My 9/11

I was born 9/11/1971, so September 11th 2001 was my thirtieth birthday. Thirty is somewhat of a milestone, and I can remember being a wee lad of eighteen thinking to myself "Man, if I’m ever thirty, the world is going to be a fucked up place."

Sure enough, it was.

On September 10th, around 6 PM, I was out for a nice ride my on my mountain bike in the late summer afternoon. At the time, I was in the midst of breaking up with a girlfriend I had at the time. She seemed to be a nice enough girl -- I was just bored. Fellas, if I can ever give you one piece of practical advice in these columns, let it be this: When you are done with a girl, just be done with her. There is no such thing as "letting her down easy" or "it’s not you; it’s me" bullshit – just break things off like the stone cold pimp you are. Women are like parking spaces, as soon as you pull out, someone else is trying to pull in – whether you want to believe it or not, you are not the last dick on earth. Stringing girls along only causes them to go psycho.

Anyhoo, I was in the midst of ignoring the above advice while my actions with a particularly loony bitch with a speed habit were making my life a living hell. In the previous weeks this girl had overdosed on xanax, gotten in a hit-and-run, and tried to stab herself in my apartment one time, but, luckily I suppose, the resulting scuffle found us both pinned under a flipped upside-down refrigerator and a stone gargoyle knocked her unconscious.

I’ve put up with some loony bitches in the past, but this one took the cake.

That day my cell phone just kept ringing over and over, some fifty-something times. It just so happened that I was biking close to her house. In the past, I’d had luck calming her down if I just talked to her face-to-face, and, at least, it would keep my fucking phone from ringing. So I answered the call and told her I would come over for a minute.

I go inside and tell her everything is going to be alright… blah, blah, blah, yawn, yawn, yawn, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit… and it seems to work. She starts calming down, so I inform her that I had to go because I was meeting some friends to go out for the night. At this, she becomes unglued, starts screaming, and throwing plates at me. I’m like, "fuck this shit" and I get on my bike and start to ride away. It’s about 9 PM and the sun is just going down. I ride up the street a short distance and I can sense headlights coming up from behind me. I turn my head around and don’t even have time to react…

THE BITCH RAN ME OVER WITH HER CAR!

Rather than winding up under the car, fortunately, when the car hit me it knocked the bike out from underneath me. I crashed off the windshield (spider webbing it in the process), and wound up on the ground behind the car. So what does the bitch do next?

SHE SLAMS IT IN REVERSE AND TRIES TO BACK OVER ME!

I manage to just barely roll out of the way of certain death as she threw it in reverse. Rather than face peril in the streets, I run into the backyard of one of the houses on the street and start high-tailing it from backyard to backyard. I was several miles from my house and the midnight hour was drawing near. Here I was at the predawn of my thirties – bleeding, mangled, and hiding in random people’s backyards while almost getting eaten by guard dogs, when I realized that my thirties would not be much different from my twenties.

So I arrive back at my apartment shortly after midnight. I was just going to bandage the scrapes, clean up, go out, get drunk, and find some pussy. Fuck that psycho bitch! I open the door, go to the top of the stairs, and what do I see? The same loony bitch that just tried to turn me into a street pancake is sitting in front of my door coloring in a coloring book! Now how fucked up is that? I grab my keys, try to go in my place without even saying a word, and lock her out. As soon as the door is cracked, she slips through and pulls out a pocketknife. Not knowing if the knife was intended for me or her, I immediately try and wrestle it from her hand. While pulling it away, the knife slices deep into the skin between my first finger and my thumb, and now my thumb is dangling from a piece of skin and this loony bitch is still in my apartment.

So, of course, things are not just going to end there. As soon as that shit happens Ms. Bates runs to the back of my apartment to my room, lays there in my bed, and refuses to leave.

"Ok, this has gone way too fucking far – I'll call the cops to end this shit. I used to feel sorry for you but I don’t anymore."

Knowing that I’m on probation, she retorts with, "Go ahead. Call the cops. Before they come, I will beat myself up and tell them that you did it."

That fucking cunt…

So I spend the next five hours suppressing the urge to go on a domestic violence rampage the likes of which would make Ike Turner proud, trying to reason with this psychopath and get her the fuck out of my room. Finally, after hours of tense negotiations, I convince here to leave around 5 AM. She gets in her car and starts driving it around the parking lot like she was at a demolition derby. Not wanting to attract any more attention from my neighbors than I already had, I take her keys from her and offer to drive her home.

We get to her house where almost twelve hours before this ordeal had begun.

"Baby, you are going to stay here with me tonight, right?"

"Yeah, sure but first I gotta pee." So I go in the bathroom, open the window, crawl out and hightail it to my friend Mike’s place. Its now 6 AM of 9/11, the sun is just coming up, I’m knocking at his door, and he answers.

"Dude, you gotta let me crash on your couch for a couple hours, I’ve had a really fucked up night."

"Yeah, sure man."

So, I lay down exhausted and I’m asleep for less than three hours when I hear…

"HOLY FUCKIN’ SHIT DUDE – THEY JUST FLEW A PLANE INTO THE TWIN TOWERS!!"

I open my eyes and can see on TV – the attacks had begun. Like a lot of people, 9/11 was one of the most fucked up days of my life – I had been run over, stabbed, held hostage in my own home, and our country was now changed forever. Maybe I was right when I was 18 -- I was now thirty and the world was definitely a fucked up place.

That was my 9/11.

Peace out,