Thursday, September 11, 2008

I Had the Craziest Day at Work on Tuesday

I was at the office by 8:15, and at my desk reading slashdot by 8:30. At that point it was pretty much like any other day, except that I had to take a colossal dump.

That never happens; I usually drink my coffee at home and take care 'a bidness before leaving the house just so that I don't have to deal with the commoners and their toilets.

Thankfully it was still fairly early, so I was able to sneak in and wreck the bathroom with impunity. I left feeling cavernously hollowed-out and in fine health.

On the way back to my desk, I looked out our tall office windows and felt the vibrant September morning sunshine. There was literally not a cloud to be seen, and I remember feeling my empty, empty bowels resonating with the crisp blank sky.

What a dump!

It was such a powercleanse that I before I even got back to my desk, I realized I was already getting hungry. Instead of heading back to my workstation, I decided to hit the bagel counter – a makeshift mini-cafe that my financial services company, in an ostensibly humanitarian but realistically googlistic fashion (i.e. its actual purpose is to prevent employees from "wasting time" with a 10 minute trip to go grab a real bagel outside) had stationed on our floor.

So I was standing in line at the bagel counter – two people in front of me, one in back, and a slow, friendly black lady behind the counter moping around, fetching our muffins and coffee.

While watching the black lady lumber around, I became aware of a low whistling, like a kettle that needed to be taken off its flame.

Hey- they didn't have no goddamn kettles– it's the 21st century. But yeah, even the slow black lady looked up for an instant looking for the same non-existent kettle. Maybe it wasn't conscious - maybe the sound just flashed her back to her grandmother's old southern plantation kettle; I dunno.

Anyway, there was no kettle, but the whistle started to broaden, then get a little louder, and then in a second, it was really curious.

In New York, real oddity always seems to melt the ice between strangers, and this whistle was odd enough to make me and the other linewaiters acknowledge each others' existence.

The black lady kept fetching coffee.

Now it was a real whistle- like a strong wind through a screen door? I want to say it lasted a minute, but it was probably more like six seconds - everyone looked at each other and wrinkled their brows to sort of say: what the fuck is that?

The whistle stopped getting louder, but it seemed to start toBLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA nuclear fucking bomb exploded------------

My eyes disappeared and the whole building and world exploded at a thousand degrees.

Stand up for one sec- trust me. Ok: put both feet flat on the ground, about 16 in. apart. Now lean to your left and raise your right heel so that the right foot is on a tippy-toe and the left foot is still flat. Keep leaning... Now slowly put your right heel back down and return to your center, feet flat, standing up normally.

That's exactly what my building did when the bomb exploded; The whole fucking building felt like it was about to tip all the way over, and then it swayed back.

It was 1 wtc, north tower, seven years ago today.

You have to understand that even under normal conditions, the trade center offices had curious properties you'd see displayed every day: In all the toilets in the building (esp. the upper floors) the water would always shimmy around a bit even before piss went flying into 'em. An engineer on my team had one of those retarded little anteaters on his computer monitor- and the head was always bopping up and down all the time, because the building itself was always moving.

It's crazy because I'm absolutely positive that the whole building almost fell- that we leaned a long way down toward the ground before straightening back up: but no matter how many times I watch the video of the first plane, I can never see the building move. I was sure it happened, but I guess I'm wrong...

The first thing I noticed was that I was alive and that I could see. Then I noticed that women were screaming. Everyone started moving to crowd the windows, but I couldn't see shit. no smoke, no fire, jack shit. I didn't bolt from the building because I didn't really feel like I was in danger - I just felt relieved (!) ... a giant bomb had gone off, and I had survived it. I was just thankful and relieved. Amazing, huh? I think about that all the time: Right in the middle of a fucking death trap, and I was just sitting there in a daze feeling lucky.

While I stood at the window not looking at jack shit, I became aware that my shirt - a white brooks brother's joint - was untucked and completely drenched right through. Soaked. Hm, not sweat...It smelled like spray paint, or rubbing alchohol or something chemical. Only hours later when I told the story to my stunned parents - my dad and I realized it was jet fuel.

