Through my pseudo-eviction and last-minute packing, the luxe environs of the Gramercy Park Hotel eased my preemptive separation anxiety. My final night in Manhattan was spent with two close friends: a slightly reformed winner of the Wanker of the Week award, and the vivacious redhead known for breaking champagne glasses. Hollywood director-producer extraordinaire, Ed Zwick, was our guest of honor. His new film, Defiance, is a sweeping Holocaust-inspired epic. Considering his pimp status with Denzel Washington and Leonardo DiCaprio, his Harvard B.A., his Rhodes Scholarship, and his expert knowledge of everything from Heidi Montag, to Imperial Samurai warriors, to West African hip-hop, he is a prime candidate for pretension and cockiness. However, he is one of the most down-to-earth men I have ever met.

He grilled me on the woes of being a twenty-one-year-old girl in Manhattan (preyed upon by weekly wankers and daily douchebags). He even listened to my idea for a series of novels geared toward the lucrative target audience of twelve-to-sixteen-year-old girls (who has more time to devour page-turners, see the same movie five times in theaters, and buy accompanying action figures?).

Ed Zwick was a breath of clean alpine air in a city of taxi exhaust and souvlaki-vendor smoke. Earlier this week I attended a media-infested auction house event where I encountered smug young bankers whose Ivy League degrees oozed out of their personalities as much as their knowledge of New York Magazine’s restaurants-of-the-week. In comparison, Ed Zwick was the real good thing. My final night in Manhattan was like a bowl of homemade ice cream after six months of Tasti D-Lite.

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