Munich eunuch.
It's been three weeks since I started procrastinating.
I wanted to write something about finding a corpse in a ravine and thinking that it was inspiration, but no. No. Nothing seems to get done around here when I try to write you a smut post. Six fucking weeks and I'm not even close to being done. And yes, this disappearing thing will stop eventually. For now you people can live with my WTC story.
¦¦¦
Once upon a time before I was Indie King, I was a firefighter. Working for the FDNY is almost like becoming a priest, something larger than yourself, something that is larger than life stays with you forever. That is to say that I have never really believed in the omnipotence that is God, but when you drag a smoldering child out of a collapsing building it fucks you up in ways that you can't even begin to imagine.
I was sleeping at my house deep in the 'urbs of Brooklyn, soaking up the slow bourgeois pace of life when it happened. I was in town doing press, probably telling reporters to fuck off, but I had no plans that Tuesday. I was brewing my morning cigarette as I turned on the tv. There was a very large explosion à la Independence Day, my cigarette fell into my lap and burned my thigh. Holy fucking shit. Why in hell was there footage of the World Trade Center exploding in giant balls of jet-fueled flame on the news?
I sat on my couch, panic stricken, gaping at the television. I was terrorized okay! Not much else happened that day. Like most people I stayed glued to the tv all day and I didn't sleep that night. I watched as tears streaked down the ash-caked faces former colleagues, as throngs of dazed people marched across Brooklyn bridge, as families sobbed over missing loved ones.
And then it was early morning. I was somewhat desensitized after watching the towers collapse on a continuous loop for roughly 16 hours. I may have also been a little drunk. I now realize that I always seem to be in some peculiar position or another when it comes to things that are of a gauche nature. It's true: former FDNY, people dying, former FDNY, people dying; so I did something about it. I sped over to my former fire-station and volunteered to pick through the rubble for survivors. We drove the firetruck over, it felt odd to be sitting in the front of a speeding vehicle that wasn't my own.
Have you ever smelled carnage? Have you ever smelled death? Have you ever picked a charred human limb out of a pile of knotted steel? I have.
I waded through the cloud of ash, it felt like I was walking through a cigarette as I sucked the black air through my white mask. I trudged through the jungle of debris, sidestepping around pools of fire as the holocaust swallowed me. There was an eerie silence in ground zero, it was like no-man's-land but with people; it was like being in an old black and while film, before the age of sound.
With a disaster on that large of a scale it's hard to know where to start. Once you get down on your knees and start digging, you find that it really isn't all that hard to find people; the real challenge is to find the living ones.
I worked for a week and during that time I leaned more about life than I could have ever imagined. Do you know how I soldier can shoot people aimlessly day after day during a war? After you've acquired a nose for death and an eye for all things macabre it's really not so bad. I was there early enough to hear the screams of burning victims, to smell their cooking flesh. It was fucking terrible.
I wanted to write something about finding a corpse in a ravine and thinking that it was inspiration, but no. No. Nothing seems to get done around here when I try to write you a smut post. Six fucking weeks and I'm not even close to being done. And yes, this disappearing thing will stop eventually. For now you people can live with my WTC story.
¦¦¦
Once upon a time before I was Indie King, I was a firefighter. Working for the FDNY is almost like becoming a priest, something larger than yourself, something that is larger than life stays with you forever. That is to say that I have never really believed in the omnipotence that is God, but when you drag a smoldering child out of a collapsing building it fucks you up in ways that you can't even begin to imagine.
I was sleeping at my house deep in the 'urbs of Brooklyn, soaking up the slow bourgeois pace of life when it happened. I was in town doing press, probably telling reporters to fuck off, but I had no plans that Tuesday. I was brewing my morning cigarette as I turned on the tv. There was a very large explosion à la Independence Day, my cigarette fell into my lap and burned my thigh. Holy fucking shit. Why in hell was there footage of the World Trade Center exploding in giant balls of jet-fueled flame on the news?
I sat on my couch, panic stricken, gaping at the television. I was terrorized okay! Not much else happened that day. Like most people I stayed glued to the tv all day and I didn't sleep that night. I watched as tears streaked down the ash-caked faces former colleagues, as throngs of dazed people marched across Brooklyn bridge, as families sobbed over missing loved ones.
And then it was early morning. I was somewhat desensitized after watching the towers collapse on a continuous loop for roughly 16 hours. I may have also been a little drunk. I now realize that I always seem to be in some peculiar position or another when it comes to things that are of a gauche nature. It's true: former FDNY, people dying, former FDNY, people dying; so I did something about it. I sped over to my former fire-station and volunteered to pick through the rubble for survivors. We drove the firetruck over, it felt odd to be sitting in the front of a speeding vehicle that wasn't my own.
Have you ever smelled carnage? Have you ever smelled death? Have you ever picked a charred human limb out of a pile of knotted steel? I have.
I waded through the cloud of ash, it felt like I was walking through a cigarette as I sucked the black air through my white mask. I trudged through the jungle of debris, sidestepping around pools of fire as the holocaust swallowed me. There was an eerie silence in ground zero, it was like no-man's-land but with people; it was like being in an old black and while film, before the age of sound.
With a disaster on that large of a scale it's hard to know where to start. Once you get down on your knees and start digging, you find that it really isn't all that hard to find people; the real challenge is to find the living ones.
I worked for a week and during that time I leaned more about life than I could have ever imagined. Do you know how I soldier can shoot people aimlessly day after day during a war? After you've acquired a nose for death and an eye for all things macabre it's really not so bad. I was there early enough to hear the screams of burning victims, to smell their cooking flesh. It was fucking terrible.