I woke up to a cell phone call from my mom, asking if I was okay. I was in my dorm room, at North Central University in downtown Minneapolis, MN. My mom frantically wanted to make sure I was all right, because I was in the ‘credit capital of the world’, and the nation had been attacked. Was I okay? Minneapolis could be next. I needed to get out of the city.
[To her credit, the entire plot of Fight Club (1999) was destroying the city where ‘credit’ lived.]
I wasn’t even totally awake, and didn’t know what was going on, but my mom was concerned. I called my best friend, Tim, but he didn’t know what was going on, either. I got up, dressed, and… hopped a bus to my friends’, Don and Diana’s, apartment in Uptown. They weren’t there, but their live-in boyfriend, Shawn, was. (For reference, Shawn, Don and Diana were in their 20s and I was a cool 18, having graduated early and been bullied in to going to college. It’s a long story..)
I did NOT realize at the time that Shawn was the third wheel to their polygamous relationship. I had a horrible crush on Shawn and thought he was just staying in their apartment for awhile. I watched tennis for this guy. Anyway.
I remember coming over and sitting on the couch in Don and Diana DeWolfe’s apartment in Uptown Minneapolis to watch the news while the towers fell. There was lots of coverage, but what I remember was how Shawn laid his head in my lap so spontaneously while he watched the news. He laid there. With his head on my lap. He chose that place for his head. We watched the Twin Towers burn, and fall, and the coverage of every moment. For /hours/. I was thinking, the whole time, “This is the best moment of my life.”
He just kept his beautiful, sandy blonde head in my lap, hour after hour, watching and occasionally making comments, twisting around and hugging my leg. I watched the carnage and relished it because Shawn was fucking hugging my thigh for an entire afternoon.
Eventually, Don and Diane came home, and I was relegated to nothing, again, but I have a weirdly positive memory of the afternoon/evening of 9/11. I am in no way trying to undermine the gravitas of the event… Just sharing my experience.
So, now you have my unwanted perspective.