East coast tour, part one: Washington DC

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I’m confused. Where are all the posts that surely came between early june and now?

After five days on the road together, Jon and I pulled into the 7-11 in Arlington, Virginia, mere blocks from our destination of Andrea’s apartment. I picked up a vegetarian chickpea dish and some naan for takeout from an adjacent kabob place, food which rocked my palette, road-starved as it was from foraging at convenience stores and gas stations. That evening, I checked my email courtesy someone else’s wireless network on Andrea’s sixth story balcony, drank some Magic Hat #9 from the roommate’s beer fridge, and slept on the couch while Jon and Andrea vigorously had sex in the privacy of Andrea’s bedroom.

Food variety is a big plus for DC, I must say. The strip with the kabob place had no less than a dozen restaurants and cafes of various ethnic backgrounds – Lebanese, Thai, Indian, indeterminate Middle Eastern, etc.; Lulu and I could probably spend a month exploring menus there, and the rest of the DC area seems equally dense. 18th street in Adams Morgan hosts Ethiopian and Indian restaurants that former DC residents speak of with misty eyes, and good coffee is not hard to find nearby.

This is the first chance I’ve had to explore DC on my own timeline and terms, and it feels liberating to be off a set schedule for the first time in over two weeks. Once I realized I could be spontaneous and choose my own adventure, however pedestrian and trite, the inherent stress of needing to conform daily to a specific [place, time, personality] coordinate started to melt away, and I could feel my free will shifting in its slumber. I really haven’t done much yet, but it’s been my own thing, and that feels good.

This town is lousy with consulates and embassies. Everywhere there is carefully considered civic architecture, rows of brownstone townhouses, churches, commemorative statuary, out of state plates, and the headquarters of national organizations. The street map looks like a grid assembled by a rational city planner but with a skewed, rotated, and scaled up version of the same grid superimposed on top of it. Every location I’ve been thus far would be considered a walking district in Austin, with a prominence of non-chain stores and locally-owned boutiques. It seems like the urban cluster must extend for miles in all directions, but the districts are tiny, and Logan Circle (where I’m staying) is a short walk from both Adams Morgan (the hip part of town) and the National Mall, so overall, it’s almost village-like. Signage and overheard conversations tend overwhelmingly towards politically-charged topics, and the overall slant appears to be pretty liberal (Mike backs this up with the factoid that DC “votes” about 10% Republican). Everyone (or so) looks like a yuppie, unless they are old (in which case they are a ouppie, I guess) or vaguely trendy enough to be considered non-yuppie (eg – piercing on upper ear, wearing a t-shirt). They seem nice enough, they are very ethnically diverse, and presumably they’ve all come here with altruistic ideals and an unstoppable urge to change the system from the inside, right?

DC may be the murder/crack/unpleasantry headquarters of the US, but everywhere I’ve been is clean and orderly, spacious and energetic. It should be noted that I’ve walked no more than 20 blocks in a given direction and that last time I visited Jon in Adams Morgan, two friends got mugged at gunpoint and someone else shot, all in one night, mere blocks from Jon’s apartment. So I’m all, like, checking my six when I count Jacksons while trolling the streets at night anyway.

Mike is my generous host, and his apartment is small but serviceable and located one floor down from the pool on the roof (more than just a rumor to dupe the Freshmen). He works for a firm that develops models which influence policy; formerly they predicted the side effects of petroleum shortages, and now his models trace economic impact of oil drilling – where exactly do those dollars go, who benefits? A friend of Jon’s that I met on a snowboarding trip last year in which myself and about five other 20-something boys drank with vigor and talked about poop, ball sweat, boobs, great works of literature, underground art and music, and cutting edge mobile technology, and also picked up after ourselves responsibly and made food for each other, Mike is clearly an ideal host with whom to spend most of a week. The first night at his place, we rode his motorcycle up to Claire’s apartment to hang out briefly while she packed for a trip to Montreal commencing the following day. Traveling by motorcycle is frightening but kinetically thrilling, presumably like running down the street at 40 miles an hour would be, and I was privileged to wear a heavily-stickered motocross helmet as though I were an 80’s pre-teen, and I wrapped my arms around Mike’s waist in the gayest display you can imagine, straight through the tolerance-oriented part of town. I enthusiastically explained to Claire that my sweaty crotch was due to it being pressed into Mike’s ass. The second night at Mike’s place, we watched a TV show with Paris Hilton and Lionel Richie’s daughter in it in which they take odd jobs to pay for a drive across the nation. If I sound laughably uninformed, consider that watching this half-hour show probably doubled my total TV exposure time for the past two years, even if you include the Texas hold em poker that played in the Atlanta bar four days ago. Both programs were fascinating, as TV will tend to be to those of us without trained defenses against rapidly changing images, and Paris and Miss Richie were entertaining in their temporary employ as police officers; I will certainly share a bar counter, my hoodie, and a few hearty road tales with them should I encounter them in my sojourn. Mike’s cat is named Radar, and is colored like a cow and also the tiniest dog I’ve ever seen which we just met downstairs a while ago, please look at the pictures and see if you don’t agree.

Yesterday I walked around the Dupont neighborhood with Jess Henig, who you may remember as having crossed the path of Theron and me in Portland for numerous minutes during YAR! in May. Despite being acclimated to Austin (and to a lesser extent, even Phoenix) heat, DC in August is a punishing climate for walking, with humidity that makes transit busses look like mobile greenhouses due to condensation buildup on the windows. Jess is native to these parts and taught me where to find the best coffee shops with free wireless internet, a crucial contribution to the past couple days, as I attempted to organize and research for my upcoming trip to Europe. On the way back to her car, we were drawn to investigate the imposing and enigmatic Masonic temple. We were spotted from within, and this guy gave us promotional pamphlets and urged us to return for a tour, an adventure we are planning to undertake tomorrow, despite reports that it’s totally sketchy and lasts two hours. Beseech the higher power of your choice for my safe return.

I still don’t yet have a name or a theme nor even a particular purpose for this, the East Coast Tour, but inspiration may strike and it may be swung by Zach, who is currently careening across the country to rendez-vous in New York City this coming Sunday. We have no plans and no place to sleep and an entire week to fill. But in the meantime, I’ve got a couple more days to put in here in DC.

Comments

[Lulu]

So wee!

[karen]

i can't believe i was rewarded for checking this again.

p.s. p-a-l-a-t-e.

[karen]

i can't believe i was rewarded for checking this again.

p.s. p-a-l-a-t-e.

[Randy]

normally i'd correct your error and delete one of those for you, but seeing as you picked on me four times (2 comments x twice per comment)....

[Jess]

If my car registration had occurred under less fraught circumstances, I would consider it a sheer delight to be graced with the snarkiest license plate in the States.

Also, I see you went to the Red Box... man, I wish you could have seen it when it was the love child of a convenience store and a vending machine. It was just a big box of pomo.

[Kristine]

Well look who joined us in the land of virtual storytelling.

[Ponch]

Ain't no party like an East Coast party cuz an East Coast party don't stop!

It's been some time since I pointed my receiver at Gemini Radio, and I feel like the whole in my ear has been adequately filled. I shall continue to monitor the rantings and ravings of this roaming cultural imbiber.