So. Not “new stuff” technically, but something that I wrote when I left H Street, NE a few years ago. I’m way behind for 2010 so far and it makes me nervous, so this erases the deficit, and now things will get back to normal. I’m declaring this straight-up autobiography, with the caveat that some of it is made up. It is intended (still) as the start of Capital City Blues. Written June 2008.
A recent wave of violence—a few murders in the span of a few days—the proportion of murders to days shrinking rapidly, suggests that the neighborhood still has a long way to go. Last night as I lay awake in bed on the cool spring evening, the shouts of “Where the fuck is my money” and broken glass do nothing but confirm this suspicion. And yet, I will definitely be sad leaving here. Leaving behind our neighbors Quincie and Lois, Pat and Amanda, Carmen and Angie. I’m writing this to remember the last year to put together a collection of short stories about our experiences in this neighborhood. A collection that captures what it feels like to be just out of college during this particular time and in DC especially. NO one writes about DC with the exception of Edward P. Jones, whose collection sits on my shelf and awaits my completion of The Sound and the Fury to be read.
When I first moved here, I thought that the reason no one wrote about DC was the fact that there was nothing to write about. A city whose cultural landscape had been marred by years of segregation, plagued by a history of race-riots and fires. Doomed by federal government and the population of Blackberry toting lobbyist and the temporary residents of Congressional officials. The vagaries of elections in Iowa and California and Alaska determine that the population of DC will always have a rotating door aspect to it. There will always be people ushered out and in. And then there will be the segment of the population that will never be able to move, despite any anti-inertial force that might impel them to go somewhere else. These are the Chocolate City folks, who have populated my block for upwards of 40 years, and who are getting pushed out by people like me. They won’t get to see the fruits of an improved neighborhood—even though they have been waiting all of their lives for it. They will be taxed out, pushed to Anacostia, and a few Indie couples will fill in the holes on their front porches. They’ll hang new mailboxes and sandblast the brick.
They will lay down bamboo flooring and install stainless steel appliances. They will bring their Kitchen Maid espresso machines and their off-roading baby carriages, with huge back wheels that seem designed for the purpose of pushing a child through and over the underbrush of a Montana trail. Whatever they are suited for, they are not made for the simple trawling of DC streets. They, like their owners, seem destined for a forced type of off-roading. They are the SUV’s of baby carriages, as if the smaller fuel efficient cars that have suddenly invaded must be offset by the ostentatious size of their baby-movers. We have to own bigger somethings in order to function as confident Americans.
There is the walk to Union Station in the Morning.
I set out, usually at around 8:15 to Union Station. I walk down the steps and can here the iron beneath my feet. As I lock my front door, I can hear my roommate’s alarm clock going off. He sets two of them: one on his cell phone and one incredibly loud beeping noice on his clock radio. I hear it as I walk down the stairs, usually forgetting something in my room. I hear it as I walk back up the stairs. I hear it as I run back down and flip the bottom lock to pull the door shut. It was never too cold in winter, but the walk was decidedly worse in the cold months. I hated it. F Street NE, down which I walk toward Union, is a dreary street in the cold, without the green of the trees, and especially on gray and icy days. The colors of the rowhouses, varied though they are, do not stand out in a way that one might call even remotely attractive in the winter. There are a few houses that stand out in my mind as I walk. There is the brick house that was redone over the course of the last eight months. Modern looking, with black trim around the windows. The brick is a great deep shade of red and there are small spotlights next to the doors. In the winter, it would still be slightly dark when I left in the morning and the lights shone on the brick. I looked forward to seeing them in the evening for two reasons: one, the house is one of the prettiest on F Street. Among some that are quite run down, and others who are doomed either by the faux bricks of their construction, or the terrible peeling shades of their facades, it is a slick and modern-looking building. It was redone with great care, and now that it is spring, the owners have planted fresh flowers in a small box out front.
The next house that stands out is a big yellow corner house with a huge front porch and a yapping old terrier that hates me. The corner house has a large black iron fence that wraps around the entire property and is nicely planted with flowers and shrubs. The porch is gray and has yellow brick columns and looks quite pleasant in warm weather. During the winter, the grass turned very brown and when the rain fell, I no longer liked the house.
Between 4th and 5th Street, there is an elementary school with a big parking lot and a blacktop playground always populated by screaming kids in the morning. In the afternoons when I walk home, there is occasionally football practice or some older looking guys (maybe out of college, in law school, or something) playing basketball on the court next to one of those huge multi-colored plastic jungle gyms. At 2nd and F is Ebenezer’s, which I am told is the largest privately owned coffeehouse in DC. I believe it. There is a small main floor with some couches where you buy coffee (they have a “suggested minimum” for credit cards of $5) But apparently most of the space is in the basement, where there is a huge room with plasma TV screens. I have never been downstairs because frankly the place creeps me out. It’s owned by some church, and when you do manage to meet the credit card minimum, the charge shows up as “Church of Christ the Redeemer” on your records. It kind of creeps me out.
