WHERE were you on 9/11?

At the time, I was sleeping on a mattress in my $350-a-month studio apartment on Sycamore Avenue, just off Hollywood Boulevard. I was so broke back then that I couldn’t even afford to pay attention. I was sleeping late, as the night before I had worked my usual shift as a doorman at a bar/nightclub down in Brentwood.

The phone ringing wrenched me awake. It was my Swedish friend Fredrik.

“What’s happening?” I asked him on the back of a yawn.

“Are you watching this?”

“Watching what? I was sleeping.”

“Turn on the TV! We’re under attack!”

Still to this day, I remember him saying that “We’re under attack,” despite being from Sweden. Fredrik, to let you understand, was a 6’6” former professional kickboxer, who had moved to Hollywood from Japan to carve out a career in movies. In the meantime, he made his way working as a bodyguard for various celebrities.

I had missed the first tower in New York being struck, but I watched the second being hit live on the news. Awful.

Hollywood in the days immediately afterward was a ghost town. People were scared, I mean really scared and also confused.

But not all.

I remember the older Mexican guy who worked at the parking garage down the street, where I parked my beat-up Chevy at the time. We used to talk politics whenever we passed.

The following day, after 9/11, he was at the entrance of the parking garage as usual as I headed for my car. He saw me approach and in a low voice, said: “You see what happens, senor? You see what happens when you go around the world killing people?”

Make no mistake about it, across the US post-9/11, for every blue-eyed patriot screeching for revenge, there was a poor migrant worker in brown skin — parking the cars, cleaning the homes, and working three jobs for minimum wage — who secretly felt that the US had just got what it deserved. These people were, and still are, the unseen and the unheard in the “land of opportunity.” Polite and servile on the surface, in their hearts resides the residual anger common to the oppressed of all lands.

Most businesses — shops, bars, restaurants, etc — in and around Hollywood closed over the following few days. The bar/nightclub where I worked four nights a week at the time decided to remain open. Brentwood is located a half-hour drive away, close to the main University of California, Los Angeles campus, and the bar down there where I worked, El Dorado, was popular with the legion of the predominately white children of the rich who studied there.

Two nights later and there I am, standing in the middle of a deserted nightclub. The decision to remain open on the part of the owners was the wrong one. At one point, looking out at an empty dance floor, the DJ put on Frank Sinatra’s classic tune, New York, New York. It was intended as a gesture of solidarity with the victims of 9/11. It went down like a lead balloon, to the point where the few people who were there started booing him. It was crude and it was crass under the circumstances. He quickly and advisedly changed the music.

The last thing I remember from that time is the old homeless lady shuffling in my direction on Hollywood Boulevard a few days later. I felt sorry for her and offered her a five-dollar bill. She stopped, looked at me, and said with surprising lucidity: “No thank you, I have my own money.” She then said, before shuffling off again: “The world will never be the same.”

Moments later, this young white guy came striding along the street with his chest puffed out. “Hey man,” he boomed in my direction. “We’re gonna kick their f***ing asses!”