Something about the smell of that shirt - it hit me in the stomach, and I realized that I was actually scared shitless. My stomach began to hurt and all at once I thought... you know what? I think I need to get the fuck outta here.

I became panicked - not that the building was going to collapse on my fuckin head, but about what people would think of me leaving. I was afraid that the guys on my team would say I was a chickenshit, and that we should be going upstairs to see if we could help the bomb victims.

I thought of my fiance, and how we were supposed to get married, and I realized that I was about to be a coward and sneak out of the building and go home. I thought about my work, my fucking ejb deliverables, and what I'd tell my manager...

It was the most shameful, selfish thing I've ever done - I walked to the emergency exit stairs and just bolted. I was starting to panic, thinking about my wife and wanting to get the fuck out of the building and go home. At that time, there weren't too many people on the stairs so I had a pretty easy time getting out.

Lotta stairs.

When I was out of the building, I looked up and saw the fire for the first time. I thought HOLY SHIT - it was an absolutely HUGE fire - MUCH bigger than I had thought could be possible from a bomb. But I never second-guessed it. They had tried to bomb it in '93, and it just seemed obvious that the explosion must have been a bomb.

Two very fucked up things that happened next:

When I was outside, I became aware of very loud BANG noises - hard to explain. Sounded like boulders dropped from the roof hitting aluminum siding. VERY loud craaaacking, and at the rate of 1 or 2 a minute. Seemed obvious to me at the time that it was pieces of debris hitting the ground, and that I needed to get the fuck out of there before I got crushed. That part was terrifying - I remember Columbine flashing into my head, like the kids running for the ambulances hoping not to get picked off. It was just like a terrifying dream where you're running, trying to make it to safety, hoping you don't get shot by some amorphous thing that you somehow know is aiming for you.

Well, I was right about needing to get the fuck out of there, but as for the identity of these loud boulders, I was wrong. I didn't actually see anyone land, but apparently this was the sound of jumpers hitting the pavement. I still don't really get it - It's hard for me to believe, because it was so damn loud... but that seems to be the conventional wisdom. What was the crack though? People don't seem BIG enough to make a noise like that on concrete. I don't get this part.

I did see a several human explosions that had already taken place on the ground - I tried very hard not to look, because I really felt like I might smell it and throw up and pass out. I got that gaggy feeling and the weak pussyknees. For the most part, it was very hard to tell if the explostions were bodies. I guess they were. The images burnt into my retenas forever however, are these three things:

a) a pair of pants lying on the sidewallk with no owner (wtf??)
b) a tiny piece of hair and scalp (size of half a tennis ball that's been sawed in two?)
c) a woman's foot in a biz-casual sandal - this is what made me almost pass out because it looked like some chick's foot you see on the subway, with the pretty painted toenails etc.

That last one was probably the most disturbing of all, more disturbing than the hair and scalp somehow. I can't really analyze it - uncharacteristic for me I know, but these are old wounds nohomo, and it's late.

Here's my insane UFO moment: I don't remember the second plane hitting. Really. I don't know how I missed it. I've thought about this a million times - maybe I was in the stairs and just didn't hear it????? It's like lost time for me. I don't know where I was for it. Anyone else headed down the stairs of 1 wtc have a similar experience?

I got over to the West Side Highway along with a trail of other people. Hundreds (not thousands - yet? did that change?) of people all walking uptown. I looked back when my office building collapsed. I'm exhausted right now and it's tough to talk about. It was unreal. I was far away when it collapsed, and I had no idea how the fuck it could collapse from "just" the bomb I had witnessed. My immediate thought was that "they" had driven a truck bomb into the bottom of the building and caused it to implode like that... It just seemed so controlled to me - just like demolitions you see on TV.

By the way, lest you think by those statements that I'm suggesting some kind of conspiracy theory - suck my DICK. 9/11 conspiracy theorists can suck on my BALLS. I'm not saying it WAS a controlled demolition, I'm just talking about what I saw at the TIME - now that I've seen popular mechanics talk about why the towers went down - I understand exactly what happened. It's called science you faggots; it works.

