. That was even closer, and less of an elevator ride. And the money is better, even if the economy is for shit these days as compared to then. It’s just harder to make a dollar now. Fucking Millenium.
“Fuck the view, I have it better now.” And just as he re-thought that very though, he saw an airplane fly into the top of his former tower. And naturally, this took a moment to process. And, naturally, this moment felt like it lasted much longer than it, in actuality, did. He happened to be the only person in the immediate area looking up at the time. Most people heard the noise, but figured something backfired—Yeah right whateverthefuck we’re trained not to look up what do I look like a fucking tourist—The twin didn’t seem to have noticed the noise, sight, or his reaction to any of it. I guess it’s possible that that facing is blocking her view. He paid for the bagel, left a tip, and told the girl thanks. He almost mentioned it. But by this time he had the sense that this was no small thing for him or for her, and decided to let the girl have a few more moments fo life as she knew it now, tregarldess of how little she seemed to be enjoying that life, it was about to get much worse. He did not want to be forever remembered as the one to tell her this had happened. He wished he had a few more moments of living in the world where this had not happened. But it Happened, and he was moving.
He was really not thinking now, but was more like fixated on the hole and he began walking towards it, it was smoking, but it should have been smoking more, shouldn’t it? That was an airplane, for fuck’s sake! People on the street were catching on. If you live here you know how information spreads like cancer in this city and right now he was in a place and a position where he could see cancer cells multiply, and see what was happening to people in this moment, see the mitosis as city people going about their city lives became survivors, figuring out how to live through something they would never be able to forget. Every one on this street was experiencing something that they would be called on to recount again and again. If they lived, they would later tell other people, either complicating the jobs of their therapists, or trumping all other stories at a dinner party when someone brought up the question that would define this generation. It was no longer going to be, “Where were you when JFK got shot?” or “Where were you when JR got shot?” It was going to be this. “Where were you when this happened?” And Dana didn’t know this yet, and nobody knew what this was yet, but they all were aware that this was something.
The din was steadily rising, and people when they turned from normal cells to cancer cells, most just stood there, and some ran away, but dana walked toward it. He could not do a thing but walk towards it. He walked with the lox and bagel sandwich and the coffe, and walked toward the hole. Nothing was being done yet. There were no sirens or lights, no whistles, no announcements over loudspeakers, just the whiff and sound of human terror.
Then things converged and humans scattered. News vehicles were the first to get there. They opened and media spilled out. Cameras, interviewers getting made up and they looked up as they got their hair done, but when that was over they looked for subjects. Dana was three blocks away, not close enough to be interviewed, but close enough to see the scramble, see the camera crews. In every set, one was trained up, and one was on the street. He got to the Corner of Fulton and Church Street, where he could finally see both towers, and his timing had never been the best, but he was in luck today. As he got there, a pland flew in from the same direction as the other. It missed, thank godm but oh, my, it turned around and it twisted, and it put itself into the middle of the other building just as a flat cloud of fire leapt out of the tower around it.
The train took too long to get there, so my patience had already been tested when when came the announcement that we would switch to the local track. Given the patience deficit, I drank the coffee too soon and got a burn on my tongue. Fuckdog, that will ruin the sandwich. The doors closed and the train lurched, and I didn’t spill a drop. A girl close to me was talking about someone she knew who was traveling to New York from somewhere over there by train, and asked her boyfriend, why anyone would want to take Amtrak across the county. “Can you think of anything worse?” she asked.
I smiled because I had been waiting to fulfill my plan to take Amtrak across the country. I had quit my job three months hence, high on romance and experience. The train trip remained high on my list of things to do. I imagined that I would have been on an Amtrak heading in the opposite direction right then, had I not gotten the fabulous indentured servitude for which I was about to be late; The job that would earn me bragging rights to working with famous women, in close quarters with starlets. The job would last for the next few months. Stories that have lasted until 25 pages from now. The level of fame of these women was middling, but the sum of the parts…The independent film princess, the sitcom grand dame, the sitcom slut, the cable slut’s friend, the 10-year-old who was richer and more recognizable than each of them. It had gay men atwitter. And employed. I was the only straight man for miles around. Well, the Stage Manager was married, but everyone knew why he hired Jared, the Production assistant. And me, for all I knew, but if I continued to stare at the indie princess’ tits the way I had the first day, everyone would catch on soon enough that I was straight.
