"The Second Time" by David C Colvin

     Monday, September 10, 2001 TST (The Second Time) Buffalo, New York   1am

     I took a drag on my cigarette and expelled the smoke almost immediately.  I never inhale when I smoke.  I just pull the smoke in and let it fill my head then let it out slowly.  I glanced at my companion.  Alex Raman was short and bald, dressed in a tweed jacket over a black t-shirt with brown Dockers and black Oxfords.  He was a furtive little man, what some would call shifty, but I just viewed him as eccentric.  There was much discussion about his personal life and sexual proclivities, often told in hushed tones with a punch-line afterward.  Ostensibly, he was a respected member of the western New York journalistic community, begrudgingly given the title “The Ferret” by his contemporaries, not only for his appearance (his mousy eyes and gopher-like nose were his most prominent feature besides his glistening head), but also for his relentlessness in pursuing and rooting out the truth in a story.  Alex’s primary job was for the Buffalo News but he also moonlighted as an editor for Gannettex, an online journal of personal experiences that were, to say the least, unusual.  It was this electronic periodical that detailed the journey of an East Compton gangbanger on a holy crusade from his crib in the ghetto to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.  The young man’s journal on the website drew hundreds of readers from all over the world.  Gannettex found itself having to upgrade its equipment and broadband access just to keep up with the demand in readership.  After this story, the journal found itself dubbed the “Ultimate Online Alternative News Source” and was offered corporate sponsorship by a myriad of companies looking to cash in on the ezine’s success.  Gannettex stayed true to its desire to remain independent and courted endowments and grants from the public-service sector.  This worked out well and soon they were attracting real journalists and news media professionals.  Alex started working for them two years ago and I had been impressed by his prose and plain-and-simple approach to a myriad of odd yet compelling narratives. 

     I had made contact with Alex three weeks ago and finally enticed him into meeting with me at all-night Greek diner on Elmwood.  Now he sat across from me sipping a cup of coffee and fiddling with a miniature tape recorder, regarding me with cool eyes.  I smiled at him wordlessly and blew some smoke in his direction.  He twisted his mouth into a grimace.  We sat at an outdoor table, one that held a particular significance for me.  I had insisted on this table and waited till it opened up rather than take another one.  I stubbed my cigarette out and sipped my own coffee.  The outdoor tables were deserted this time on a Monday night.  It was cool, but not too cold outside.  I had worn a light button down shirt and khakis.  Alex finally became impatient with my silence and cleared his throat, began a sentence that I abruptly cut off.  “Yes, Alex, I do have a story for you.”  He smiled and pressed RECORD on his recorder.

     “Now, I’m going to need a little background on-“

     “Alex, like I said on the phone I am going to give you the whole story, you are not going to ask any questions until I am done.  Understood?”

     “Sure, David.  So go ahead.”  Alex smiled again and leaned back.  We knew we wouldn’t be interrupted.  I had told the waitress after she filled our coffee cups to not disturb us unless we signaled her.  I had given her a tip of twenty dollars to leave us alone.  She had readily agreed. 

     “Alex, what I am about to tell you is complicated.  It’s going to be difficult for me to explain what happened.  This is my story.  My explanation of the last part of my life.” I paused to see if I had Alex’s attention.  I did.  I leaned back and looked across the street and let my mind drift back twelve years.  “I was born in 1977, on May 24 at Ives Hospital in Syracuse.  You can confirm all this later.  I lived a normal life through those years.  I grew up in my mother’s home in a small town north of the city.  My parents had gotten divorced early in my childhood and though I lived with my mother, I saw my father regularly.  He did get remarried and had a long parade of foster children in and out of his home.  He loved each and every one of them like his very own.  I think I learned to love from my father.  Not unconditionally as he did, nor did I become as unforgiving as he did.

I had a happy childhood.  My parents had none of the afflictions of modern day dysfunctional life.  I always had enough to eat, clothes to wear, was never beaten, never undeservedly screamed at.  I entered high school a well adjusted and socially acceptable child.  I always had depression though.  Something I never told anyone.  I was depressed a lot, lonely and moody.  I learned to wear masks, to shield my emotions and thoughts and who I actually was from those around me.  Teachers, friends, relatives..no one saw what I was really like.  I was the perfect student, perfect friend, perfect child.  I had stumbling blocks sure, but for the most part, no one knew I grew up miserable, lonely, depressed, and angst-ridden.  Everyone saw what they wanted.  And what I gave them.  The first couple years of high school I did nothing whatsoever except classes and the occasional Dungeons and Dragons game.  In my junior year, I got involved with the drill team as an equipment handler and audio technician.  I gained a newfound freedom as I suddenly gained many friends, most female and my world kind of opened up.  I became more involved with the world around me.  I began to write about this time as well.  I began to seriously look at this as a career.  Writing had been the only companion I had to see me through the depression.  Now, suddenly, I had this new life and friends, and people who I think accepted me.  It meant a lot to me, but I still wasn’t happy.

