Six weeks or so before, I went dancing there. Swing dancing up at the club at the top, “Windows On The World”. Years before, my friend Ronnie was turned away from the place because he was wearing jeans (before they found out he’d brought Andy Warhol with him). But in the years since then the admission guidelines must have become less severe, as by 2000 or so even us cheapskate swing dancers were allowed up. Swing dancers, at least when I was one, were notorious for not buying enough drinks. Getting shitfaced made it difficult to safely Lindy Hop. But it was a perfect scene for me to go out and have some fun with people, without feeling too left out for not drinking, as I was still in relatively early sobriety then.
Windows was a fun, inexpensive dance and hang in a pretty swank place. There was always an odd mix of swing dancers, lower Manhattan finance bros, tourists, and oldsters. The bands and DJs were good, and running into friends was almost guaranteed.
Six weeks or so before September 11th, 2001, I was dancing there — up in “Windows On The World.” I remember after a particularly fast tune I decided to take a break, so I grabbed a seltzer and took a walk alone to take in the view through those huge floor-to-ceiling windows. Lower Manhattan at night. Christ, so sublime. You could practically hear some Gershwin in it. The bridges, the lights, the Statue Of Liberty, all beautifully laid out. And so small, from so, so high up. Like toys. I thought about just how high up we were, and how small people looked below, and then I looked around inside the club — the beautiful lights, people laughing, dancing, drinks flowing — and out of nowhere a cold shudder went right through me. I thought, THIS IS WAY WAY TOO HIGH UP TO BE DANCING AND HAVING FUN. There’s something *wrong* with this. I know you’ll think this is bullshit, but I actually thought about the Titanic. People dancing and frolicking and holding crystal in a place where people shouldn’t be...some old, primitive part of my brain said GET OUT. NOW. I freaked, and left immediately. I didn’t even say goodbye to anybody. I just headed to the elevators, left as fast as I could, and never went back.
Six weeks or so later, the morning of 9/11, I was sleeping in. A girlfriend of mine who lived around the corner from me called. I thought it was a little early to be hearing from her. She just said, “Turn on your TV”, and hung up...
After watching it all for an hour or so I left the house, 10:15am. I had a physical therapy appointment. In a kind of daze, I went to it. The South Tower had fallen, but the North tower was still up. I had walked about five blocks, and when I hit 6th avenue I saw a big bunch of people gathered in the street. From 19th and 6th I watched the North Tower go down. Everyone was silent, and then one guy said out loud “They been tryin’ to do that shit for YEARS, man. Since ’93. Finally fuckin’ did it, man. Finally fuckin’ did it.” I have to say, those were my thoughts exactly...
..See, I was shocked by 9/11. And disgusted. And saddened. And angered. But I wasn’t really surprised. I think that’s why I went like a zombie to that damned PT appointment. Our foreign policy has pissed off a lot of people. Our activities have threatened and hurt and killed a lot of people. And we’re 5% of the world’s population using something like 25% of its resources and generating almost 30% of its garbage. In the simplest of terms, we do a lot of fucked up shit. People don’t like us. If *we* don’t change, that won’t change either...keep rubbing the world’s face in shit, the world’s probably gonna hit back. The question is if you’re ready for it or not.
The people we lost were our friends, neighbors, and colleagues — fellow Americans. A guy I was in my first band with, in junior high, died that day. Gopal Varadahn. We’d reconnected not too long before. He had just started working at Cantor/Fitzgerald..a terrible tragedy...and of course, I’ll never forget...
...but what I also remember was the war we’d started under false pretenses and fudged intelligence. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who died. The civil liberties we lost here. The Bush administration’s clampdowns and quasi-constitutional power grabs and law changes that made us less free, more scared, and arguably only marginally safer. I remember seeing infomercials selling “safe rooms” and “terror shelters” and “personal executive parachutes.” “Freedom Fries” in the cafeteria in congress because the French wouldn’t play ball with us, no questions asked...I remember police forces in the middle of nowhere being militarized in the name of the “War On Terror.” Honestly, what the fuck was the Nebraska State Police gonna do with amphibious tanks? I remember an uptick in xenophobia, racism, and mistrust. But as a New Yorker, it just pissed me off that someone tried to fuck with MY TOWN. And, worse, that people were USING that tragedy to justify awful things after the fact. It wasn’t just Dick Cheney I was mad at for using it to go after one of the world’s largest proven oil reserves in a country where local extraction costs were a dollar a barrel. When I’d hear some asshole from Texas on TV saying, in a drawl, “AH FELT IT WHEN THA TOWERS FEY- ELL!!” I thought, “No you didn’t, motherfucker. I DID. AND I SMELLED THEM BURNING THROUGH MY WINDOW.”
It’s temptingly easy to go right to your spleen and reduce things to a pure fear/threat reaction, to knee-jerk straight to “us and them,” and to want to go kick ass accordingly. It’s a lot harder to look in the mirror and try to wrap your head around both the terrible thing AND the conditions that might have led to it. To be pissed, and sad, and angry, but also, at least, for god’s sake, reflective. Everything has consequences. Too often, Americans are insulated from consequences, and we mistake that insulation for freedom. The hurt gets outsourced, or as a corporate type would say, “externalized.” Shit happens, but far away. Somewhere else. On 9/11 it happened here. I’d like to think we learned something...many didn’t. But no matter how you slice it, it’s a horrific thing. Ordinary folks in offices and trucks and planes and the brave people who tried to help them all suffered for things they had nothing to do with. Anytime that happens, to anybody, anywhere, on any scale, it should be a grave concern. My mom, for her part, reminded me of the Hard Hat Riot in 1970, when iron workers working on the World Trade Center mobilized themselves to beat the crap out of kids protesting the Vietnam war, the shootings at Kent State (which had occurred days before) and our bombing of Cambodia, where we’d killed about 100,000 civilians. ”Never Forget” — absolutely. But if that’s gonna stick, you’d better try and remember it all. When I see those two words, I try to sub them out for two others, from E.M. Forster: “Only Connect..”