|
 |
 Lunchboxer Tim Molloy carefully weighs E! Entertainment Television's selection of Britney Spears as the 22nd sexiest bachelorette in Hollywood. by Tim Molloy "It's like a holiday, but a weird holiday," I tell my dad. "People go to church but it's not really a religious event, and there's flags everywhere, but it's not the Fourth of July, and everyone talks about death and the weather's like Halloween. It's like a combination of four holidays, I guess called September 11 Day because I don't know what else you'd call it." I stop myself from adding, "It's kind of like I guess Memorial Day is supposed to be," because my dad hates everything related to the military so much that he once scolded me for giving change to a homeless veteran. It's 9:15 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2002. I'm walking in New York City and talking on my cell phone to my dad in California. Occasionally we get disconnected and I have to explain that there's something wrong with my phone: "It's Sprint." My dad says he's been seeing the images from New York on TV. "Yeah, people on the radio out here have been talking about whether it should be a national holiday," he says. "I have really mixed feelings, because I hate flags and I hate 'God Bless America' and I hate 'United We Stand.'" More than twenty-one hours earlier, just after midnight, the day begins at my office with an unusually grim pronouncement from the funniest guy there. "It is now September 11," he says. "I cannot wait until September 12." We work at a really large news organization where we're spending the night editing stories about the September 11 anniversary. Outside we hear sirens. "Oh geez," says the funniest guy at my office. "I guess it'll be like this all day... Sirens and false alarms." I am so not having it. I'm functioning on too little sleep and I don't understand why we need to rehash September 11 again. I didn't have any big freakouts on Sept. 11, 2001, because I was too busy running around. When my then-girlfriend woke me to say a plane had hit the World Trade Center, I went back to sleep, thinking of some lone pilot in a Cessna. Crazy stuff happened all the time in New York, and we lived in New Jersey. Good old crazy New York, I thought. What will they think of next. About 90 minutes later I was on the New Jersey Turnpike trying to get to my job in Manhattan. Peter Jennings on the radio said the second tower was falling and I looked to my right across the Hudson. I passed a billboard and when I could see the skyline again the tower had crumpled into a cloud of gray. All entrances into New York were closed and I couldn't get closer than Jersey City, where they were dropping people off who had fled lower Manhattan by ferry. I let people coming off the boat use my credit card to call whoever they needed to call and interviewed them so I could call in their quotes to the office. Someone tried to quantify the destruction by calling it "biblical." That sounded about right. I tried to remember whether the World Trade Center buildings had been the tallest in the world. "How tall are they?" I asked a businessman who had just escaped from the South Tower. He held his hands about six inches apart. That night, after trains started running into Manhattan, my bosses sent me to the hospital where they were supposed to bring everyone rescued that night from the rubble. There was no one to bring. "Of course people who actually lost someone should recognize the anniversary, or firefighters, cops, people in the military," I say, taking a break from editing to begin one of the little speeches that make me such a great guy to work with. "But I get a little sick of people who were nowhere near the attacks talking about how they still haven't healed or what they're doing for September 11. Do you think people after Pearl Harbor did this? Why does it have to be this big media event or holiday or something? Is that really healthy?" A couple of people in the other cubicles nod halfheartedly. Maybe because they hope the mini-tirade is over or maybe because I'm saying something obvious to them. We go back to editing anniversary stories. When me and my girlfriend broke up and I moved into the city early this year, I asked an apartment broker in Astoria, Queens, if a lot of people were moving out of Manhattan because of the attacks. "People out here don't really talk about it anymore," he said, and the silent implication was that I shouldn't either. I changed the subject. In the next few months, a lot of other people did too. You could talk about it all the time if you wanted to, but what would that accomplish? When the night shift ends I sleep on the subway back to Astoria and then can't sleep when I get home, so I flip through all the channels showing the same ceremony at Ground Zero. The ceremony looks moving and tasteful and I'm glad for the victims' families but I can't watch. E! Entertainment television, God bless them, are the only ones who don't acknowledge September 11 in any way. (Even MTV is weighing in, saying one of the things that offended the terrorists about the United States was our ubiquitous pop culture.) I leave it on E! and watch an episode of "Rank" about Hollywood's hottest bachelorettes. I'm stunned to see Sandra Bullock at number one, but Renee Zellwegger is such a thoughtful number two that I decide not to be overly disappointed. I finally go to sleep, but wake up because gusts of wind