It’s been so long since I had a first day at something that I do not remember exact details. So I’m going to give you an amalgamation of what I remember from my first days in DC. Believe me when I say that this is a love letter to the city, because DC is the one that got away, the one I long for, the one that makes me feel complete. I cannot decide if DC has spoiled me for anywhere else, or if I just need to stay in Baltimore longer… It’s not that it doesn’t mean as much, we’re just not there yet.
My original introduction to DC was a trip when I was eight years old. We went to the White House and the Capitol, me dressed in the world’s most uncomfortable clothing- a lace dress. I’m fairly certain I had a matching hat. To think of myself in this getup now is amusing….. But it definitely showed me the rhythm of the city. Formal, dress up.
It was in my eight year old mind that the seed started…. “I wonder what it would be like to live here?”
I moved here with a partner, and she was not into me. So, when the relationship ended, I didn’t know what to do. I left DC when I really didn’t want to, I just didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t take time to make friends outside of my relationship, so I went home to Houston and eventually moved to Portland.
But I never forgot about DC.
That first week in Alexandria was full of driving past the Pentagon and the monuments, mouths agape. We thought we were the luckiest people in the world until September 11th.
September 11th, 2001 was the real first day of our new lives, because everything was different. There were 18 year olds with automatic machine guns all over National when we tried to fly home. Security was a nightmare, but we made it.
I suppose the life lessons write themselves after something like that, but the thing I remember most is the resilience of the city and the communal support/love in the air.
So don’t give up on me, DC. I’ll see you again. I’ll never let you get away for long.
I have had a lot of caffeine in getting ready for my apartment to be inspected on Friday. They never showed up, so I will have to check in again with them on Monday. They apologized for the inconvenience, but I reserve the right to be perturbed that I thought my lease would be settled by now. Thank God I have time on Monday to go to the office and sit down with them. They don’t seem to do much if I’m not right on top of it. The reason I’m staying is that I don’t have the energy to move. It’s not that they did everything right.
They’ll have a chance to change gears with the new apartment, so I’m hoping for good things. If I do not get them, I can always move in a few months. This is just really bad timing to pack up everything. I am going home for the holidays on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Fitting a move in there is just silly.
I’m already drinking too much coffee trying to get everything done. It’s going to be hard enough to get movers to take my furniture to my new apartment, much less across town. But a move across campus is something I could manage by myself (I think). I will have to consult my counselor at Cognitive Behavioral Health and see what he recommends. Surely his other clients have had to move before, and I know he’s at least a sympathetic ear.
He’s the kind of person who takes action, and will step in with my apartment complex if he thinks I’m being taken advantage of or anything like that. It’s good to have someone in my corner that’s local, because my dad and sister definitely are, but they are not here. I’m sure it would be easier on them if I lived in Texas, but it’s not easier on my health insurance. I have to stay where the Medicaid expansion is.
I need to take some major sleeping pills when I get home tonight, making sure to sleep in tomorrow. I’ve been getting up so early that “having a lie-in” means 7:00 AM, not noon…. not that there’s anything wrong with sleeping until noon when I need it. I haven’t been sleeping deeply and I desperately need the rest.
Long, hot showers do a lot of restorative work, but they’re not everything.
I’m getting excited because it’s almost time to load up and go to Tiina’s farm. She’s not a morning person, so I promised her I wouldn’t arrive before 11:00. That means I need to leave here sometime around 9:00. I don’t know what the traffic is going to look like, but it doesn’t matter. It’s Saturday morning and the mood is lazy. When we get there is when we get there.
DC always has traffic even when it’s the weekend because of construction. I may be able to go around the city and miss it entirely, but I doubt it. The fastest way to Tiina’s will invariably involve getting on a freeway, and in DC, that means the odds of it being worked on are high on the weekends.
I wish I could get my car to drive me, and I practically can. Once I get on the freeway, I’ll set the adaptive cruise control and let the car do the work.
It really settled my mind seeing on the Progressive app that I’m rated four out of five stars as a driver. I know for certain I am not a five star driver, but I have also been too hard on myself.I can tell you from having ridden with many Uber drivers that I’m not that bad. So, apparently, if I tell you that I’m a bad driver, take it with a grain of salt. Apparently, I just have low self-esteem.
It’s coming up with the freedom of driving and the feeling I get when I walk out to my spotless car. Well, not spotless. I could use a car wash. But the inside is still fresh from being vacuumed and the leather smells good. I put on my sunglasses and just smile. It makes me feel so luxurious to have a nice car.
But notice I said “nice” and not “expensive.”
I am not sure that I could have gotten this good a quality of used car in Maryland because this car has never spent a winter up north. I’m not looking forward to that part of it, that my car’s undercarriage could get rusted out with the use of salt on the road when it ices. There are spray coatings you can get to protect against that kind of damage, so I need to do some research on how much it is. I would much rather keep putting money into this car than shopping for another one. Shopping for cars is something that you think will be fun and very quickly becomes overwhelming.
It’s now 5:30 PM, and I’m home from my friend Tiina’s. That’s her dog, McLaren, in the photo. He’s a French bulldog and the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. His favorite hobby is slobbering. ๐
I would say that this was one of the best days I’ve had in DC since I got here in 2015. The drive from Maryland to Virginia was so beautiful I would have cried had I not been driving. The fall colors and the monuments were in full glory, and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway is just unmatched. Then, as I got deeper into Northern Virginia, there were more forests and hills to explore.
My check engine light in the Fusion came on again, because whatever they did to it at Ford to turn the light off before doesn’t work now. It’s throwing the same error it was before, that the inner fuel door isn’t sealing properly. I’m going to take it back on Monday or Tuesday if the fix I found on YouTube doesn’t work. It didn’t before, but I’ll try it again. You spray WD-40 on the fuel door and push a funnel through it until it reseals. If it’s a permanent problem, it might be expensive to fix, but I don’t think it’s OH MY GOD. Luckily, I have enough money not to sweat it. I’m trying to get my car completely stable before winter. Nothing is worse than when the car won’t start and you didn’t bring a jacket because “I don’t have to get out of the car.”
Mostly I want the light off because it sends my blood pressure into a tizzy, even though I know that nothing is going to happen. The inner fuel door in the gas tank not resealing might make me lose gas, but I’m not going to be stranded on the freeway.
And hey, Tiina likes to drive, too, so I know she would have bailed me out even if I broke down close to home.
Oh, man. I still can’t stop thinking about the brilliant fall leaves I saw, because they were just as beautiful as New York. The reds, in particular, stood out to me because I was wearing blue blocker sunglasses. I went past all my favorite places, from Alexandria to Waffle House.
