Windows on the World: 9/11 and the View from Here

There are some things we just can never quite comprehend--things that just make no sense--like W. winning a second term. 9/11 is one of those things that I think about from time to time. A fragment here, a place, a memory. And sometimes the oddest little details, thrown-away, discarded moments of time get sculpted into a greater piece and scare us in how well they fit together. This picture is one of those fragments of time. It's of me and my friend Hudson at Windows on the World--the restaurant/bar that was on the top floor of the WTC. Hudson had this old busted camera he found in a drawer at work (a film camera, the days before digital). He didn't realize it at the time, but it was all screwed up, and it would create these crazy double images. So here you have us chopped off in reality, but reflected in a ghostly image over our heads. And how odd that FIRE alarm over my head.
A few months ago I picked up Don DeLillo's recent novel Falling Man which deals with 9/11 and the aftermath of one man and his family. I'd been on a Don DeLillo kick recently, reading all of his old stuff, so I was glad to see this new book was coming out. And it didn't disappoint. It's quite a powerful read and he does an incredible job putting you there in those towers and describing what it must have been like when it happened--the chaos--and the long journey down.
It made me think of my own experiences at the World Trade Center. As I've mentioned before, I lived in New York City back in 1999. At the time, I felt disenchanted with The City, as if it wasn't what I expected from the movies I loved; Manhattan, Annie Hall. It was right as the Dow was crossing 10,000 for the first time--I can remember the headline. I had a small black and white TV set that only picked up one channel--Bloomberg. So if I wasn't working, I'd watch the stocks crawl across the bottom throughout the day.
As I mentioned, Hudson came to visit for a Neil Young show at Madison Square Garden. I took him down to Windows on the World for a cocktail--it seemed like a good touristy thing to do, and you couldn't beat the view. Here's another one of those ghostly images his busted camera kept taking.

Shortly after I had moved to New York, when it was still Winter and quite cold, I went out on the town with some new friends I'd met. One of the places we went one night was Windows on the World. I remember there was a really cute girl who worked as a fact checker for People magazine. I got a big kick out of that because we always had People magazine around the house (my dad loved the crossword puzzle in the back because it was full of easy pop culture clues). She was wearing the smartest looking hat, like something out of "Breakfast at Tiffany's". There was another girl with us whose mother was in the Daughters of the American Revolution and she felt it was important we know that. She also kept her dog in her purse--but he wasn't with us this particular evening. I also remember a young Egyptian doctor--a dentist--and he was dancing and quite taken with the daughter of the Daughter of the American Revolution. And I remember he was full of advice for me about making it in New York. I can't remember it now and I obviously didn't then.
As we were leaving, I took the claim checks for all of the girls coats so I could pick them up and pay for them downstairs. That was not a cheap gesture for a free-lancing-recently-evicted-young-man, but I'm afraid it made no impression on my hat wearing friend. But she did share the taxi fare to a night club we visited next. The club was very modern, circa 1999, and you had to go through an alley, there was no sign. And I remember the coat check was through a door and all of a sudden you were in an 1960s diner with old men drinking coffee. A world removed from the techno and black lights on the other side of the door. The reason I mention this is because there was another piece of the crazy puzzle that, in hindsight, all starts to add up to something. I remember seeing Bill Maher at that nightclub that evening. He was hosting his popular "Politically Incorrect" TV show on ABC at the time. It was right after 9/11 that he made his famous comment about the terrorists not being "cowards" which cost him his job and that show. Fortunately, he was able to start a new show with HBO which is usually pretty damn funny--especially when he "kids" the president.

So, looking back on it, the New York I knew in 1999 was a quite different place from the one I seeked in images from the '70s. But the time between those decades seems brief and small compared to the distance between 1999 and the New York (or America for that matter) of today, post 9/11. And when you really look at it, there were these little incidents, clues, of time weaving itself through our lives and creating moments of continuity. One last thought--going back to that little black and white TV that only picked up Bloomberg. On 9/11/2001 I was back living in Little Rock. The place where I worked, despite being in television production, had no working television to watch the news (they hadn't paid the cable bill apparently). So a co-worker ran home and picked up a small, portable TV set, no different from that one I had in New York. And that's how I watched those planes fly through the windows on the world.