It\u2019s the anniversary year for Great Society. In April of 2001, I set up Dirtyfreaks.com. I think there was the vague idea that it would be a porn site, but that somehow drifted into becoming a \u201cliterary\u201d community. Which, then, drifted into insane ranting behind the guise of \u201cNacho Sasha\u201d and, ten years later, I\u2019m still sort of spinning around in circles in some vast emotional desert.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also the tenth anniversary of 9\/11. Yes, I know, every motherfucker in the world has written an anniversary article on that topic. Simply typing this out now makes me almost crazy enough to go blow up another building somewhere just for the sake of a distraction.<\/p>\n
But, I\u2019ll go ahead with this article. Because I\u2019m an evil dog rapist. Though it\u2019s boring to reminisce about the meaning of 9\/11, and the changes that it ushered in for my city, my country, and my world. I think the thing to talk about is what it did not<\/em> change. The fact that people before and during 9\/11 were fucking waterhead assholes and, ten years later, they\u2019re still a horrible plague. My misanthropy runs so deep that things like earthquakes, and hurricanes, and flooding, and train crashes, and 9\/11 fill me with this little spark of hopefulness and excitement. A little voice in my head whispers urgently: Now! Now! The revolution starts now!<\/p>\n In my late 20\u2019s, it was the same voice that said I should be out there waving the flag and leading the revolution. Here in my late 30\u2019s, the voice has shifted to bitterly grouching about the cost of Dutch Cocoa Archway cookies. But, still, the excitement is there whenever something happens. It\u2019s not that I want to harm people, or for them to be harmed. (Well\u2026mostly.) It\u2019s just that I want the world to wake up.<\/p>\n I understand that the ultimate lesson of Fight Club<\/em> is that we should beware cults of personality, fascism, and groupthink\u2026 But doesn\u2019t that movie\u2019s finale sort of lift the spirits? The death of debt, and the banks that control us, hopefully leading to the rise of something more\u2026I don\u2019t know. Simplistic.<\/p>\n But, no matter how extreme the disaster, we\u2019ll always be the same fucking losers. Hell, what\u2019s a couple of towers and the death of a few thousand salary serfs in the bigger picture? I sometimes wonder if we\u2019re actually kind of over-reacting to 9\/11. Certainly, on the day of, my grandfather shrugged his shoulders. \u201cNo matter what, it can\u2019t be worse than Pearl Harbor.\u201d He said when we finally caught up with each other late that evening.<\/p>\n My grandmother, living just outside of DC at the time, had a doctor\u2019s appointment at 10:30am and, hell or high water, she intended to keep it. So my grandparents (who had labored for an hour to find something else on TV) left their house at 10am, as the first tower was collapsing, and drove to the doctor\u2019s office. They arrived at 10:20, where the waiting room was filled with a cluster of weeping patients, nurses, and doctors all mesmerized by the TV.<\/p>\n They were pretty much ignored until, after five minutes, they began to loudly complain and stomp their feet. It took ten minutes, but as the north tower collapsed, they forced the doctor to honor the appointment.<\/p>\n I think about that doctor\u2019s story. Where were you on 9\/11? I was in exam room one being cruelly mocked by two old-timers who kept telling me to get over myself.<\/p>\n My story? I was at work being cruelly mocked by a customer at the publishing house that so kindly employs me during the week to talk to fucking crazy customers. An author called at around 9:45. At that point, everything around me was lapsing into a slow, dreadful panic. CNN had been receiving and breathlessly reporting false attacks around the country. At 9:45, if you were listening to the radio, it sounded like there was a full fledged invasion going on. We were minutes away from being evacuated which, instead of an orderly fire alarm sort of thing, was taking the form of supervisors racing through the halls and offices screaming for us to get out of the building.<\/p>\n I was attempting to help the author, but hopelessly distracted. The call started to go pear-shaped, and she lapsed into yelling at me and insulting me. Finally, my co-worker hung up my phone and pulled me away to join in the everyone-for-themselves evacuation.<\/p>\n That afternoon, the author sent the following email to all of my bosses, and all of the top brass at my company:<\/p>\n From: XXXXXXXX Hi, Wonder if you can do me a favor? I tried to order some of the Thank you. Hope all is well. As for XXXXX……I hope tomorrow is a better day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019ll let that sink in for a moment. It still shocks me. If you email me, I\u2019ll tell you who the author is so you can boycott her.<\/p>\n These people are legion. My grandparents, solipsistic authors\u2026 People whose lives were not changed on 9\/11. They didn\u2019t even care. I read all of these blog posts, all the articles, all the sound bytes, and I think, fuck, what a day that was. But it didn\u2019t matter. It didn\u2019t matter at all. We\u2019re all still horribly, terrifyingly evil. The people it should have changed\u2026it didn\u2019t. They were busy writing nasty emails to my bosses, or hounding people to keep appointments, or complaining about a lack of service, or distressed that their shows had been pre-empted, or plotting retribution, or, like me, simply glad for the day off and in the grips of some form of sick schadenfreude.<\/p>\n Here at Greatsociety, two of the co-founders slowly dissolved into mania. Their lives only changed because, up till 9\/11, they were unexamined. The day after, they realized that they were small and empty. For a few months, I watched them slowly disengage from life, and then they imploded in early 2002, robbed me for everything I was worth, and ended up squatting in an abandoned building in Memphis.<\/p>\n That attitude is a mystery to me. I understand people like my grandparents and that author who complained about me. They\u2019re fucking nuts. It makes sense. I\u2019m an only child of a broken home. A latchkey kid from the age of 12 to18. My dad was a fucking criminal who vanished for 15 years and my mom spent her life drunk and in a blind rage and talking to birds. My family, for generations on both sides, are all so insane I sometimes wonder if they were all reincarnate souls from the worst of the Roman Republic\u2019s consuls.<\/p>\n I raised myself. I understand solipsism. The greatest tragedy in 60 years strikes America and the reaction is to howl because your Flying Nun<\/em> reruns were pre-empted? Yes. That makes sense to me.<\/p>\n But having an emotional breakdown over 9\/11 even though nobody you know was truly involved? That doesn\u2019t make sense to me. I watched these so-called friends spiral downward and realized that I was the only person they knew who was really affected by 9\/11, and that was simply because I was in the vicinity of the Pentagon. No harm done to these rubes. And yet they shakily bemoaned it as the end of the universe for months and months.<\/p>\n I asked them how they would feel if they were in New York, in the Pentagon, on a farm in Shanksville, or related to any of those people, or on the rescue teams, or working next door, or living a few blocks away.<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\nSent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 1:54 PM
\nTo: (all the top brass)
\nSubject: Re: book order<\/p>\n
\nnew editions of XXXXXXX from the order office and after a few too many mishaps, was told by \u201cXXXXX\u201d that it was not listed as something orderable. XXXXX did not seem inclined to do much more investigating hence this message. Also Borders here in Ann Arbor (its headquarters) does not have it on its shelves and school has begun with some parents eager to have the new version…….so I say HELP!!!!! I must say I enjoyed seeing it prominently displayed at one time and hope a few people saw fit to look inside and maybe buy a one or a two??<\/p>\n