I almost pulled over, but Tiina lives about 20-30 miles past it, so it wasn’t worth it to eat when I wanted to see if Tiina was hungry first.
We ended up having pulled pork sandwiches with cole slaw, and a delicious herbal tea that’s supposed to bring down your stress level. Everything about today brought down my stress level. There were animals, a huge yard, and just a vibe around the house that makes you relax.
It felt so easygoing to sit and chat with friends.
Then, I decided to come back to Baltimore and the traffic was horrible. On a Saturday. I shouldn’t be surprised. There were wrecks and construction the whole way. But again, my attention was taken up by the scenery. I also got to see the monuments in bright light and just at sunset. That’s worth coming to DC all by itself.
I just felt so free, and so at home because I think of Virginia that way. I lived there in my early 20s and it changed my life. Thus the drive to come back here in my late 30s…. “here” being the general vicinity of DC and Baltimore. I am tied to the land in a spectacular way because DC and Baltimore are both characters in this blog.
If Kathleen and I had been smart, we would have bought a house back then. Even if we’d had to sell it, we would have made money on the deal. Real estate in this area doesn’t go any way but up.
Tiina sent me pictures after she’d hung her outdoor chandeliers, and it was marvelous. I can’t wait to go back, and I’m so glad to know I’m invited.
As a preacher’s kid, I have always loved spring. Mostly because for Christian kids it’s a much tamer version of Christmas. You’re not focusing on death, but on new life. It’s a party atmosphere. There are generally tiny gifts. When we didn’t live close, our grandparents sent us small amounts of money in the mail when we were kids. One year, I talked about getting a goldfish nonstop for months and I woke up to a trail of marshmallow eggs leading to a bowl containing Othello, the aptly named Black Moor goldfish with the cutest little bubble eyes I’ve ever seen in my life. He looked like the fat Buddha baby of fish.
As an adult, the magic of springtime is not as much in Easter, but in the changes to the land in DC. I love the cherry blossoms, and cannot thank Japan enough. Walking around the Tidal Basin at the Jefferson Memorial is a singular experience in beauty.
My singular experience in beauty moved about a year ago. I used to go sit next to the giraffes in the spring because the zoo is a great place to write when it’s nice outside. You just need headphones because the internet’s biggest competition in DC is a sunny day when the flora is blooming around the Potomac and the Anacostia. In Silver Spring, I get a smaller amount of beauty at Sligo Creek. It’s an actual creek, but also a hiking trail head that takes you from around my house to the White House, which is close, but not that close. I have moved closer in than I was, which means that the White House is about 15 minutes to an hour southeast from my house, depending on traffic because the speed limit is 25 mph.It is probably faster during drive time just to hike. That was a joke, but it comes with prime sideye.
We just don’t have the infrastructure to support getting anywhere fast because you can only retrofit so much. DC was designed to be hard to navigate for troops. It’s a defense mechanism, and the proof is in the pudding because we live here and we get lost.
That reminds me of Jonna Mendez saying that she developed a shorthand so covert that not even she could understand it.
The opening of the new digs of the spy museum was in the spring, and the view from the “patio” is singular as well. You’re high enough up on a bridge that the view to The Capitol is clear. It’s beautiful at any time, but you don’t want to leave it. Well, I don’t. I’d rather sit outside and have The Capitol behind my computer when I’m writing. It makes for an excellent “desktop wallpaper of the mind.”
People think of DC as buttoned up and staid. That’s true of the federal government. The locals, left to their own devices, are “Keep DC Weird” evangelists. We could very easily have our own version of Portlandia in Takoma Park.
Spring is a great time to be a music fan in DC, because it’s nice to sit outside and there are free concerts all over the place, in all kinds of genres. To me, the most fun is hearing the jazz and classical military performing groups outside. That’s because they’re large, and I like a big sound. I came unglued earlier because I learned that Marin Alsop is conducting Beethoven 9 at National Cathedral. That is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I highly recommend getting tickets. It’s not just the music and the conductor, it’s that piece of music in that space. It gets deeply personal in National Cathedral because the entire congregation will be struggling not to sing.
Yes, it’s summer in DC now, but National Cathedral has air conditioning. I’ve checked.
Speaking of National Cathedral, I went for the first time when I was eight. I went to Westminster Abbey when I was nine. Over time, those two memories meshed together, and it was great going back as an adult and picking out which thing I remembered belonged at which church.
(I have a fondness for London, too… but like a side piece. I married DC. DC is my partner. London is my girlfriend at best.)
Spring in anyplace is my favorite season because I would rather sit outside than be in the water. There are diminishing returns on how pleasant it is to be outside if you don’t like to swim. I love it once I get in the water, but I’m not particularly motivated to put on a bathing suit of my own accord. I don’t have body image issues. My first thought is always comfort, and the temperature swings in getting in and out of the water while the breeze tickles my skin sets my nerves on fire. I am much more comfortable in jeans and a hoodie, on a sailboat or on a riverbank. I don’t know how to sail, I’ve just eaten it up every time I’ve been because I don’t feel like it’s dangerous. I’m a good swimmer, I just don’t.
I do like that Zac has a community pool, because we can take beer, soda, and stuff to grill and talk to the people in our neighborhood. I don’t know whether David and I do or not. We probably do, but because we’re in the middle of a city and Zac is in the suburbs, I doubt it’s the same vibe. I’ll just have to check it out. I know that other neighborhoods in Silver Spring do have them, but they’re out past where it’s easily Metro accessible…. as in, there’s enough space that it looks like Virginia again.
I do have several neighborhood parks around me, part of the reason that moving was difficult. It’s a further walk to public transportation. It doesn’t bother me, though, because I get most things delivered and I am building up strength by walking the dog every day. Walking to the bus is a hike and I’m here for it, because it is keeping me young and fit. I don’t have to have a gym membership if Im building exercise into my day, and it’s a 15 minute walk with *lots* of incline. Walking to the bus is one thing. walking home is quite another.
Ask Bryn.
This has probably been my favorite spring in DC, having my people around me at the Spy Museum in May. Zac said that he’d go with me to hear Jonna Mendez, and was looking forward to it when he was called away on temporary duty. So, it meant a lot to me that I got to go back with him, Bryn, and Dave later on.
Being able to share DC with Bryn was the best thing I’ve experienced in years. We have a deep, rich history in Oregon, and we are just beginning our mid-Atlantic chapter in terms of exploring the land together. I hope that she gets here often enough over the years for us to hit the highlights. For instance, we didn’t see a quarter of DC and none of Baltimore.
