Nine Twelve

A reflection

The last time I felt happy was 9/11. If I had to go back even further, I’d say it was swimming with my mother in the outdoor pool in Lanzarote as a child, with her holding me afloat, guiding me along. I will never get back to that feeling of peace, security, and joy. But the closest I came was September 11th, 2001. It was the summer break from university, and I was on a cheap resort holiday in Almería with my girlfriend Lizzy, our friend Ruth, and Ruth’s friend James, who was only there because Ruth’s boyfriend couldn’t come. I had never met James before and neither had Lizzy. Inviting him was a bad idea from the start.

The other bad idea was Ruth saying we should go for two weeks. One week seemed more reasonable to me, but Ruth won and we settled on two. I don’t remember the name of the resort where we stayed, or much about the flight. I do remember the coach ride from the airport to the resort, but only because as we pulled in I was listening to Tom Petty on my walkman. Lizzy said ‘Look’, and tried to nudge me to look out of the window, but ‘Even the Losers’ was playing and I wanted to get to the end of the song. I really related to the lyric ‘Even the losers get lucky sometimes’. That was kind of how I felt about having a sweet and pretty girlfriend like Lizzy, and now we were going on our first holiday together, and she was ruining my enjoyment of the scene by talking. The song is about recalling the thrill of a love affair, and I was making the mistake I’ve often made of attempting to feel nostalgia for the present.

The next day we all went to the beach, except it turned out there was no beach. Or there was, but it was covered in rocks, and the sand was black and felt like gravel. The rooftop pool at the resort was slightly better. It wasn’t very big, but there weren’t many other people around. They were probably too smart to pick this resort. I would sit by the pool reading my book about the assassination of JFK. It was only much later that I saw the irony of reading this book as another violent American tragedy was about to unfold.

The rest of the time we sat on the balcony playing music, mainly my Beach Boys CDs. Or we walked around fairly aimlessly. At one point we travelled to the Alhambra palace in Granada, which I’m afraid was totally wasted on me. I’ve always hated sightseeing of any kind. I guess I’ve always preferred to live in my own head.

At night we sat outside the resort where an old geezer murdered various classics on the piano. We ate pizzas and drank beer. Some nights we went out to a nearby bar and played pool. At one point England beat Germany 5-1. The game was showing on a small TV high up in the corner, and I was annoyed not to be watching it properly. One night playing pool I somehow got into an argument with James, who had been weird and moody the entire trip. I don’t remember what it was about, but when I got back to the little self-catering apartment I was so wound up I threw a glass at the oven. Instead of the glass smashing, it went right through the oven glass instead. That worried me, as it seemed potentially a lot more expensive. But when I reported it the staff didn’t seem too concerned.

The next day Ruth came and told us something had happened in America. Something bad. We turned on the small television in her apartment, and in stunned silence watched the planes flying into the buildings. I don’t think I even knew what the World Trade Center was until then. I doubt I had ever formed those three words in that order in my head or on my tongue.

To make things even stranger, it turned out all this had happened the day before, and was only just reaching us now. The simple resort was a little behind the times. There was no Internet, and this was long before smart phones. We just had Nokia bricks that could call, send a text, or play Snake. That was all we needed back then. I suddenly realised the day I threw the glass through the oven had been 9/11 without us knowing it. We knew the date, I suppose, but not the significance. I couldn’t help but think my glass was a little like the planes, and the oven was the World Trade Center.

That night the barman at the resort spoke to us about it in his broken English. After a brief conversation he said ‘Not good’, then walked away shaking his head sadly. That was our last night.

Once I got home to England, I would lie awake at night worrying about World War III. When I heard an aeroplane overhead, I would think it had finally started. It sounds silly now—the low-resolution thinking of a young man with no idea about the world. And it was. But 9/11 did something to us all. I was only 19 and staying in an attic room in a shared flat in Newcastle. Seven boys living there, in absolute chaos. There was no heating in the room, but it did have a skylight window where I could watch the planes flying by, perhaps leaving or returning to the local airport.

Planes had always meant holidays, excitement, and mystery. Now they were terrorist death machines hurtling into iconic buildings we had never even heard of before. America no longer represented an exotic new world of possibility, but a dangerous place that could reach into your life and take away all your safety.

That’s why I say 9/11 was the last time I was happy. There was a moment that day at the swimming pool, before we knew about the planes, before the argument that night and the glass thrown through the oven. Ruth and James had gone back inside. I put my JFK book down and got into the pool with Lizzy. I lifted her up under her arms and swung her around the pool. Her smiles and laughter emanated pure joy, like the barely-contained frolicking energy of a young animal. I only realise now the odd connection between my mum lifting me up in the pool as a child, and me lifting Lizzy up in the pool on our holiday. Maybe that’s strange, because Lizzy would be my child in the analogy. But I don’t feel like it’s strange. It’s just two different versions of love, at two different but somehow related times.

When I think about that day, I wonder if I could have been normal. If I could have stayed with Lizzy and had a normal life. But that turned out to be my last taste of innocence, before the planes hit the towers and everything became clouded by confusion and fear. The world got darker after that. I broke up with Lizzy and became increasingly lost. I went out with other girls, of course, but I never experienced quite that same love again. Maybe it was all destined, just as the planes had already hit the towers that day without us knowing it. But I’d choose that joyful ignorance over reality any day. Give me our 9/11, splashing in the pool, hidden from the world—from ageing, loneliness, death and chaos. For me, the problems all started on 9/12.