Since September 11th, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) has run ramped in the city that never sleeps. There was more than just jet fuel and screaming civilians inside the jets that crashed into the Twin Towers. A biological agent was released– one that makes our minds race at the speed of sound. Take a look around. The symptoms are everywhere. Racing thoughts have infected the thought process of the city of nine million.
***
As I made my way through rush hour traffic this evening, I paused in Union Square to assist a victim of WTC OCD. A man going into the subway had shaking hands; a sure symptom of one who has been exposed to the nerve rattling, invisible, psyco-electronic transmissions that were unleashed, in a white dust cloud, back in 2001. They had a dirty bomb. The black man in front of me was confused at the subway turnstiles this afternoon, like so many others who have brain washed by the media and still suffer from acute nervousness triggered by electronic devices and cell phones.
***
Yellow, credit card-like transit vouchers enable commuters to enter the subway system by simply gliding a paper credit card through a thin metal strip. The convenience costs riders $2 each way. The black man was having trouble with his MetroCard. It is in places like the subway, at electronic turnstiles, that the OCD affected, men like the Black man with shaking hands, exhibit the debilitating affects of WTC OCD.
***
There were hundreds of people around– all rushing to get to where they were going– home. We were scurrying like insects in a hive or colony. The mind racing began in everyone around me. We were all temporarily insane. It was rush hour. Paranoia at its highest. New Yorkers were freaking out. A man in front of me was stuck at the subway turnstile. I waited patiently for him to go through. I could have gone to another turnstile, but I waited there for the black man to finish. The electronic machine would not accept his swipe. Over and over again he ran his card, like a manic-depressive in a full-blown psychotic state. I just stood there and waited. I knew he was going to ask me. People with OCD and other severe mental illnesses always ask me to solve their mental dilemmas. I waited. He used both hands to try and get his yellow Metro Card approved. The machine instructed the user to ’swipe again’.
“Take your time,” I said. “Don’t push down hard on the card. Just glide it through slow and easy. Pretend it’s your penis.”
The black man laughed his ass off.
Wouldn’t you know it? It worked. He was approved.
Suddenly, a skinny white woman, one obviously a victim of 9/11 anorexia came storming through the metal turnstile. The metal rods that served as the MTA’s way of dealing with turnstile jumpers quickly swung in a counter-clockwise direction, causing the black man with OCD to freak out.
I wanted to tell him not to “clear” the turnstile by pushing the metal spikes in a 1/4 rotation before he entered the cocoon like entranceway. He forgot that the machine would count the 1/4 turn as a used fare. Thinking he was going to get through the NYC subway system OCT counter-terrorism device, the black stranger was stopped abruptly by the computer that accepted his fare just moments ago.
“What the fuck?” he asked like an obsessive-compulsive; as if I somehow was a token booth clerk and stole his fare.
“They ripped you off,” I insisted to the man, who like me, has been suffering ever since September 11th.
“Fuck this shit. I’m going through that gate. You are a witness, right?”
I quickly made my way through the turnstile with one simple, light, Metro Card swipe.
“Oh yes. Sure. I’m a witness to it all. I’m sure they will believe me!” I shouted to victim of 9/5.
