La Polizia

Me, Sister J., The Police, and Fenway Park. Tomorrow night. Can'tfuckingwait.

Happy Halloweens!

Who the hell decided to make Halloweens happen on a Tuesday night? Last year it was on a weekend and H. and I attended a fun but utterly bizarre costume party/burlesque show at a bar in Williamsburg. I went dressed as Napoleon and she went as some sexy, leatherbound catwoman/sadist. I am trying very hard not to remember how good she looked in her costume.

Since I am working this evening rather than celebrating one of my favorite events of the season, here is a short list of my favorite things about Halloweens:

1. Little kids in costumes. They look so adorable and this is by far my favorite part of Halloween. Even when I was younger, after I got home from my own trick or treating escapades, I used to love to answer the door with the candy so I could see the kids in their costumes and pay suitable tribute. Hopefully I'll get home early enough tonight to see a few.

2. The modern trend of women in slutty costumes. Sorry to put this one so close to the one about innocent children, but I'm a stickler for accuracy and this ranks as a solid number two in my book. Halloween now gives even the most chaste female an excuse to dress like a tramp for a night and show off her hard-earned assets from the gym. Trampy Little Bo Peep, Dirty Catholic School Girl, Naughty Nurse, Slutty French Maid -- may Allah bless all of you! Seriously, I wish we could work this into Valentine's Day and hell, why not Christmas? Okay, New Year's.

3. Dressing up in costume. I enjoy dressing up too. In past years I have gone as Clyde, from Bonnie and Clyde (Sister J. was Bonnie); Spiderman; a U.S. soldier; a mummy; a pirate; a skeleton; an evil monk (I grew a goattee the week before -- yeah, it only takes me a few days (cough) -- and painted my face red) and the aforementioned Napoleon. It's fun to be someone else for awhile. One year my mother tried to cajole me into dressing up as a woman. I can't remember if I went along with it or not, I'll have to ask her. Maybe I suppressed it.

4. Candy. Need I say more? As a kid I remember literally GORGING myself to the point of sickness on Kit Kats, Milky Ways, Snickers, and Watchamacallits after a night out on Halloween. Sister J. and I would compete to see who could eat the most. Have you ever eaten so much candy that you wanted to throw up? That was us every single year. If I did that now, it would take me at least six months to lose my candy gut.

5. Scaring the poop out of myself with creepy movies. I'm not a huge fan of the scary movie, but Halloween is the perfect time to indulge in a few. Some of the best ones in my humble opinion are the Hellraiser movies, The Shining, The Ring, and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which creeped me out for days after I saw it. I also thought The Blair Witch Project was pretty good. I got lost in the woods behind my parents' house once when I was little, so it really hit home.

Oh and on television there is some Celebrity Paranormal show on Fox or some other channel that is a little scary too. The premise is that they take 4 or 5 "celebrities" to a supposedly haunted place, like an empty insane asylum or sanitorium to spend the night exploring and looking for ghosts. They wear these silly helmet cams that stick out two feet and bounce so it looks like the wearer is scared and shaking even when they're just walking normally. I go back and forth between being creeped out by the paranormal shit these people are supposedly seeing and laughing my ass off at seeing celebrities cry and run away scared because the Ghost of Nurse Betty, who hung herself in the hallway (or was she MURDERED??!!) 40 years ago wants them the fuck OUT of there! Good stuff.

Next year I will make sure I celebrate it properly, but for this year:

HAPPY HALLOWEENS EVERYBODY! BE CAREFUL OUT THERE TONIGHT, OR YOU MIGHT NOT MAKE IT HOME ALIVE! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Sister J. In The Hizzy

Last weekend, Sister J. came to visit from Massachusetts, and she, Sister T., and I had a little sibling reunion here in the Big City. Sister J. has three kids at home, all under the age of five, so she doesn't make it down here too often. In fact, it had been over a year since her last visit, so I wanted to show her a nice night out New York-style.

Historically, going out on the town with Sister J. has been fraught with peril for me. It's a bit like walking a tightrope. Carrying a bag of watermelons. Over a flaming volcano. While wearing army boots.

Let me explain. Sister J. is attractive, flirty, provocative, a bit brazen, and will say almost anything to anyone, whether it's ill-advised or not. She freely chats up men, women, busboys, waitresses, policemen, construction workers, you name it. She likes to speak her mind, and she keeps it reals. Sometimes a little too reals for my taste. In fact, on occasion, her antics require emergency evasive action.