And sooner still, they’d catch on that I was okay with being late on the second day. I got there and the Stage manager wasn’t in yet, but Val the PSM was there, and as soon as I got into the room, she told me she heard that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.
What?
Then she went downstairs to find out more, and I got a call from someone I hadn’t heard from for months, asking if I was okay. I told him I was fine, and I told him where I was, and being a gay man, he said, “That’s fabulous! Congratulations!” I think he immediately regretted letting his excitement override the gravity of the situation, and he let me off the phone quickly. I tried to call my parents and couldn’t get through. Thanks Cliff. You ruin everything.
The actresses started showing up, the fourth one was in tears. She had been on the train behind mine on the red line, local track, and when hers stopped at the World Trade Center station, people started rushing in through the doors. They were telling this story with holes and horror, it was so much more frightening than the radio updates Val was getting from the doorman with the radio. One actress had a serenely blank look on her face, as she had had the whole day yesterday. She started stretching. Val asked her if she knew what was going on. She nodded and moved to grab her other leg behind her back. One of the above-the-titlers stormed in and announced that she would soon be storming out. “I’m not staying here. I mean, Times Square!!? This building could be next!” She invited another actress who lived downtown to go to her apartment with her, because she couldn’t go back home. That’s what made me realize that I had to go somewhere too and I had no fucking clue where I was going to go, and for that second, I thought about asking if I could go with them too. I stopped myself because I supposed it wouldn’t have been very professional, and because I didn’t know how it would be received. There was a question about whether a tragic situation would render irrelevant the invisible class lines, the very lines that neither of them would want to admit their awareness of and professional dependence on. I decided that it definitely would have been awkward, whether they asked me along or not. She was still who she was, and I was still who I was.
The Stage Manager had arrived, and I was sent to the deli to cancel the order for the Meet N Greet that was supposed to be that morning. At first I hated and nearly feared having to go out into the street. But then, what protection is this building going to give me? I was in a way just happy to have something to do. It was good to have a task and a purpose. Before I got to the deli, I saw what it had done to the streets, the looks on people’s faces. The looks defied everyone’s feeling of helplessness to control what might happen next, while still trying to figure out what had just happened. While keeping it all together. No one was coming unglued. I stopped by an incense stand because it had its radio on and a crowd was gathered. Speculations weren’t yet being made, they were still just reporting facts. Information. It wasn’t yet what we now know it to be. What it was was all we wanted to know. What the fuck it was. “What is this?”
I had swiped a cigarette from the prop table. That was a job perk, available exclusively to employees with high clearance, low moral character, and quick hands. There was an endless supply of cigarettes. I had no light. I mimed lighting up to another woman who was listening to the same radio. She held her cigarette out, and when I went to take it, she pulled it back. I was not to touch it. She was doing me a huge favor anyway, and she was only doing that because of what was going on, so I’d better not push it. I said “Thanks” out loud, and she looked like I had broken a sacred vow of silence.


Dana had moved toward the commotion. He didn’t remember consciously weighing the options and deciding to do so, but it happened when his body took him there. He now clearly and without a doubt wishes he had thought about the options, maybe considered them a little. He saw bodies falling from the towers. They were not being thown out. They were jumping. Were they, too, just acting as their bodies commanded? Did they think about the options and decide, yes, I must escape this heat, and then just jump. Did they think it was their only chance for survival? Or did their body just make the decision. Hey, If I stay here I’ll be ash. If I jump, I might be found and buried? Was Dana doing the same thing, following his body to certain death? He was closer than anyone could have wanted to be to this thing that was happening. It had happened. No, it was still happening, and he was here. He wished he had thought out moving toward the action. He didn’t think he would actually have done anything differently, he just though that if he had considered what to do, he might have given himself a clue about what to do now. Now that there was a noise that could not possibly have been made at any other time before or since. An unduplicable sound which would be duplicated a million times in his memory. He heard it and it was now and forever part of him. This sound was just what you might imagine it must sound like when a hundred story tower falls on itself. But why would you and how could you have ever imagined that sound. Why would you think about it, and now that you have lived it, how can you ever not think about what is happening right now?
How could it have fallen? How could it have fallen and how could he be here to see this?