Last night, Zac took me to my favorite Mexican restaurant in the area because I had to show it off (he’s from Arizona and we’re seemingly alone in this city in terms of “our food.” Texas and Arizona are Mexican influenced to a very heavy degree, and DC is, shall we say……. Not.
I like Salvadoran food. I like Nicaraguan food, etc. But there’s no nostalgia in banana leaf tamales for either of us. It’s not that it’s inferior, it’s that it’s not home. I have learned that the best way to eat in the city is to talk to other cooks, and ignore the white guys (for the most part). It’s not because white people don’t know Mexican food……. Around here.
I have very, very high standards because I will take a quick aside to tell the story of how I met Pati Jinich.
My father is a huge Pati Jinich fan. Huge. I didn’t even know who she was. My dad just bought us tickets to go and see her do a cooking demonstration at the Mexican Embassy (my God DC makes normal things sound amazing). I am always excited to go hear a chef talk. I did not know who I was meeting in terms of PBS fame. She is to him who Vivian Howard is to me, although my dad is definitely on the Vivian train as well.
So, my stepmother noticed my dad’s fascination with Pati and started calling her “his girlfriend.” So, when he called to tell me he wasn’t coming, I said, “careful, Dad. I’m going to steal your girlfriend.” I told her this story.
That’s how we roll. Us cooks.
At the end of the day, it wasn’t a cooking demonstration. It was like flipping shit to every chef I’ve ever had. So, she talked to me longer than she talked to anyone else and was the only one who she said, “let’s take a selfie together.” She didn’t tell me she was going to kiss me, and you can see it on my face. It’s one of the most beautiful shots I’ve ever had in my life and it was taken by a total stranger.
Which is why I will tell you about the next great chef I met, Rachel Bindel, and then I’ll post a worse one. It’s not how I would have wanted it to turn out in terms of myself, but it is on brand. I feel shell-shocked at meeting Someone. A capital S because getting back into the rhythm of speaking “kitchen” burns in my soul. I am fluent in food, it’s what I love, and I just don’t have it together physically enough to really do the job well. As my last chef told me, “you have the heart of a chef.” It took me a very, very long time to accept that I couldn’t hack it physically because I was so determined to run my own kitchen at some point. Then, at some point, it was like “fuck it. You have CP. You can’t get better by working harder.” I was working 12 and 14 hour days multiple days of the week trying to get my performance consistent. If there was an award at restaurants for perfect attendance, I got it in DC.
So, it means a lot when chefs talk to me, because I was married to a chef for a long time and rode her coattails into the business, but stayed with it on my own. I miss cooking with her, personally and professionally. She remains to this day my favorite coworkers ever. Like, I definitely wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with her, but I would be absolutely fucked not to have her on my staff.
In food, you speak with your eyes because you don’t have time for communication except for “heard,” “behind you,” “coming in hot,” “around the corner,” and my particular weakness at calling back because math, “how many we got all day?” “All day” means counting up every instance of every entree on the board. If I’d become a chef, I would have let the sous handle all that (just the math part). I am not quick enough and I know it. Being a creative with autism/ADHD affects me differently as well, because my autistic side doesn’t multitask and my ADHD side thrives on chaos. It wasn’t a good fit for me, but it is my idea of heaven.
If heaven exists and you arrive at the Pearly Gates, what would you like to hear God say?
“Bourdain says you’re on dish.”
So, when I met Rachel Bindel, new chef at Cielo Rojo (the former chef has taken on a second restaurant, so she is chef de cuisine by a hair’s breadth), I absolutely fell apart inside.
I asked her where she went to culinary school and she said simply, “Hyde Park,” and then she forgot who she was talking to. My jaw was on the floor at “heytch.” She went to CIA.
The first thing I asked her was “have you been to the Bourdain and Ripert wing?” I thought, “you better get this woman’s phone number rightthefucknow.” If you’re in The Six, you’ll know why it’s important. We are now entering a new phase of research for my novel, which is a clue, but of course you know that if I write it, it’s going to have something to do with CIA.
So, anyway, she’s a lot younger than me and just tapped my phone and gave me all her details. For as excited as I was to meet her, she looked as excited to meet me…. After I started talking. I hesitate to ask if I can meet the chef, and I don’t know why, because I always put them at ease immediately by being inside the wire. It’s different going to a table full of lay people. You absolutely have NO FUCKING CLUE what to say.
In my case, sometimes this works beautifully. In some cases, it does not. Self select as to which applies to you, and “you’re welcome” or “I’m so, so sorry” as applicable.
So, I hope I’ve made a new friend because both our heavens, at this moment, are red.
Oh, and Zac was there, too. ๐
We just had the funniest conversation where I said, “it’s okay that I’m writing about this, right? That we did this?” He said, “sure, and I appreciate that you asked. I said, “but you don’t care that I mention you, right?” (Insecure after a year and two months…. Eyeroll.) He said, “of course I don’t care if you *mention* me. I said, “ohhhh, you’ll barely rate as more than a mention in this one, too.” We weren’t in the same room, but I hope his response would have been flipping me the bird.
He knows how I feel about him, that he’s the most stand up, stable guy I know and I am blessed beyond all measure in the amount of attention he pays to details. He remembers things I don’t, and it just adds to our institutional memory. I like that we’re creating memories together so that I have him to write *about.* I’m glad to write about anything and everything, but I often write the best about the people I love because I’m so moved by them. Good writing doesn’t come from shallow emotions, and neither do good jokes.
If you’ve been following me for a long time, you know I needed to meet Rachel like I needed air, because I needed to replace some bad memories with good ones. The like cook who sexually harassed me also went to CIA, and I needed to replace a bad CIA memory with a good one to really move on and forget.
Now, I can say I know people who have been to both CIAs.
Zac doesn’t just get a mention. Last night was magic that he created himself.
It’s my last night in this room, as Zac is coming over tomorrow after drill to help me move my stuff, and if we don’t have time to do it all, we’ll finish it up Sunday after 5:00. I don’t think it will take very long, but that depends on our energy levels and the stairs at both places. I’m lucky in that Zac is very handy, so he has tools already that would be helpful and yet, I wouldn’t have thought of them on my own, like a drill and a hand truck, etc.
So, as I close out this chapter in my life, I have a million thoughts in my head, pictures going by too fast to get one to stick. The people who’ve lived here with me, the things that have happened, etc. It’s a lot. But my entire DC story minus the 18 months I lived here in my early 20s has been created in this one house, mostly this one room.