One example of some innocuous fun with Sister J. happened the last time she came to New York. We went to a nice restaurant in Midtown to celebrate Sister T.'s 30th birthday. At the end of our dinner, the waitress brought out a piece of cake (or some other tasty treat -- I can't remember) with a candle on it for T. to blow out. We all started singing "Happy Birthday," along with a few waitresses, and several friendly patrons who were sitting near us.

Seated at the table right behind Sister J., who was several months pregnant with child number three, was Federico Castelluccio, the actor who played "Furio" on the Sopranos. Furio had come in to the restaurant twenty minutes earlier to meet some friends who were having dinner. Sister J. noticed with great dismay that Furio was immersed in conversation and not clapping or singing "Happy Birthday" with us. She turned around, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, quite loudly, "Hey, why aren't you singing?!" Furio, who was understandably surprised at this bold intrusion from my sister, smiled good-naturedly and helped us finish the song for Sister T. Upon leaving the restaurant, Furio even congratulated Sister J. on her impending arrival. A nice guy that Furio.

Sister J. can be fun this way -- she knows how to work a crowd.

Unfortunately, her antics are not always so well-received. There have been other instances where things have taken a decidedly more ominous turn, to the point of threatening my health. One night many many years ago, it was my birthday, and Sister J. and I drove into Boston to celebrate with a little barhopping with my friend P., who lived in Southie.

After a couple of stops, we ended up at a restaurant/college bar/dance club called "The Kells," in Allston. While P. and I were having a beer near the bar, Sister J. wandered off by herself to check out the dance floor. After about 15 or 20 minutes, she hadn't returned, so I got up to look for her. (After a lifetime of knowing Sister J., my J.-dar has now developed to the point of virtual clairvoyance. I can now sense trouble several minutes before it happens, but I am always powerless to stop it. Kind of like Christopher Walken in the first half of "The Dead Zone." That night, my J.-dar was shooting off fireworks.)

I walked into the adjoining room, which was a dance area, and saw her on the other side of the club talking to a musclebound, blockheaded Neanderthal. He was 6'4", 230 pounds, and looked like a football player. In college, we labeled this species of male a "Fatneck." The Fatneck is commonly found in the populous cities of the East Coast, and you will often spot him chasing tail in college bars, working out in local gyms (Fatnecks are the ones who grunt loudly when lifting, so that everyone in the gym can hear how strong they think they are), and in quiet back rooms injecting steroids into their ass.

"Another winner," I thought to myself. My J.-dar was telling me that their conversation was getting a little too animated, so I casually walked over just to make sure that everything was kosher. Of course, it wasn't. Just as I got within earshot, I saw her walk away from Neanderthal at a very fast clip. Then, over the loud, thumping 90s music, I heard him call her a very nasty four-letter word, which begins with a "C" and ends with a "T." I really don't like this word at all, and when I heard Neanderthal direct it at my sister, I got a little pissed.

(Cue in Black Mamba fight music from "Kill Bill")

I walked over to where Neanderthal was standing, looked up (higher than I really wanted to), and with some stretching, managed to raise my left arm around his homo habilian fatneck, as if we were lifelong friends. In his right ear, I shouted over the music, "You know, you shouldn't use words like that when you talk to women. You should really try to be a gentleman."

Years later, I still cringe at the utter absurdity of my pathetic, nerdy attempt to reason with this knuckle-dragger. I must have been drunk off my ass, or just plain stupid.

It's fair to say that Neanderthal was none too pleased upon hearing this condescending advice coming from the uppity little fellow in the pansy-yellow linen shirt, who was about half his size. I surmise that this is why he immediately grabbed me by the neck with both of his hands, which were as wide as baseball mitts, and, with all the might his steroid-infused body could muster, shoved me backwards several feet, shouting "I was TRYING to be a gentleman, asshole!"

I don't remember if I went down -- it's entirely possible. I do remember looking at my right hand, and there, like a shimmering, magical weapon you discover in a dragonslayer video game just when you need it, I saw that I was still holding my pint glass, though it was now empty of beer. I gripped the glass hard with my fingers and felt its girthy heft and weight in my hand. This was a solid piece of work. Surely, it could do some damage.

Time slowed down, and there was a three-second span where my mind went to war against itself, as I seriously contemplated taking the pint glass and smashing it as hard as I could against Neanderthal's unibrow. I remember the bloodlust I felt as my Id took hold of the driver's wheel in my head, my adrenaline kicked in, and I anticipated how fucking great it was going to feel to completely let go of myself, not worry about the consequences for once, and teach this stupid moron a badly-needed life lesson.

