July 04, 1999
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Tonight I was talking on the telephone with Andrew, and suddenly the sky turned white for a moment before a large boom unnerved me. This is how it all ends, I thought. Someone is bombing New York City, and I'm trapped in this roach-infested hotel room. Hell.

Oh, but it wasn't a bomb after all. The Independence Day fireworks were starting; it was quarter of ten. Andrew and I said our goodbyes, and then I decided to watch some fireworks. Normally, such things disinterest me, but this year I wanted to take in the colors and noises. Two reasons enforced this decision: last year, Evan and I got into a spat of some sort; he went to his mother's house for the 4th, and the fireworks were in their town. So I didn't get to see them, and it made me rather cross because I'd never had anybody with whom to share the occasion. Secondly, I was in New York City on the fourth of July. It's not every day that fireworks go off over the Statue of Liberty.

So I grabbed my bag and waited for the elevator. After a minute, it stopped. I squeezed into the cramped box and received glares from four people who looked like they were escapees from a giant youth group convention. "We're going to miss ALL THE FIREWORKS," whined a brunette in a Dave Matthews Band t-shirt. "We might as well just NOT GO since it's taking so long," complained a guy who looked like a casting reject from Dawson's Creek. "Nnpgh!" agreed a blonde girl with, I kid you not, curled-and-teased bangs. The remaining individual was apparently the strong and silent type that liked to pout.

Then the elevator stopped again at the fifth floor, and Dave Matthews let out one of those exasperated sighs that teenage girls do so well. Two boys speaking Japanese walked into the elevator, holding the door for a friend who arrived about five seconds later. "Would you hurry it up? Some of us are trying to see the fireworks!" said Dawson's Reject. "Learn to speak English," he added.

That was approximately the moment that sent me flying over the edge. "I wonder how it feels," I said to the fireworks posse, "to go through every day being a selfish asshole." The youth groupers did not take this so well. They sent death glares my way, but I started to laugh because they were amusingly unmenacing. It was like being threatened by a troop of Campfire Scouts. The boys speaking Japanese started laughing, too, and it felt like something out of West Side Story: instead of the Sharks and the Jets, the Laughers and the Grumps. When the elevator doors opened, I was the first person to exit. And Strong and Silent Pouter, followed by the little band of pyromaniacs, yelled, "C'mon, gang!" like he was Fred from Scooby Doo or something.

I did catch the fireworks, and amusingly I arrived at the viewing promenade before my elevator companions did so. Moral lesson: being a jerk doesn't make you get ahead.