I hope I’m as comfortable at the new house as I have been here, and I’m grateful that we’ve been able to cohabit so long without incident. It is one of the longest stretches at an address I’ve ever had.
Everything is, big picture, going to be the same. When you get into the details, my route around town changes. I “have a dog now,” because the house I live in now has five dogs, but none of them live on my side of the house. I don’t see them for months at a time, but I’ll hear them.
Jack will have free run of the house, and may sleep with me some nights. I can walk him whenever I wish. I think it will be good for me, because I always notice I’m calmer when I’m writing and Oliver, who is a dog, is in the room. His presence is everything, so I hope Jack and I will have the same vibe.
I need to get to work, but I thought it was too important a date to go without writing just because I was busy with other things. I am very, very busy with other things and absolutely could not afford to tell you all this, but I thought, “will it matter in five years if you didn’t blog today?” That’s the moment I stopped. This is a milestone.
Nine years is a long time.
When I landed at DCA, it was midday. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to go right home or to Kramerbooks, but ultimately tiredness won out; I took the Metro to Silver Spring, where Hayat picked me up.
Hayat drove me to BWI when Lindsay called and said that my mother had died and I needed to come home.
Hayat gave me a Lebanese jewelry box that is one of my favorite things, because I designed my room around the color scheme of the tiling. The curtains are teal, and are thick enough to use as blackout. I never have to worry about working a graveyard shift ever again, because she said I could take them as well. ๐ And on that note, I have to go- for some reason my Android has decided it does not like the “Enter” key today, so I cannot make new paragraphs. I’m not sure my brain is capable of new paragraphs, either.
Last night I went over to Colin’s house to meet him in person for the first time, as well as his dog. I got along with both swimmingly, but it’s a huge house and a lot more than I want to pay. I don’t want to use half the house. I want to rent a bedroom. He’s fairly certain he only wants to share the house with one person, so if he gets what he’s asking from someone else, I’m cool with it. I made a friend regardless.
However, we like each other so much that he’s taking some time to see if he can make it work, like being open to renting to two people, or axing his dog walker because I’ll be able to do it. Again, this has been a godsend of a connection, because even if I don’t end up moving in with Colin, he’s a solid dude. I told him that he still has my number regardless of the move for things like taking care of his dog while he’s out of town. Boarding dogs around here is expensive, and being good with a potential roommate’s dog has never lost me any brownie points.
Colin’s dog is half Jack Russell terrier and half Chihuahua. Therefore, he’s very tall (for a terrier/chihuahua) with blonde, curly hair all over. Colin says that the Jack Russell terrier must have been wire-haired (he’s had his DNA tested, so he’s sure about the mix). I feel like you can trust a man so dedicated to his dog that be brought genealogical research into it.
I just feel better about the state of moving at all, because Hayat gave me a stunning recommendation letter, and she’s actually the one that introduced me to Colin, indirectly. She’s on NextDoor and I’m not, so she sent me a listing. The reason it was so much more than I wanted to pay is that the listing didn’t have a price. When I told him it was out of my price range, he wanted to talk to me, anyway, because I was the first person that had even responded.
Then, of course, we started texting each other because that’s how our people communicate (neurodivergent). So, we have become a little bit closer via iMessage, because I feel it’s important for us to feel comfortable if we’re going to be sharing a house.
When he told me that he needed to think about all the financial implications, because he really only wanted one housemate, I told him to take the time he needed, because I don’t have to be out of my current place until May 1st, I’m just looking to move earlier than that because I don’t want to live here while people are coming in and out for showings. I also told him that I didn’t want to move again in another few months, so let’s make sure it’s the right fit.
He agreed, so we’re just chatting about normal friend stuff because like I said, I want to get to know him regardless. He does have a girlfriend, but they’re about as involved as Zac and me. As in, they don’t live together, they don’t spend all their time together, etc. We’re both stunningly introverted, which I think will also work well.
If Colin agrees to take me on as a lodger, it will be very nice only living with one, possibly two people. I don’t think that neurotypical people get the need for sensory deprivation. I think that people who need to be alone a lot make extroverts uncomfortable.
So, now I have two solid leads, and I feel better about myself than I have in ages because I didn’t know how this would go. Now that I have a letter of recommendation from Hayat and not someone they can’t verify I lived with, it’s a different ball game. My landlord said that I was a warm and caring person, and that my rent had never been late in nine years.
That goes a long way with people, so hopefully if it doesn’t work out with Colin, it will work out somewhere in DC. I’m surprised at the amount of looking I’ve sone in Silver Spring, because I thought I’d want to take off for DC/Alexandria immediately.
I’ve found much better deals on this side of the river, and in DC, even if you get a refinished house, it will still have weird steps all over the place because there’s no way it’s level after 300 years. I have nearly killed myself in several DC row houses. I know it would be so much easier for Lindsay if I lived in the middle of the city, but I haven’t found any place that truly looks comfortable. Most of the DC houses I’ve seen are very, very cramped.
Colin works for the local government in DC, and has a band. But it’s interesting. They only rent a recording studio and play together like, once a year. The rest of the time, they record their parts separately and just e-mail them, then the mixer puts everything together.
If it seems like I’m putting all my eggs in one basket, I don’t feel that I am because I am continuing to interview with other people, I’m just the most excited about this probability because I won’t be going that far and it’s someone I already like.
Plus, it would be nice to be settled by the time Bryn and her boyfriend, Dave, get here in May. However, I did warn them that it may be they arrive and start picking up my boxes. ๐ I know them well enough to know they’d just do it, though. The way I move, it will take less than half a day.
Today it’s all about culling, because tomorrow they’re coming to take pictures for Zillow, Redfin, etc. This is not my fortรฉ. I am going to suffer through. I had a Five Hour Energy, and I might have a cup of coffee as well (out of Adderrall and don’t have time to go to the doctor before the photographers get here). I have nine years of crap to go through, because I don’t want to move it all.
Yesterday, I gave my housemate Magda two GIANT bags of bath salts, because I bought them without knowing that Hayat was planning on ripping up the bathtub and putting in a shower. So, I have had industrial size bags of bath salts sitting on top of my dresser for the last year and a half.
Not all of my clothes fit, or they’re not my style anymore, etc.
It’s Mari Kondo time, and I may put her on for inspiration.
But if I’m going to bring up Mari Kondo’s name, I should also tell you I have “The Life Changing Magic of Leaving Your Shit All Over the Place” on my Kindle.
