The Baltimore Boys

Speaking of Ruben (the friend I mentioned in this post), I thought I would re-post the story of how he and I met. It’s quite extraordinary, and it still has a little whiff of unreality to it, when I look back on it. I still kind of can’t believe that I did what I did – it was unprecedented, a huge risk (if you think about what COULD have happened) … and yet … it all made sense in those crazy days.

We are still friends. I can’t even explain how grateful I am for that, and how grateful I am for Ruben.

The first time I left New York City after September 11 was for a weekend in Baltimore at the end of September. I was going to visit 2 guys I had never met before in my life. But we had become friends in an online flirty kind of way, in the summer before September 11. I felt no fear, NONE, as I went to meet these strangers. I was aware of no danger. My friends thought I was insane. “What do you know about these guys? Who are they? What are their phone numbers? Call me every day while you’re down there…” Etc.

Well, suffice it to say – that they were 2 of the loveliest men I have ever met, and they treated me like a refugee from a war-torn country. Which, indeed, I was. At that time.

One of them, Ruben, is still a good friend of mine, and comments on this blog often (his moniker is Wutzizname). I will ALWAYS have a soft spot in my heart for these guys. I went down there on the train, and I was – to put it mildly – a mess. I didn’t want to leave New York. I was still not sleeping. The city had not recovered. By the end of September, we were into the Time of the Funerals. Every day there were funerals. The drones of bagpipes filled the air at all times – replacing the screams of sirens on September 11. I can’t explain it. I had not recovered – nothing was normal.

I almost didn’t go down to Baltimore, because I felt too much anxiety leaving my city. What if something else happened? I couldn’t not be there! If an explosion was going to happen, then dammit – I wanted to be exploded too. It’s MY city, Goddammit. I would look at the skyline every morning, and get this overwhelming sense of its vulnerability, its fragility … And somehow I felt like if I could just stay nearby, nothing would happen to it. Leaving felt precarious.

My 2 new online friends were voices of calm and reason. All of America was affected by what happened that day. But I was their friend from New York City, and they assured me that everything was going to be all right, and when I got down to Baltimore, they would show me around, they would take me out to dinner, they would take care of everything. No worries, no worries, no worries …

I am still amazed that these guys came into my life. I called them “my Baltimore Boys”.

Our encounters before September 11 (the two of them are best friends) were online chats, IM messages, and a couple phone conversations. Benign, flirty, whatever … On the morning of September 11, when I finally was able to check my email (since no phones worked, email became my primary contact with the outside world) – I saw that both of them had emailed me about 5 or 10 minutes after the first plane hit. Actually, everyone in my entire life who was near a computer emailed me in the first 5 or 10 minutes after the first plane hit. But their emails definitely struck me, because they were, in essence, strangers to me … but there they were, sending me concerned (and yet calm-sounding) emails to their new friend. I can’t explain how much that moved me. It didn’t move me so much that first day but in the days that followed … I became more and more attached to both of them. I would even say that I felt a bit clingy. Why them? I do not know. But there they were – stalwart email friends – sending me multiple supportive emails a day – “hang in there … we will get through this … how you holding up? … we’re all upset …” … and I just started clinging to them both in my heart.

When one of them invited me down for the weekend, I said Yes with no hesitation.

Everything felt very unreal.

On the day I was to leave, I had an extended anxiety attack. I was taking the Path to 33d Street and then walking over to Penn Station to take the train out of town. At every second, I thought I’d turn back. I felt I could not leave the city yet. The whole damn island of Manhattan felt like an illusion. While I was in Baltimore, the entire place could be liquidated. My home … my home … my family … my sister … my brother … Cashel … all of them were there … I could not be separated from them …

But I got off at 33rd Street and made my way to the stairs up to the street. My breath was always high up in my throat in those days. The station was packed with people. It was a Friday afternoon, your regular rush hour.