If he had thought it all out, he might have considered what the best escape plan could be when you are faced with a cloud traveling faster than a car, not stopping at traffic lights or for anything, a cloud full of all things you don’t want destroyed and hurled at you, is on the same street as you. In YOUR neighborhood. In a moment of luck and clarity, you duck into a deli on Church Street. You are the first one in from the street, but then a hundred million people follow, and you are moved back to the back of the deli, and you camp out by the cold glass doors that you can see through when you are picking out what you want to drink. More people want to get inside, but it’s pretty much full up. You feel oddly safe back there by the Snapple. Isn’t a deli the best place to be trapped? No one will starve. I guess If I had a choice I’d take being trapped in Peter Luger’s, but you gotta do what you can with the hand you’re dealt.

I got to the Starlight Deli as they were wrapping up the order for 50 sandwiches. We were a regular client, and they were going to get that order to us, towers be damned. I didn’t even need to say anything about canceling. The guy wrapping it up saw me and knew right away who I was and what I was doing there. He just nodded and said, no problem. “Tomorrow, maybe.”
I nodded. What do you say to that? I left and walked around the block, this time towards Times Square. I wanted to see as much as I could, and as I got to the corner, a girl in a bad skirt in front of the MTV store had her phone to her ear, and she screamed and sat down on the ground. There she was. The first one just to lose it. How the hell did she have reception? I still can’t get my parents on the line to tell them I’m okay. I know my grandmother is crying right now. I looked up across the street, at the big TV on the ABC building, and, um, there was only one tower there. One tower and it was not doing very well. Everyone was just looking up at the TV, and you know me, I just had to get where I had to be, and I had to be at the rehearsal room. Maybe I just wanted to keep moving. It’s not that I wanted not to watch. I wanted not to be one of the people watching.
I got back to the New 42, the building entirely owned and operated by the Roundabout Theater, where we were rehearsing alongside other Broadway Shows. I saw that waiting for the elevator was an actor who had recently been nominated for an Oscar. He had lost, but everyone knew he was going to win the Tony for his show that hadn’t even opened yet. We exchanged slight nods of recognition. Not of each other, but of the situation. I wonder what would have happened if there were still two towers intact. His co-star came up behind me and passed me and started talking to him as the elevator doors opened, and we all got on as she talked to him about her morning yoga routine. I was last on, so I stood with my back to both of them. I did catch his expression of blank wonder as he realized that she wasn’t about to mention the tragedy. I imagine that the man, who had actually been Knighted by the Queen of England, was quite inwardly seeking a diplomatic way to tell her what was going on. If he had been, it was a fruitless search. No one mentioned it at all. Someone finally responded with a comment about yoga. God bless him. God bless the people that were with her when she finally did find out. I imagine she would be most concerned with how she had appeared to me that morning. She would be devastated to find out I had not been impressed.
When I did get back to the room all were gone except Peter Hansen, the Stage Manager, who was not so much keeping his shit together as he was in not acknowledging the fact that there was anything to fall apart over. Val and Jared were there too, and the bastard Peter Hansen sent me out again, this time to get him coffee. Val looked appalled, but I silently reasoned that it was better than staying there with him. I went. Back to the Starlight Deli. Nothing was different, but everything had changed.
I got back from my fucking errand and by that time Val and Jared weren’t there. Neither was the North Tower. I was not staying there with Peter Hansen. I couldn’t go home. I didn’t know if I still had one. I didn’t immediately know where to go. I would have called Kimmy. That was always my first thought, but she was staying with her mom these days because the place she was staying had roaches. Abe and Joanne were my next closes friends, but they lived even closer to the WTC than I did. I hoped they were okay. Somehow I knew they were. I called Emily. “Hi! Are you okay? Do you need to come here?”
I really did.
The walk from 42nd and Broadway to 66th and Madison was dotted by sur-. Surrreal, survival, surely some kind of state I’ll never communicate and I hope never to get back. I was trying to prepare myself for suicide bombers, car bombs, pipe bombs, bursting fire hydrants and exploding manhole covers—I didn’t have any idea what I should be afraid of, but I was for sure afraid. I felt whatever was going to happen next could happen at any moment but wouldn’t. maybe I felt it shouldn’t. If it did, I ddin’t know what I would do. I was trying to think rationally in a situation where your entire frame of reference and rationality has been blown apart. Collapsed. I looked at the other people, and we all had that same feeling. I imagined my face must have looked just like their faces. All of us scared and doing what we needed to do for ourselves together. Scared and keeping it together.