I don’t know what to do except get my room ready to have pictures taken for Zillow. I overheard a conversation that my landlords are selling the house. They didn’t deny it, just said they were getting it appraised. Therefore, I know that pictures are going to be taken, just not how all this will turn out. I’m not going to sit here and wait until the very last moment. I also know that they think there will be a lot of interest in the house, so they say they’re waffling, but I’m not so sure that’s true. I’m looking around for a place, and it doesn’t matter where as long as I’m close to a train station. I might stay in Maryland, or I might move out to Virginia. It really depends on my tax and health care status.
The thing about moving to Virginia is that there’s too much space. It takes longer to get everywhere. However, there are some pluses. One of them would be being closer to Zac. We wouldn’t get to see each other any more often than we do now, I don’t think, but it would be nice if I could cut that commute down…….. but then I think, “you write on the train.” So, there goes my need to look for a house in Virginia except for some very specific laws I don’t like in Maryland. But, they’re not so important to me that it’s worth gaining a shittier health care system. I have work to do in terms of where I go next, but I do think it’s time for a change. And yet I don’t. I’m miserable thinking of leaving after just starting my 10th year here.
I’d like to move into another group house, because I like having a front and back yard, plus a big kitchen, all that. I don’t want to go back to a white box alone every night. It doesn’t have to be the right fit at first. I will find the right fit. I just lucked out when I called these landlords first. It’s not coming at exactly an opportune time for me because it never would. This is a huge deal, a huge life transition.
I called Hayat from Houston pretty much the day after Dana hit me. It sped up my timeline quite a bit, honestly. I figured I could live anywhere for a month, so just stick it out and get the lay of the land. I joke now that if Hayat hadn’t picked me up from the Metro nine years ago, I’d still be there.
But now Hayat is thinking about retiring, and everything looks different. As it’s supposed to do….. nothing is certain except moving on.
What I do know is that I will not be taking off for another city unless it’s within the DMV. I even thought about Baltimore for a hot second, because I love it there. However, I know it’s so much easier to see my sister without having to get the MARC train involved. It would also be nice to stay near downtown Silver Spring, because I love the way it’s so walkable. I feel the same way about Alexandria, though, so maybe I’ll check over in my old neighborhood and see what’s available. My old neighborhood is only one Metro stop up from Zac’s, and the buses in Alexandria are just as good as the ones in Silver Spring.
I get weird vibes about my old neighborhood, though, so we’ll see. It just depends. As of right now, everything is coming together in terms of Lindsay, Matt, Bryn, and Dave all being here at the time I’m supposed to move and I have like three boxes of stuff (kidding, but not by much).
The only reason I don’t have much is that I switched to a Kindle.
I know that when one door closes, another opens. I just want to start looking for the right handle.
Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.
DC metro is much, much smaller than Houston. I cannot express this enough. That’s because even though there’s maybe half the space of the city from whence I came, if you don’t live in The District, you forget it’s there.
In other cities, where I live would not be a suburb. I live 11 miles from The White House, northwest of The District in a suburb called “Silver Spring,” In another city, a neighborhood. The District and The Potomac define the geographic lines of something that doesn’t exist and yet very much does. One of the first things you learn when you move to DC is that people who live in The District are territorial, because they have to be. If you don’t live in the The District, you forget it’s there…….. The reason it’s hard that they’re territorial because they’re unseen is that Marylanders and Virginians can’t vote to do anything to help them. It has very much been an offense to tell someone I’m from DC if they live in The District and I have lived in Maryland and Virginia, Therefore, to a local, I tell people my “suburb,” but on my blog I say “DC” because that’s the city people know.
For instance, I actually did live in Houston, but for some of the time I lived in Sugar Land, an actual suburb. International audiences shouldn’t have to care, but in person I’m more specific. No one from Houston would care if I wasn’t specific and said “Sugar Land,” but people in DC are particular about it. They are a tribe of their own, and you have to fit in. It’s a weird setup.
Most of the population doesn’t live there, and the income disparity is enormous. Gentrification is everywhere, and the heart of the city is being destroyed because our history is African American and again, gentrification. Plus, DC only has a city council and The Senate to govern them. DC residents’ needs shouldn’t have to depend on the Senate, because they get ignored by pork barreling something unacceptable into a bill on a different topic that also contains something for DC residents. It is a whole other world to Virginians.
I think for Marylanders a little less so geographically, but more so politically because being governed by a state looks so different. The Potomac makes DC seem very far away from Virginia, yet Portland, Oregon looks the same- there’s just not the same geographical feel because you’ve changed the name from a district to a state once you’ve crossed the river.
Because DC’s history is African American, historically Virginia was where the white people lived and 5:00 pm became known as “white flight,” and still is in some circles because the federal government is overwhelmingly white. Very, very few people who work in Washington want to have The District as an address. The only person I can think of is Barack Obama (Kalorama Park).
It’s like other government employees found something about DC that they just didn’t like, and couldn’t put their finger on it……… more recently. Historically, it’s always been very clear why white people don’t live in The District. The government employees who bought in Georgetown should have bought up more neighborhoods and made it affordable and invulnerable to creep because we need cheap housing for people on those salaries. We could have insulated it from the beginning, but it’s too late now. What is happening is that the few white people who lived here got rich and then it took about 30 years for gentrification to happen in other neighborhoods, and now it’s insane. Crack houses will still sell for way more than they’re worth because of the land.
In addition to Barack Obama, I also love that having Kamala Harris here feels like having her “home,” because she went to Howard. She thinks of it as one of her hometowns as well, so that love is returned.
Speaking of Howard, that reminds me of a thing I haven’t done yet in DC that I keep putting off. I’ve been to the African American History Museum, but not recently. Chadwick Boseman, also a Howard grad, has his original Black Panther costume there and I haven’t been to see it. I know it will be emotional because so far, Chadwick has been my favorite superhero in both the real and Marvel universes.
I do try to get to museums often, but don’t have the spoons. My favorite is The National Portrait Gallery, followed by Air & Space. Since my sister and I are planning a “staycation” over Galentine’s Day (must remind her we need to go for waffles), we are going there soon. I joked that I would be surprised if she did not bring at least $400 just for space ice cream (it’s been her favorite since childhood). I can’t remember if Lindsay has ever been to A&S on her own, but I know she wasn’t on my trip. She was a toddler and was being shuttled between my grandmothers at the time. ๐
I told her to think of some things she’d never done but wanted to in DC, and she definitely wants to go to the Zoo. I don’t know how many animals we’ll see in February, but I’m down. It’s a great park and I love walking through it when it’s not precipitating. Even in the cold, it’s wonderful because if you’re wearing layers, it’s a workout and you’ll generate enough heat to keep yourself warm.
