A week after 9/11 the wind shifted from the west and a southerly breeze pushed the smoke from the Big Pile into the East Village instead of Brooklyn. It smelled like an asbestos BBQ. I called my sister in Boston. We hadn’t gotten along as teenagers, but had become good friends during the deaths of our younger brother and mother.
“I gotta get out of here.” Health was only one of the issues. No one was working in New York. Business was at a standstill. No one was buying diamonds no matter what the fucking president said.
“C’mon on up. We’re going to the boat show in Newport this weekend.” Pam was a lawyer as was her husband. He was in the market for a SeaRay.
33 feet long.
“I’m getting on the bus this afternoon.” I packed a bag for a week. The wind would have to swing back to the autumn westerlies and the fire of the WTC would have to run out of fuel.
My sister was glad to see me.
My family heard my tale of 9/11.
Hearing the roar of the first plane.
Seeing the impact of the second.
My apartment on East 10th Street was less than two miles from the Twin Towers. My brother’s neighbor had been in Windows of the World that morning. A friend had called from the ground floor. He went down to meet him. That phone call saved his life.
We didn’t speak about the attack on the way to Newport. Pam’s daughter sat in the back of their Audi with me. Sara was 6. The sky was clear blue. I told her stories about the Jamestown ferry, which plied the sound between Jamestown and Newport before the bridge connected the two peninsulas.
At the boat fair Pam and her husband viewed the options for a new boat. I had about $200 in my pocket. I could only afford a beer at the dock. Middle-aged men unleashed threats of nuclear destruction on the perpetrators of 9/11. I said nothing and planned my escape from the USA. The next years under GW Bush were going to be ugly.
I came back in 2008. A lot had changed in those 7 years. I was no longer 49. I was 56. No one had attacked America proper in my absence, however everyone was fatter and not little fatter. A lot fatter. Over one-third of them obese and they couldn’t stop stuffing their faces.
Even worst was the addiction to coffee.
Everyone walked around the malls, subway systems, streets, and parks with a container of coffee in their hands. They never shared it with anyone.
No one ever said, “You want a taste?”
It was their coffee and no one else’s coffee. It was made specially for them.
I drink my coffee at home. I also drink it at Demels Coffee in the Plaza. One regular in the morning. One expresso at noon. I don’t carry it around the city like it was a holy candle and I wish my fellow countrymen took the time to drink coffee like a human being.
Stop the rushing around.
Like where the fuck are you going?
Just to work.
And work is just a job.
And coffee is just coffee.
You stupid slobs.
