I live about three blocks from where the Twin Towers stood on the 15th floor. On 9/11 I was hung over, looking out my window, trying to get motivated to go vote in the Democratic mayoral primary, and listening to Howard Stern (Thought police, please do not force me to invoke my right to remain silent for liking something that is not politically correct). All of a sudden I saw what looked like a plane flying into one of the Twin Towers. When I realized I was not still drunk from the night before, I had the ultimate "holy shit" moment. I called my mom and said "Guess what? Some idiot just crashed a plane into the Twin Towers." Right after that there was a huge explosion that shook my apartment. The phone line broke and the whole sky was on fire. I was completely mesmerized by what looked like Armeggedon. Before I realized that time had passed, another plane came out of nowhere and hit the other tower. I looked down to the street and all hell had broken loose.

I tried calling my mother back but the phone lines were completely dead. My lan line did not work, my cell phone did not work. I was completely isolated and flipping out. Paper was falling out of the sky. Pretty soon people were falling out of the sky. I did not have time to feel bad about not being able to talk to my mom because pretty soon the first tower collapsed and my apartment filled with debris and dust in seconds (and I do not live in a tiny Manhattan apartment). I was up to my knees in what I would later learned was a mixture of the cremains of thousands, paper, computers, lighting, and anything that makes up a building. I could not breathe, I could not see, and could barely move. I made what I thought was the sensible move to flee. I ran down 15 flights of stairs in the dark. I got outside and ran into a herd of people. There was barely any visibility because of the dust. Mayor Giuliani ran down the street screaming. People were bleeding, crying, burned, walking wounded, walking with broken limbs, carrying each other, and shell shocked. Then my good decision to go outside paid dividends: the second tower collapsed. I did what Karl Rove and George Bush would not have the balls or brains to do: I ran to NYU Downtown hospital to donate blood. They were not set up to receive blood donors at that point and they really only had room for patients. I got washed off at the hospital, the doctors and nurses did what they could to help me breathe (I'm an athsmatic), tried to stop my eyes from bleeding, and I left to make room for people who were severely injured. I left the hospital and being the Defeatocrat that I am, I cut and ran across the Brooklyn Bridge along with thousands of my fellow latte sipping Manhattan liberals at the behest of the cowardly NYPD.

A few days beforehand I jogged across the bridge to get pizza at Grimaldi's with some friends. I'm a lifelong Manhattanite, I have crossed that bridge a million times. I took me like 15 minutes. On 9/11 it seemed to take hours. I was so disoriented to time and space that I still do not know how it took to cross. I imagine it took hours because at some point we were trapped on the bridge. I don't know why the crowd got held up. I do remember people being remarkably calm and wanting to get the hell off the bridge so that emergency vehicles could pass. We were still under the delusion that every available ambulance in a 50 mile radius would be needed to transport the people who worked in the Twin Towers.

When I got across the bridge I was exhausted. I had to figure out what the hell I was going to do next. I have friends in Brooklyn and I decided to walk to one of their places. That was not an option because one of my friends was working at one of the voting stations near the World Trade Center, some worked in the World Trade Center, others worked on Wall Street, and the rest were scattered around the city. I had no where to go. I sat on the ground, coughed up a lung, nearly rubbed my eyes out of the sockets, and sobbed uncontrollably as I watched the sky burn with a blizzard falling below it. I am not a crier and any other time would have hidden under a rock before having a meltdown in public. No one noticed because we were all having a collective meltdown.

I have never lived in a warzone before but I think I may have had a taste of what it is like to be in one. Hellicopters were overhead, F-16s were scrambling the sky ready to take out anything, I had to flee my home which was ruined, I was coughing up blood, vomiting, could barely see, I did not know if my friends and family were okay, I was incommunicado, and I was forced to try to make sense of things and figure out how to escape the mayhem with a thousand equally displaced people. Maybe that is why I sympathize with the Lebonese and Palestinian civilians who live in a never ending 9/11. I can't imagine living that day over and over for an interminable period. I just might prefer blowing myself up to living that way.

Maybe 18 to 24 hours later I finally snuck back into Manhattan and walked all the way uptown to my mom's place. I had not lived at home since I was 13 but I knew that I could not go home and I was glad about it. I went back to the hospital, they suctioned the blood out of my lungs, washed out my eyes, treated the minor chemical burns on my skin, and sent me home. I waited in front of the television to see if any survivors would be pulled out. Instead I saw George Bush turning 3,000 individuals' families worst day into a photo-op.  

As three days passed and no one was rescued, I felt so hopeless and helpless. When I went outside kids, parents, friends, and relatives of people who worked at the World Trade Center were handing out fliers with pictures of the missing. They were hoping against hope and all reality that their loved ones had amnesia and were at hospitals or wandering the city confused. A kid came up to me and asked me if I had seen her mother. I stopped feeling sorry for myself then.