I also haven’t done Mt. Vernon since I was eight, but I don’t know how much time Lindsay’s got. It takes a while, but it’s one of my favorite tours. I’m not sure Lindsay has been to Ford’s Theater and the house where they brought Lincoln after he was shot. The memory of seeing that gun does me in to this day…. as well as the fact that the blood stains are preserved on the pillow. I went to Ford’s Theater when I was eight, too, and it’s a core memory. So, in a lot of ways I feel like the attractions I’d want to see are around here, just not in DC. For instance, I’ve never gone to the Maryland coast. I’ve been to Annapolis, but that’s on the Chesapeake Bay and a different experience from Ocean City.
I also want to go to Great Falls, Virginia, because I hear there is hiking equivalent to the Columbia River Gorge. I need to walk with Zac and Oliver, who is a dog, before i make that commitment.
If you love being outdoors, this area really is for you. So much great hiking, biking, kayaking, sailing, waterskiing, and actual skiing within a few hours’ road trip. I love the idea of being a biker and no idea what to do with it once I get somewhere. However, I have found that I do love sailing. Lindsay and I have been sailing on the Chesapeake, and I’ve been in Galveston and Corpus as well (not sure about her). The difference between moving here and moving to Oregon is the weather. Having more sun in my life really does make a difference, but there are no less outdoor things to enjoy and it doesn’t irritate my depression.
DC was just a great choice all around, because everything I’ve ever wanted has been here the whole time. I’ve known it since childhood. It’s just that now, the “Local” section of The Post means more…… I mean, after Shane Harris at National Security. Let’s not get stupid.
Leslie: Could you call me? Lindsay: Do you just want to do dinner tomorrow night? Leslie: This is great. I didn’t even know you were in town, but even for a call, you’re in the right time zone. Lindsay: My dinner got moved to tomorrow night. Zaytinya at 6:00?
Wait, wait, wait…… you mean I don’t even have to wait six hours to see you? This is the best part of ADHD ever. I live for this. Of course I can drop everything. Please. Anything else on my radar is now completely unimportant. As of right now, I’m just sitting here chewing my fingernails and keeping busy until the alarm goes off to get on the bus. Zaytinya is also one of my favorite places to go because it only takes 40 minutes and is located three minutes’ worth of walking from the Gallery Place/Chinatown Metro stop.
My sister works in DC, but she doesn’t live here. Therefore, sometimes if I time it right, I get these text messages full of joy because it’s an outing I didn’t expect, and it’s at “our Spanish Flower.” If I dwell on it, I’ll get misty-eyed. Spanish Flower(s- no one called it Spanish Flowers because Eli, the owner, told us that he named it after Mary, his wife, THE Spanish Flower.) It then spread to eating there three or four times a week. Since Lindsay and I both like finding a thing and exploring it intimately, we go to Zaytinya nearly every time she’s here. We have branched out a few times, like going to Union Stage to see Charlotte Cardin (which lets me know exactly what I should wear tonight…. Lindsay bought me a football jersey with Charlotte’s “number” on it- her album 99 Nights….. I love how she just rolls with my eclectic choice in clothing….. She also got me a hoodie with matching sneakers….. FANCY.). We have also been to that restaurant on the end of the pier where Union Stage is, which Lindsay had been to before and vetted.
It’s what’s nice about Lindsay working here- she has been to nearly every place we try with other lobbyists or Congresspeople. If I had to describe Lindsay’s life in one sentence, it’s taking people out to eat. She sits around, listens to people, and talks about stuff….. so that when she’s older, she can “sit around, smoke cigars, and own stuff.” That is an old, old joke because we used to live in a very tony suburb, and Lindsay went to a friend’s house that happened to have an elevator. My dad asked her what the friend’s parents did to have an elevator, and Lindsay said, “I don’t know. I think they sit around, smoke cigars, and own stuff.” We have repeated that phrase as the ultimate profession since then- probably 25 years.
It’s an unusual day for me, because I spent yesterday panicking about how I was going to get my Lamictal today, because I was completely out. I thought I was going to have to go to urgent care if I couldn’t get a doctor’s appointment today, because at urgent care I could have explained that I can’t get ahold of my doctor and they would have given me a month’s refill. But this morning, I woke up to a text message saying my medication was ready. I do not know how that happened, because on CVS’s web site it said that it was going to have to contact my doctor for a new prescription, and that can take days.
If you are completely out of a medication that affects your brain, you cannot skip a day. The effects are different on each person, but when I go without my medication, my brain starts making sounds akin to the Emergency Broadcast System, a minor second blaring in my head and I just want to stop the pain at any, and I mean any cost. Doesn’t have a thing to do with how I’m feeling. It’s that the pain is that bad. So, I’m vigilant about getting all my meds refilled as fast as possible, and prefer the Amazon pharmacy because they’ll give me three months’ worth of maintenance medication at a time, and I only need to go to the doctor for controlled prescriptions like Klonopin and Adderrall. I need the Klonopin, but I do not need the Adderrall all the time. I take drug holidays from it because even though it works on my mind, my body feels strung out and weak from all that stimulation….. Again, trading physical health for mental. Your body is keyed up and exhausted while your mind is quiet………. and you can’t really tell that your body is keyed up because your mind is quiet.
You quickly get a benefit, and after about two weeks of your body screaming, you want off of it again. I am also starting to feel that because my autism wasn’t caught, I am only treating my ADHD…. and that doesn’t work on autism. So, I’m taking ADHD medication and still feeling like crap because the same symptoms overlap with autism and therefore, don’t go away with ADHD medication. At this point, I am doing well on Sudafed and caffeine, so I might want to keep it that way. If I can get the same effect just by keeping my nose clear and having a cup of coffee or a 100mg energy drink in the morning, then another dose and small energy drink/cup of coffee at noon, it controls my symptoms for the whole day….. and I’m only on the smallest dose of workable stimulants and not beating myself to death with them.