     This is also about the time I began that great American high school quest: the search for a college.  I wrote essays, filled out applications, took my SATs and generally did what one was supposed to.  And finally one college came through: Canisius College right here in Buffalo.  A scholarship, some other financial aid and an acceptance into their liberal arts program set my future.  Alex, I’m not losing you am I?  This is the background you were asking for.  I am only going to take you up to January 25, 1995.  The last semester of my high school career, I was 18.  The future lay out ahead of me.  And I lived it.  Now, Alex, let six years pass.  I went to Canisius, earned a bachelors degree, met and fell in love with someone, she dumped me, and I ran off to England for a semester.  I began to work for a company right after I graduated in May 2000.  By April of 2001, they had laid me off.  Now, we must advance to September 24, 2001.  No Alex, goddamn it no interruptions.  I know what you’re going to say: ‘It’s only September 10 2001’.  I am talking about TFT, The First Time.  Let me continue and you’ll see.  September 24, 2001, TFT.  I am still unemployed.  And desperately seeking work.  This country was just getting over the national tragedy that had befallen it only two weeks before.  The buildings collapse, thousands dead, a nation coping with grief.  I lived in a small converted deli.  My home, as it was, had very little actual furniture.  My bed was a mattress on the floor.  I had only one chair.  But I did have a roof over my head so I really couldn’t complain..and Megan had said it was cute.  I am getting to her.  I am low on money and need a job, I’m feeling this sense of national angst the same as everyone else is.  The only thing I have really to my credit is Megan Briarson.  After my failed engagement to Sharon Roark in college, I had decided to harden my heart.  Never again was I going to let love into my life.  Yet in July, I did.  She came in the form of a beautiful, wonderful, intelligent Venus from Ohio.  She was made my dreams take flight.  She made my nights and days soar with possibility.  No longer was I afraid of love, in fact we discussed our life together, our children even had names..Ava for a girl and Anthony for a boy.”  My voice cracked at this and I took a deep breath to steele myself for continuing.

     “We loved one another so deeply.  I would have done anything for her.  It was during those terrible days in September before and after the tragedy that we spent our first moments actually in each others’ arms.  Megan and I met on an online diary posting website.  She had been keeping her online diary for some time, and I had just started mine.  In it, I recorded thoughts and feelings, some of my writing and general outlook on life.  Taking advice from a friend, Megan read my diary and began to make contact with me.  I ignored her at first then gradually we began speaking.  I was drawn to her like a moth to flame.  I felt like I had found my soulmate, the woman I was destined to be with.  And she was.  Everything I had ever wanted in a woman, she was.  And so much more.  She awed me everytime we spoke.  It was difficult at first carrying on a relationship in two different cities.  But we had declared our love for one another and were ready for the challenge.  It was rocky toward the end of August and she broke my heart by breaking up with me.  I fell into a drinking binge.  By this time, I knew I was an alcoholic who used booze to hide his pain and depression and anger at the world.  A couple weeks later, Megan and I came back together.  We talked openly and honestly about what went wrong the first time and decided we would try again.  It was a couple days after that she journeyed to see me from Canyon City, Ohio.  She arrived on September 5^th.  It was heaven.  We did so many things together.  We talked for many hours, saw a couple movies, made love, and just enjoyed being with one another.  This lasted for a week.  Then it happened.  September 11 2001…the day before she was supposed to go back.”  I looked at Alex and saw him raise an eyebrow but not utter a word.  I took a slow deep breath. 

     “That morning, a Tuesday morning, while Megan and I lay in bed….a commercial airliner departing from Logan International Airport in Boston bound for Los Angeles was hijacked by a group of middle eastern terrorists.  They seized control of the plane and killed the pilot.  They then proceeded to fly the plane into one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.”  I let the deathly silence stay there before looking at Alex and continuing.  “Another group seized control of a second plane and slammed that into the other tower.  Within the hour, both towers collapsed due to the enormous structural damage, turning the symbol of America’s financial power into a million tons of twisted steel and concrete.  Thousands died.  Still, a third plane was hijacked from New Jersey and flew to Washington where it was slammed into the Pentagon.  Luckily not as many were killed in that crash.  And finally, in Pittsburgh, a fourth plane took off with a final group of hijackers aboard, but when they attempted to seize control of the plane, met resistance at the hands of some heroic passengers and the jet was crashed into a field outside Pittsburgh.  All people on board died.”  I stopped and leaned forward.  “Alex, think of it, both towers of the World Trade Center collapsed in the middle of downtown New York City with thousands of people still in the buildings.  Terrorists violently took over three commercial, civilian planes loaded with innocent people and jet fuel and slammed them into those towers and the Pentagon, with a fourth plane intended for the Capitol, or the White House, or who knows what else.”  Alex nodded slowly.  How aggravating…he wouldn’t get it.  How could I expect him to?  It hadn’t happened yet..again.

     “When Megan and I heard from her brother in a frantic morning phone call, we were stunned.  Finally, after much phone tag back and forth we confirmed our families were ok.  The next day, rather than have Megan go back on Greyhound as originally planned, I drove her back to Ohio.  I stayed with her and her family for 4 days and returned that Saturday.  You can’t imagine this country at this time Alex.  The news was on twenty-four hours a day.  Everywhere you went, televisions and radios broadcast nothing but news from the disaster sites.  Those images of that plane slamming into the tower is one that I will never forget.  What?  Oh yes, Alex, the media got shots of the second plane hitting the second tower.  Every American asked himself how this could happen.  On our soil, in our time.  You couldn’t know the sheer terror of these attacks.

     Life moved on though.  The crashes stayed preeminent in the American consciousness but life had to continue.  And it did.  Until September 25, 2001.  That was the night it happened.  It was a dark, rainy night out..about five o’clock in the evening.  I had just eaten dinner and I laid down to watch some television.  I fell asleep.  I didn’t dream, at least I don’t remember dreaming.  I remember waking up.  I woke up not in my bed in Buffalo….I woke up in my childhood bed in Syracuse.  I had gone to sleep on September 25, 2001 and woken up January 25, 1995.”