THE WTC AND ME.
A short, true short story I wrote two months after 9/11/01. Never published.
NOTE: I am going to start, ocassionally, publishing some of my unpublished short stories on this Substack written 20+ years ago. I think a couple of them are good.
They were Monoliths. Unless you had ever stood right under them, you couldn’t conceive how big they were. How tall and wide they were. No photos ever captured this. They were AWE-some. They represented power. I’m sorry Chicago, but either one of them could have beaten the shit out of the Sears Tower. Those bony Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur? Please.
Me? I was the son of Appalachian Trail hillbillies who grew up in a small Southern New Jersey town where the high school wrestling coach was a pig farmer.
I first approached them in 1985, post-college. It was, what was then, the biggest interview of my life. The interview was with, what was then, Dean Witter in Tower 2.
I got out of the cab, wearing a cheap brown suit that was all over me like an even cheaper browner suit, and looked up, and up, and...up. And back-and-forth. It hurt to look at them. You could have described me as “visibly shaken.” I took a guess and strode into Tower 1.
I spent a few minutes walking in circles amongst hundreds of sharp people heading in a hundred different directions. I felt like a tiny piece of hay. Finally, I saw a black man in a grey uniform behind a desk.
“Dean Witter?”
“Tower 2.”
I exited Tower 1, feeling smaller. And poorer.
The position was “editor of internal newsletter”, paying “25k per annum.” The interview was with “Dave.”
The mild-looking, middle-aged man’s office within this immense tower was ridiculously tiny. With the door closed, we were nearly on top of each other. Dave’s voice was disturbingly soothing. After pleasant introductions, he very breezily told me he was going to give an oral grammar exam consisting of 20 questions. I stared into his close, open mouth as he calmly asked each question like he didn’t have a care in the world.
I didn’t get the job.
The following year, I was invited to the Windows On The World restaurant at the top of #1 for brunch by my girlfriend’s Father. Her family was quite well-to-do. The Father—well-to-do dentist. The Brother—well-to-do doctor. The Mother—well-to-do art professor. The Girlfriend—well-to-do…cheating nymphomaniac. All were there waiting for me. I had been dating her for about three months; this was to be my initial intensive indoctrination interview. It was time to explain what I did all day as a freelance writer/proofreader.
Being a hick, I didn’t realize you needed a jacket to dine at the Top of the World. So before entering the fastest elevator in the world, I was loaned the ugliest jacket in the world—an ill-fitting, restaurant-issue, dingy smelly blue blazer with torn lining and gold buttons missing from one sleeve. Not looking at all well-to-do, I quickly ascended 107 floors, a good many more floors than I’d ever ascended before. I blazed into the dining room in my pitiful jacket, non-matching blue polo shirt, wrinkled, bunchy pleated khakis and dull dork shoes and shuffled up to their table. I looked out and down at all of the rest of Manhattan for the first time. It looked perfect. I looked at them. They looked impeccable.
“Hi, I’m Mark.”, I humbly mumbled.
That same year, I made a career switch to advertising, where weakness in grammar was not at all a hindrance. While working at a god-awful ad agency in northern New Jersey, I was assigned to work on a shit-awful campaign for the World Trade Center—The Port Authority of NY/NJ was the agency’s client. The agency’s strategy was to make the WTC appear more “friendly”, not all business. Yes. The two Towers, your two new tall friends. The friendly Manhattan Transfer-ish doo-wop radio jingle (“The World Trade Center, More Of Everything That’s New York!”) was one of the worst pieces of music ever written, and the print ads featured cheesy color drawings of the Towers (one orange, the other yellow) that made them look like big doofy buildings from a goofy toon town. I’m sorry, it was just no way to treat monoliths. This agency desperately needed an injection of new creative blood. That was me.
A few months later, I got fired.
A couple of years later, I started a copywriter job at a small startup ad agency in Soho NYC. One Saturday, I ascended 110 stories: different Tower, different non-cheating girl. Within the enclosed observation deck atop #2, a jacket was not required. Not saddled with socioeconomic pressure, I was able to freely gape. There were 20 or so other people on the deck, but no matter. I was finally alone with The View on a clear cloudless day.
The biggest loudest dirtiest smelliest city in the world was now laid out at my feet as a cute little quiet pristine plastic diorama. No car horns. No scaffolding. No dog shit. No fucking tourists five-wide on the fucking sidewalk.
The biggest fucking seagull in the world just then landed on the ledge right in front of me…it was all white and had a shiny piece of fish or fish-like matter (this was New York harbor) hanging out of its beak. The sucker was less than two feet from me.
In 1998, I went to a Saturday night party near The Towers, a party Nick Nolte was supposedly going to attend. All the men were in the living room, and all the women were in the kitchen. No Nolte.
I left.
Walking back to the subway, The Towers were partially aglow. I had never looked at them up close, at night. Just, breathtaking. It was about a ten minute walk, during which I didn’t see another soul, no cars, not even a taxi. For me, the City had never been so quiet, so peaceful.
In 2001, one of our smaller clients was The Windows On The World restaurant. I, in fact, wrote the last print ad the restaurant would ever run.
On September 11th, 2001, I watched the 2nd plane hit the South Tower from the Hudson River waterfront. I almost puked. Then, I got on the train, and went to work in Soho. As an ad copywriter.
I just didn’t know what the Fuck else to do.