But then, all of a sudden, my Superego snapped awake. He doesn't like fights, and when he saw Id holding the steering wheel and jumping up and down on the driver's seat like a rabid Mr. Hyde, he yanked the wheel away from him.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, you stupid, primitive ass? I'm in charge here, not you. I got this idiot through childhood, grade school, high school, and college without serious incident, and I'm working on law school. I've kept him out of trouble so far, and it has not been fucking easy. You are NOT going to screw it all up tonight. Now go back into your goddamn playroom until I say you can come out!"

Id, who's not the brightest of mental beings and never speaks, just "does," complied with a whimper. As the door closed on Id's playroom, the potential consequences of splitting Neanderthal's head open in a bloody explosion of glass, skin, and bone flashed through my mind like sharp, silvery flickers from an overactive strobe light.

"You'll probably get arrested for assault and battery, you know," Superego taunted. "Then you'll have a criminal record. And that will probably mean that you'll get kicked out of law school. Oh, and if you happen to blind him, I hope you manage to locate All The Money In The World because you're going to need it to defend yourself in the 10-year long civil suit that this fuckhead will surely bring."

"Not worth it," declared Superego, with his customary finality. "And that's if you hit him clean and take him down on the first shot. If you miss, even just a little bit, IT'S ON, my sorry friend. And he's got two equally-sized cavemen nearby to help him out, as if he needs any assistance against you, pipsqueak. And who has YOUR back? P.? He's still in the next room, the idiot, sipping his beer in his khakis and loafers. By the time he finds out about this, you'll be on a stretcher and well on your way to the hospital."

Superego is a smarmy, know-it-all bastard, but he makes a lot of sense, and he's usually right. Yet, when I heard Id bouncing around the walls of the playroom like a nutty pinball, desperately trying to get the door open, I almost let him out again. I felt sorry for him, because in my head, he hardly ever wins. This is sad and quite boring. Id's not very bright, but damn, he knows how to PAR-TAY.

Just as I was declaring Superego the winner (again), Sister J. magically appeared back on the scene. She had witnessed what had happened and was seeing red. (I've seen that look many times -- it's a little scary.) Apparently, HER Id was firmly in control of her situation, and none too worried about the consequences. She ran directly towards Neanderthal like an angry, crazed, Spanish bull, armed with a half-empty glass of something in her right hand. I thought for a second that she was going to club him in the face with HER glass, which would have been a disaster. But she stopped right in front of Neanderthal, screamed something loud and unintelligible, and threw the rest of her drink in his face. This all happened in about three seconds.

Then, in came the bouncers. Like a bunch of rodeo clowns, they broke up this ridiculous scene before it got any worse. One bouncer, who was about as big as Neanderthal, took him to a corner of the club and began lecturing him like a small child. It looked to me like they knew each other. The other bouncer gave Sister J. and I the bum's rush back to the other room, where good buddy, ol' pal P. was still sitting at the table, calmly nursing his stupid beer, as if he were having afternoon tea in the middle of an English cricket match.

"I almost got my ass kicked in there -- where the hell were you?"

"What? I thought you were just going in there to get your sister."

"Oh yeah, as if it's that easy. It's never that simple with her. I almost got into a fight."

Soon Sister J. sat down and started laughing as she told us what she had said to Neanderthal to make him use the "C" word. Apparently, he and his buddies had come on a bit too strong with Sister J., and she wasn't remotely interested. When they didn't take "no" for an answer, she went with Plan B, and told Neanderthal precisely why he didn't measure up to her standards. That's about the time that I entered from stage left, like a clueless Mr. Magoo.

As my sister was regaling us with these informative details, Neanderthal suddenly appeared at our table. The good chap wanted to apologize for his uncivilized behavior. In a Sylvester Stallone-like monotone, he proceeded to grunt a few words of regret in our direction, clearly stretching the limits of his sub-par vocabulary. I accepted his apology, with the following caveat: "You shouldn't always assume that people aren't going to escalate things because of how big you are. This could have ended a lot differently tonight."

"Yeah," he said. It became clear to me that he was too stupid to understand what I was saying, and that I was the idiot for continuing to try to reason with this guy. He finally turned around and left our table, no doubt proud of himself for having acted like a "mature adult" by coming over to apologize.

When he left, P. started laughing. "That guy was fucking HUGE. He would have mopped up the floor with you."

"Well lucky for me, you had my back, so I had nothing to worry about, did I? Asshole."