Bush is a gigantic spoiled arrogant asshole and a shitty president: congrats. But anyone who thinks he had a hand in 9/11 is so dumb they don't deserve to vote. All of you MUST suck my taint. All Europeans, all fags with 9/11 conspiracy sites, all of you are literally mentally retarded fucknuts - whether you think the planes were computer animations, or that no plane hit the pentagon, you're a fucknut. Eat shit and digress.

So people were pointing and yellling, and I turned around in time to see the building crumble. At this point, I still didn't know it was a plane. Only when the tower came down did I start feeling the urge to talk to the people around me - I was hit by this shock of my computer and our vpn and whiteboards and my files and shit not being there anymore. That's when I heard people talking and learned it was a plane that had hit my office building. 2 planes.

So that's how it fucking happened - the rest is predictable.

Well, I think I'm for Obama still, and I don't wanna politicize this day at all, but jesus hoover christ do I hate stupid liberals... See, now ya got me thinking about all those conspiracy theorists and even just my wife's European friends who talked all that shit about how we deserved it... I deserved it??? The woman who belonged to that leg deserved it?

Get the fuck outta here you criminal, moral-relativist sociopaths; If that's what you think, then you're so far gone there's just no hope for ya –– wait! may have spoken too soon....yes....yes....breaking news ladies and gentlemen, we do have ONE potential ray of hope for ya! There does exist a single, remote opportunity for rehabilitation of said moral-relativists: You must, in full earnest effort, suckle the hairy nuts, ass and dick pouch of one Robert Dobbs Jr. at his residence in Brooklyn, New york. None other: The chickenshit 9/11 batman; The vociferous, light-skinned, and malodorous Blognigger.


[update: please don't donate to the blognigger diaper fund today - give it to someone who actually did something. I'm taking the link down for today - thanks for your amazing emails but remember that I didn't do shit]

29 comments:

David said...

Enjoy the truthers.

Seriously, nice post.

Anonymous said...

I have been waiting for this and it was worth it.

Anonymous said...

Incredibly well-told story. Thank you for sharing it. Going to be a long day.

Seth said...

Nice work dude--you escaped the terrorists...only to spend the rest of your life tortured by annoying yuppie assholes talking about where they "source" their cheese.

Oh well better red than dead I guess.

roebling said...

wow. i had no idea. you deserve complete carte blanche with a shillelagh

Scott said...

Thanks for this post. I'm sure it took a lot to write it, and I appreciate you putting it out there nohomo.

I got nothin' to add. Except that I have, for the last 7 years or so, always referred to the 9/11 attacks as "the recent unpleasantness downtown". Whistling past the graveyard, I guess. How we deal with horror and tragedy.

tommy said...

thanks. really really good. man...

Moodysid said...

I normally don't remember details about my days but that day, just like you, I remember right down to the smell. I am glad you made it out and thanks for sharing your story. Have a wonderful day B.

Anonymous said...

Now aren't you glad you decided to go for the poop first instead of trying to hold it in that day?

Anonymous said...

I've never read an account like yours, though I'm sure there are hundreds (thousands) of them. It's given me a perspective I can't possibly understand but that I truly appreciate.

Thank you for writing this.

Anonymous said...

Well written. It really makes you think about those who died and the space they could have occupied. You could easily have been some anonymous vague photo instead of the nigga you've become. I worked round the corner on Rector St. Most vivid memory is of the smell that hung over downtown for weeks.

The building need not have swayed visibly, most of the stress would likely have been dissipated across the floor you were standing on causing it to literally ripple. You were surfing a wave bro.

brosti said...

