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]