All in all, a lovely birthday with Sister J., and another fun story for the annals.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Last Saturday night, with the assistance of friend K., who hooked us up with a reservation, Sister J., myself, Sister T. and her Boyfriend A. found ourselves at Buddha Bar in the Meatpacking District for dinner. Because I have an innate aversion to self-absorbed, arrogant, vapid, and self-important poseurs, I don't frequent the Meatpacking District too often. I also can't stand the completely arbitrary and utterly idiotic door policies that are in place at many of the bars and clubs over there. And no, it's not because I've never gotten in to those places (I have), though they certainly don't cater to single guys traveling in groups larger than one. I just refuse to play the silly game of faux "exclusivity" that they try to create in order to generate a fake "buzz" among the masses. In a city this big, with so many cool places to go, it seems silly to subject myself to a bouncer's judgmental b.s. and an interminable 2-hour wait that may not even lead to entry. In 6-18 months, the same place that everyone is so desperate to get into will be "out," and begging anyone to come in. Give me a nice lounge, pub, or unpretentious Billyburg bar any day of the week.

Surprisingly, Buddha Bar was a marked exception to the above. We had no trouble getting in, though an early reservation certainly helped. There was a long line outside the door when we left hours later. Everyone from the hostess to our waitress was incredibly nice, even when we were a little late. The decor inside was very dark, plush, and sultry, with lots of dark wood and walls that were painted a rich red, which created an intense feeling of depth. Sitting at the back of the dining room and facing everyone, was an enormous, black Buddha. He took up almost the entire wall by himself and welcomed everyone with a smile. Opposite the Buddha, a DJ played some funky music in a little glass box at the other end of the dining room. Very cool.

The food at Buddha Bar was decent, but for me, the hit of the night was the Buddha Lemonade, which had vodka, guava, peach, and a bunch of other sweet stuff in it. The picture below, of myself and Sister J., was taken after I had "experienced" approximately three Buddha Lemonades, each of which was stronger than the last. As you can see, I quite enjoyed them.


After dinner, we made our way to the bar and kept on keeping on. Sister T. was quite happy herself, the direct result of two or three whiskey sours -- her weapon of choice. Every 30 seconds or so, she conveyed to Boyfriend A. how much she loved him, with a pleasant, glassy-eyed enthusiasm. Before long, she and Boyfriend A. departed to greener pastures, and I turned my full attention to the two women that Sister J. opportunistically had engaged in conversation. Both of them were visiting from Los Angeles, and we spent the rest of the night talking about New York, L.A., and their respective love lives, which were as dissatisfying as my own.

The older of the two was about 5'10", thin, with blue eyes, and short, blondish hair. She told us that she was 48, though she looked much younger. About 30 minutes into the conversation, she confided that she has been married for 25-plus years, has no kids, and hasn't had sex with her husband in the last ten years. By that time I was on my fifth Buddha Lemonade and well on the road to Buzzville. I made her repeat what she said because I thought I had heard her wrong. Nope.

That just didn't seem possible. No sex with your husband for ten years? Not even by accident? Conspicuously, she didn't say that she hadn't had ANY sex in ten years, just not with her husband.

Perked up by yet another happy story of marital bliss, I turned to her younger friend to find out her situation. She was very attractive (and became even more so around my sixth Buddha Lemonade). She was about 5'6", with dark, shoulder-length hair, and clear blue eyes. She looked like a cross between Tiffani Amber Thiessen and Julianne Moore. We talked for awhile, and eventually got on the subject of things that we can't stand that people do (coincidentally, one of my favorite subjects), which led to this clever exchange:

HER: "I can't stand it when I have to repeat myself. I don't mind saying things once or even twice, but I don't like it when people don't listen, and I have to keep repeating what I said."

ME: "What?"

HER: "I said that I don't like it when I have to repeat myself."

ME: "What?"

Oh what a card I am! It's amazing that I'm still single, isn't it ladies?

After more fun banter with our new friends, the older of whom invited me to her house in L.A. (for goodness knows what), Sister J. and I left Buddha Bar for home around 2:00 a.m. Amazingly, we escaped the evening without incident, though not before Sister J. surreptitiously plugged my cell phone number into Older Woman's cell phone. Nice. Thanks so much.

If only Sister J. lived here. I have discovered that she's no longer just a pain-in-the-ass troublemaker. She's the perfect wingman. Though it appears she needs a little target practice.

Five Years Later

On September 11, 2001, the first thing I heard was the discordant sound of my bedroom telephone ringing. Three separate calls, four rings each, twelve in total. I ignored them completely. I was still asleep (or trying to be) and didn't feel like waking up. How prophetic.

The fourth time the phone rang, I finally picked it up with a "What the fuck -- hello?!" It was T., my sister.

