I met my husband at Dorrian’s, a bar on the Upper East Side, right around the corner from the railroad apartment I shared with three friends from college. The bar was infamous for being the place where the Preppy Murderer met his victim before he lured her to Central Park. You’d think any association with murder would make a bar unpopular, but you’d be wrong. Every night, it was crowded with twentysomethings who were new to the city. When “Sweet Caroline” played, the whole place pumped their fists, smacked their palms on the tables, and chanted, “So good, so good, so good.”
We met in October 2001, and the amazing part about that night wasn’t that we found each other in a big city, or that we wound up at the same bar at the same time—it’s that I’d gone out at all. I arrived in New York in July, moved into the tiny apartment that took more than half of my paycheck, and for a couple of months, everything was great. I was an editorial assistant at Vanity Fair, for a theatrical and judgy gay man, who loved talking about whatever new diet he was on and how fat and gross everyone else was. (Once he walked by my desk in the morning and wrinkled his face at the bran muffin I was picking apart. “Is that fried chicken?” he asked, before disappearing into his office and letting me explain that it was a muffin, that I wasn’t in fact eating fried chicken at 9:30 in the morning.)
But regardless, we were all happy and employed, getting drunk most nights, making under $30K a year (except for our one friend working in finance), and supplementing most things with credit cards that still went to our parents, who insisted we use them for groceries (“You have to eat well!”) and the occasional night out (“Enjoy the city!”) and of course, some clothes every once in a while (“You work so hard! Treat yourself!”).
And then, the fall came. After September 11, we all thought about leaving the city. That morning, we’d made it back to our apartment, crying, although we didn’t really know what had happened yet. We went out to Long Island, to stay with my roommate Colleen’s parents. Mrs. McEvoy served us strange combinations of food—mashed potatoes and spaghetti, chicken casserole with a side of ham—and kept pouring us whiskey, which none of us normally drank but all accepted gratefully.
The second night there, I decided I was moving back to Wisconsin. I was alone and homesick and scared, and I wanted to be back there so badly my chest hurt. Why would I stay in this city, to make lunch reservations and have my food choices mocked by a forty-year-old editor? The Midwest, I decided, was where I belonged.
Of course, I didn’t move. None of us did. Julie, who’d been the only one of us downtown when the attacks happened, kept telling us about the people she saw jump, bringing it up in any conversation, mentioning it out of the blue. When she finally went back to work, she’d come home at the end of the day and put her pajamas on and get right back into bed. We didn’t know what to do to help her, and to be honest, we just wanted her to get better and to stop talking about it, to stop reminding us of how horrible it was.
One of our neighbors was missing—a boy we called Yale to his face because of the T-shirt he always wore. We didn’t know him well, but he’d come over a couple of times to have a beer late at night, when we’d all bumbled home at the same time. His parents were staying in his apartment, putting posters up around the city with his face on them, and we looked down every time we passed them in the hallway, because it felt like we should apologize for still being there, for how easy it was for our own parents to find us.
The four of us stopped going out. We’d taken to ordering Thai food on the weekends and drinking huge, inexpensive bottles of red wine, until our lips were purple. It felt wrong to go out, disrespectful almost, and so we sat in pajamas and watched movies, eating crabmeat wontons and drinking wine until we could fall asleep.
But that Saturday, I suggested we go to Dorrian’s. Maybe it was because our apartment was starting to smell like pad thai noodles all the time, or it was the thought of waking up with a pounding headache and purple-crusted lips. Whatever it was, I begged my roommates to put on clothes, telling them we wouldn’t have to go far, that fresh air would do us good. And somehow, they all agreed.
It was loud in the bar, and the four of us stayed close so that we could hear ourselves talk. Colleen and I were sitting on stools and Julie and Courtney were standing behind us. None of us were particularly energetic or cheerful, but I still considered the night a success for getting out of the apartment. I was taking a sip of my beer when Colleen leaned toward me and said, “Dogpants is totally checking you out.”
“Who?” I asked. I looked over my shoulder.
“Dogpants. To your right.” She sounded hopeful, like this situation might make the night more interesting. “He’s not awful,” she continued. “I mean, besides those pants.”
I looked blatantly at Matt then, who was holding a beer and listening to one of his friends. He was smiling in a way that made me think he knew we were talking about him. He was tall, with wavy brown hair and a handsome face, and he was wearing dark green corduroy pants with small yellow Labs embroidered all over them.