Collective Chaos

When wildfires began raging in Canada, not too far from the New York State border, the fallout ended up being a bit more than any of us expected. At sunrise, New York City was still enveloped by that welcoming hazy dawn we’ve come to know so well. By 9am, an eerie gray fog had rolled in from the north. By 1pm, the entire skyline was all but invisible, swallowed by smoke. By 5pm, the entire northern Atlantic region of the United States had become a setting for “The Book Of Eli.” Our entire world had become engulfed by a hideous piss-yellow filter, like the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust in a dystopian novel. Chernobyl without the radiation. It was reminiscent of a very grim day in 2001, though still unlike anything any of us had ever seen. The smell of charred wood was so thick you could taste it, as if the neighbors were hosting an unventilated barbecue. The air quality had been polluted to the point where the mayor urged everyone to stay inside and keep the windows shut.

Within 48 hours, the smog was gone and the world went back to normal. Or at least some version of it. That being said, a return to normalcy isn’t the theme here. The point here is that once again, for the ump-teenth time, we as a society were dragged into collective chaos. 

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Yesterday just so happened to be the 20th year of The Blackout of ‘03. I’ll never forget it. It was a sweltering August day. The dust still hadn’t settled from 9/11 less than two years prior.  I was leaving the beach around 4 pm, crossing the Robert Moses Bridge, when I noticed all the radio stations were dead. The car radio produced nothing but static. In unison with the static was the cacophonic roar of fire truck sirens in the distance. A foreboding apocalyptic vibe all too familiar from the horrors of September 11th.

Once I reached the mainland, I was informed by a traffic cop that the entire eastern United States was in a blackout. One could argue that we couldn’t catch a break. First the twin towers collapse. Then an ex-sniper-turned-psychopath and his stepson drive around Washington D.C. gunning down random people with an AR-15, without any rhyme or reason. Then Uncle Georgie decides it would be a good idea to invade Iraq. And now this: the return of the Summer Of Sam. 

Americans were built for this shit, especially by that point. And in yet another example of collective chaos, our machinations of destruction subsided and we took this for what it was. Just another crisis.

Despite our resilience, there’s still no stopping anarchy. You see, there are two things that happen during a state of Code Red. The first is that the freaks come out of hiding. All the misfits, outcasts, outlaws and what-have-yous take a break from hibernation and come out to play. Anyone reading this likely still has the surrealism of 2020 fresh in their memory, so this should come as no surprise. The second thing, however, is a more troubling phenomenon. While the thugs come out of hiding, so do true colors. When ordinary civilians give in to hysteria and let their emotions get the better of them, things become unpredictable. If a bunch of patients escape a psych ward or a group of convicts breaks out of prison, your first instinct is to run, hide, and lock your doors (and maybe grab a gun). But when you’re out and about amongst Bob the furniture salesman and Karen the soccer mom, you have no way of knowing what you're going to get.

I saw some interesting things that night. A married couple took it upon themselves to impersonate police officers and make their own checkpoint at the entrance to their block. I wasn’t there when the real police showed up. Though from what I heard, the verbal exchange alone would’ve been a viral hit had YouTube been around at the time. While that was going on, about a half dozen friends and I crept up the driveway of a house where we knew the owners were on vacation. We pushed their 25-foot motorboat on top of a trailer out of the driveway, across Montauk Highway toward a boat launch  and eventually into the Great South Bay, only to discover that even though the key was in the ignition, there wasn’t enough gas and all the gas stations were shut down due to the power outage. 

It seemed as if the entire tri-state area was having one big block party. When the radio stations came back on, we could hear FunkFlex dropping the bomb in the background, encouraging the world to celebrate like it was the end. Everywhere you looked, people were leaving their cars on the side of the road and getting out on foot. My boy Si lit a bonfire on his front lawn and threw a Blackout bash. Over 200 people pulled up. Then his neighbor around the corner tried to copy him by starting his own bonfire, except it spread across the lawn and burned the poor bastard’s house down. 

People were turning vigilant. A lot of looting broke out. I remember walking up to the Mobil to get beer. The owner, Pakistani Dean as he was known, was sitting on a lawn chair right out front, armed with a Mossberg shotgun along with an arsenal of pistols patiently waiting--just waiting--for somebody to try something. 

To stoke the madness--as well as to get to the point of this post--there were a slew of outrageous, ridiculous, hilarious, and sometimes terrifying rumors passed around. The most common one, understandably, was that it was terrorists. As for the rest: aliens, sea monsters (I shit you not), a biblical plague, Japanese payback for World War II, and this one dude who told me he thought his brother-in-law did it.

That’s what you call collective chaos. And it was this collective chaos that swarmed the network around me while I was in the hospital after getting shot. The rumors. The suspicions. The never-ending medical revelations pertaining to how they’ve managed to keep me alive so far.

“Who shot Alex?? Who would do such a thing??”

“It was the mob!”

“Nooo it was his ex-girlfriend dude. She set him up!”

“It was the Italians. I told him to stop hangin’ around those guys by the cafe!”

“It was that crackhead I always see around.”

“Had to be someone he was in jail with. Mark my words.”

“It was those gangsters from Jersey. It was them.”

“It was Mikey Botz. I don’t know how I know. I just know. I’m calling his mom.”

“Are we in danger?”

“Do we not know Alex as well as we thought we did?”

“I thought he was a good guy.”

“Is it possible this guy’s a gangster? I heard he was mobbed up.”

“I heard he’s braindead.”

“Half his face is gone.”

“He’ll never talk again.”

“He’s dead.”

“Yeah, man. He’s dead.”

“Oh my God! He’s dead??”

And so on. Once again, it was the same contagion that takes place during a national disaster. Collective chaos. Family. Friends. Enemies. Acquaintances. Strangers. Cops. Gangsters. Lawyers. Doctors. Nurses. Everyone who encountered me in some way, shape or form over the years. They were all affected, or I suppose infected, by the same mass hysteria we experienced during 9/11, COVID-19, JFK’s assassination, Pearl Harbor, Y2K. Here to stay. It goes for you. It goes for me. Our lives are no different. A crisis is a crisis. A war is a war. And in a war there are heroes and villains. Some survive. Some don’t. I survived. And I intend to keep it that way.