As I have said before, there is a LARGE jump between coffee/Sudafed and Adderrall. I do not suggest using Adderrall long-term. It just affects my muscles, bones, and teeth too much. However, I do not recommend never going on Adderrall at all. You need to know what controlled symptoms feel like so you can replicate it….. but of course, I’m not talking to everyone. I’m talking to everyone who thinks “Driven to Distraction” is really about them….. and them only, because everyone feels that their problems are unique. Like, if you read “Driven to Distraction” and it doesn’t come across as a personal attack, you don’t need Adderrall. ๐
“Driven to Distraction” is the seminal work on ADHD, the Bible for therapists and psychiatrists on ADHD….. every bit as important a work as “One L” for law students and “Intern” by Doctor X is for med students. Speaking of med students, “Intern” is out of print, but you need to get a copy pronto. See also “Five Patients” by Michael Chrichton. Nothing will prepare you better for life in the hospital than reading about someone who went to, I think, Harvard in the 70s….. because nothing about hospital politics has changed in a hundred years……….. see also “Scrubs,” which my stepmother has said is the only accurate show about medicine ever on TV. She noped out of ER during the pilot because there was an X-ray upside down and backwards.
Because I know how the sausage is made in medicine, I do not suffer fools gladly and yet I do because I do not want to exhibit “drug seeking behavior.” It is a balance of knowing my shit and not seeming “demanding.” I swear to Christ, you will not meet anyone as self-aware as me. If I tell you I’m panicking and absolutely need more Klonopin than normal, you can take that check to the bank and cash it. But what you can’t do is get a doctor to stand in your body and feel it. Feel the panic that you do. Feel the nausea that’s going to make you throw up if your brain chemicals don’t “get right with God.” What you cannot do is convince a doctor you have ADHD if your symptoms are under control that day.
Please take it with a grain of salt if you’re in that position. These people see genuine DSB all day long and twice on Sundays. I had a patient back in my MA days who, before they started tracking controlled medications nationally, would go to six different doctors in a day for Valium, and she was one patient of many who had the same idea. So, I don’t push my doctors hard on anything, ever, because that’s the shortest way to cut yourself out of getting narcotics, benzos, and methamphetamines when you’re actually hard up. For instance, knowing what I need ahead of time and being able to explain, “okay…. here’s what I’m dealing with. You make the call, but here’s what I suggest based on what my previous doctors have done and it worked.”
You do not, for instance, ask for a prescription for those drugs and then come in halfway through the month and say you need more, or that you need your dose upped because either you’ve already run through the first prescription, or the doctor doesn’t believe that you actually need your dose upped, you’re just saying that because you’ve run out. There is no chance that a doctor is going to believe that you still have all the pills at home unless you bring them to the appointment.
I had another patient in my MA days that bought a safe for his house, because he noticed that when he didn’t keep his meds locked up, for some unknown reason they went missing. You have to watch for other people in your house exhibiting drug seeking behavior as well as watching it in yourself. I’ll give you a for-instance. If I have Adderrall and I’m going to Zac’s, I keep maybe two pills on me. That way, if my bag gets stolen or the pills do, I have only lost two pills, not my entire prescription. Same with Klonopin. Also, it’s harder to tell that they’re controlled substances when they’re not in a labeled bottle.
You have to know the difference between “I’m doing better” and “I’m fried all day” as well. Because the point of those drugs is to make you feel better, not to numb you out all the time. There are just certain situations that make me more anxious than others. For instance, going with my sister to a familiar restaurant would not cause me as much anxiety as going to a party in which I knew absolutely no one. I’m always afraid that I will find one person and hang onto them like a sloth because I’m intimidated. Luckily, I seem to hang with people who also do this…. because we’re the kind of people who seek out “the introverts’ recharging station” at any large gathering, anyway.
This is generally the kitchen, btw. If you’re looking for the introverts, they’ve either gone to the bathroom or to the room where the least people are gathered so they can hear themselves think. Introverts do not do well in situations where they can’t hear themselves think, because they’re more drawn to their inner monologues than they are anyone else’s. But at the same time, I’m an empath and can feel others’ emotions, and can’t seem to stay out of the heavy conversations because I’m built to hear them.
As I have said before, I do not have the ability to protect my mind, so I carry a lot of pain that’s not mine. I have clinical separation when someone is bleeding, but not when they’re crying. My dad said something to me that’s stuck with me since he said it- which was at least 30 years ago. He said that one of the reasons he left being a pastor is that he was exhausted at only being able to pray for people and not help them concretely. It’s exactly why I would have ended up in medical school if the fates had thrown me the kind of autism that understands STEM completely. Like, that’s a whole thing with me. If I could be mad at a deity for the roll of the dice, it would be having the kind of autism that makes me lost to the rest of the world, inside my head and protective of my environment. If my parents hadn’t both been dedicated to helping me physically and pulling me out of my own thought processes, I would have sat in my room forever, and I know this about myself.
I discovered my ability to take on others’ pain to an enormous degree when I was a toddler, and because I’m an INFJ, I have a deep inner landscape where I can get lost- easier than feeling every emotion in the room and bleeding out until I am full of rage at my sensory environment. When I am in meltdown, it is not pretty……. and you only learn who your real friends are when you stop social masking and start working without a net….. when you are so overwhelmed with your own symptoms that any change in your environment sends you into a place where you cannot take in any more. Rage is about putting up boundaries, a cry for help when it doesn’t sound like it.
Everything about autistic rage is a cry for help because we don’t have the words to express something clearly when social masks fail. We say things wrong and others focus on how we’ve said something vs. what we’ve said. If we could have just gotten the words right, our problems would be valid. We learn over time that there is no tone we can take that will make you see that our problems are valid, because we adjust and the answer is still no, because you’re still rightfully hurt over what we’ve said previously and you’re focusing on it. We are not narcissists or borderline. We are in hell, and we are sorry.
The hard truth is that many people are diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder because they’re female and “hysterical.” Many people aren’t because they’re male and their opinion is expected to sound sort of arrogant all the time. Non-binary people get the worst of it, because sometimes it is missed for either or both reasons. I also think ASD is under-diagnosed and ADHD is over-diagnosed in both sexes because of “bad behavior” in boys and introverted behavior in women…. not that ADHD isn’t valid. It’s that sometimes ADHD medication doesn’t work and that’s because the symptoms overlap just enough for doctors to be allowed to miss it, frankly. I am not angry that my psychiatrist in college missed it, because I have watched hours and hours of video on YouTube where psychologists talk about the neurodivergent brain, and ADHD is always lumped together with Autism Spectrum Disorder because it’s a comorbidity in something like 80% of ASD cases….. also why there is argument in combining ADHD and Autism as one diagnosis, that ADHD is part of the autism spectrum, not outside it.
