9/11 Six Years On, Part Two
On September 11th, 2001, I didn’t yet have a cell phone but remember many of those around me trying earnestly to call friends and family both in the city and beyond. Someone must have gotten through, if only for a bit, and heard from his mother that a plane went down somewhere in Pennsylvania. I remember he said “somewhere in Pennsylvania” as though it was some distant, insignificant land. I guess it was and is to many but to me, that’s where my family lives after all. “What?” I barked. “What’s happening in Pennsylvania?” He knew little more than nothing. I was more worried.
Watching the towers—smoking and smoldering—collapse was unbelievable. The scene resembled a video of an old building or theater or warehouse being imploded to make way for gentrification. It didn’t seem real; it was especially unreal as I kept reminding myself “There are people in those buildings!” Those buildings are collapsing on the people inside.
It was unbelievable.
After the towers fell, we all pretty much headed inside. I sat down at my desk, a set of book pages spread out in front of me; I just stared at them. Was I supposed to get back to work? Yes, I guess but how?
I hopped online and tried to go to www.nytimes.com to see the extent of what had happened but there were apparently so many people attempting the same thing that I couldn’t get through. I tried to call my boyfriend at the time, who worked pretty close to the World Trade Center but couldn’t get him on his cell. I tried, also, to call my dad in Pennsylvania just to tell him I was okay and failed.
I continued to sit there, staring at the book pages. I wandered toward the back of the office we, as St. Martin’s Press Scholarly and Reference Division (now called palgrave macmillan) had on the second floor of the Flatiron and noticed that Roxanne and Meredith were listening to the radio. What a great way to get news in times like these, I thought. Like the stunned family huddling ‘round the radio to hear about the attacks on Pearl Harbor, back in the day.
But no one, let alone the radio host of whatever station it was, I think it was one of those “all news, all the time” sort of stations, really had a handle on the situation. As I approached Roxanne and Meredith with their radio I heard Meredith exclaim, “Another plane hit the Pentagon!”
That’s when I felt like Chicken Little, the sky is falling, the sky is falling, and really wondered if this was the end of the world. World War III, the apocalypse, sort of thing.
Shortly after this, an announcement came down from the high-ups that it was time to evacuate the building. I’m not sure what the rationale behind evacuating all of the city’s office buildings was. Emptying all of the offices while every route in and out of the city was shut down still doesn’t make any sense to me. It just left a ton of people out on the streets as most people who work in NYC, in Manhattan, do not live in Manhattan proper but instead in the neighboring boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, the Bronx, and the good Garden state of New Jersey, etc.
Out we filed onto the streets. I remember pretty clearly that our department (production editorial) in particular and our division (Scholarly & Reference) in general stuck together. We clung to the patch of sidewalk from which we watched the towers implode before proceeding. For some reason, we collectively headed downtown. At this time I lived on Attorney Street, south of Houston, east of Broadway, on the cusp of Alphabet City and the Lower East Side. I was heading home but our group meandered along with me.
We walked in a loose formation, like zombies marching, catatonic. My boss, Alan, somewhat took control. As most of us hoped against hope, he thought there would be an urgent need for donated blood due to the attacks. He offered to lead us to the nearest Red Cross office to do just that.
Having just begun a new tattoo not more than a handful of days before, I knew I wasn’t eligible to donate but I sloshed along downtown with my group as I was heading in that direction anyway.
I remember that the day before, Monday, September 10, 2001, Amanda had just joined our production editorial team as a production assistant. She had transplanted herself to the City from the Bay area, if I remember correctly. Alan asked me to keep a special eye on her. Can you imagine, new to a city, a job, and within two days, the world shatters and you’re meandering the streets with people you met no more than nine hours before?
She was calm, quiet and it seemed to me that Erin, another member of our team, most needed someone to talk to. She had started in our department five or so before, hailing from Kansas. Their reactions to what was happening were so varied. One, almost not responding; the other nearly panicked.
At about Union Square Park, I left our group as they headed off to see if they could donate blood. Erin stayed with me and I took her to my apartment on Attorney Street. Like the starts of the tattoo on my slimy arm, our apartment was new to us too, having moved in over Labor Day after having lived in the hip gay neighborhood of Chelsea for two years.
My boyfriend and I had never vocalized what we would do and/or what our plan would be in case of an emergency of such a scale but we both headed home. I think he beat me and Erin home that day. He worked much closer to the Towers and, upon hearing the first plane hit, actually headed further downtown, nearer to the Towers to investigate.
Much like Alan’s hopefulness in thinking there would be a lot of survivors who would need heaps of blood, my ex-boyfriend and his work pal thought there would be people they could rescue. What else could we all have thought?
They headed so close to the Towers that my ex saw people flinging themselves out of the burning towers, choosing to hurl themselves to their deaths than be incinerated (f that really is a choice). He has mentioned this sight to me only once and said it flashes in his mind pretty regularly; something that will surely never leave him.
When the first Tower collapsed, my ex and his companion were dusted with the white powdered destruction, not nearly as heavily as those in the thick of things but enough to prompt them to cough and get the hell out of there.
