Everyplace in Washington, D.C. is “city.” There’s no downtown or slum that I’ve seen. It’s just miles and miles of eight to thirteen-story buildings (and the thirteenth is usually called a “Penthouse” even though it’s usually just another floor). And everywhere the sidewalks are wide and clean and there are bars and pubs and restaurants and panhandlers because no one block seems much better than another for any of that. The topography has something to do with this being a swamp, originally, so they can’t go deep enough to build real skyscrapers – or so I was told by a blind date quite a while ago, on my first visit to the place.
I walked again, today, as I do almost every day – seeking out a place to settle, investigating neighborhoods or specific apartments found on Craigslist or Hotpads or via a friend’s forwards from her work’s bulletin board system. Today, I walked from Penn Quarter nearly to Georgetown, to the West End, where I looked at one place and made many phone calls without success. I spent most of the day in one coffee shop or another. After browsing Craigslist some more and working on my side project for a few hours at a Starbucks, I walked to Dupont Circle. There was a happy-hour feeling around the entire place that I think I could get used to. Once I was there, I found I couldn’t leave. I tried to leave as I wasn’t quite sure I was ready for happy hour, but then as I got farther from the epicenter of Dupont and the streets grew less exciting I had to turn around. I was drawn back to the circle. I do a lot of that here – turning around in the middle of a block and doing other things I’d usually feel self-conscious about but doing them now, anyway, just because. I read in a bar. I write in a bar. I stop in the middle of my run on the lawn near the reflecting pool or I climb the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in a t-shirt that’s so thin and wet with sweat it’s transparent. This is a city that’s (usually) exceptionally un-disturbed by anything anyone does. I think I just feel this way because of all the tourists. Whenever you can pretend you’re a tourist or a businessman in the city on travel, you can get away with things like reading in a bar. Or so it seems to me; someone observing me may have a completely different perspective. But one thing is clear – I’ve never found it easier to talk to strangers as I do now, here in D.C.. Very few nights have gone by where I didn’t end up talking to someone interesting or even exchanging cards (my cards being self-printed from a Sam’s Club business card kit where the paper felt heavy on first inspection but now I’m almost too embarrassed to hand them out).This may be the right place to point out that my only friend here (a pretty girl, as it happens), has acknowledged that the ratio of single women to single men in DC is about (feels about) 3-1. I don’t think I’d dispute that, though the married politicians seem to skew the ratio more to 3-2 (plus, they screw up the rent availability by getting their girlfriends nice apartments in the city). But I may be generalizing, a bit.So anyway… there was free yoga happening on the lawn in the center of Dupont Circle. There were legs and heads and bare feet flying into the air and downward-facing dogs, with an inner circle and an outer circle of spectators and others just enjoying the evening on a bench. There were hundreds of people all coalescing in the circle; those not doing yoga or watching yoga seemed to be considering which restaurant or bar they’d like start with. I stopped at a restaurant that had sidewalk seating and I thought I’d like to sit there and people-watch, but as I got closer I realized I didn’t want to consume a big patio table all by myself, so instead I sat inside at a smaller table and read. I’m re-reading If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler…, by Italo Calvino. Incredible book and the voice and his words just make me want to write and keep writing regardless of how I sound and just to trust that something decent may come of these words, whether they’re read or not. Microsoft Word underlines the previous word “read” and suggests that maybe I meant to say “ready.” Ready or not?” No, Word. Read. Read as in the past tense of read. Our language is hard.While walking back to my temporary Penn Quarter apartment from Dupont Circle, I detoured father down than usual, and took myself to Lexington Square – the large park just north of the White House. I was blown away by the awesomeness of the place at night. Sure, there were still crazy guys talking to themselves about how many times they’ve been in the hospital and probably some characters who’re better avoided, but there were also women jogging and skinny businessmen walking alone, talking on their phones as if this weren’t a big-city park at night.In the two weeks I’ve been here I haven’t yet been scared. This isn’t a scary city. Or maybe it’s that I’m not a scared person, anymore. I suppose it’s a little of both. I’ve had conflicts here – several conflicts, in fact: with other bar patrons and vagrants and panhandlers and punks on the street, but I’ve never felt that there was a situation I couldn’t handle – and I haven’t yet been pushed to any sort of real confrontation. I wrote something about that a couple days ago – about the aggressive panhandling and a crazy woman yelling at me as I sat at a sidewalk café with a friend, but I’ve sent it into McSweeney’s for possible publication in a section that’s not all that prestigious anyway, so maybe I’ll publish it here soon (if they don’t publish it soon). But anyway, it’s not the sort of city that makes you run away from anything or sneak paranoid glances behind you.I get closer to Penn Quarter and still, at ten o’clock at night there are pretty girls walking all alone, and I realize I’m not the only one who’s fearless. Behind me is the sound of flip-flops on concrete and I dismiss them as a threat and continue on without even turning around. Only at the light do I notice the flip-flops carry a pretty girl in a black dress who’s heading somewhere purposefully as she doesn’t stop at the light at all – she does the big-city jaywalking of a local. I usually jaywalk, too, but I’m distracted by an email that’s come into my iPhone with a ding. I stop for a second or two to read the title and instantly delete. I look ahead and evaluate the light, still twenty-six seconds before I can walk legally. With no cars in sight, I stride forward and continue on against the light, the girl in the black dress and flip flops leading the way to my next cocktail.
