I left New York City about two weeks after Sept 11, 2001. At the time, I felt like a bit of a heel (for those that don’t speak Noir- a heel is worse than a cad but better than a crum-bum.) After all, the entire nation was weeping and praying and sending their love to New York and I was all “Peace out, bitchez- I’m going to Cali! Good luck with all that healing and shit- Daddy’s getting his beach on!” Of course, there are a couple of reasons why I shouldn’t have felt bad for leaving: 1. I had been planning to move out of NYC for some time before Sept 11 and had quit my job and already secured an apartment in LA. 2. While the entire nation was happy to pour love and affection into NYC, there was no way in hell that any of them were actually about to show up there in person. In fact, I would bet that most of the red-state, pink-cheeked Americans in Oklahoma and Missouri (that’s a place, right? “Missouri”?) who bought shiny new FDNY caps and “We Will Not Forget” t-shirts on Sept 12, 2001, hated New York with a passion on Sept 10. They hated the gays, the Jews, the commies, the Yankees, the Mets, the Knicks, Spike Lee, Woody Allen, Ed Koch, subways, hot dogs, pastrami, homeless people, drug dealers, the smell of urine, high taxes, bad traffic, knishes, theatre, Puerto Ricans, Brooklyn accents, stockbrokers, Port Authority, being yelled at and, yes, probably even the World Trade Center. The only way they could sustain their empathy for New Yorkers after the attacks was if they pretended that the hook-nosed, cross-dressing, book-reading, coke-snorting socialists which they had (quite accurately) believed New Yorkers to...