Yes, I was scared...

...it was a scary time.

The first few hours of that day I was pretty sure that we might be in the middle of a battleground and we'd have the shit bombed out of us. I called my cousin in Atlanta to make sure her husband, a pilot, was not flying. I woke my mom up in Seattle to tell her that I was okay, though she did not yet know what had happened, and was still half asleep when we said goodbye. I left messages for my dad in Ohio and brother in Wisconsin. I wanted to talk to somebody, anybody, because I thought I might die alone in my apartment. The phone calls stopped for a long time because the lines were jammed. My roommate came home from work and she and I drank screwdrivers at noon, and she fell asleep on the living room floor in front of the tv. I don't think I went outside at all that day, except once to go onto the roof, and to make a couple calls on my cell phone to people I knew who worked or lived near the Towers. On the roof, I saw the smoke coming from downtown, and F-16s overhead. We taped the windows to seal us off from "biological agents" that might be in the air. I don't remember eating. I did not sleep more than two hours at a time that night, turning on the television by my bed to see if the next bad thing had happened. The F-16s screamed by on the Hudson and the sound sent me further into shock. My stepmother asked me to get newspapers the next day so my little brothers could "have a piece of history." I walked for six blocks trying to find the New York Times on September 12th. I never once walked towards Times Square, but instead walked West and South and saw almost no one.

I lost no loved ones, no close friends or acquaintances. I knew survivors who had been there, been in the buildings, lost a father, lost a friend or a co-worker. Fifteen guys in my local firehouse, Engine 54, Ladder 4, Battalion 9, "The Pride Of Midtown" died there.


Some guys - mostly cops, FDNY, newspaper reporters - are so sick and tired of reliving that time that they sigh and roll their eyes and say, "enough fucking already with 9/11"....I can't begin to fathom what they have been through, and do not blame them for their disgust and hatred for this anniversary. I regret the wine-driven instances when I have brought the subject up with those who were there, at the pit, in the buildings, - who the fuck am I to ask probing questions and display my sorrow to these men and women?

Today I was downtown doing some legal paperwork at Surrogate's Court, and there were dozens of policemen around the courthouses on Centre Street...as I stopped for a bite at the outdoor food kiosk, I asked a patrolman waiting for fries if there was some sort of protest I was hearing echoing through the canyons of the judicial buildings, and he nodded slowly. I asked what they were protesting and he looked blank for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders ever so slightly and mumbled, "9/11, I guess."