FIREWORKS

I hear dull distant bangs and I know that there must be fireworks going off somewhere, or that the world is ending. Usually, my first thought—

BOMB

Then it's followed by quick, rational assurance—

FIREWORKS

which is way more logical and likely. I don't know why this is, as I am lucky in that I have never been near exploding bombs. 

I suppose that’s a post-9/11 thing.

I hate that phrase.

I used to hate the whole production of fireworks.

I remember seeing them as a kid and being scared, even though I knew better—like thunder and lightning—so there was always that sort of fascination there too. It wasn't complete fear, but no one else seemed too worried, you know? It sounded scary, but was totally fine.

I remember thinking it was acceptable and maybe even endearing to be frightened of fireworks when you were really little; the basis of this being that my Nannie’s dog Abbie would hide behind the couch every 4th of July.

In a twist of ironic fate, Abbie was struck and killed by a stray firework.

Just kidding.

That is so weird, why would I say that?

Now that I think about it, I actually don’t know what happened to Abbie. I was handed her little name tag attached to a pink ribbon, and the excuse that she had to go live on a farm. I mean, come on. 

I run up to the roof. On my apartment building's roof, I knew I would be able to see where they were coming from. That's a good thing about Los Angeles, is that it's so flat. 

Firework displays are the only kinds of shows that people talk the entire way through. Could you imagine if that was the case in movie theaters? Musicals? Concerts? Readings?

Obviously, a lot of people are screaming their fucking faces off during concerts, and sports are sort of a separate category. 

But firework displays are the only thing we watch in shared conversation and enthusiastic noises of approval.

OOH. 

AHH! 

My mom’s side of the family in particular is really into fireworks. From early on, I remember my Aunt Trisha driving down to Pennsylvania, where it was legal to purchase fireworks, and drive back up with her trunk completely loaded. 

She was always the cool aunt. Still is. She let us watch PG-13 movies way early.

I remember Vince Meegan putting a firecracker in his sneaker laces and lighting it, starting to run. As it explodes, he jumps through the bushes that lined the rectory yard at school, and we all collapsed in laughter, as it was certainly the funniest, coolest, bravest thing we’d ever seen. And then we all ran because it really damaged the bushes.

He was such a class clown.

I hate that phrase.

My cousin Chris was always two or three years ahead of me in school, and was very much a demonic and hilarious surrogate older brother. He was always climbing trees and on top of roofs and jumping from one things to another, doing flips from the trampoline into the pool, completely fearless. 

He loved getting really cheap smoke bombs and firecrackers at convenience stores and putting them down holes in the backyard, in mailboxes, sort of near cats, and uh, really close to toads.

Heading up the stairwell, I think it’s possible that the show could end before I get to the roof, and I won’t be able to figure out where it’s coming from. I think it’s possible that I could show up and the exact wrong time, and take a hit right to the face.

I remember my Uncle Tim doing crazy shit—a hypermaniac daredevil who would love to blow money on stupid shit just to see the looks on our faces. 

One summer, we were spending a week at their house in Connecticut. I remember my Uncle Tim lighting off a huge round of fireworks in their driveway. At the end, it was this huge cannister, I remember watching in fear and amazement as he ran jumped over the whole thing, as it spit yellow and green and red and gold sparkling streams towards the treeline. 

He timed it perfectly, the canister ran out of juice the exact second he lept across them, and it was almost like he disappeared into thin air.

My mom’s cousins’ family owns a popular hotdog stand in Angola, 45 minutes south of Buffalo, right on Lake Erie. Since the late 40s or early 50s, all the owners of the rundown cottages get together on the beach, stacking wooden shipping pallets and broken doors in 10, 20, 40, 80 ft piles and lighting them on fire at sunset. Then everyone (all amateurs) would break out their stashes, also procured from Pennsylvania. Babies waving sparklers, kids with fire crackers, drunk dads with the big stuff. 

My dad’s mom met her husband at the beach bar across the street. Captain Kidd’s and Mickey Rat’s. Everyone still gets loaded there and goes across the street to the Connors’ for late night hot dogs and ice cream.

I love to look at other people's' faces during a fireworks display, the awe on the faces, the colors shining on their sweat-slicked skin. I love how happy and full of wonder everyone looks, even when they’re generally an unpleasant person.

Lake Erie is a great place to grow up—a huge beach-going community that can only go to the beach about four months out of the year. I like to think that makes us truly appreciate the summer. 

My Aunt Carolyn's cottage was not much further south from the Connors’ Hot Dog Stand. She lived there with her husband, “Moose” when they first got married, I think. I remember her growing radishes in her garden, grilling sweet corn-on-the-cob. We’d drag lawn chairs down half a mile of asphalt to get to the overcrowded beaches on the Fourth.

I remember watching golden fireworks that look like sea anemones, and how their sparks stretched out in limbs and then scattered and glistened, mirroring the the overgrown willow tree that grew just beyond the sand. I remember sitting in my mom’s lap on a blanket, thinking that it was the biggest thing I had ever seen.