keep blowing through my living room window and rattling closed doors. There's a weird sound outside and I see it's coming from a flag being whipped to its pole. It's the most windy it's been since I've lived here and it seems weird the wind comes on a day so many flags are out. I think about God making the weather do things to punish or reward people as I go back to sleep. My alarm goes off at 6 p.m. and I hit snooze again and again before climbing out of bed. I make dinner and turn on the TV. Recognizing the scarcity of non-September 11 options, I decide to ease into them with a show on the History Channel that seems to be about the history of the World Trade Center. It turns out to be about recovering artifacts and art stored in the towers, and I can watch it in an academic, "I am a curious-minded television viewer" kind of way because it is about things and not people. I switch over to "Someone Like You" on HBO, then over to one of the news shows for a minute-by-minute account of the attacks that makes me feel sucky again. I leave for another night shift. Walking by the Catholic Church on the corner I hear people singing and decide to stop in. I'm not Catholic and haven't gone to church regularly since high school, but I do a fair amount of praying. The service is packed and I'm happy to see that I live next to a church where people of all races, ages and economic backgrounds worship together. I've read somewhere that churches are one of the last vestiges of segregation in America. Some people wear suits and some wear firemen's jackets, and I'm the worst dressed with a T-shirt and backpack. I haven't shaved since last week. They sing a Catholic song I don't know and say one of those prayers where everyone knows when the priest is supposed to talk and when the congregation is supposed to jump in. The priest asks God to protect the souls of church members, one of them named "Eddie," and everyone else who died in the attacks. For some reason I'm surprised that people in my neighborhood died. I like that the priest says "Eddie" instead of "Ed" or "Edward" since "Eddie" must have been what he called himself. I leave because I want to go to the gym before work. There's a nice breeze, the sky is dark and the temperature is cool but completely comfortable. The wind from the afternoon is gone, and it feels like October. I stop for ice cream. On the subway I read an article in Men's Health about the positive effects of walking and decide to skip the gym. While most guys have a secret pile of porn hidden somewhere in their house, I have a shameful pile of Men's Health magazines that the gym keeps sending me for free. I drop off my backpack at work and head up Park Avenue, where I rarely have any reason to be. I see a lot of police cars heading south, but remember that even the most normal things seem strange in new neighborhoods. After about ten blocks my mind is totally clear and I think how nice it would be to go camping in Vermont. I head east after about 30 blocks and decide to cut through Central Park. I decide to call my family back in California and that's when I talk to my dad. The talk about his hatred of flags leads to a thoughtful discussion about the recent flag salute ruling by a federal appeals court in California. My call is cut off and I hear music deeper in the park. A cop tells me there's a free concert on the Great Lawn. There are thousands of people watching a symphony. The musicians appear on giant screens that a cop tells me were also used to broadcast President Bush's speech from Ellis Island earlier in the evening. The cop says Billy Joel is supposed to play later. "I love New York," I tell my dad after a brief discussion about how great Billy Joel used to be. "Central Park is my favorite place in the world except maybe the Pacific Ocean. Well, maybe the Pacific Ocean is better." "They're very different," he says. People are standing quietly under the trees and the stars and the little sliver of moon, and a handful are spread out on blankets. Some have candles and a young guy and young girl cradle candles in red plastic fire helmets. We talk a little more and my brother Ted calls on the other line from Syracuse University and says I have to check my e-mail. I stop for a coffee and head for the office. "Hey Tim," the e-mail begins. "People in Syracuse are fucking retarded." "I skipped the candlelight vigil tonight because I knew it would turn into a big jingoism-fest," he says. "Fortunately, that allowed me to see a random idiot on television being interviewed about why it was important to remember September 11th." "It's good to remember those who lost their lives," the man says. "And also those who are out risking their lives so we can do things like this, protecting our freedoms. And also, just remembering how our lives have changed." "And sir," asks the newscaster, "how have our lives changed?" "Well," says the man. "We can't bring fingernail clippers onto airplanes anymore, because they're, like, a security threat." One of the stories I'm editing mentions a kid in Texas who drew a picture of a baseball game where Uncle Sam strikes out Osama bin Laden. "America 100, Osama 2," says the scoreboard. It's midnight again and the funniest guy at my office says he's feeling better. |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| lunchboxing.com 2003 | all content © | all rights reserved | suck it so hard | feel the rhythm of the night |
