(Man, have we ever got our money’s worth out of this picture. Once again: my old lady on the phone on my roof circa 9-11)

Blognigger has a good thing on his site today about his 9-11. Here’s where we were on that day: On September 11th, the real one, Derrick woke up to one of the windiest farts I’ve ever had. I was brutally hungover after a late night of karaoke and had those kind of farts that warn of an imminent exploding beer shit. My girlfriend (now wife) had come storming into the apartment to tell us to turn on the news. I ran over to the couch where Derrick was sleeping, saw the first plane in the first tower and then, “Ppppsssssh” involuntarily let it out, right into his afro.
He pounded me on the leg so hard I had an African American Charlie Horse for a week. “Do you fucking mind!?” he asked. “My mom is in there.” Oh yeah, his mom works in the World Trade Center. Now we really had to pay attention but it was hard to hear the TV. There was construction going on in the apartment next to me but when I went over there to tell them to shut the fuck up the Russian illegals looked at me like I was insane. “You guys know what happened right?” I asked, “Yes, buildings fall down” they responded. I just shook my head and left. For them, this was about as important as any old plane crash. A few blocks away, on Avenue B, our buddy Trevor was on his roof and the Puerto Ricans next to him were yelling, “Yeah nigga! Bomb that shit!” Wow. We went up to my roof which was on Ludlow St. at the time and saw the second one hit the towers – live. Now we were all sure this wasn’t any old plane crash.
There was no way any of us were going to work that day so we did what everyone in the East Village and Lower East Side did. We went to bars. The whole time we tried to keep Derrick’s mind off the inevitable. His mom was definitely dead. Both towers had collapsed and she was in one of them. If she was alive why hadn’t she called? He kept bringing up the odds of her being alive and I kept lying and saying it was very possible.
Then, at around 2PM Derrick’s brother called him. His mom was fine. Apparently she had been forced to leave her office because someone was late and hadn’t prepared copies of her presentation. She was pissed and stormed out of the WTC to go to Kinko’s right as the first plane hit. Her purse was still on her desk. She saw her entire floor explode. She walked back to Jersey in shock. When Derrick found out his mother was alive we could finally stop bullshitting him and cheer.
After he left to be with his mom we went over to a friend’s and continued to watch TV there. The whole world must have watched TV for 36 hours straight. Then I had an idea. “Let’s get an 8 ball!” This seemed blasphemous at first but I explained myself. “Think about all the nights we spent doing lines and talking about stupid shit like how cool owls are. Well, now we actually have something to talk about!” Our guy was called and a full night of chatting ensued. By the morning we had the whole thing figured out and would never have to discuss it with anyone again. Until now.

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3. DERRICK GINO