september 11, 2001 |
yet another account of the world trade center attack |
We were hosting a roundtable discussion at 9:00 a.m. at our offices in midtown Manhattan. I had planned to be in at 8:30 a.m. but ended up arriving around 8:45 a.m. Adair, my boss, was in town from Atlanta for the roundtable; I checked in with her and some of the other attendees on the 35th floor. Everything seemed under control. I went down to the 34th Floor to get my desk situated and get ready for what was going to be a morning-long event. After leaving my office about five minutes later, I passed through the kitchen, where we have a TV. Some people were standing around watching it and I could see something had happened. I ignored it and went back up to the 35th floor, where someone said, "Did you see what happened? A plane hit the World Trade Center." I went into one of our conference roomsmany of our conference rooms overlooked the World Trade Centerand stood there with several other people. I could see smoke pouring out of one of the towers. Someone had binoculars and eventually I got to look through them. I could see a helicopter around and smoke billowing out. At that point, no one knew anything. I even asked someone, "Was it a commercial airliner?" thinking it was an accident, and they told me it was a single engine plane, probably a suicide bomber. Of course, it was a commercial airliner, but the TV was in the kitchen and we were just watching from the window. We were watching when the second plane hit but I didn't see the plane, and I'm not sure anyone else in the room with me did. I saw a huge fireball, and people were saying, "Oh my God!" A few speculated that it was a fuel tank from the first plane. At some point, we knew we had to cancel the roundtable. We didn't know yet what was going on, and I went back to my desk and called my friend Mark in Philadelphia. I went to the New York Times web site and saw just a quick headline about it with a red exclamation point--no story yet. Mark couldn't get the web site to load and thought it was a hoax. Someone said the Supreme Court had been bombed. I think they had just heard about the Pentagon at that point. I told Adair she needed to get Amtrak reservations, because she most assuredly would not be able to fly home as planned. I reserved sleeper cars on the train from Penn Station to Atlanta for the next day. At some point, we had to figure out what to do. People were already saying all ports in and out of the city were closed. Someone told us fighter planes were in the air. We were summoned to a conference room and told to stay put, because all tunnels, bridges, subways and trains were shut down and there was no way we could get anywhere. We agreed that it wouldn't make sense to all mill about on the streets, and were cautioned to make sure we had a plan before we left: once we left, we probably wouldn't be able to get back in. The receptionists were taking names of people who had places in Manhattan you could stay, and people who needed places. I put my name down as a person who had a place, provided I could get home to Brooklyn. In case I couldn't, Adair told me I could stay at her hotel. We were told we should try to be out by 3:00 p.m.--but not to rush--and that lunch had been ordered for us. At some point during all of this, at least one of the towers had crashed. I remember because a colleague mentioned that he knew some of the first firefighters to respond, and that they couldn't possibly have survived. About an hour later--probably shortly after 12:00 p.m.--someone came around and told us the city was evacuating high rises, so we had to leave soon. Since the subways weren't running yet, I went to Adair's hotel. We walked over and went to the bar, and I drank wine, and we talked. At some point, we ordered a bottle and just went up to her room. We watched TV for a while and she decided to work out in the hotel gym, to relieve some stress. I stayed in the room and ordered shrimp cocktail. I talked in the hall with some hotel staff, smoked one of their cigarettes and watched the reports on TV. I left Adair's hotel around 5:00 p.m. to take the subway home, as the trains were running. I hoped they'd been running long enough not to be insanely packed. I walked to the Times Square station and was able to get on an F train. The trains were running sporadically and were packed. The trip home was a nightmare, and took about two hours. At one point, we hit a stop in Manhattan and no one could get on, but this one guy kept insisting. He kept saying, "I'm late, I'm late!" Three or four men on the train were arguing with him, telling him not to get on. I was right at the door and was getting jostled while they argued. He squeezed on anyway and we left the station. I noticed that this guy had his hips pressed tightly against me, but not the rest of his body. It felt slightly strange, but the train was so packed, I wasn't ready to complain. About two stops after he'd gotten on, I finally said, "You're going to have to back up off me at the next stop." He kept saying something like, "Just 2 more stops, 2 more stops." When the train stopped, I turned slightly and saw that he was masturbating. I turned to one of the guys he'd argued with initially and said, "This guy is playing with himself over here." The guy said, "Do you want to switch?" and I said, "Yes." We switched places so that he was next to the masturbator. I'm not sure what happened next, but the guy disappeared. I couldn't believe that thousands of people had just been killed--we already knew it had to be thousands--and this guy couldn't wait until even the next day to molest women on the subway. |