At Union Station, I usually read the poem on top of the balustrade: Welcome the coming/speed the parting guest./Virtue alone is sweet society/It keeps the key to/All heroic hearts and/opens you a welcome in them all. I looked up this poem one time on Google and I think it turned out to be two separate poems. I can’t recall. At this point in the walk, I am walking by the SEC, where guards take what look like giant dental mirrors to look under the bottom of some cars as they pull into the parking lot in the morning. High school students who look very indie, many of them dressed in red sneakers and camo jackets, some in suits, and others in skinny jeans with roughed up t-shirts, walk past me in the opposite direction. Their school, just behind me at this point (I think it’s on 2nd and G) spills out into trailers in the parking lot.
At Union, I walk down the long corrider toward the Metro. I love to look left and see the Capitol Building, and the winter here provided one advantage. In the warm months, leaves obscure the dome and you can only see the statue at the top. But in the winter, the capitol (which looks good in any light) stands out against the sky menacing. I make it to the metro, turning right and usually looking at the Postal Museum entrance.
On the walk down the corridor there are always homeless people smoking, many of them screaming. I heard an explanation for the apparent insanity of most of the homeless in this city. Apparently the mayor closed down a lot of the mental institutions someitme in the eighties, and a fair number of these people are still on the street, wandering around, looking for money and for food. One is actually passing the window right now. She wore a white bucket hat and a green frayed (has to be frayed of course) sweater. Her bottom lip hung low and somehow too red for the blackness of her face. You could see the veins.
The one homeless guy who stands out is obviously the guy who hunches over on his cane, sometimes more severely than other times. “Spare a little change,” he says always as I walk by, and I can sometimes tell how drunk he is just by watching his posture, other times just by listening to his voice. It’s extremely nasal and he squints as if in pain as he stands there. Assuming that he does in fact hunch all the time, I imagine that he aches all the tiem. Some part of me, perhaps the cynical, perhaps the realist, believes that he is faking it most of the time. Most of the other homeless people huddle around the ash trays and you can hear them telling stories or complaining about the government, something that I always get a kick out of because they are within site of the Capitol. I say “get a kick” inappropriately here. What I really mean is that one of the things that gets to me about DC is how many people live in abject poverty within a stone’s throw of the government that might be able to help them. Bootstraps, or providing boots, or something like that. What would it feel like to be homeless or on welfare with a sick kid and two jobs, and know that you can’t pay your bills? What would it feel like to see the decision makers of our government so clearly? What would you want to say to them? Would you try to convince them of something? Would you want to march up to the Rayburn Building to meet your Congressman and demand an explanation? Or would you just stand outside Union Station and pick through the wrought iron cans? Would you really want to subject yourself to the realization that nothing could or would be changed?
**
My favorite place on H Street, Dr. Granville Moore’s, was one of the first real restaurants on the strip. The first time I went here, it was just for a drink, and I went with Tarek before he left for Israel. I ordered a Corsendonk Brown from the hearing impaired waiter, named Brian, who has by now learned that I am a regular. I did not introduce myself that night, and it was not in fact until the last time that I went there with a few other people that I got his name. The first time that I went with Tarek, we waited for a half hour at the tall front table while Brian got my beer, and got a Coke for Tarek. The place was just about empty. I saw who I thought was the owner, Chris, with a beard and glasses. A huge dude who later made me a daiquiri from some of his private stock of spiced rum. A bottle that had orange and lime peels in it and a daiquiri that he insisted was the best in DC. I told him that I had to take his word for it, and I still haven’t tried one anywhere else in the city. That first night, it was about a month before Tarek left. We talked mainly about how long it was taking to get my beer. He had been quiet during that period.
I went there with Drew and Christina once. Drew bought me birthday dinner and I got drunk on a beer that the waitress had recommended. We tried to sit outside, but there was no room on the patio.
And it’s dark dark inside. The beer fridge on the bottom floor was imported from upstate New York: repaired and retro-fitted to suit the dimensions of the downstairs bar. Both bars (upstairs and downstairs) are stained dark wood and they have simple stools at them of an equally dark wood. There is a sheen to the bar and it is hardly ever sticky. They stripped all of the paint off the brick walls and shine dim lights against the reds and browns to make a slight glow. The crossbeams in the ceiling upstairs are visible, left exposed. The place feels slightly cool in the winter, but cozy. So far, on the nights when I have been there during warm weather, the air conditioning is usually not working. It’s hot upstairs, always packed, and loud. I like coming here partially because it’s a place that feels like my own within the neighborhood.
