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56 Others ThreeThousandDeathsinOneDay It is easy to forget, given the torrent of stupid certainties and the idiotic fervor, unabated to this day, that have followed them, that the events of September 11, 2001, were very surprising. Her voice a mere mumble, the neighbor asked me for a cigarette as we were both standing on the sidewalk that sunny Tuesday morning, so clear and luminous—­ a reverse omen of the murkiness that was soon to envelop us like a treacherous fog. She didn’t have any cigarettes herself, and I assumed that she must have quit but that if ever a situation demanded a smoke, this was it.We nodded, we raised our eyebrows, we didn’t say anything. We just smoked. Soon Johnny walked by. He had just moved to the city to start grad school at NYU. Classes had been canceled, obviously, and he was on his way home. He didn’t say much either. He shrugged and extended his arms a little, his palms turned upward in a universal gesture of baffled powerlessness. He smoked too. We didn’t know what to say or what to think. We just stood there on an East Village sidewalk and smoked in near silence. A few minutes later on Houston: “Tower came down?” “Yes.” “Man . . .” Then Michael stopped by the apartment. “Well,” he laughed, “I guess it’s up to us to repopulate the earth!” This was funny because everyone in the room was gay. Well, you had to be there. And gay. At least we could still camp it up a little. It always seems to help, somehow. To think that, only two days before, we had had a passionate discussion on the respective (de)merits of Earthquake and The Towering Inferno. . . . Just two days. But camp always takes you back. ...

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