I DON'T GIVE A ZHIT ABOUT 9-11
I don't give a zhit about "9-11." Its not that I'm a cold, heartless person (if anything I'm an over-sensitive weenie who cringes at the sight of somebody else in pain and feels guilty when I crush an ant). Its more that my own life is so weird, surreal, and tragic, that "9-11" was just one more weird, surreal, tragic blip on my radar screen.
They say that everyone will Remember Where They Were on the Date of 9-11. The day that will live forever in infamy (or at least until its replaced by subsequent even more infamous days). It was a sunny morning in Berkeley, and Willow, a middle-aged street woman, came rushing up to me. "You won't believe what just happened!" she gushed. "They just bombed the Pentagon!"
"You're kidding?" I said.
"No, I just saw it on TV." She was almost gleeful. Something exciting had finally happened in our boring lives. "I think the CIA did it," she said.
I walked across the street and looked in the window of Raleighs, a local sports bar. On the TV screen above the bar I could see the smoldering World Train Center building. Then they switched the picture to the smoldering Pentagon building. It occurred to me that this was all happening live as I stood there.
Later that evening there was a big, candle-light peace demonstration on the campus. A young woman with a folk guitar kicked off the demonstration with a flat version of "Imagine" by John Lennon. (Oh no, I thought, my worst fear realized: this could launch another generation of folk singers!).
My friend J___ was in the back of the crowd, drunkenly raving to himself at the candle-lit demonstrators. "FUKKING PEACENIKS! WE SHOULD BOMB THE HELL OUTTA' THEM FUKKING AYE-RABS FOR WHAT THEY DONE!" J___ was a long-time, long-haired, anti-cop, hippie radical type. It occurred to me that the battle-lines were being re-drawn. And that this would not be "another Vietnam."
I took a seat on a park bench to the side of the peace demonstration. Today's newspaper was sitting there on the bench. September 11, 2001. It was the early-morning edition, so there was nothing in the paper about the World Trade Center bombing. It was like seeing the last note from the old era, before we entered this new age, whatever it was.
The frontpage headline was about a guy in Sacramento who had went on a bloody rampage the day before. He had killed 5 or 6 people and then he held two other people hostage; forced one guy to hold a videocamera and videotape his mad shpiel. Than he shot the person on camera and gave the videotape to the second person and told her to deliver the tape to the local Eye Witness News. "THIS SHOULD GET ME ON THE NEWS FOR AT LEAST THE NEXT TWO WEEKS!" he crowed, before blowing his own brains out. (His murderous rampage was inspired in part by the Columbine Killings and other high-profile media killers who he was jealous of).
THE DUMB FUKK, I thought. His story had been completely wiped off the frontpage by 9-11. The dumb fukk can't even do THAT right.
I walked over to Hate Camp, Hate Man's circle of street people. They were all sitting around a candle, quietly lost in thought.
"So, whats happening?" I said happily. "Anything much in the news today?"
"Hee-haw," groaned Scooter.
I dreaded what I knew was coming next: Having to spend the next few weeks listening to everyone checking in with their very important opinions on world affairs (I made a mental note to remember the correct pronounciation of "Bin Laden" and "Al Queda.")
I walked down the street. There was no wind, but it seemed like there was an unseen, swirling madness in the air. The weirdest thing of all was; each person I passed on the street, every person I could see in every direction, I realized we were all thinking about the exact same thing at the same time. It was a surreal, almost quasi-mystical feeling of unity amidst the shattering, fragmented alienation of the day's events.
I realized that everything had changed just like that. Before 9-11 everything was really, really weird. And now, after 9-11, everything would be really, really weird.