September 17, 2001 - Usually this time of the week I try to be as glib and as brittle as possible in the writing of my column. The only thing brittle right now are my nerves as I sit in my office in midtown Manhattan. The last couple of days have shaken us to the core, so in lieu of my usual rantings on casual sex and dating mishaps, I am writing about my home, Manhattan, and what is happening here this week.
Monday, September 10. A typical day here in the city. I just flew into La Guardia from Chicago after a weekend on my farm. It is Fashion Week here in the city and the designer runways are all set up in big white tents in Bryant Park, a block from my office. The traffic in cars and on foot is so intense in midtown that I get out of the cab three blocks from my office and walk the rest of the way into work.
I had a date that night with this guy I have been seeing named Johnathan. I wanted a really gay evening, so we went down to Chelsea for dinner at the Viceroy. We had a couple of drinks there and at a local bar. I couldn't believe how packed the bar was for after midnight on a Monday night, but that is typical of New York. We went back to Johnathan's place and fell asleep.
Tuesday, September 11. Johnathan woke me up after 8 a.m. and we hopped into the shower together. He works down in lower Manhattan and has to be at work by nine. I kept him late in the shower, and at one point we heard a low rumble, but thought nothing of it. Traffic in the street maybe. We said goodbye just after nine outside his building and he walked over to take the train downtown. I headed over to the west side to get to my apartment.
When I reached 34th Street and 11th Avenue, near the Javits Convention Center, I saw a bunch of people looking up, and a local TV crew van. I thought there was a fire in one of the warehouses down the street. As I came past the FedEx building there, I looked up and saw the North Tower of the World Trade Center with a few floors on fire near the top. From my angle, we could only see the North Tower, as the South Tower was completely obscured behind it. Knowing how my mom worries about me, I immediately called her on my cell phone and woke her up. “I don't want you to worry. I am fine. But there is a small fire in the World Trade Center, so it might be on the news.” I overheard someone say something about two planes crashing, but it seemed inconceivable. No planes fly around that area.
Of course, when I got home, I turned on the news and the first thing I saw was the replay of the plane smashing into the South Tower. I couldn't believe it. I raced to the observation deck of my building, which had a clear view of the towers. I joined a few dozen other tenants watching the towers burn, and then, to our utter horror, collapse live before our eyes.
In a sense, it was easier to watch it all on TV. I am used to seeing images of buildings exploding and planes crashing on TV, in movies and news programs. But to see it happen in front of you is almost unbearably unreal. The people on the deck were devastated. Our building has the same security company as the towers. The staff was shattered. From my apartment, I watched a line seven blocks long of people waiting for the New Jersey ferry and the Circle Line tour boats to take them off the island. The police barricaded the street below and used it as a staging area for police and other emergency vehicles.
That night I went down with Johnathan to the barricades at 14th Street and 6th Avenue. The city was eerie and quiet, the streets largely deserted. Johnathan told me about getting to work and seeing the buildings on fire and watching dozens of people jumping from the windows. "What they showed on TV -- it was more." His building is the white and gray horizontally striped building right behind Building 7, which collapsed later that day. He was still shaken up by the horror of the scene.
Wednesday, September 12. I came to work for a little while, but the city remained largely deserted. It was hard to tear myself away from the news coverage. Almost everything in midtown was still closed, and my building required two forms of ID to enter. As I walked home, there was a police car parked next to the station near my house. The windows on the car were blown out and there was a six-inch layer of soot and debris in the back window and seat. Later that evening, the wind shifted to the north and the smoke that had been trailing over Brooklyn wafted all the way up to midtown. It was an awful smell that filled my apartment.
Having lived in Los Angeles, I was used to earthquakes that disrupted and shook the entire city, so this event has some familiarity to it. It was also in the back of my mind before I moved here that if there ever were to be more terrorist activity in America, it would probably be here in Manhattan. So I was more or less reconciled to the event and was reasonably calm. Then Johnathan called and told me there was a bomb scare at the Empire State Building and Penn Station, just a few blocks from my apartment. Suddenly my calm collapsed and I was overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness and panic.
Thursday, September 13. Midtown is more or less back to normal. Businesses are open and the roads and streets are more crowded today. More scares at La Guardia, and in a building here in Times Square, sent panicked people fleeing into the streets again, and in a general sense, we all wonder when life might return to some feeling of normalcy again. When will we feel safe? How long will it take for us not to feel a jolt of panic at the sound of an emergency vehicle racing down the street? How much time will need to pass before we all stop looking down the avenues as we cross the street for buildings that are no longer there?
0 comments:
Post a Comment