And suddenly – with no warning – NONE – everyone started to run. People were screaming. There was a mad RUSH for the stairs. I had no idea what had happened. What was happening? But I was part of that crowd – and the second the movement began, the crowd movement, I started to run too. Something was going to explode, something was in the subway station … There must be a REASON why everyone is running, right?? (By the way, this was not the only time that this happened to me in the month following September 11. It happened 4 or 5 times actually – a crowd response to some invisible panic button … Crazy days.)

People were pushing and shoving, frantically, to get out of the station up to the street. I had my bags for the weekend. I couldn’t catch my breath.

It was completely catching. The panic.

And I emerged onto the nightmare of the street – it’s a block away from the Empire State Building – you have to crane your neck way way back to see the spindle – and there had been some sort of bomb scare. Which is probably highly normal for the Empire State Building – but in those late September days of 2001 – nothing seemed more fragile, more courageous, more precious and easily destroyed – than the Empire State Building. I would stare at it from my kitchen window in Hoboken, the only building in Manhattan visible to me. At least now it was the only building I could see. I used to be able to see the twin towers, but now … there was just one building left. The Empire State Building looked ENORMOUS. A huge target.

The streets were blocked off around the Empire State Building. Cops and National Guardsmen were literally everywhere. I am not exaggerating. It felt like we were under siege. A war zone. As many military folks as civilians. The crowd (of which I was a part) was running this way – that way – panicked – trying to get away from the building, running towards the building – shouting at the cops, “WHAT’S GOING ON?” The cops were hollering at the crowd – “GET BACK. GET BACK.”

You have to remember the context of those days.

I started running across 34th Street, holding my suitcase. People were running, all around me. Some were running, as they were talking on their cells. The sound of sirens filled the air. As I ran, I kept looking back over my shoulder at the Empire State Building’s spindle … it looked so fragile you could snap it. I was WILLING it to still exist.

This all probably sounds really crazy. But there was such a crowd dynamic in New York in those days. At any moment, the crowds on the sidewalk were liable to start running. For no reason.

Oh, and randomly – in the middle of this crowd panic – something very very strange happened.

A woman grabbed onto my hand. I was literally running towards Penn Station. I was completely convinced that the Empire State Building was going to explode behind me … like in a movie. So a woman grabbed onto me. Stopped me. I looked at her with my crazy eyes.

And she said something so unbelievably incomprehensible to me – that I had to ask her to repeat it. She was speaking in English, do not get me wrong, but in that moment, what she said was so absurd, so out of place, that I could not, for the life of me, understand what she was saying.

Here is what she said:

“Do you have any idea where I could buy a Boggle game?”

I’m not kidding.

We’re in the middle of a Midtown-wide Bomb Scare, and she’s looking for Boggle.

It was only later that I was able to laugh about this. I did an imitation of the moment later for my friend Jen and we were crying with laughter. My insane running, looking over my shoulder, etc., and then this calm oblivious woman basically asking me to point her in the direction of Toys R Us.

I said, “Huh?”

She said, smiling, unaware somehow of the crowd running at her from the direction of Broadway, “Can you tell me where I might find a game of Boggle?”

I should have said, “Up your ass, lady. Why don’t you try there?”

But I pointed wildly uptown, and screamed, as I ran away from her, “THERE’S A TOYS R US ON THE CORNER OF 45TH AND BROADWAY – TRY THERE…”

Absurd.

Those days were so absurd.

Penn Station in those days was one of the most mournful places on earth. You walked down the huge corridor to get to the terminal, and the walls were, first of all, lined with National Guardsmen and women who all looked about 12 years old, holding massive rifles. Second of all, the walls were plastered with notes from all over the world. And commuters and passersby would stop to read the notes. People were always weeping in that corridor. I would weep in that corridor. I think I read every note, over those weeks. There were notes from entire classrooms of 2nd graders in Tulsa, there were notes from fire departments the world over … clumsy English spelling from a fire department in Germany … there were notes from individual people, “Hang in there…” “We love you” “We will not forget” – there were letters in every language imaginable. Some were written by little kids who obviously had just learned how to write. So their sentiments were blunt. “I am very sad about the dead people. My dad says it’s okay to cry though.” Stuff like that. It was a corridor of mourning. A corridor lined with the National Guard, and filled with crying people.

