The reason I was drunk was that I'd been up till 5 AM drinking because I'd just gotten fired. I wasn't working in the Towers--that would have been too weird. And I wasn't drinking alone. We had a party. I'd known for a long time they were probably going to fire me because I was barely showing up anymore, and I kept saying we'd have a party when they finally fired me. Me and my friends, I mean. So I came in that Monday morning and they fired me, and by suppertime I'd already been to the gym, gone to see a movie, changed the sheets on my bed, and been to the liquor store and bought three twelve-packs and eight bottles of vodka.
People started showing up around 8 and I remember we had music on incredibly loud and there were women I didn't know, because I told people to bring women, and my friends are amazing, even though almost everybody had to work on Tuesday. I got drunk so fast. I was drunk maybe by 9 PM and I stayed drunk until Tuesday afternoon. At 5 AM there were just three of us left, me the only one still drunk, there was silly string all over the apartment, and a hundred Solo cups, and I was so happy because I had such great friends. I went to bed happy as it was just starting to begin to get light outside.
I guess I woke up at about 9 because that's what time it would have been. I only know my phone had been ringing for five minutes because that's what Jess told me later.
"Ricky, are you okay?"
"I was until you woke me up!"
"Are you still drunk? Are you okay?"
"Yes, why?"
She tried to tell me but she didn't make any sense, and then she told me to go up on the roof. I went up on the roof and saw the smoke in the west, and it looked just like a nature show I saw about a forest fire once, and I guess that's why I just knew there was a forest fire. In downtown Manhattan. Until Jess finally got through to me.
"Ricky, I'm freaking out. Nobody knows what's going on. They think maybe all of New York is going to be bombed. Jackie said people are trying to get out on the bridges and they can't, everyone is trapped in the city."
I couldn't focus myself to save my life. Everything was funny, like amusing funny, even though I knew in the back of my mind it was deadly serious. I heard myself talking more than I actively talked. I heard my voice coming out and hoped I didn't sound too stupid. "It's all right, Jess. Just stay calm. You're not in any immediate danger. Right?" My head was floating about five feet above my body all day as I talked to Jess, and Jackie, and Brian, and Rachel, who said that one of her cousins worked in the Towers and wasn't answering. She was freaking out, she was crying. Everyone wanted to know if I could see anything from my place. I spent all day out in the sun on the roof. Somehow I had to be there for all these people and as the day went on I began to understand that there was no way to do it, there was no way to make anything okay, and I was completely and totally inadequate and I never should have gotten drunk the night before. And I felt like shit about that for a long time.
Rachel moved out of the city a couple years ago because she still couldn't sleep. Brian is in Afghanistan. And I'm fine, I still live here, that whole day is now like a tape of a cartoon to me, barely real. It's funny I felt so bad so long about something that was really just a big blessing.
Note: Googled "I sure was glad I was drunk when it happened," went off this picture.
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