Everyone in NYC has a 9/11 story, and I honestly never get tired of hearing them. Thanks for yours. We all remember it "right down to the smell" if we were anywhere in the city at the time. Something that always angers me is the thought that people in parts of the US who were not attacked, and who live in places that, frankly, will NEVER be terrorism targets, pose as hyper-nationalistic assholes and then go vote for hawkish jackasses who figure you don't need to know anything about anything going on in the rest of the world, and approach international diplomacy with dicks out and swinging, even Condi, nohomo. If you're in Kansas and you're voting Republican, and you're all "but we were ATTACKED!" you can really just go fuck-on-out of my credibility zone -- I've got no use for anyone trying to appropriate the trauma of others to feed their own sad insecurities. Big cheesy hugs today to anyone who was really affected 9/11/01.

Filthy Lucretius said...

To quote the Onion, "Holy Fucking Shit."

nohomo could not begin to un-gay the love I want to shower on your nigga ass right now.

BTW, I've heard your "liberal" rant a few times now, and it sounds just a little bit off target to me.

Seems to me that it's not liberals you despise. It's wankers. It's easy to get them confused because something like 98% of liberals are wankers (and before the haters get all hatey in comment thread, yes, I am a liberal and a wanker. Just means I know what I'm talking about here.)

BO is that rarest of public figures, a liberal who is not a wanker. So vote proudly.

bravo palin said...

ah, shove you righteous indignation up your twat brosti.

im from one of those places, and my kids are the ones who fight our damn wars in the first place.

tommy said...

Brosti - for once we see eye to eye. while my 9/11 was nothing like BN's, i was close enough - Canal St. - to hear it and smell it and feel the fear and when these psycho right wingers from the middle of bumble fuck use 9/11 as an excuse to shred the constitution - the thing that actually makes me proud to be American - it fills me with murderous rage. like Sarah Palin - god i despise that fundamentalist maniac. she's awful.

and yeah...big cheesy hug to BN and else directly affected (i got over my "trauma" pretty fast) - we got wasted that night actually.

Anonymous said...

Great post and I was in NYC and remember that smell too. I guess BN has survivors guilt but you did the right thing BN, you did the thing that

Brosti and Tommy, save your indignation for the dar al Islam which can't get its shit together. Your mid west right wingers may be hicks and beneath your cocktail party lists, maybe not nuanced, but actually such Americans, even the ones who cling to religion and guns, are bascially decent people, Palin too, who is actually 10x the woman that Hillary is, by all measures.

jamesmallon said...

Why do Americans go apeshit against the conspiracy theorists (I'm Canadian - you know, your smarter cousins)? What are you afraid of? Examine the facts, and make up your own mind. Don't act like fucking evangelical Christians or Mormons, or my sainted Catholic mother, and refuse to acknowledge anyone else has access to the truth.

Most of the conspiracy shit is wacked, but the official version don't add up neither.

tommy said...

FUCK CANADA. AND FUCK THE MIDWEST. BITCHES!!!!

Anonymous said...

There's one part of your story that doesn't make sense... how did jet fuel end up on your shirt while you're still in the office looking out the window? From the story it seems your floor wasn't affected at all but suddenly you're covered in jet fuel? Makes no sense at all.

Cable Guy said...

everybody watch the last 20 seconds of this 9/11 call from a wtc tower. It's the most fucked-up thing ever.

Anonymous said...

@ Cable Guy

I assume vent ducts.

mordicai said...

I was in Ohio. At the time, the media was convinced the world was ending. Every van in every parking lot was suspicious, every bridge was a terror target. I'm still pissed no one with a car would take me to go buy more shells for my shotgun, all boob-tubed.

Your story is better.

Plus it didn't have Doctor Doom crying.

subtitle said...

it doesn't matter about the cause or effect, just the end result. thanks for the truth, I'm sorry it was at your own expense....

Natasha said...

Thank you for continuing to give witness all this time later, when some people seem only to want to forget. The remembrance ceremonies get smaller every year. I was downtown that day as well, and I don't have the words.

Mike said...

this is maybe one of my all time favorite 9 11 storys

Mike said...
This post has been removed by the author.
johnGEE said...

i think its good for you to share your story. everyone who lived past that day in new york has a story. it is amazing.

d. said...

Damn...not really sure what to say besides that it was a really good read; fresh perspective andting.

RIP to the fallen.

Anonymous said...

Well put. Well done.