"Go put your television on."

"What? Why?"

"Just go put it on. A plane just hit the World Trade Center."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Just go put your t.v. on!!"

Incredulous and still half asleep, I got out of bed and walked bleary-eyed to the living room of my small, Upper West Side apartment, phone in hand, and snapped on the remote. Sure enough, on Channel 4, they were showing replays of the second plane flying into the South Tower, followed by an enormous explosion.

"Holy. Shit."

"See? I told you. They think it might have been pilot error."

"No fucking way this is pilot error. It's a clear day -- look at it. The sun is shining! This was intentional. This has to be terrorism. Jesus."
Then the reporters said that that this was the SECOND plane that had flown into one of the towers. Another plane had hit the North Tower just a few minutes earlier. I got off the phone with T., and for the next half hour watched news reports of the horror happening downtown, three miles from my apartment. Like millions of other New Yorkers, I could not believe what I was seeing. Again and again, I kept watching the second plane shoot through the air like a poisonous missile and hit the South Tower. From one angle, you could almost feel how fast the plane was going when it hit. Then, an angry, explosive, fire bubble. Over and over. My stomach sank. I wondered with morbid horror at the sad fate of the people who were sitting in their offices when the planes hit. People just like me. Going to work and sitting at their desks to begin their day.

I could not believe that someone could do this intentionally. Then, live shots of the buildings burning like two overwhelmed chimneys. The smoke was pouring out of the two sharp, slashes in each of the towers. People with ghostly faces waved desperately to the circling helicopters from broken, jagged windows, hoping someone would come to rescue them. No help would ever come. I later learned that some people had tried to go up to the roof, rather than down the stairwell. A fatal decision. The emergency doors to the roof were locked. Others could not escape because the floors below them were on fire, burning off the jet fuel from the two planes, which were fully loaded for trips to California. The smoke from the towers began to turn from a smoky gray to a charcoal black, foreshadowing worse events that were yet to come. I tried to imagine what it was like in those buildings. What those poor people were going through. People were jumping out of the windows. How unimaginably bad must it be in there for people to be making that choice? My mind couldn't fathom it.

I thought of the people on the planes. What did they experience before the planes were taken over? What did they feel as they saw New York, not Midwestern fields, below them? What were their final thoughts as their planes did something unthinkable, flew directly into two of the tallest buildings in the world? A member of my college class was on Flight 11 from Boston -- the first plane that hit the North Tower. Attending a college memorial service in New York weeks later, I remembered her pretty face, and the cold, winter morning many years ago -- a lifetime ago -- that she was kind enough to open the door to her locked dormitory floor for me, so that I could complete my newspaper delivery. Given my grungy, unshowered condition and the two-day stubble on my face, this was no small act of courage. That winter day in 1988 was my only direct, fleeting contact with her. Thirteen years later, she was gone, a victim of cruel fate. She left behind a husband and a baby girl. Five years later, he has remarried and her baby is now a little girl, who is growing up.

Suddenly, a picture of the Pentagon appeared on the television screen. It was on fire. That's when your friendly neighborhood blogger got very nervous. You know the shit is truly hitting the fan when the Pentagon -- the fucking Pentagon! -- is on fire. I could not believe that the only building in the entire country that I thought was impregnable was burning as if it were a pile of old tires in a junkyard. There were no anti-aircraft batteries around that thing? Are we this fucking vulnerable? Exactly how bad is this day going to get? How many rogue planes are flying around in the sky right now? What the fuck are they going to hit next? How is this happening? Jesus H.

I didn't feel like sitting around all day watching television. I wanted to be around people, to try and get some semblance of the routine. I decided to go to work (a nonsensical decision in retrospect). I quickly showered, dressed, and made my way outside, to the B train on Central Park West. I looked up and winced at the irony of the sun's optimistic rays shining in the brilliant blue sky. The perfect weather added to the surreality of the day. "How can this be happening on a beautiful day like this?" I wondered to myself. I still remember one of the songs I listened to on my CD player (not iPod -- thanks K.) as I made my way to work: "Die Hard The Hunter" by Def Leppard. It seemed to fit my angry, adrenalized mood.

I don't know why I thought the subways would be running, but they weren't. I walked down Central Park West, to Central Park South, then all the way down Central Park South towards my office on the East Side. New Yorkers were walking even faster than usual (if that is possible). Everyone had a tense, shellshocked look on their face. Some people were sitting in their cars listening to radio reports, and watching television screens in store windows, hoping to get an explanation, some kind of clue as to what exactly was happening and what was going to be done about it. People were desperate for news.