One year, when I was about 12 or 13, I went to my mom’s friend’s house for the Fourth of July—she had a house in the suburbs with an inground pool, a big yard. I remember looking over the back fence once it got dark—a bunch of the dads who had probably been drinking from their coolers for a good part of the day had started lighting off fireworks in the undeveloped land beyond Joanie’s property. I looked down at a huge bottle rocket as it was being lit.

Rather than shooting off as it was supposed to, the rocket stayed put on its launchpad, but all the sparks meant to propel it into the air only ricocheted off the ground and up into my face. 

I had small third-degree burns around one of my eyes, and even littler second-degree burns on the palm with which I tried to wipe the embers away,

In my Sophomore year of college, I wound up getting a gig with a small literary agent as a babysitter and personal assistant of sorts. He lived in an apartment building in TriBeCa, right across the street from his youngest son’s school near the Westside Highway, a few blocks north of Ground Zero. I ended up also working for his girlfriend as an office assistant in her apartment uptown. I sat in a cold converted office space scanning her old fake book, listening to the Beatles. She told me how she played clarinet, but also banjo in Woody Allen’s jazz band, and mentioned that her family still lived in Buffalo.

It was early on in a dark night just after Halloween. Cynthia wrote me a check for $39 as I put on my coat and scarf. Suddenly, we heard a gigantic boom. 

BOOM

We looked to one another inquisitive, each waiting to be reassured by other. Then

BOOM

BOOM

BOOM

We went to the window, but her apartment faced an inner courtyard, and we couldn’t crane our necks enough to look up and beyond the top of her building. 

BOOM

I felt feeling draining from my face and into my fingertips. Cynthia kind of laughed, but then turned on her tv, to see if something was happening. She assured me that it  just to be on the safe side, took her house phone, first trying to call her boyfriend, then a friend in her building. Neither of them answered and our eyes widened, and she asked me to wait a moment.

I grew warm in my winter coat, my scarf, and I stood with my check in my hands, mentally going through my Emergency In NYC plan.

The noises continued enough us to gather courage. But it was such strange timing of year, of day, and we still couldn’t see the source of the noise. As with any heightened anxiety in NYC, we listened and heard sirens wailing in the near-distance. Neither of us fully knew what was happening, but were unable to admit to one another that we were consumed by the fear of a “terrorist attack” or some insane invasion. The booms continued, and with false nonchalance, I took the elevator. 

When I got out of the building, fire trucks flew past me. I tried calling both my roommates and imagined them already dead. 

Then someone called me back, asked me what’s wrong, did a little Googling, and we both had a good laugh. It was the night before the New York City Marathon, and their were fireworks further northeast to celebrate the occasion and welcome the runners.

One summer when I lived in the East Village, I watched the Hudson River firework display from across the island on my friend’s roof in Alphabet city. Like all New York summers, the air was thick and awful. Right off Avenue D, a bunch of the Dominican kids, kids that actually grew up in the neighborhood, were shooting off bottle rockets. 

For a while they were shooting them straight up, and they’d whizz past our heads. 

But then they began aiming up at a new high-rise condo building. Things on the balconies caught fire, windows smashed and clattered 15 stories below like wind chimes. 

In retaliation, people in the apartments began throwing down houseplants at the kids in the street, screaming for them to knock it off. As we stood on the roof of a five-story building, we watched as houseplants, glass bottles, and fireworks screamed into two very different directions.

It was the most recent 4th of July that I started seeing signs pop up—

A UNITED STATES VETERAN WITH PTSD LIVES HERE. 

PLEASE BE COURTEOUS WITH YOUR FIREWORK CELEBRATIONS 

THIS INDEPENDENCE DAY.

What makes me most sad is how polite and courteous the sign is.

You know that weird conversation that sometimes comes up?

You know the one, of like—

what do you want to be done with your remains when you die?

I always joke about this, all to find that it’s actually also true. Well, when I die, I wanted to be cremated. I then want my ashes to be put into fireworks and have the fireworks lit into the sky and explode in a show of color and light

so that I can really go out with a bang.

BOOM

After running up five flights of stairs, I felt disoriented, trying to situate myself in the suddenly dark outside around me, like one of those cylindrical compasses floating in viscous fluid on the dashboard of your grandfather's Cadillac, or like a room in a funhouse —not the hall of mirrors, but the room with the strobe light where the floors are shifting like tectonic plates. I looked out, sort of south, sort of east, or maybe north, kind of west, sort of close but pretty far. I could see a massive and microscopic show, fireworks of hues, shapes, sizes, of metal and fire and powder, of willow trees and bonfires, sparkles and gemstones and lava and rail. Its pace was artful and perfect, timed to gunfire and acid, waves of water and beer, acid jazz, money, love, country, hunger, of collapse, of running downstairs, of sweeping motions, of carbonation. Electric inkblots of nothing too important but completely consuming. All in the distance. It lasted until it didn’t, and during that, I thought of so much.