The TV’s in the electronics stores kept me up to date. On that route, I saw it all unfold on the worlds best TV’s. A flatpanel plasma screen in the window at Sony told me the Pentagon had been hit, and I got to Emily’s place and that’s when the fourth was downed in Pennsylvania. Emily lived with Robby, who I liked a lot, and Kaya, a big sweet dog. All three needed lots of attention, and as far as I could tell, everyone they came in contact with was happy to give it to them. Emily was Carrie Bradshaw, right down to the rent-controlled apartment. The apartment. A classic New York apartment, great for one person. Now with three grown people and a big dog it was getting a little tight. I was crowding them, but it didn’t feel like it that morning, though. I got the warm greetings I always got when I went there, and they seemed happy to have someone there to help. For the longest time we couldn’t’ take our eyes off the TV. Something more was going to happen, we thought. And if it did, we wanted to see it. We didn’t know what it would be but it was something. The channel we were watching called it “The Attack on America” before signing off for a commercial break. It had a name now. Robby turned off the TV. It gave me a strange feeling. I soon realized I was relieved.

Both of them. Two towers have fallen. What next? What more can happen? How do you know when it’s safe to come out? Will the news on the radio let you know you can go out of the deli without having to worry about having a building fall on you? You heard a rumor about there being a radio in the deli. Information is circulating, and someone said something about Bin Laden. What about us? What do we do? Who’s going to get us out? How could this happen to you? Wait, now wait, this didn’t happen to you. You are pretty sure many many people have died. You never for a second after that forget tha tyou are one of the lucky ones. And something happens to you. You don’ thtink you could die in here, but you’ll be damned if you’re going to die in a deli, or at least, you’ll hate it if you’re in a deli by the snapple while other people are out there dying. A piece of glass separated you from genuine danger, and you don’t want to be here anymore. You go through the door that leads to the back of the deli, and there’s nobody back there. There was so much more room to fit more people in, but nobody thought to go through that door. You find the door to the outside and unlock it and you’re gone. No one saw you leave. No one would have followed you if they had. They wouldn’t leave if they had a timeshare on a bomb shelter under the shoe store next door. You go because you can and you must. You are not them.
You are heading back to your apartment and the dust is strangling almost immediately. You loosen your tie and unbutton your top button and pull your shirt up over your nose and mouth. There is grey powder all over the ground, and you just start running like a Green Bay Packer past horrible, horrible things. Ambulances that were torn apart and have become just twisted metal. Buildings where all the glass got blown out. Ther is one side of a building where 40 panels were shattered, and in the middle of that, one mirrored panel is still there. How did that one manage to keep it together?
You have one thing on your mind and that’s everything and your luck holds out long enough for you to get home. You take the stairs though the lights arent out yet, but they go out while you’re in your apartment packing the essentials. You have an Amphibious hiking pack, which has a water compartment and tube and it’s a lifesaver. You will use it as such. You fill it. You put on your ski goggles and wrap a bandana around your mouth and nose, and you go back out. You saw what you needed to see, and knew you couldn’t stay inside. Not here, not in the deli. You saw a policeman under his car, crying. You saw a woman paralyzed by fear. She just collapsed and sat against the wall, eyes open, no movement, fear all over the face, trying to cough.

Emily’s phone rang a lot. I still couldn’t get through to my parents. I got through to Maggie at some point. My older sister worked at Sony, and she let everyone know I was okay through E-mail. I don’t know what they must have been thinking when they saw. I had walked right by sony and not even thought of whether she was in there or not. How could I not have even thought of it?
Robby’s message to his own sister: “Alyssa bin Laden! Just our brother calling to find out you’re okay. Call me back? How are you dealing with this? Because I know I’m cracking jokes!” I think I laughed at his jokes that day. I always did, funny or not. I wanted them to be funny, so I laughed. On a day like to day, you don'’ want to not laugh, you don't want to just let those jokes hang out there and make everyone uncomfortable. I wanted it to be okay to joke about this. I wanted something to be funny enough to make me laugh on this day. I remembered that I had half of the lox and bagel sandwich left, and earlier that morning. It didn’ toccur to me how different eating the second half would be from the first. Knowing was the difference. Before finishing it off, I realized that would be the last bite I’d ever eat of the last absolutely unique sandwich made for me by those two girls who looked exactly alike.