At Sixth Avenue, I stopped. From Sixth Avenue, you could normally see the Twin Towers all the way downtown, sticking into the sky, like two massive, supersized Legos. Except on this day, when I looked downtown, I didn't see them. All I saw were two empty plumes of smoke. "I guess all the smoke from the fire is obscuring them right now," I thought to myself.

I made it across town and to my office in about 35 minutes. "What the heck are you doing here," my secretary J. asked me when I got to my desk. The entire hallway was empty of lawyers except myself and one or two others.

"I came to work -- this is happening downtown, not up here."

"You're crazy, no one is coming in today. Did you hear that the towers came down?"

"You mean they were hit by planes -- yeah, I know."

"No, they collapsed. They fell down. They're gone."

"What???!! Those motherfuckers! I hope we kill every one of the assholes that did this."

On the night of September 11th, an acrid, smoky, bitter mixture of burned steel, benzene, dust, and who-knows-what-else drifted uptown from Ground Zero. It soon enveloped the entire city. No matter where you were, you could smell it. You could almost taste it. For everyone in New York, this was a little taste of hell, and it served to remind us all that thousands of people had just died a horrific death only a stone's throw away.

Five years later, it's hard to describe what it was like to be in New York on that day and in the days that followed. To define the shock, sadness, and disbelief that I felt for weeks afterwards. On the subway, the fear and paranoia were palpable. You just didn't know if something else was going to happen. If there was going to be a second wave of attacks. If you were going to make it to work. Every single passenger looked deflated, tired, exhausted, and emotionally wasted. "Is that box a bomb? Is that a suicide bomber in that heavy coat? He's smiling funny. I don't like it."

Over time, my paranoia got so irrational that it bordered on the absurd. Is that Pakistani cabbie a member of Al Qaeda? Why doesn't he have an American flag sticker on his cab -- is that a subtle protest? Did Al Qaeda plant suicide bombers in New York to use later? Is something else planned? Are they just waiting to attack? At my lowest point, I am embarrassed to admit that I even wondered if an Arab-looking waiter at my favorite diner was going to poison my food. When that happened, I thought I was going crazy. It was utterly ridiculous, but I did feel these things at the time. I had terrible dreams. In one of the recurring ones, I kept dreaming about a single propeller plane flying over New York City and unloading a nuclear bomb. It was very vivid. I would see it sillouetted against the blue sky, seemingly innocent, like a seaplane. Then its bay doors would open, and out would come a silvery, glittering bomb, like in one of those old World War II movies. Slowly I would watch it fall, fall, fall down, a shiny silver dart, until just before it hit the ground. That's when I would wake up.

These are memories that I am more than happy to put on the shelf. I don't enjoy revisiting that day very much, and I think that is how most people who live in New York feel. I didn't see "United 93." I didn't see "World Trade Center." I have zero interest. I even avoid the retrospective documentaries -- I watched them when they first came out. Wallowed in them. No need to see them again.

In addition to the grief I felt for the loss of life and destruction on 9/11, I was greatly saddened by what the attacks did to New York City itself. For a long time, there was very little happiness here. People didn't go out as much. It seemed disrespectful. How do you enjoy a nice dinner or drinks when you know that a few miles away, they are searching for people's remains? The driver safety cones -- I mean tourists -- stayed away too. For once, I wanted them here. We were beat up and felt victimized, and that is just not a normal position for a New Yorker to be in. The unbridled, carefree joy that I once felt riding the subway and just walking around the City disappeared. After 9/11, it felt to me as if a huge dark cloud had floated over New York and the sun would never shine again. Even when the sun WAS shining, it didn't truly feel sunny. It was very sad, and I wondered if the City would ever be the same again.

As terrible as 9/11 was, five years later, I am happy to report that New York has bounced back and is as vibrant and strong as it ever was. Slowly, we began to focus on the stories of heroism that took place on 9/11 instead of the attacks themselves. The firefighters and police who died trying to save people. The survivors who miraculously escaped certain death in unconventional, serendipitous ways. The restaurants and stores who gave away food, water, and other necessities to people who needed it. The help and good wishes that came from outside the city, both in the U.S. and around the world. New Yorkers who lined up to give blood that sadly, was never needed. And others who volunteered in myriad ways around the city. The good souls who sifted meticulously through the enormous field of debris at Ground Zero for weeks and months in an effort to find remains and artifacts for the families of the deceased. Spontaneously-organized memorial services at Strawberry Fields in Central Park and Union Square, where people expressed their grief openly and honestly. The way strangers randomly connected and bonded. New York took pride in surviving, in rebounding, and in giving an upturned middle finger salute to Osama and his 19 dead accomplices.

