A coming out, the ‘Falling Man’, and 25 years of loneliness since 9/11

I had just finished a workout when I stopped beneath the TV mounted above the stairway at my gym and saw that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. The news made it sound like a small aircraft had flown into one of the towers, and after enough years in New York, you think you’ve seen everything.

So a plane hitting one of the towers felt like bad luck.

I ran down to the weight room and yelled the news to my buddies. Nobody took it that seriously. Just another day in New York.

I went back upstairs and watched with a couple of friends who worked at the gym. Then the second plane hit, and whatever nonchalance we had felt collapsed instantly. “Shock” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

I left for home. My neighbor Clare, a beautiful blonde actress, stood outside my door, crying. We went up to the roof, where we could see the towers over the skyline, and we watched the smoke until the buildings disappeared behind it.

We stood there in silence, feeling how vulnerable, how exposed, our city suddenly was. I remember us being together all day, and oddly, I don’t remember a single word passing between us.

My apartment had a balcony over First Avenue, and as the day wore on, we watched people who worked downtown make the long walk home to the Upper East Side. They were covered head to toe in ash, moving like sleepwalkers.

It was one of the most frightening things I have ever seen.

A few friends came to my apartment, and we stood on that same balcony, watching the human tragedy pass beneath us. At some point, one of those friends, whom I’d always assumed was straight, turned to me and told me he was gay. He said hiding it barely mattered anymore.

And at that moment, it didn’t. Against the scale of what had happened, something as personal and as complicated as sexuality suddenly seemed small. My conception of what mattered, or what I needed to worry about, changed profoundly, at least temporarily.

But one image has stayed with me longer than anything I saw or heard that day or afterward. It was the photograph an Associated Press photographer took of a man falling from one of the towers, headfirst, chillingly composed against the building’s vertical lines behind him.

History remembers that photo as “The Falling Man.”

It became one of the most controversial images of that day. Newspapers debated whether it was too much to print. Some did, and they were roundly criticized for it. People were offended, unsettled, and wanted it gone.

I understand that reaction better now than I did then, because years later I survived a suicide attempt. I don’t say that to make this essay about my experience, because it isn’t. But that is why the Falling Man has never left me.

To me, that photograph was never really about one man’s death. It was about the enormity of that day’s pain, a pain so total it sent a body into free fall. And that kind of pain doesn’t disappear just because the day that caused it eventually passes.

After all these years, 25 of them, what I remember most about September 11 isn’t the noise or the chaos. It’s the pervasive loneliness. Surrounded by friends, standing next to my neighbor on that roof, I had never felt so isolated in my life. And that feeling didn’t end when the day did.

In the weeks afterward, something strange happened to New York, and it still stands out to me: You said hello to strangers. You saw the grief behind the eyes of everyone you passed, and you saw the loneliness behind that grief.

New Yorkers came together like never before, all while experiencing a profound solitude and isolation.

It made you actually talk to the guy at the bodega making your sandwich, your taxi driver, or the person next to you in the elevator. I’ve lived in buildings in Manhattan where I did not know the people on my floor. You just mind your own business. But September 11 evaporated that distance.

And you looked at firefighters, cops, and paramedics with reverence. There was real community in that. But underneath it was that nagging loneliness, which was just as real, brittle, quiet, and shared by everyone, even as each of us carried it alone.

Grief like that doesn’t become communal simply because so many people are experiencing it. It remains deeply personal, something each of us carries separately, even when we’re all carrying it at the same time.

I think about my gay friend often. He has since died, though not from anything connected to that day. Still, I think about how small everything felt in that moment on the balcony, how a truth he had probably held fiercely inside for years suddenly seemed to weigh nothing at all.

I’d worked in the shadow of the World Trade Center for a year after first moving to New York, and each time I got off at the WTC subway stop, I stepped out, looked up, and marveled at those buildings. They never ceased to amaze me. I was in awe of their power.

Now I go to the memorial where they once stood. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to unsee the two of them coming apart from my rooftop, or forget how alone we all felt watching it happen.

It’s hard to believe 25 years have passed, because with every anniversary, it all comes rushing back as if it happened yesterday. And every year, that same inexplicable loneliness returns with it.

I don’t think that feeling ever fully goes away for anyone who watched those towers fall in person. And I want to be clear here: Nothing I felt compares to the pain of the people who lost those they loved. I lost a couple of guys I used to work out with at that gym. I was spared. Many were not.

That’s what the Falling Man has always meant to me. Not just the horror of that single morning, but the vast, lonely weight so many of us carried afterward, alone together, for a very long time. We were all falling, and we didn’t know where we would land — or whether we ever would.

Opinion is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. Visit Advocate.com/submit to learn more about submission guidelines. We welcome your thoughts and feedback on any of our stories. Email us at voices@equalpride.com. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists, and editors, and do not directly represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, equalpride.

If you or someone you know needs mental health resources and support, please call, text, or chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or visit 988lifeline.org for 24/7 access to free and confidential services. Trans Lifeline, designed for transgender or gender-nonconforming people, can be reached at (877) 565-8860. The lifeline also provides resources to help with other crises, such as domestic violence situations. The Trevor Project Lifeline, for LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger), can be reached at (866) 488-7386. Users can also access chat services at TheTrevorProject.org/Help or text START to 678678.