You go back, out. You look for the almost coughing woman, but she’s gone. You find people huddled. You pry them apart, wash their eyes, give them a drink, rinse their mouths. You tell them where to go to get out of here. You’re really just going on instinct. You figure the subways aren’t running, but the boats must be. You have no way of knowing that, but you just know. It’s common sense. Most of them act like you’re a genius because you thought of getting out of there. And a hero for not getting out yourself. You’re not trying to be a hero. You’re doing what you have to do because you can. A sense of urgency tells you you don’t have time to let them thank you.


Robby had a van and we were going to use it to help out. We decided the best way to be human right now would be to leave the apartment and give rides uptown to anyone who needed it. There were so many who needed it. No Subways, Busses were packed, Taxis were hard to find. Everyone in the city was just walking up. We could see out the window, people just streaming past on foot. We’d give rides. That’s how we could help. I didn’t have to go. In fact it would have been more of a help if I’d stayed. More room in the car for riders in need. But I couldn’t stay. What would I have done? I wanted to feel like I was doing something. I went downstairs first, and when I stepped outside, it was a minute before I made the conscious decision to turn and look downtown. I knew exactly what it looked like, I had been watching it for an hour. But for it to really be happening, I was going to have to turn south. And that naked eye view gave me proof, clarity, and punched me in the gut and in the face at the same time. It was so much more powerful than the bird’s eye view at 1080 lines of resolution. Was looking up at this flying, hanging, black arc of smoke tha was bigger than Woody Allen’s mother in New York Stories, and this her was the newest New York Story. When the hell was I going to go back there, and what was going to be left when I did? Did I leave the windows or balcony door open? How are the cats? Is my roommate still alive? I get in the van and look back again, and the back window frames the cloud and that makes it manageable again. I tried my cell phone and this time I got through and talked to my dad. It was good to actually personally let him know, really, I’m okay.
I’m okay. I’m consciously observing the differences in people today. Seeing through the frame of the window, through the lens of myself. We all have somehting in common about our faces. It’s a complicated common denominator, but it betrays confusion but not fear, and displays a desperate resolve to keep it together, if only on the outside. We’re New Yorkers, we only ask for help if we needit, and today anyone who needs it is going to get it.
We give rides. Moms and their kids get first priority. Uptown, downtown, we’re taking the temperature of the city through our random sample of people in need. Everyone’s speculating. Palestinians? Israelis? Isn’t today the anniversary of some treaty? Isn’t it strange that it’s 9/11 and if you dial 911 you can’t get through? One guy took a ride, and he said he worked in the WTC, and was supposed to be there that very day, but he went to his other job instead. We all decided he was definitely full of shit.

And you’re out of water again and now they’ve shut off the water in your place, and there wasn’t dust in your place before, but now lthere’s a lot of it, and you realiz you brought it in yourself. It was on you. So much of it was and so much of it still is on you. Despite having changed clothes every time you’ve come back to the apartment. How many trips was it now? You’re huffing, coughing and sweating, and th lights are still off,and you can’t turn on the TV to find out what’s going on if youwanted to, and then, at that moment, it occurs to you, you should be getting out of here yourself. And you grab what you packed before and you get another bag and throw in everything you see that seems you might need it and can fit. You get to the door before you realize you don’t know where to go to get out of there. It occurred to you when you got to the outside door. Like you walked down three flights of stairs, and past Reza the failthul doorman (Is he the only man in the world still working? He’s there passing out flashlights to anyone who’s staying here. Tip him well.) and out itno the greyness, and only then do you think about the fact that you don’t know where to go. You don’t want to go to Jersey, because you might not get back. Youhaven’t contacted anyone. You haven’t thought of using your cellphone all day, yet its’ been whith you the whole tim.e You gransferred it from one pair of pants to the next every time you changed clothes but you never tried to use it. You think. How strange. You don’t know what the fuck went down her. You know what the faces have looked like. You’re hearing the sounds, the sound of that towner falling down again and again, still you’re hearing it, you’re hearing the screams too baby, and you know you saw those fucking planes, and you guess somene meant for this to happen. It wasn’t an accident, but it’s time to consider the fact that as bad as this is this could be the best thing that’s happened in the city today. Is the park flooding? Is Chelsea in flames? You realize that right about now, you might want some fucking information, and your cellphone is on, and shows no signal, but you go ahead and dial anyway. You see a guy that lives on your floor. To yourself and your roommates, you call him black willie, but you don’t even know what his real name is. He’s sixty and seems to know you live there too, but he doesn’t acknowledge you as he walks past you into the building and he’s got a bag of provisions. He’s fucking staying, man. He went to the Korean grocery and thought about what he’s going to need for as long as this goes on, and he’s clutching his food and shuffling in, and he’s fucking staying.
