Yesterday. July 19, 2007

It felt like 9/11 yesterday.  

I left work at around six and received a frantic phone call from my mother, who had just returned from tennis and turned on the TV and OMIGOD CLINK THERE IS SMOKE EVERYWHERE AND SOMETHING EXPLODED AND PLEASE WHY CAN’T YOU JUST MOVE BACK HOME PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE? 

And I was all “stop overreacting, Ma.” Because everyone on the streets seemed pretty calm to me. No one was running towards the New Jersey border or diving into the Hudson and it all seemed fairly commonplace.  

Except, when I tried to call my fiancé, my call wouldn’t go through. At first I started to curse out “Cingular! AT&T! Whoever the hell you are!” But then the man next to me while waiting at the corner was also cursing out Verizon and we both kind of looked at each other.  

“Feels like 9/11, eh? Not being able to make a damn call?” he said to me. 

“Yeah,” a girl standing behind us chimed in. “Did you hear what happened in Midtown?”  

And then suddenly, like I had just pressed seek and found a clear channel on the radio dial, I started to hear everyone talking about it. 

“I heard it was a transformer.” 

“Like, from the movie?” 

“No, you idiot.” 

“I don’t know – they’re saying it’s not terrorism but I think that’s just so everyone doesn’t freak out. It’s kind of suspicious that it happened right around Grand Central.” 

“I heard it was the subway. They finally fucking blew up the subway.” 

During my walk home, I caught snippets here and snippets there until – by the time I made it to my apartment building – I was convinced that it was officially the End of Days and maybe I should just order one of everything off the menu at the McDonald’s on 8^th Avenue because, really, who cares anymore? It’s over. Might as well go out in a blast of greasy deliciousness. 

I turned on NY1 and saw the images and – despite the reassurances from the news anchor – thought it looked pretty damn fucking terrifying.  

The scene was eerily reminiscent of September 11^th: billowing smoke and people running for their lives and mass confusion and chaos and debris everywhere.  

Clearly, we know now there was “nothing sinister” involved – unless you consider Con Ed’s suckiness “sinister” (I do) or the fact that there may be fucking asbestos everywhere “sinister” (again, I do). 

To quote Gawker, “we kind of always knew we’d die at the hands of Con Ed rather than Al-Queda.” Ha. And also, exactly.   

It’s scary, being a New Yorker. Each and every day we head out into the city and ignore the fact that we live with a bulls-eye stretching across our city limits.  

When something like what happened yesterday happens – even if it was “only” a steam pipe that burst – we all kind of crumble into the emotional balls of stress and neuroses that we really are. It gives us license to cave and talk to each other about just how scared we really are. About how we still carry the scars of 9/11, even if that tragedy was hijacked by the current administration and spun into a war with no apparent end. About how we live on edge while pretending not to live on edge but really, good lord, living on edge.

About how, yes, we’re terrified but, truly, we wouldn’t want to live anywhere else – even if the streets randomly blow up or fundamentalist bastards fly planes into our buildings. Even then.