Jay McInerney on post-Obama New York. 

Not sure you know this about me, or if you care, but this is my blog, so I'll tell you. Living abroad, for some reason I never felt any particular shame in being American, even when there were good reasons to do so. I grew up on the East Coast and moved abroad in 1996 at the age of 22, shortly after graduation. I never really thought I'd stay away for that long. Just wanted to see what was out here in the big old wild world and then go back to New York City. 

In fact I always said I'd be living in New York by the age of 30. Well, you do the math -- for whatever reason, that didn't happen. 

Over the summer I spent a few days in New York and it sort of occured to me that life is pretty damn short. Too short, in fact, not to be living in New York. And I was dumbfounded by how easy it could be: I could in fact just move there anytime I like, and live there as long as I like, for the rest of my life if I so choose, without ever having to worry about things like visas, paperwork, potential deportation, or anything like that. 

Shocking, I know. Maybe I was more dumbfounded by the fact that I was dumbfounded. This was not new informtion, but there's knowing and then there's knowing, if you catch my drift. 

Mom's a solid New England Republican who, due to breeding, could never physically bring herself to vote Democrat. I felt her wavering this year and gave her all my reasoned "good conservative" arguments for flipping. At the last minute I brought out the bigger guns: If both my parents voted for Barack Obama, I said I'd come home in 2009. 

Start packing your bags, they said. So that's the news. I gotta move back to the USA finally.