On September 11th, 2001, I didn’t yet have a cell phone but remember many of those around me trying earnestly to call friends and family both in the city and beyond. Someone must have gotten through, if only for a bit, and heard from his mother that a plane went down somewhere in Pennsylvania. I remember he said “somewhere in Pennsylvania” as though it was some distant, insignificant land. I guess it was and is to many but to me, that’s where my family lives after all. “What?” I barked. “What’s happening in Pennsylvania?” He knew little more than nothing. I was more worried.
Watching the towers—smoking and smoldering—collapse was unbelievable. The scene resembled a video of an old building or theater or warehouse being imploded to make way for gentrification. It didn’t seem real; it was especially unreal as I kept reminding myself “There are people in those buildings!” Those buildings are collapsing on the people inside.
It was unbelievable.
After the towers fell, we all pretty much headed inside. I sat down at my desk, a set of book pages spread out in front of me; I just stared at them. Was I supposed to get back to work? Yes, I guess but how?
I hopped online and tried to go to www.nytimes.com to see the extent of what had happened but there were apparently so many people attempting the same thing that I couldn’t get through. I tried to call my boyfriend at the time, who worked pretty close to the World Trade Center but couldn’t get him on his cell. I tried, also, to call my dad in Pennsylvania just to tell him I was okay and failed.
I continued to sit there, staring at the book pages. I wandered toward the back of the office we, as St. Martin’s Press Scholarly and Reference Division (now called palgrave macmillan) had on the second floor of the Flatiron and noticed that Roxanne and Meredith were listening to the radio. What a great way to get news in times like these, I thought. Like the stunned family huddling ‘round the radio to hear about the attacks on Pearl Harbor, back in the day.
But no one, let alone the radio host of whatever station it was, I think it was one of those “all news, all the time” sort of stations, really had a handle on the situation. As I approached Roxanne and Meredith with their radio I heard Meredith exclaim, “Another plane hit the Pentagon!”
That’s when I felt like Chicken Little, the sky is falling, the sky is falling, and really wondered if this was the end of the world. World War III, the apocalypse, sort of thing.
Shortly after this, an announcement came down from the high-ups that it was time to evacuate the building. I’m not sure what the rationale behind evacuating all of the city’s office buildings was. Emptying all of the offices while every route in and out of the city was shut down still doesn’t make any sense to me. It just left a ton of people out on the streets as most people who work in NYC, in Manhattan, do not live in Manhattan proper but instead in the neighboring boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, the Bronx, and the good Garden state of New Jersey, etc.
Out we filed onto the streets. I remember pretty clearly that our department (production editorial) in particular and our division (Scholarly & Reference) in general stuck together. We clung to the patch of sidewalk from which we watched the towers implode before proceeding. For some reason, we collectively headed downtown. At this time I lived on Attorney Street, south of Houston, east of Broadway, on the cusp of Alphabet City and the Lower East Side. I was heading home but our group meandered along with me.
We walked in a loose formation, like zombies marching, catatonic. My boss, Alan, somewhat took control. As most of us hoped against hope, he thought there would be an urgent need for donated blood due to the attacks. He offered to lead us to the nearest Red Cross office to do just that.
Having just begun a new tattoo not more than a handful of days before, I knew I wasn’t eligible to donate but I sloshed along downtown with my group as I was heading in that direction anyway.
I remember that the day before, Monday, September 10, 2001, Amanda had just joined our production editorial team as a production assistant. She had transplanted herself to the City from the Bay area, if I remember correctly. Alan asked me to keep a special eye on her. Can you imagine, new to a city, a job, and within two days, the world shatters and you’re meandering the streets with people you met no more than nine hours before?
She was calm, quiet and it seemed to me that Erin, another member of our team, most needed someone to talk to. She had started in our department five or so before, hailing from Kansas. Their reactions to what was happening were so varied. One, almost not responding; the other nearly panicked.
At about Union Square Park, I left our group as they headed off to see if they could donate blood. Erin stayed with me and I took her to my apartment on Attorney Street. Like the starts of the tattoo on my slimy arm, our apartment was new to us too, having moved in over Labor Day after having lived in the hip gay neighborhood of Chelsea for two years.
My boyfriend and I had never vocalized what we would do and/or what our plan would be in case of an emergency of such a scale but we both headed home. I think he beat me and Erin home that day. He worked much closer to the Towers and, upon hearing the first plane hit, actually headed further downtown, nearer to the Towers to investigate.
Much like Alan’s hopefulness in thinking there would be a lot of survivors who would need heaps of blood, my ex-boyfriend and his work pal thought there would be people they could rescue. What else could we all have thought?
They headed so close to the Towers that my ex saw people flinging themselves out of the burning towers, choosing to hurl themselves to their deaths than be incinerated (f that really is a choice). He has mentioned this sight to me only once and said it flashes in his mind pretty regularly; something that will surely never leave him.
When the first Tower collapsed, my ex and his companion were dusted with the white powdered destruction, not nearly as heavily as those in the thick of things but enough to prompt them to cough and get the hell out of there.
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