Through the passage of time, New York has rebounded from the grief-stricken depths of that day. While the possibility of more terrorism is ever-present (and simply an unfortunate matter of time, in my view), there is a sense of normalcy here again. In fact, you will be happy to know that people are back to swearing at each other in public and cutting each other off in traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular. Now, that's more like it!

There will be other opportunities to discuss the costly, domino-like mistakes that our government has made since 9/11. How we squandered the world's good will from that day on an expensive misadventure in Iraq. Indeed, the fact that Osama "Been Forgotten" is blowing out five candles today to celebrate the anniversary of an event that he and his colleagues consider to be a great "victory," says it all. The Bush Administration's masturbatory backslapping about the fact that we haven't been attacked on U.S. soil since 9/11 is completely illusory and should not make anyone feel very safe. (Factoid: there was a gap of almost 9 years between the two attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001. History suggests that terrorists work very slowly and on their own timetable).

But that's for later. Today, the focus should be on remembering those who died, celebrating their lives, and honoring their memory by holding our leaders accountable for their decisions -- past, present, and future. And by making a personal promise to ourselves to learn as much as possible about Islam, Al Qaeda, and American foreign policy in the Middle East, so that we can defeat this enemy, develop a more sensible interaction with the Arab world, and try to prevent this from happening again. Those who died on September 11th deserve no less.

Beginning

After much procrastination, I am finally engaging in the ego exercise of starting my own blog. My hope is that this will provide me with a creative outlet that has been sorely lacking in my life for far too long. I deliberately chose this day, May 28, 2006, to start this communication. Fourteen years ago, on this day, my childhood friend A. was killed in a motorcycle accident.

From the age of four, A. and I, whose birthdays were two weeks apart, grew up together in a small New Hampshire town. As a child, A. was a bit of a tomboy, so our friendship worked quite well. Using our overactive imaginations, we role-played games derived from the omnipresent cop shows of the 1970s. Our favorite game by far was "Starsky & Hutch," and we did Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul proud in the plot lines that we created. Since I had black hair and A. had blonde hair, the division of characters was easy. Our Big Wheels served as our Ford Torinos, and we had an ample array of toy guns to choose from, thanks to the liberal gun policy of my parents. (A.'s parents frowned upon toy guns, mine did not. Ergo, we played at my house.) In the pre-cell phone age, we were forced to rely upon handmade "walkie-talkies" that we created out of small pieces of wood. Using black magic markers, we drew mouth and ear pieces on our wooden handhelds and pretended to convey "emergency" information to each other on them. They proved utterly useless as communication devices, but since we always used them within earshot of each other, it didn't matter.

My sister J., who was prone to getting into a bit of trouble in her own right, played the pimp informant Huggy Bear with great aplomb. As on the show, we would shake down J. and get her to divulge information about the whereabouts of A.'s sister JE., who, because she was the youngest, always played the unwitting victim of some nefarious crime. Oh, the times we had!

Another favorite game of ours was spying on neighbors. I sometimes marvel at how that little game has evolved in my adult psyche, but more about that another time.

Without exception, A. learned to do everything before I did, which made me question my manhood at much too young an age. First, she learned to tie her shoes before me, and I would be embarrassed when mine invariably came undone and she had to help me tie them. At a time when I was still doing spin-outs on my Big Wheel, A. was flying down our street on a 10-speed bicycle, at a lightning speed that seemed incomprehensible to me. In a remarkable exhibition of bravery, A. would hang upside down from the top rung of her jungle gym while I looked up in awe from the ground below. The humiliation would continue in the wintertime when A. would recklessly jump from her parents' 12 foot high porch into the white cottony New England snow below. Notwithstanding her urging, I never had the huevos to try it too.

As with everything else, A. left our small town long before me, when she decided to attend a prestigious private high school in Maine. Soon thereafter, A.'s parents moved out of New England, and years would pass before I heard from her again.

In 1991, a year after I graduated from college, I was floundering with indecisiveness about what to do with my life. I had applied and gotten into law school, but was ambivalent about taking this "road more traveled," which seemed to conflict with other values and goals I had at the time. I was mired in a depressive, existential crisis, living with my parents, and working two part time jobs, covering high school sports for a local newspaper and stocking shelves in a supermarket. It was a low, confusing time for me.

