Cheers
As I climbed up the long flight of stairs of the
Brooklyn subway station, I could smell the pungent odor which was a mixture of
trash, stale urine and the mechanical oils of the trains that were so familiar
to me. The cool night air hit me as I cleared the last landing and walked
outside into the very early morning. The streets were quiet and calm. I
adjusted the worn bass guitar gig bag on my back and set off with the long,
fast gait that I had learned in the south Georgia woods and swamps when I was
young but now served me to cover ground in my adopted home.
As I walked the 15 minute trip home, past the
drug dealers and the tagged, graffiti- covered buildings, my mind wandered back
to the night of playing I had spent at one of my favorite Manhattan blues jams.
I had played, as I lived, with the reckless abandon and the fearlessness that
only a young man can have. I had played slow blues ballads, with the feelings
welling up in me of love and unrequited love, I had played faster songs with
unbridled abandon, the music increasing in tension, stomping my feet and
dancing—yelling at the soloist to “TELL IT TO ME, MAN,” and urging them to play
their screaming, emotional lines louder and harder until their solos climaxed
and still I cheered them on. “There it is, there it is, Brother!” I spent the
downtime with the other musicians, trying to find more work, drinking the sweet
beer that the bartenders brought me, and enjoying the smoky atmosphere and
cathartic music. I watched the bartenders dance on the old wooden bar, swinging
their mesmerizing hips to the rhythms of the music and sometimes lifting a
lighter to blow fire balls from their pursed lips with the alcohol. I cheered
them too. This was living. I got clapped sharply on the back. It was Big John
that ran the jam, and had been known to tersely tell people to “Get the hell
off my stage” if he felt they didn’t play well enough, causing fear for most.
He told me “You played good tonight, man.” I asked if he knew of any more work for
me. “Sure, I’ll try to find you some,” he said, as he took another one of my
business cards. I was invincible, felt invincible and played invincibly. We
played hard and partied harder. It had been a beautiful night and I could still
hear the faint ringing in my ears.
I reached the corner of my block, passed the
broken down cars, and walked towards the steps of the red brownstone I called
my home. The usual guys who were out late selling drugs off my steps told me
“What’s up?” and one of the older ones told everyone to get out of my way so I
could pass. I mentally cheered him for this, clasped his hand, and went inside.
The day had been a good one but also very draining, emotionally and physically,
from playing the music and the general “musicians’ hang” afterwards where we
one upped each other with partying just like when we played the music. I was
ready to sleep and as I lay down on my mattress I could still hear all of the
music that had flowed through me and the others as we played with the frenetic pace
of the city. We were unlike anyone else. You can instantly pick out a New York
musician by how they play. As sleep finally overtook me I had a happy fulfilled
feeling—I loved New York and I loved the pace, the music, the people, and I
even loved the dirt and grime—I loved it all and I loved my life. I could not
have begun to comprehend that the rest of the day would be a life changing
event for me, and everyone else in the rest of my city and the nation as a
whole.
I awoke a few times, early in the morning, to the voices drifting
into my dreams of people talking outside of my window. I was in a predominately
Puerto Rican and Dominican neighborhood and I could hear the unique Newyorrican
accents. Since I was on the first floor the people talking on the steps were
only about five feet from my head on my pillow. I heard someone say “A plane
just crashed into a fucking building, YO! What the fuck is going on?”…This
barely entered my consciousness and I only rolled over and peacefully drifted
back to sleep. This statement meant nothing to me in my groggy, dream- filled
state. A little while later, a loud voice snapped me out of sleep and I heard
someone run out of the building and say “Another plane just hit the other
tower!” My neighbors weren’t going to let me sleep anymore so I blearily
decided to get up and face the day.
With a thick, throbbing head from last night’s
debauchery, I stumbled to the kitchen to make some coffee. As the coffee
started to bubble and percolate, I plopped down to see if there was anything
interesting on daytime television. I didn’t have cable but still could get four
or five channels with the rabbit ears that my roommates and I had. All I got
was static for reception. Great start to the day. My TV is messed up. I got off
the couch and started to adjust the antenna to try to get a signal. I finally
found a weak signal on one of the channels. It was footage of both the World
Trade Center towers spewing thick, acrid smoke. I watched in shock and horror
as hopeless people were jumping out of the buildings to their deaths, making
horrible thumping sounds as their spirits crashed out from their bodies. I have
no idea how long I sat there staring in disbelief, wondering how an accident
like this could happen, and then realized it was two different collisions. I
leaped up from the couch and ran across the room to my cell phone, sliding on
our uncarpeted floors. I could not get reception. I tried my home phone and
could only get an ominous dial tone beeping on the line.
I hurriedly put on enough clothes to walk
outside and walked out onto the street. The normally bustling street was like a
ghost town. I looked towards the Manhattan skyline and it looked like a nuclear
bomb had gone off in the city. There was a large, grayish mushroom cloud over the
city with flocks of either pigeons or seagulls flying through the smoke, making
large sweeping loops. I stood there stunned in the center of my road in
Brooklyn. All I could mutter was “Oh Shit…” I pulled myself together and turned
to go back inside. Thoughts raced through my mind…was this a biological
attack?...who is responsible for this?...and most of all what could possibly be
happening? As I walked inside, my home phone started ringing. It was one of my
best friends, who was an old roommate of mine. He was in a different part of
Brooklyn and said the cars there were being covered in thick, snow like ash
from the buildings. It was great to hear a friend’s voice and talk to someone
about what was going on and find out that they were fine. After talking to him
for a while, wishing each other luck, we hung up the phone. And then the calls
started pouring in.