You will not stay. You call and every time you try, you get a busy signal. You stand there for a while and let it get inside your head. And then you just walk. Uptown. It’s the only way to go. You’ll just stay in the middle of the island, and you’ll keep calling, and when you get in touch with someone, you’ll head in their direction. You walk and you are no longer all that affected by what’s around you. You want to get out of it. You’re covered in it. You are not affected, that is, until you look up. Not uptown, up above. What you see is blackness, a charcoal cloud. You can’t imagine how you’ve gone through the morning without looking over hour head, but you think, “No, I definitely didn’t. If I had, I would have seen that, and if I had seen that, I would remember seeing THAT.”
The whole fucking thing, whatever is left of it, is on fucking fire, and it is time to get out of here. I am walking. I need to know what’s going on. I can’t be scared, I must absolutely keep it together. I am the guy who was helping people and I was a hero, I am not falling apart here. I will walk, and I’m not talking to anyone. It’s like I’m just waiting to be given the information. I’ll find the right person, and they’ll just know they should tell me and then I’ll know what’s going on ,where to go, and what to do. They’ll tell me what Iwant to hear. I don’t know what I want to hear. Once I figure out what I want to hear, I’ll be able to be told. Then when I’m told, I’ll know how to react. I don’t know how I want to react. I’m just walking. Not asking, not listening, just walking, wondering what I want to hear. When I’m going to hear it, and how long I’m going to be walking before I hear it. But for now, I’m just walking.


One of Emily’s talents was making people feel comfortable. People in the van were really opening up. People offered us money for rides. We hadn’t really thought of that. But nobody was about to turn it down. We could buy more gas and help more people. So they took it,and it actually seemed to make people feel better to be able to pay us for doing what we did. Even the people we were helping wanted to help. Nobody wants charity that doesn’t need it. Everyone in the city wanted to help out, but nobody could really do much of anything. All those triage centers set up within an hour of the crashes. All those centers set up, and no victims to treat.
So people gave money, and Emily started asking people for money before they got in the van. Not anything too pushy, but I guess I was surprised. And Robby was mad. I think Robby and Emily might have just been primed to have a fight, because everyone deals with stress in a different way, and this was what they were going to fight about. So Robby thought she was asking for too much too soon, and she thought she was just helping him out so they could pay for gas for the van. The fight started on the second trip uptown, and by the time we made it back downtown again, and Emily asked Robby to let her out to get a snack from a deli, but Robby was in traffic he didn’t like and he snapped back and they snapped back and for a lot and I was glad I was the only person left in the car, but I really wished I wasn’t. We swung back uptown, and Emily said she’d get out at home, and Robby headed toward Madison, still looking for more people to pick up.
There was nothing to say right then. So we just looked out the windows at people on the sidewalks, streaming uptown. By now it was still constant, but it was orderly. Youd see this string of hundreds of people, and then every once in a while you’d see someone covered in grey dust. Right there, walking along with everyone else, not talking or wailing or crying, just getting where they were going the best way they could like everyone else. Looking like everything else was in color, and they were in black and white. And this was about the ninth dust person I’d seen,but this time the person who was covered was indeed Dana. A bag in one hand, and another over his shoulder, just walking. “That’s my friend Dana.”
That’s all I said but they figured it out. Robby started to pull over to the right lane, and Emily called out, “DANA!” He looked up and saw her, and started walking over like he knew here. He started smiling in that way that I knew he thought this was something other than it was. Can you imagine, getting hit on at a time like that, with the dust and everything? I opened the side door and asked where he was going. Robby asked Emily if she thought we still had to charge him the regular rate. He stepped in and said, “Peter, after you left this morning, the weirdest thing happened.”