My God.

So the panic was still going on, as I entered Penn Station. I felt like I was making a getaway from a war zone, being air-lifted out of Nigeria or something. Everything dissolving into chaos behind me.

Now mind you: This was just an anxiety attack I was having. New York was still there when I got back. The Empire State Building was still there when I got back. But everything was messed up in my head, I couldn’t sleep – no one could – It felt like we were on the brink of utter destruction. It was only September 28.

I got on the train, my breathing high in my chest, and everything in me was saying: Don’t go. Don’t go. If the Empire State Building explodes, you will want to be here. You will want to be here for your city.

But … the train pulled away from the station … and I was off. I felt insane. Wild-eyed.

Boggle? What?

When we emerged into New Jersey, I could see the whole of the city spread out to my left, glimmering, and tragic. The gaping hole of lower Manhattan hurt me, like an actual wound. It doesn’t really anymore, but it did then. And I stared at that spindle of the Empire State Building, the tallest building, in the center of the island … teetering … It looked so … small. It looked like – wow, it would take absolutely nothing to get rid of that building! And I stared at it, craning my neck backwards, tears running down my face, until I couldn’t see it anymore.

I arrived in Baltimore to meet these 2 strange men, in this state of mind.

We had never met. We knew what we all looked like, pictures had been exchanged … but nothing else.

And these men were my heroes. They still are.

They came to get me at the station. I was nervous, and literally trembling. I could not play anything cool. If I had been going to visit them in July, it would have been a very different vibe. Ready for some flirty-flirty, yadda yadda … but now? I was a mess. There they were – tall and strong, walking towards me – and Ruben, dear Ruben, just held his arms open. I walked right into them, and he hugged me like he wanted to shield me from all harm. I have never felt so safe in my life.

They took care of me. They showed me the sights. They listened to me talk. They were sensitive. I couldn’t talk about anything else. And I needed to have the TV on at all times, in case something happened. They were fine with that. They introduced me to their friends as “our refugee”. They gave me (why?? I have no idea!! I was a stranger to them!!) 2 days away from the stench of death and the bomb scares. They were kind enough to take me in. I was, to put it mildly, NO FUN to be around. This was not a whoo-hoo kind of weekend. I was jumpy, and tearful, and needy, and a little bit insane. They expected nothing from me. They just wanted to take care of me, and give me some time away. They were thrilled to be able to do that for me.

Writing this down, I realize it doesn’t make all that much sense.

But I’ll alway be grateful to my Baltimore Boys for their kindness to me during that weekend. I will never ever forget it.

And one of them has remained a true friend. For which I am also very grateful.

They weren’t really meeting “the real Sheila” that weekend. Who I was that weekend is not who I am normally, obviously. I couldn’t stop shaking, all through our first dinner out – I sat at the Mexican restaurant, shivering, as though they had the AC on full blast. I kept saying, “God, would they turn the AC down?” The Baltimore Boys said that the AC wasn’t on at all, actually. But I couldn’t stop shivering. Then I said I wanted to go to a bar where they had a TV, because I had to make sure nothing had happened to the Empire State Building. They did whatever I wanted. “You need a TV, darlin’? Okay, then, we’ll take you to a TV.”

These men were miracles to me.

I remember lying on Ruben’s bed in his dark cave-like apartment, staring at his glowing blue lava lamp for about 30 minutes. Ruben left me alone to do that. Member that, Ruben? The lava was floating around, in its cool blue light, and it looked so peaceful, so deep … I lost myself in contemplating it. I thought about nothing. I worried about nothing.

When I returned to New York a day and a half later, I came back into Penn Station at about 9 o’clock at night. It was rainy and dark.

And the sadness of the city hit me like a wall. It wasn’t MY sadness, per se. I didn’t own any more sadness than anyone else. It was like there was a wall of grief around the city. And I was stepping back into that atmosphere. I am telling you: I could feel it the second I got off the train. The sadness wasn’t just in the air, or between the molecules … it WAS the air.