I spent the next week glued to the television. Manhattan was
basically shut down and everything in the city was cancelled. Those of us that
were there during the time after the attacks lived with one of the strangest
smells when the wind would blow our way. I realized that this was the putrid
smell of death. The strange, sweet smell was basically barbecued humans. The
smell caused a fight-or-flight response on a human being's most animalistic,
biological level. There was no one there to fight, so it just caused an
impulsive urge to flee the area, but there was nowhere for us to go. I watched
footage of New Yorkers selflessly helping each other replayed over and over on
the news. Many of these heroes paid the ultimate price trying to help and save
others. It made me proud of the responses everyone had and how much everyone
cared about their fellow New Yorkers. One of the cities responses was to step
up patrols in the predominately Muslim neighborhoods, in and around the city.
After a few days, it was quickly realized that no one blamed Muslims that lived
in New York for the tragedy. They were all New Yorkers too and the extra
patrols were stopped. This was our city, our country and we all felt that the
people that needed to pay for this would pay. I talked to my father on the day
the World Trade Centers fell. He is one of the biggest pacifists that I have
ever known and would never harm or wish harm on anyone. He said “Someone should
and will pay for this.” I fully agreed.
Most of my friends, like myself were military age. We talked and
talked about what had happened and what would be done about it in the weeks and
months afterwards. We had all seen the people dancing in the streets when the
buildings were hit and so many innocents in New York were murdered. This caused
a very angry feeling inside of us. We had never rejoiced for the fact that
innocent people had been killed in the United States or any other country for
that matter. I wanted everyone I saw celebrating the attacks on that TV screen
to be dead. It’s hard to explain the anger you feel when you watch people being
killed who are from the city that is your home. We wondered if there would be a
draft instituted when we struck back at the cowards that had done this to our
city. Many decided that if a draft did start that they would go ahead and join
up to fight. None of us had ever seriously thought of military service until
this had happened. We all had so much anger towards anyone killing innocent
civilians in our city and had no one locally we had a right to direct our deep
rooted anger towards.
About two weeks after the attacks, I finally went into the city to
get out of the house. As I rode the subway I remember the haunted, distant look
in the eyes of the other people on the subway. A very young National Guard
soldier was standing there with an M-16 rifle. Being from the South, firearms
do not scare me, but an 18 year old kid with very little training carrying a
gun on a packed subway makes me nervous. What had happened to my city? There
was a sad broken energy to the city. The ride was very somber. I arrived at the
club downtown where I was going to watch a band play. They were playing on the
lower level and there was a strange rumbling and shaking. I realized it was all
of the earth moving equipment working at the site of the attacks. It was
surreal to listen to the music, drink a few beers and know that they were
recovering bodies about half a mile or less away. I left soon afterwards. I
felt like I was disrespecting those that had died in the attacks even though I
knew that the city had to keep moving and retain some semblance of
normalcy…otherwise the terrorists had won.
Around seven or eight months after the attacks I started to see
the city beginning to recover as best we could considering the circumstances.
One day, as I stepped onto a subway in Manhattan headed towards Brooklyn,
everyone on the subway car started to cheer and clap loudly. I had stepped
through the doors with a businessman. Being confused by the cheering we looked
at each other with mild panic and bumped into each other trying to get back out
the doors to safety. But the doors dinged and we were stuck in the
claustrophobic car. It turned out that at every stop everyone cheered for
whoever that got on the subway car. The crowd had been doing this all the way
from the Bronx. A middle aged businessman read a random paragraph from whatever
book he had happened to be reading. We all cheered for him when he finished,
screaming, clapping and yelling encouragement as if he was a sports star. In
retrospect, I realize we were all cheering for each other. We were all New
Yorkers and forever changed but we would persevere through the tragedy that we
had all witnessed and many of us had lived. We were cheering because we were
alive. We were cheering for everyone that had died on that terrible day. As I
got off at my stop I smiled as I heard the raucous clapping and yelling for the
people that had just entered the car and saw the panicked look of a man that
was trying to leave the car as the doors slammed closed. I smiled because this
was New York and you could not break New York’s spirit.
I left New York for good about seven years ago and have only been
able to return once. Many musicians, including myself struggled greatly after
the attacks. Friends of mine that had been there for 20 or 30 years were having
trouble finding work. It was hard on all of us and finally became too much of a
struggle to get by for me. I will always love the city and do not regret being
there when the attacks happened. I only regret the fact that it did happen. I
will always carry the feeling of that day with me, good and bad. I remember how
much good the people of New York did helping others during and after the
attacks. I cheer for them for that. I cheer for the people that lost their
lives. Not the fact that they died, but I raise my glass periodically in
remembrance of them as I do as I write this paragraph. I have had many things
happen to me that were life changing. I have suffered through the deaths of
friends and family, most of the friends I grew up with are dead or in jail for
life, and I am myself also a cancer survivor. Still, the thing that changed me
the most were the events on September 11th, 2001. I will always
remember that day of tragedy, helplessness and also the selflessness of New
Yorkers in my old city and I will always cheer for and raise a toast for my
former home, the one and only New York.
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