Out of the blue, I heard from A., who was living in Los Angeles and contemplating a career making movies. After several long phone conversations, we resumed our friendship in earnest. I decided to visit A. in LA and see what California was like. I drove cross-country with a college friend and his then-girlfriend, now wife, and moved in with another college friend who was living in Long Beach.

After settling into my new apartment, I visited A., who was working at Condomania on Melrose Avenue. Seeing her for the first time after so many years was surreal. She was the same girl, only older and more mature. In a bittersweet way that only lifelong friends can understand, we reminisced about our childhood, our parents, our siblings, and our respective world travels. A. still had the same stubborn, independent streak about her that she had possessed as a young girl. She also had the same sense of adventure and daring. In 1991, I had never even smoked a cigarette. By contrast, A. had "experimented" with alternative substances a great deal, in her neverending quest to try anything once. So, I was not surprised when she showed me the motorcycle that she rode to work every day. A. suggested that I buy one too and learn to ride so that I could get around the city. As the song goes, "Nobody Walks In LA."

For some reason, this idea made sense to me at the time, and, following A.'s lead, I bought a motorcycle from a classified ad in LOOT magazine. M., a co-worker from my new job at Banana Republic, taught me to ride the bike one afternoon in an empty alley behind my apartment. "Okay - I'm going to teach you to kill yourself," M. joked. Stupidly, I hadn't even bought a helmet yet and didn't have one on as M. taught me the basics of starting, shifting, stopping, and turning. I should say here that the feeling of riding a motorcycle without a helmet, with the wind in your face and the power of the engine below you, driving you forward, is one of the most liberating experiences I have ever felt. I think that it is this feeling of complete freedom and refusal to be constrained by physical fear and life's boundaries that makes riding so incredible and so addictive to those who ride.

After one or two lessons, I bought a helmet and ventured onto the streets of Long Beach with my new, very large, very heavy bike. To say that I was shaky on the motorcycle, which was WAY too big for a new, inexperienced rider like myself, is a severe understatement. The first time I took the bike out on the street, I was practically hyperventilating in my helmet. I heard my quick, sharp breaths hitting the plastic faceplate as I fought to keep the motorcycle upright. In what bordered on an out-of-body experience, as I rode, I could see my amateur hands in front of me, moving the handlebars back and forth with unconfident, shaky jerks as I struggled to maintain my precarious balance on the bike. I soon realized that I was literally putting my life in my hands. As sweat beads rolled down my face like reluctant raindrops, I enviously glanced at the drivers and passengers next to me. How safe and secure they looked in their steel fortresses, the bastards! When I finally arrived at my destination, I felt like a prisoner of war who miraculously had survived a game of Russian Roulette.

I rode the bike exactly 3 times, and it still amazes me that I didn't get myself killed.

One morning, about two weeks after I had started riding, I walked to my parking spot and found the bike lying on its side, like a wounded animal. I leaned over, grabbed the handlebars with my hands, and pulled hard, using all of my weight to lift the massive hunk of metal to its feet. After finally getting it upright, I discovered that the right mirror and turnlight were smashed to bits. I looked down where the bike had been and saw a disorganized mosaic of triangular, yellow plastic mixed with sharp, reflective daggers lying in the drain gutter next to the sidewalk.

I realized that I would not be able to ride again until I got the light and mirror fixed, and I cursed my bad luck. "Somebody somewhere does not want me riding this thing," I thought to myself. The face of my deceased grandfather suddenly flashed in my mind. I thought of how difficult it had been for me to balance the bike when riding, how afraid I was in traffic, and how little training I had received before taking the bike onto the street (if you can describe M.'s half hour of stoner riding instructions "training"). It was obvious to me that I was in way over my head. I decided then and there that my riding days were over, and I was going to sell the bike. I placed an ad in LOOT and, a few weeks later, sold the bike for far less than I paid for it. I didn't care. I was happy to be rid of the albatross and felt as if I had dodged a tornado.

The reality of having to support yourself has a way of disposing of self-indulgent existential concerns after awhile. I ultimately decided to take the "road more traveled" and go to law school. I moved back east in April 1992 and awaited school to begin in August. A few weeks after I had moved back home, my mother told me that A. had called to see how I was doing and that I should return her call. "I'll call her back later," I thought to myself. My mother reminded me again a few days later. It was the middle of May.

I never spoke to A. again. While I somehow avoided ending my life in a motorcycle accident, A. did not. She died fourteen years ago today.

Even though A. has left this life, I have felt her presence quite often since her death. A voice in my head - her voice - reminds me that there is much in life to be felt, seen, and explored, and there is no time to waste. It is in this spirit that I pursue my mind's ambition by conveying my thoughts in this space.