Remebering 9/11

I gave the boozer his nickname because he was the first one in our trio to turn twenty-one. He was still celebrating his birthday during tragic times. A couple of weeks after September 11 before the bombing, it was the Captain’s idea to bring out the cards so we could play poker.
I would walk around and see strangers with a glazed over look. Most people saw on tv. But it was as if they witnessed it in person. America had been invaded.
Since none of us had enough money to gamble, the boozer let us use an ample amount of change he had in a wooden bowl beside a fresh pot of chili.
One spoonful of that chili and your mouth would be left feeling like a stream of devils had flown down your throat leaving strains of hell on your tongue. Even A cold beer couldn’t extinguish the inferno. You just had to sit there and take it and hope you weren’t making a fool of yourself.
We were well into the game, as some of the boozer’s neighbors came to his apartment. They were two young girls who knew more about drinking and poker than their ages would suggest. One was seventeen, or so she said, and she had her eye on the Boozer, and he had his drenched beer eyes on her. The sixteen-year-old eyes with braces must have been in the crossfire of lipstick and eye shadow. rebellion . A few times she went to the refrigerator to get herself one of our beers, she would bend over, stretch her arm to retrieve a beer, which made her thong underwear ride higher against her back. I think it made the Captain guilty for staring. I saw it as a test of restraint or a war, so I reminded myself I was only there for the chili, the beer, and the poker, that was all.
The boozer raised the volume on his Irish music as the seventeen-year-old decided to try the chili. On her venture up to the pot of chili she bragged about her tolerance for spicy food. She swallowed an entire spoon full, and quickly found herself underneath the kitchen faucet, hoping luke warm tap water would be an efficient coolant for the rage burning on her tongue.
The sixteen-year-old lips immediately spoke; “I don’t eat in front of people I don’t know so well because of my braces.”
If she had tried it her tongue would have been the color of her lips that were now acting as brake lights for the so-called adults drinking away their memory. We didn’t want to go to jail for a few minutes of pleasure.
“Call!” announced the Captain.
We dropped our cards face up.
“Who won?” asked the Captain.
“I didn’t,” slurred the Boozer.
“At least you can make good chili,” I said.
“I think I won,” said the Captain.
“No, you didn’t,” I insisted, “ I won. I have two two-of-a-kind, and you only have one three-of-a-kind.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” protested the Captain.
“Bullshit man, I get the pot!” I stammered even though the change would never see the inside of our pockets, because it was the Boozer’s.
“I think three-of-a-kind does beat your hand,” mediated the Boozer.
“Bullshit!”
“I win!” The Captain slid the Boozer’s change over in his direction.
“We make up our own rules,” said the boozer, still lusting over the seventeen-year-old.
“In life and in poker,” I slurred proudly.
“I know I win.” The Captain was still rubbing it in. “My dad taught me how to play poker.”
“My dad taught me how to be a goalie in soccer, and you can see what good that did,” I said.
“Soccer’s cool,” said the Boozer, singing along with his Irish music.
The seventeen-year-old finally had feeling back in her tongue and announced she and the sixteen-year eyes were leaving. The Boozer’s roommate was coming up the steps.
“I have to go to,” said the Captain, “I have to wake up at 8:00 am tomorrow for work.” He’d always been the responsible one. He left with the young girls.
“Hey man, ya wanna go to a bar?” asked the Boozer’s roommate who just came in from work?
Immediately the Boozer picked up his jacket, “Yeah let’s go, but what about this guy? He is still underage?”
“Ah shit, he can use my friend’s ID,” he looked at me. “You look just like him.”
He went into his room and brought back the ID, and gave to me. His friend had a boxy forehead and a crooked nose. I hope I didn’t look that bad.
“It’ll work man, trust me.”
Three of us left while the Boozer’s Irish music played ... “Be easy and free... when you’re drinking with me...”
The bar was just a block away. The Boozer and his roommate showed the tattooed bouncer their IDs and they went in. I showed him mine.
“Man this ID expired three years ago.”
“Three years? Wow, this is embracing,” I said sarcastically.
I waved farewell to the Boozer and his roommate, who were now inside, and I decided to wander Main Street searching for a shoulder to tap. The weather wasn’t fitting with the norms of October, as I watched cars with 99 cent patriotism stuck beside the gas cap, and bumper stickers with the word REMEMBER were on the back driving by, as name brands with arms and legs passed hot air through their cell phones.
A man and the woman he was with, parallel parked in front of me. He got out and I went up to him as a sketchy drifter.
“Hey man would you mind buying me some beer?”
He kind of stomped his foot, and dropped his hands to his sides, then raised them up again like a Southern Baptist preacher. “God will strike me down at this spot if I don’t buy this kid some beer!”
He generously bought me a six-pack, and I rambled back home remembering my U.S. history, even then I knew it wasn’t going to be the beginning of WW III even after the World Trade Center went down.
I remember Einstein‘s words, “I don’t know what will be fought with, but I do know WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
I had been writing in a journal since the seventh grade. I remembered another event that affected my life was Colombine. I was shaking like the World Trade Center, but I didn’t fall. I graduated. Even now I wonder who exactly was the terrorist; maybe it is the person who can just get away clean.
For me writing exercises an individual’s right to remember in his own voice how things were.