avatarBoots Davidovitch

Summary

The author recounts a personal experience of escaping a hotel fire in NYC, emphasizing the transformation of attitudes and the triumph of communal support over individual fears.

Abstract

In "The Fire This Time," the author narrates a harrowing escape from a hotel fire in New York City, detailing the transition from the complacency of the "Before" era to the stark reality of the "After." The story unfolds with the author being jolted awake by a fire alarm, initially dismissing it as a false alarm before the acrid smell of smoke and the sound of fleeing guests confirm the danger. The author joins others on the roof, facing the choice of waiting for rescue or descending a rusty fire escape. Amidst the crisis, the group bands together, particularly to support a woman named Jordan who has a fear of heights. The narrative highlights the collective spirit as strangers encourage one another, ensuring everyone's safe descent. The author reflects on the incident as a moment of clarity, where the essential nature of human connection outshines personal possessions and pessimistic worldviews, suggesting that even in the face of death, there is room for wonder and camaraderie.

Opinions

  • The author initially doubts the reality of the fire alarm, illustrating a common human tendency to deny immediate danger.
  • The author admits to a generally pessimistic outlook, citing anti-heroes and cynical thinkers as personal role models, yet acknowledges the happiness and success often associated with optimism.
  • The crisis situation on the roof leads to a communal shift from pessimism to collective action, challenging the author's usual cynicism.
  • The author believes that phobias often symbolize deeper, unspoken fears, and in the context of the fire, these fears must be confronted and overcome.
  • The narrative suggests that in moments of peril, the presence of supportive companions can significantly bolster one's courage and resilience.
  • The author expresses a philosophical view that while death is inevitable, it is the connections we forge and the moments of beauty and unity that hold true value.

The Fire This Time

I went through a hotel fire, so you don’t have to!

Photo by Adam Wilson on Unsplash

I ever tell you about the time I was in that NYC hotel fire? No. Well, it’s a story, but let me ask you a question first. Have you ever been shaken to the core by an event that played havoc on your sleep?

Like Otis Redding sang, “You don’t miss your water till your well runs dry.”

The Before, the After, and the Silver Wolf of Insomnia: If you have, I feel you; if you haven’t, I envy you.

So, there I am, sleeping the sleep of the unjust, out like a light in the middle of the night. This is in the Before epoch. And there’s this buzz. A harsh screech. A technicolor shrill. But what is it? The car alarm from hell. A deafening travel alarm shrieking through thin walls? Music from John Cage?

That sounds just like a fire alarm, I think, and pull the thin spare pillow over my head, I reason that this can’t happen. Not to me!

The thud of shoe soles slaps the fire stairs. It’s the lack of chitchat that frightens me into action. The deadly quiet before the storm — except for the blaring alarm, that is. Simultaneously, an acrid, smoky smell comes to the fore.

And I think what anyone would think at a moment like this: This can’t be happening. (But it is, Blanche, it is.)

I pull on jeans and boots and look around the room. What else do I really need? My life. And I touch the door. It’s not hot. I throw it open and follow the sound of people in the stairwell.

“Why are you going upwards?” I yell.

“Fire’s on the second floor. The only way to get out is to go up!” A guy in a flapping great coat yells down.

Minutes later, I emerge on the roof and merge with a crowd of about forty people in various stages of glamour ébranlé.

That’s French for throwing clothes on and pretty much missing. An outfit that, while technically and legally allowed as streetwear, frightens the horses and alarms the children.

Doesn’t glamour ébranlé sound more in control when you’re huddling together on the black tar roof of a burning building; the smoke drifting upwards is apparent, and yet, the fire department isn’t.

It’s beautiful at 3 am; the buildings lit up by streetlights illuminating the craggy architectural canon. Even when the building’s burning, there’s always beauty, enticing us to amazement.

Stare over the edge of the ledge to the fire escape, a rusty metal ladder fastened to the side of the seven-story hotel. All we have to do is climb down, descending the side of the building like an audition for a cut-rate Spider-Man stage show. Sure.

Now is the time to mention something germane to our story. I am not Nature’s Own Optimist. All my role models are anti-heroes.

Camus, Colette, and Kurt Vonnegut are storytelling heroes. Machiavelli and Casanova are misunderstood in my book.

Vince Gilligan is the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and I’d avidly read his shopping list. The Wire, Sons of Anarchy, The Sopranos, and Shameless shade my worldview.

Shopeneur may have been a son-of-a-bitch, but you’ve got to admit, he’s a sage for the ages.

Cynicism is my go-to attitude, my humor low-key and arch-snark, served achingly dry, with two olives and cocktail onion on the side. And it’s disheartening how often I’m right.

According to studies and the people who love them, pessimists are more often correct in their assessment of a situation; optimists, however, are more overtly happy and successful. So whaddya want? Do you want to be right, or do you want to be successful?