You eat mussels at Grandville’s. They come in big earthen bowls with another bowl on top as a lid. They come with frites, and you choose dipping sauces. Garlic, Horseradish, Curry, and Heinz Ketchup. I crack the mussels with my hands and scoop out the broth with bacon or beer or mushroom cream with the shell. I throw the mussels in the second bowl. The beer complements the mussels and the sauce and the frites are salty. At the end of the meal, they drop a basket of bread to mop up the rest of the sauce, and you feel good for a moment at the end. Buzzed and slightly congested and full.
Next door to Granville’s is The Pug, which claims to have a boxing theme, which as far as I can tell is just pictures of Muhammed Ali, some boxing gloves tied to the television, and a Rock ‘em Sock ‘em game that has been broken since I first went there. There’s always a crowd of barrel chested dudes there, and I occasionally feel out of place. The bartender who served me and Anderew the first time that we were there was named Jim. He was there a few times after that, but I haven’t seen him since the end of the summer.
Jim served us whiskey and told us about how he was a baseball player in Indiana during college. He walked with a limp that seemed almost cartoonish, swaying back and forth so violently that it looked as though he was about to tip over. He wore a towel tucked into his belt and wipes his fingers clean after pouring bowls full of Cheese Puffs. Here, you order Natural Bohemian and they are always out of it. In theory, you can order a Natural Bohemian can for $2.00, but somehow they are always out. I think the only time we actually drank Natty Bo was when we sat next to a divorcee in his thirties that Jim introduced us to. He talked about how Natty Bo was a great beer to drink when tubing because, “You can drink about 24 or 30 of them and feel great and float on down the river.” For some reason he looked like a man who was not exaggerating when he talked about how much Natty Bo he could drink. He wheezed and grasped at the air for gestures that wouldn’t come. I didn’t know how to talk to him as he talked about Capitol Hill and the reason it was the best place to come after his divorce. I just didn’t know where to look.
Tony is the owner of the bar. He kind of recognizes me and always has a look of disdain on his face when we walk in—especially if we are bringing girls in for a shot of whiskey at the end of the night. Tony definitely remembers us, but he doesn’t remember our names. He got Pope tickets when the pope came into town and I asked him, “How did you get Pope tickets?”
“You didn’t know me when I was in Capitol Lounge, did you? How long you been coming here?”
The maximum I could have answered was “a year,” since The Pug only opened last March. I couldn’t say “as long as you’ve been here” for fear that I would easily be caught in his lie. Instead I told him that I had been coming since the previous summer. “Well then you just don’t know,” he said. I didn’t know how he could get Pope tickets.
There are rules posted in chalk over the bar. “No idiots, no politics, no specials, have fun, drink your drink.”
When Davey came into town for a night, I took him and his four friends to the Pug to drink. Two extraordinarily drunk guys in the back took them on in pool, but Davy and his friend Bill decimated them. It was extremely satisfying. That was one of those rainy nights when you just want to curl up, but when you break that feeling and get out of the house, you feel much better about yourself. Also that day, Davey and I had come to Sidamo to talk and smoke cigarettes and catch up over coffee. We argued about the morality of homosexuality and whether it can be a moral choice if you are born a homosexual. It was already gray when we parted. I dropped him on the mall and promised to talk to him that evening. Sure enough, after hanging out with Brian and his lame friends, instead of driving home I picked up Davey and his buddies in Chinatown. We headed out to H Street and ended up at the Pug.
They had been an interesting crew. Unlike many other “crews” that I had been introduced to among my friends. They had traveled cross-country together and were as varied in personality as you could imagine close friends to possibly be. And I don’t remember any of their names in particular. There had to be an Andrew (there’s always an Andrew) and they smoked cigarettes and were extremely friendly, and could tell each other’s thoughts before they spoke and I was jealous of this. I was jealous of their ability to hustle the two guys playing pool too. I did not begrudge them their friendship, as I know that I have many friends and different dynamics to enjoy here in DC. But that night, I felt like an outsider in their group. They each filled me in at different points of the night on certain inside jokes. I laughed and nursed beers as the driver. They slammed back whiskeys and Bud Lights as we walked from bar to bar in the pouring rain. When I dropped them at their car on the Mall, I drove back in the rain and lay awake a long time when I got back to the empty house, listening to the rain and waiting for sleep.