In the span of three days I ran for my life, lost my home, Rudy Giuliani went from the race-baiting mayor we could not wait to get rid of to "America's Mayor" (he also used 9/11 as an excuse to power grab and tried to get the term limit laws suspended so he could stay in office; it was really classy) and George Bush went from being a dipshit who stole the election to the cowboy who would lead us. The world was upside down.

Five years later Bin Laden and friends are still running around, putting out more videos than are aired on MTV. New York gets the same amount of money from the Homeland Security Department as Nebraska, that state with many attractive targets of opportunity. You see, all those red states that have the people with the biggest mouths who are the first to call someone a terrorist sympathizer do not care if their Homeland Security budget is bloated and would be better spent protecting major cities. They can spend it building that bridge to nowhere that will be bombed.

Five years later I still have to wipe the dust from the collapsed towers off of my walls. I can't forget 9/11 because I have to wipe it off my walls once a week. They have stopped hiring window washers for my buildng because when they have finished doing the top floors the bottom ones are just as filthy as when they started. The air is polluted and I have every confidence that we have not counted the last 9/11 victims because the pulmonary diseases and cancer will take people out.

Every time another billion dollars is spent in Iraq, George Bush is pissing on New York. The federal government slashed funds for New York to pay for overtime for first responders (cops, fire fighters, paramedics). I listen to politicians who are allegedly tough on terror say that we simply cannot afford to pay to inspect more than 5% of the containers that come through our ports. The same people who pound podiums spewing venom about "Islamo-fascists" won't cough up the money to do what we can to secure the mass transit system that carries me and millions of others to work or to school everyday. Muslim fascists are a threat when compromised politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, want to toss Haliburton a sweetheart deal to rebuild an oil pipeline in Iraq, but not so much when it comes to doing the hard work of thwarting terrorist attacks.

I am not a fanatic who views 9/11 as a sacred cow that must be treated with trembling reverence. I found the hysterical mourning undignified and contributed to politicians using it to manipulate the public. Though fire fighters, cops, and paramedics do more for people in one day than I do in a year, I could not stand the robotic use of the work "hero." And I am someone who would  be categorized as part of the "blame America first" group because I think the country and administration were caught flatfooted and could not respond properly to a major catastrophe. I take little comfort in knowing that the government is just as unprepared as that day, just ask the former residents of New Orleans. But, I lived that day in up close and personal and I live with the aftermath everyday. It is so insulting to hear someone from South Carolina talk about how we need to follow Bush lest we invite more terrorist attacks. Yeah, I'm sending out cards to al-Qaeda for a cocktail party next week. I take the subway during rush hour, work and live in tall buildings, and use the bridges and tunnels. I am not a spectator in all of this unlike some hick on a farm or politician with Secret Service protection who has time to piss and moan about Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast. I refused to be accused of cutting and running because I won't be run out of my home or my city for anyone or anything.  I won't let the twins of terrorizing people, Bush and Bin Laden, to exploit my bad experience for their political aims.

I don't think I am special. Yeah, I had a bad experience, I got a little hurt, had the shit scared out of me, and I had to crash at my mom's house for 11 months (that was more traumatic than ducking falling chunks of building) but miraculously I did not lose any family or more than 5 friends. Anyway, millions of other people lived through that day whether on television or real life. Hundreds of thousands of enlisyed men and women were sent to war on the pretext of avenging what happened to New York. My life was interrupted but not ruined or ended. I am asserting my right and the right of everyone of us to enter the terrorism debate, reject the politics of Britney Spears (Kevin's baby mama boldly and intelligently told us that we should trust our president in everything he does), and to give corrupt incumbents the Bronx cheer and run their asses out of office.

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Post Script

A lot of people here have said how sorry they are for what happened to me that day. I want to say thanks for your concern and thanks for reminding me of something I left out.

I really was feeling sorry for myself for a couple of days. As I said, when I saw the people with the fliers I stopped all of that. I cannot imagine that level of desperation. The plaintive looks on their faces and the hopefulness was heartbreaking. My heart broke into a million pieces when a mother had pictures of her two missing children or when a kid had pictures of his/her mother and father. I took every flier that was handed to me because it was impossible to tell someone no, hell, I could not even look them in the eye.

When I hear Bush or whatever dummy of the day talk about the American spirit, I think of those people. How they managed to hang onto the hope that their loved one was THE one to make it out of the Towers and was just missing in the city or the hospital is a testiment to a spirit of hope. And none of them were elbowing one another out of the way or arguing about whose family member got out. They all hoped for one another, prayed with and for one another, and comforted each other when it was over. You see a fireman's funeral on television and it is moving. But to look into his family's eyes when they are still searching for him is a totally different experience. A right-winger (that wretched bitch Ann Coulter comes to mind) should have had an encounter with a child from the Bronx whose father was a janitor in the WTC. She asked me if I had seen her daddy and I felt like I'd been kicked in the chest. When the New York bashing free-for-all starts up my blood boils because I see those faces and I see those critics spitting in them.