September 11
Image credit: Joe Daly
In 2001, I lived in a one-bedroom apartment on Chicago’s north side, with the living room window facing east. On the morning of September 11, I was playing guitar as the sun washed across the hardwood floor. My stereo boasted a five-CD changer and I was strumming along to some songs that I was scheduled to play downtown at noon. In the year running up to that day, a girl whom I had occasionally dated had recommended a hip, nondenominational church as a means of grounding my restless soul. I did find relief there, although my libertine lifestyle was utterly impervious to the spiritual forces at work. Nonetheless, I fell in with the church band, rising through the ranks as a go-to acoustic and rhythm guitarist and on September 11, I’d been tapped to accompany one of the singers at a noontime worship ceremony in the Loop.
The television was on — whichever morning news program I watched at the time — but I don’t suppose that I was paying any real attention to it until the image of one of New York City’s Twin Towers appeared, with smoke billowing out of a high floor.
What I remember in those fraught minutes has been blurred as much by the traumatic stress of that moment as by the passage of time. But I do recall sitting on my green futon couch, unable to pull away. And I remember my friend Steve calling from the west coast. Two hours behind me, he was waking up on a friend’s couch after a night out, still-oblivious to the breaking story.
I remember debating in my head, wondering if what I was about to say was really true, but I said it anyway: “We’re under attack.”
***
The second tower was hit and there was a report of another crash at the Pentagon. There’s no way we’re doing this noontime worship thing, I though. But nobody called and nobody was answering the phone at the church office, so I walked a couple of blocks over to see what was happening. The guy who coordinated the noon service was a tall, friendly dude named Scott. I really liked Scott — he’d always been welcoming to me and when I once mentioned about staying out late the night before, he grinned knowingly and said, “I used to be that guy, too.”
When I got to the church, I tracked down Scott and said something like, “We’re not doing the noon thing, right?” His reaction creeps me out to this day. Smiling blissfully, he asked, “Why not?” I pointed out the whole attack thing currently underway and he continued to smile and said something along the lines of “God’s got it” or some other pithy slogan so far-removed from the situation, and so wholly devoid of empathy or concern, that I turned around and walked away.
The Loop was evacuated within the hour.
***
I spent the rest of the day watching the news and furtively making calls to friends across the country. Reaching the east coast was hit or miss but I knew my family was OK — no reports of anything happening in Massachusetts. I watched the news nonstop that day. Other than what was broadcast on the screen, there was little clarity surrounding the events. There was, however, no shortage of speculation. I think we humans tend to loathe uncertainty more than we consciously realize. In those first few hours, the most imminent speculation was not “Who did this,” but “What’s next?”
Burnt out from the news and emotionally-frayed, I went for a run. As I type these words, I vividly recall stopping in Lincoln Park and looking up at the blue sky. O’Hare International Airport - one of the largest on Planet Earth - was only twenty or so miles north, but there was not a single airplane in the sky.
***
My girlfriend and I met up with my friend Pete and his girlfriend Molly at Butch McGuire’s that night. The bar was quiet and largely empty. Why I recall having chili I don’t know, but I did. I also remember Molly wanting to talk about herself. And I remember her being somewhat annoyed when the conversation kept circling around her and going back to that morning’s deadly attack. We didn’t know the death toll at the time but were very much aware that there were people jumping from the Towers. Anyway, Molly was awful.
***
That night, back in my apartment, my friend Joe called from New York. My classmate Neilie Heffernan, wife of my other classmate Mike, had been on one of the planes. And another friend, John Hayes, had been in one of the Towers. Neither of them survived. Neilie and Mike had given birth to their first daughter Riley only six months previous.
Joe then spun two or three tales of some of our other close friends who, for one bizarre reason after another, did not make it into work in the Towers that morning, their survival a chain of serendipitous miracles. My last memory of that day was dropping onto the couch, overcome with emotion.
***
On September 2, 2001, I took the subway up to Belmont Street Tattoo. My friend Christine had designed a killer Celtic tattoo for me that I was eager to get on my left arm. Instead, I approached tattooist Nick Colella — who weirdly had no customers at the time — and asked if he’d be up for putting some ink on my left shoulder: an American flag with an eagle on the front, above the slogan, “Live Free Or Die.”