From RPF:

From the editor: Ten Years

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Richard Pérez-Feria

VEGAS INC Coverage

It seems impossible to me that it has been ten years since that day. That day that has forever changed me as a person and, largely, us as a people.

The day terror came looking for us started out like any other day, only more magnificently so. Though I was still recovering from raucous birthday celebrations a week earlier, I woke up that Tuesday morning in my Gramercy Park apartment to a surreal blue sky. After off-and-on rain and overcast skies for days and days on end, that fateful morning in Manhattan was breathtaking for the sheer blueness of the sky. I mean, it was not-a-cloud-in-the-sky blue. As any longtime New York City resident will tell you, we don’t take our cloudless perfect days for granted. Not even a little bit.

Crossing Park Avenue South and 27th Street en route to the gym just before eight in the morning, I caught myself humming. Humming? Oh, yeah, I was in a very good mood. After my grueling session with my sadistic trainer, I noticed a few folks had gathered around the small television set perched above the gym’s juice bar. From a distant local news traffic helicopter shot, what appeared to be a small airplane had flown into the World Trade Center. The consensus around me was instant: The pilot must have had a heart attack. On my way to shower, I made an innocuous joke about the poor schmuck who’s worked his entire life for a corner office at the World Trade Center who suddenly finds a single-engine plane on his lap. Everyone laughed and I went to get dressed. Some 20 minutes later, the small crowd had tripled in size and it was now clear that it was, in fact, a commercial airliner that had flown directly into the iconic building. How could that be? The sky was perfect. Then, as I saw the second plane enter the other tower, I instantly understood we were at war. Though I literally couldn’t hear myself think over the ear piercing shrieks, I started running toward my office, a few blocks from the Empire State Building, a logical next target.

For those of us who were there that day, particularly in lower Manhattan, the images remain unimaginable: The dozens (hundreds?) of people we saw jump to their deaths from those burning buildings; the thousands upon thousands of people running as fast as they could away from the soot and smoke and debris that engulfed everything in its devastating wake; the constant din of police, fire and emergency vehicle sirens blasting perpetually as if on a loop. It was, in a word, madness. Sheer madness.

How crazy different the city smelled is forever engraved in my memory, too. After two decades in NYC, I know what I’m talking about. The post-attack Manhattan smell was pungent in its intensity and relentless in its reach. Most vividly though, the feeling I remember that endless, horrible day was that of being genuinely, unequivocally, unbelievably afraid. I longed to be with my mother because I was frightened to my core. The boogeyman had finally come looking for me and everyone I held dear. And I was scared.

On September 14, I went to my office that would remain closed for five more days to grab some files I needed before the weekend. At the time, I was editor in chief of a group of national magazines. Understandably, my office voice mail was full of messages from concerned friends who couldn’t reach me because cellphone use remained a hit-and-miss proposition.

The first voice mail I retrieved — time-stamped September 11, 10:16 a.m., was the following: “Hi, Richard, it’s (Los Angeles-based celebrity publicist). What a mess over there, right? Anyway, can you confirm (former supermodel) is locked down as your cover choice for the December issue? You said I’d have an answer by today. Hope to hear from you today. OK, then. Call me.” I sat in my empty office staring at my telephone in disbelief. Are you friggin’ kidding me? Not to paint everyone who didn’t experience what we experienced with the same brush—the guy was obviously a tool—but there was some truth to his disconnectedness I sensed when I traveled to San Francisco, Miami and Los Angeles in the weeks after the attacks. Everyone I spoke to in those cities told me the same exact thing in the exact same way: “It felt like I was watching a movie.” It didn’t feel like that to me. Not even a little bit.

Ten full years after the events that unfolded on September 11, 2001, I’m unquestionably a different person than I was on September 10, 2001. In an instant, I realized how precious life is, how much I really had to lose and how American global indifference is a potent political problem. I believe the flimsy silver lining in this otherwise colossal tragedy lies in waking all of us up to the realization that we live in a changing, dangerous, connected world. Forever more, as a nation, we can never believe that ignorance is bliss. It’s the opposite of bliss. It’s hell.

September 11, 2001 was hell, folks. Not a movie. Hell.

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