Effluvia

In New York City in 1981, eleven people were bitten by monkeys and reported the bites to the appropriate authorities.

From an article in Salon a while back:
"Rock radio is full of bands like Limp Bizkit, Staind, Slipknot and Linkin Park, bands who look as though they'll have the shelf life of a watermelon and seem just about as important."

Funny. Who would think the New York Times would print a big slobbery travel article about my neighborhood?

And Joey K's gets a mention in another article from the Times about New Orleans. We is bigtime now!

Yeah, I'm back. I just couldn't stand you kids another goddamned minute, with you always whining for a glass of Tang and screaming about your little brother touching your stuff. So I went off to Rancho Relaxo for a few months and things worked out just like I wanted them to. I had lots of adventures, and over the next few weeks I'll tell you how I spent my summer vacation - the vacation I took from you, you little shit. All I know is you're damned lucky I'm back.

In the last few months I saw Depeche Mode, got a new tattoo, saw the Saints practice, hunted for a new apartment, moved over Labor Day weekend, ran back to Memphis a couple of times...hell, I did a lot. I'll tell you all about it.

And I'd like to give notice: I'm not fuckin' around at this journal shit anymore. I know - and you know - that I'm the best there is at this business. There's been some great people at the top of the journal world, but there's been some real jokers in charge, too. And now I think it's time for me to take my rightful place at the very top. I'm not going to stop 'til I get what I want, and you're either for me or you're against me.

So stand the fuck back. Whoo!

Three Years Ago
Seeds. That's right, motherfucker: seeds.

Two Years Ago
"He was not a Happy Little Squirrel at all, but a filthy stinking rat."

One Year Ago
"This is the best thing I've ever put in my mouth ever!"

You know what sound I keep hearing? Do you know what's going to haunt me the longest out of this whole wretched series of events?

Maybe you saw the video on CNN. A doctor, responding to the emergency call that went out from the Trade Center, was there when one of the buildings came down. He got the whole thing on video. Then he was overtaken by the cloud of dust and rubble that flowed out from the destruction.

So this guy is wandering around inside this yellow haze, trying to find other rescue personnel, trying to get his bearings, trying to help. And the whole time he's roaming around in this little slice of Dante there's a horrid tweety-twittery sound. Not loud, but insistent - and persistent. Like a smoke alarm wrapped in a pillow...like hundreds of smoke alarms, all wrapped in pillows.

And this doctor is wandering around, camera recording. Sometimes he comes upon a car, or a wandering fireman, or someone who's been hurt. And he tries to do what he can. And that tweety-twittery sound keeps on the whole time.

The sound was made by the locator sirens the firemen wore. In case they passed out or their buddies couldn't see them they could be found by the sound the little siren was making. Every time I've seen that since, though, my skin's gone cold. It's like the muzak in hell.

And some of the still pictures, too, like video captures swimming up out of a nightmare.

Some woman was taking pictures on the way down the stairs in one of the Trade Center towers. In one of them she caught a fireman, looking resigned and competent and a bit annoyed. "Just doing my job, lady," his look says, "nothin' worth taking a picture of."

And the jumpers were bad, of course. That's a long way to fall, and I bet you could do some serious regretting on the way down. Do you think they were sorry? Did they wish they'd stayed in the building? What must it be like, to see your death rushing at you at terminal velocity, knowing there's nothing you can do to stop it?

Or were they just glad to be done with it?

None of those, though, bothered me as much as the one the Washington Post ran the day after. It was a wider shot, showing two or three floors above where one of the planes had hit. All the windows were broken out and were filled with people. Some leaning out, some looking down, some waving for help. In the caption it said the building collapsed seconds later.

Did they know? Could they hear the building creaking and moaning around them, like a ship caught in the ice? Did they feel the building sag underneath them, or did it drop a few sickening inches before the whole thing gave beneath them?

And my dreams since then...damn. Before, my dreams were memorable and vivid and minutely detailed. I never understood what my dreams meant, but I could certainly mull over them in the shower. For the first two weeks after the eleventh, though, I couldn't bring anything out of my dreams except falling and dust, tumbling and swirling in front of me. I would jerk awake and peer in to the corners of my bedroom, sure that something terrible would be lurking there, pitifully wanting to know what the hell happened.

I'm getting over that now, though, for which I am infinitely grateful.

All my people are okay, you know. Just a small group of friends and acquaintances in New York and D.C., and we had confirmed they were all okay within hours of the first crash.

It intrudes at the strangest times. Friday night Sonya and I were bar-hopping with some friends: O'Flaherty's to Lucky Cheng's to Babylon to the Crowbar. None of them were as busy as they should have been on a balmy weekend night. Saturday we went to see They Might Be Giants at the House of Blues. Towards the end of the show, one of the guys acknowledged that it had been a fucked-up month to live in New York City.

"I shouldn't have to think about this," I thought, "none of us should."

We were looking for something in the mail one day.

"You know, the mail's been a little erratic since the attacks on the east coast," I said.

I thought about that for a second.

"God," I continued, "isn't that a science fiction-y thing to say? It's hardly believable."

Yeah, things are different now, but only in little ways, mostly. You can almost forget. Kind of like Anya's hypothetical world without shrimp.