On 9/11, I was 19 years old, a sophomore, living in Buenger Hall dorm at Xavier University in Cincinnati with my 5 choice friends. I didn't like having a roommate (not him particularly; it just felt crowded), so I had moved my bed into the common living room, and I was laying on that bed when 9/11 happened. It didn't strike terror in me like it did my roommates, who were glued to the tube watching every second unfold. I had been reading some Noam Chomsky at the time (not required reading, but by my own volition & curiosity), so 9/11 to me made logical sense: when you've been bombing folks for ... decades, centuries, they're bound to strike back. And they did. I also felt like, since the attacks were happening in NYC, it was so far away, & Xavier University kept classes going, so I didn't have much time to reflect, but was instead ruing having to attend those hierarchical meetings, listening to Professor John A. Ray, some stuck-up monologist monarchist snob lecture down at us, pretending as if he were a God. I messed up and told "the one who got away" that I wanted to separate over that Summer, so I could attempt to pursue my childhood crush, but that didn't work out, and so we were trying to patch things up that Fall... but she felt betrayed, and it wasn't the same as my enlightening and quite liberating freshman year. Feeling so vulnerable did scare me later on, and I had declared at the Sodexo-run restaurant lunch in the Cintas Center that I was going to join the military, because I'd feel more safe with my brothers in a military outfit, than just sitting idly by, and killed while pushing a pencil in some office in a corporate skyscraper. Shortly afterwards, a day after 9/11? that night? all 5 of my choice friends & the "one who got away" all gathered around the tube to hear what Dubya was going to tell us all in a national broadcast. So, we saw tragedy on the TV, were told what to think about it on the TV, but I don't remember trying to understand what I thought about it with others, or discussing it with others, or trying to unpack my feelings about it, or to try to make sense of it, to come to a better understanding about it. I do remember that I felt a ton of pressure to write some academic paper, regurgitating that John A. Ray's bullshit thoughts back to him, the next morning, and about how much of a waste of time it felt like to me, and that I didn't want to do it. God I hate that guy. I was a first generation college student and I really wanted to do well, but yeah... fuck you Professor John A. Ray of Xavier University!!! The end.
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