The military has a saying: “There are no atheists in foxholes.” I can’t speak to that, having never hit the dirt while bullets buzzed overhead. However, being in an NYC hotel fire, I can say with authority that there are no pessimists huddling on the roof of a burning building.

We confer. We come up with a plan. Actually, we came up with two options. Plan A) we hang out and wait for the firefighters to show up, or Plan B) we descend, carefully, slowly, yet with great elan, climbing down the rusty fire-escape ladder from the roof to campo tierra, until bootheels press down on the sacred soil — or the cracked sidewalk above the holy earth.

The fire alarm continues to blare out. NYers in surrounding buildings draw up blinds and pull aside curtains to look at us. We look back into their well-lit apartments, which look like stage sets. Pedestrians, such that are up at that hour in the morning, gather on the street.

We’re pretty enthusiastic about Plan B, except for one woman. There’s always one in every group. This one is a petite brunette of the genus gamin. Absolutely adorable — at any other time and any other occasion. And this woman, all 104 pounds of her, has a phobia about heights.

Who doesn’t have a fear, a phobia, a prejudice, or a strong antipathy? The funny thing about phobias is that they stand in for something else.

The phobia rears its head, appearing for all the world under the guise of a particularly virulent fear of snakes, planes, or heights. Guns, germs, or steel. A dread of clowns can cover the fear of dying alone. Phobias can be a metaphor for a terror so bigly tumescent and ginormously humongous that, like the sun, we dare not look at it directly.

Cut. To. The. Chase. This babe doesn’t want to go down the fire escape, and she doesn’t want to stay on the roof.

Have you ever been in a group situation where your neurosis impacts others? Right, me, too! Like, every day of my life. Me, I’m a master at experiencing terror.

I have phobias, glitches, and odd, cobwebbed, unlit rooms of the soul that manifest as tics, addictions, and other fascinating traits. I can easily combine a fear of heights with a terror of smoke annihilation. And then attach hierarchies to those fears, I’m like a black belt in neurosis.

“I don’t want to die!” the woman sobs as her friend wraps an arm around her shoulders.

Our motley crew clustering on the roof of a building with escalating flames conclude: we can handle this. You can see people almost nod; it is so clearly and communally understood. Leave no broad behind.

We’re all going to die, whether enthusiastic about it or not. It’s in the human contract. Four generations hence, no one will have known we were here, I think. However, I don’t say it out loud. Or loudly. Or very loudly, at any rate. To the best of my recollection.

And, remember, the fire alarms are blaring, so even if I did say it out loud — which I’m not saying I did — no one can prove that I said it, which should, one would think, put the issue to rest.

The woman, Jordan, whose name we are all soon to know, was freshly released from the wilds of the university and about to discover that she was stronger than she knew.

To begin with, she has the fine great sense of being with good people, and the friend standing by her side in an oversized T-shirt, purple hip-hugger bikini briefs, tossed black mane, and unlaced Doc Martins is a champ.

The friend talks to Jordan as you do a frightened animal, more for the sound and rhythm, the affection and comfort, than the language, and Jordan begins to calm down.

We plan our descent. No one says it out loud, but it’s understood that we don’t want Jordan to freeze going down the ladder if she’s near the front of the line, but we want to make sure that she’s committed to the process and can’t leave her near the end.

We place five or six people before her to partially block her view of the ground, and her friend follows her down. We hold back for a few breaths for a moment of space.

The building’s bricks are impressively weathered; the streetlights cast a nimbus of light. Inhaling deeply, the early morning air is bracing. The corroded steel of the ladder feels cold under my palms, the paint flaking at a touch.

On the way down, I peer shamelessly into the living room window of a small man watching us in his pale blue bathrobe while he eats Pringles out of the tube.

I hear the soft voice of the friend, giving guidance. And in that NYC way, which is a state of mind as much as a geo-local reference, we join in the encouragement as we hit the fire escape, one by one.

We cajole, joke, and encourage Jordon until her Converse tennis shoe-clad foot hit the ground. When the last person descended, we gave ourselves a round of applause. The rubberneckers and window lurkers join in.

The firetruck arrives, and the firefighters emerge, some checking out our group, most running into the building to put out the blaze, opening each room to ensure everyone’s out and the flames doused.

The alarm goes blessedly quiet.

Looking around, there’s nary a laptop, purse, suitcase, or backpack in sight. When it came to what was essential to take, people chose people.

I am proud of us: that no one shamed or blamed Jordan for breaking down on the roof, crushed between the lowering sky and the upcoming fire. We all break down sometimes.

That dichotomy. The glass half-empty, half-full conundrum. Yes, it all ends in death; the existentialists, nihilists, and pessimists have a point. But, hell, the realists, those fabled and fabulous beasts, have their angle, too.

But sometimes, for instance, should you find yourself hanging from a rusty fire escape, why not — if just for a moment — pause and look upwards at the stars?

Good Vibes Club
Life
Life Lessons
Mental Health
Society
Recommended from ReadMedium