story10530.xml

story10530.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-04-09

I was at the gym, doing bench presses in the weight room. I had gotten off the treadmill about twenty minutes before ? the treadmills look out of the big glass front of the second floor of the gym, east, into the bright blue morning sky. Not much to watch while running there, beyond the cars going downtown, or people walking to work, or the planes taking off from Logan. You watch those planes climbing into the sky from just north of the gym, sometimes arcing to move out over the Atlantic, sometimes just continuing south. I don?t remember specifically watching the planes that morning, you take the sight so much for granted while running, and besides, I was too busy going over work in my head. It was the first day of the fall semester at the university where I was to teach, so I was reciting my first-class speech to myself in my head.

I was on my second set of flat bench presses when the guy who keeps the desk in the weight room came in. He was laughing, but not in a funny way. Shaking his head, unbelieving, the laugh a hollow sound, filling a void behind it. He said to one of the trainers, ?A plane just hit the World Trade Center in New York.? The trainer asked, ?What, a biplane?? but for some reason, I just knew it was bigger. It wasn?t a thought, just a feeling so horrified and urgent that I automatically dropped the bar back into place and raced downstairs. The weight room is on the second floor of the gym; going down the stairs, I think I jumped over all the steps, landing to landing, down to the lobby. In front of the locker rooms in the lobby is a big screen tv, and it was filled with the two towers, like smoke stacks. There were only three people on the couches; people were still getting towels, changing, going about their business. I sat down, my weight gloves still on, staring at the screen, shocked. They replayed the tape of the second plane hitting, over and over, cutting back to the burning towers. I can?t remember much of CNN?s live telecast, my memory is so full now of the reruns, the magazines, the photographs, the documentaries, all I?ve seen and heard since, the saturated sense of a week that was itself suspended from time.

I do remember witnessing the collapse of the first tower very clearly. My mind could not process what had happened, literally could not believe what my eyes had just taken in, to the degree that the data was not processed. There was a huge amount of smoke, the announcer said something about there being a sudden lot of smoke and we can?t see the tower, and I just waited for the reporter to tell me what that big plume of smoke and dust and no building meant. My mind took a very long time to catch up to the scene on the television, only when I heard the words did I begin to understand. The other thing I remember clearly was the moment the type news scrolling at the bottom of the screen beneath the images from New York began to spell out that ?A fire is reported at the Pentagon?? and I turned my face to look at the guy sitting next to me and he turned a gray face toward mine, and between us there flashed without words: the Pentagon? Washington? They're attacking the whole country? What the hell is going on? Seeing my horror reflected in another, suddenly, all references, the day, normal life fell away.

I got up off the couch; I went into the locker room, changed into street clothes and went to my brother?s office down the street. Everyone there was crowded in front of the tv also. My brother and I went into his private office. He was white with rage. ?They?re all saying the stupidest things, I can?t deal with it?? He meant the people in his office. Before moving to Boston the year before, my brother had lived in New York for years. He worked on Church Street, literally in the shadow of the towers. I asked him if he?d called our sister, whose husband worked in a building on Liberty Street that has since been torn down due to structural damage. But the phone lines were all jammed; he told me nothing was getting through anywhere.

It?s odd how we try to resist reality when it is suddenly completely divorced from our understanding of what is supposed to be. I went to my school, trying to - what? punily resist the horror from actually touching my life, from taking on a tangible effect, outside of the television? But classes were suspended, the city was clearing out. Only then did I go home. The skies, always echoing the trace of air travel coming out of Logan, not ten miles away, eerily silent. Usually I took the train through downtown Boston and up the red line; today I walked a half mile up Mass. Ave. to catch the bus that would cross the Charles to the west of the city and directly into Cambridge. A man at the bus stop kept saying to me that now the politicians will have their excuse to bomb other countries, how awful that will be. I bit my lower lip, hurt myself, to keep from hurting him, to keep from screaming at him to keep his f*****g politics to himself, have some bloody sense, what's wrong with you!? The bus took a very long time to come.

I got home, sat down in my living room to watch the tv. The shock was breaking. I started to cry. I don?t think I?ve really stopped.