Where ADHD and Autism differ is that there is not such a pull to get lost inside yourself because you need so much stimulation, and the need changes frequently. ADHD makes you a daredevil, autism makes you need quiet and a lot of it. I vacillate between those two things, but autism wins 99% of the time. That means actively avoiding relationships because I get tired of trying to communicate and it just not working the way I thought it would. I develop selective mutism and agoraphobia because I am trying to create a secure environment again….. and once I find it, it’s hard to pull myself out. I feel like the more I explain that this is part of my disability, the less my people will take it personally. Selective mutism and unwillingness to change my environment doesn’t necessarily come from conflict with people close to me. If I go out to, say, pick up a prescription and the experience is taxing, I will retreat for days to fill my social battery………
Again getting lost in my own world because it’s not as scary there.
Tonight, though, I’m going to a great restaurant with the world’s greatest person.
Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?
I don’t cook anything for holidays anymore, because when I got divorced and moved to DC, I moved in with a family who already had Thanksgiving wired, and I wasn’t the only cook in the house. One of my housemates when I first arrived had gone to Johnson & Wales, and was the chef at Jaleo Crystal City (Jose Andres is the executive chef, I mean the guy who actually ran the restaurant on a day-to-day basis). Therefore, I know Jose Andres intimately, even if he doesn’t know me…. and all of his secrets are safe. ๐
We used to laugh together about the things that happened around us that we were helpless to stop. Neither one of us in all of our cosmic culinary power could get people to stop putting knives in the dishwasher or in the bottom of the sink. More than once did we look at each other and say, “I can’t.” We honestly didn’t spend that much time together, it’s that our relationship was like all brothers in arms. We had an emotional shorthand not there for others in the house. If you are not a person with ADHD/Autism when you start a kitchen job, you will gain the ability to see the kitchen that way. Everything in cooking is a sensory issue, and you’re learning to fine-tune it. The tiniest changes will cause absolute anarchy.
For me, a big one is soap. They’re all concentrated differently, and it seems there is a large leap from generic to brand. It also affects the kitchen to change the smell of the dish soap, because you get used to how those fragrances mix with spice. For instance, going from a floral scent to a lemon scent gave me gastrointestinal issues because the lemon mixed with the scent of eggs and ruined Hollandaise sauce for me because every time I think of it one of the flavor notes is surfactant.
Soap is a trigger for a much bigger sensory issue overall. Most autistic people who have sensory issues with smell are because it’s turned up to “pregnant woman.” I throw up more due to bad smells than anything else, and why when I live alone and have a cat, I have disposable litter boxes and change them out often rather than ever force myself to change it. I was lucky in that Dana didn’t mind and had permanent boxes at her house, but I wasn’t counting on her to care for Asher. I had my own system, I just didn’t have to use it. I wasn’t allergic to chores. I traded that one out.
Being married is really the last time I had any holiday traditions, because when I moved to DC, I was folded into an established family here, Lebanese heritage and not Irish. For Thanksgiving and Christmas we have turkey and dolmades. Stuffing and kibbi (Kibbi is actually one of our dog’s names, too- “meatball,” basically, in Arabic). It’s a wonderful life. Hayat and I have talked often about the fact that “I’ve picked up Arabic,” because when I first moved in, Hayat spoke Arabic and Nasim spoke Farsi. I asked both of them if it would bother them for me to listen in on their phone calls, because I didn’t want it to feel creepy and I knew they wouldn’t really, either since I don’t understand either language. I just wanted to take away the feeling that I was trying not to watch them by making it obvious that I was.
Listening to Nasim was hearing the end of “Argo” all day long. Learning the Levantine dialect of Arabic was learning the rolling lilt of the ocean and not the Middle East RP equivalent, Cairo (I checked). Some words in Egypt and Lebanon are different, some words are the same because Lebanon has had a bigger influx of Mediterranean immigrants. In fact, my cover photo on Facebook is a picture Hayat took of the marina in Beirut, now a city on my bucket list if it ever calms down enough for me to go. I would feel comfortable with Daniel or Zac in that situation, but I would not feel comfortable traveling without someone who could defend both of us. That whole idea started the romance with Daniel, because I initially wanted a travel companion and then I realized I wanted him. I don’t know whether Zac and I will ever travel together or not, but what I do know is that he may have not been in the same situations as Daniel, but not because he didn’t train for them.
But Zac and I haven’t started our own traditions yet because we haven’t spent a Christmas together. Since he celebrates Yuletide and not Christmas proper, it doesn’t matter whether I see him on the 25th or not. What I do know is that we as people are a spectrum. Maybe we’ll go for Chinese, maybe we’ll finally watch “The Pigeon Tunnel,” the Apple TV+ documentary based on interviews and John le Carrรฉ’s last book. I would have jumped on it the moment I saw it if I wasn’t so insistent about not cheating on him. Infidelity is one thing. This is couple TV. THERE ARE RULES. There are shows I still haven’t finished because I promised Dana I’d wait. It’s getting a bit ridiculous. Still can’t do it.
I have been asked to make a Christmas list and so far the only thing on it is a long-sleeved SAS t-shirt. I’d also like a Senators baseball cap because of the Duke Ellington concert in the spring, because even if I didn’t wear it, oh my God would it ever look good with Jason’s signature on the side. For my international readers, the Senators are the current hockey team in Ottawa, but the baseball team in DC was called the Senators when we first joined the league. Duke Ellington started selling peanuts when he was like, 11?
When Jason told me that he was going to do a Duke Ellington concert in The District, I told him that he was a brave, brave man. He laughed because he knew exactly what I meant. If you come for Ellington in his hometown crowd, you best not miss. Here’s what I know that you don’t. Jason is objectively better at piano than Ellington ever was. He can take Elllington’s ideas to a place that the composer himself couldn’t- another brain seeing different patterns. Ask me how I know that? He’s been doing it since he was 17 (probably younger, but I’ve known him since then), the Mozart of jazz, too many notes that boggle the mind.
I do not say this lightly. It probably sounds like I’m just part of the Houston jazz scene and trying to promote my boy. No. Jason is different. Jason goes to places I don’t like and I don’t know why and then I fall on my ass when I figure out the chord structure. It’s not that I didn’t like Jason, it’s that my mind wasn’t big enough to hold Jason yet. I had to grow into him. He’s an artist that is perfectly capable of giving you a beautiful haircut that you don’t like until you realize you were wrong. You thought it was a mess, and it makes your whole face.
The last time I saw Jason, I left the Kennedy Center and walked around for two hours trying to deconstruct that concert in my mind. Every time I came to a new metro stop, I decided I wasn’t done thinking about jazz yet. If you’ve never been to see Jason, I do not believe you have a grasp of modern jazz and where it’s going. I hope the concert is not too esoteric for Zac, but I don’t think it will be. I just think the difference is that when he looks at Jason, he sees the finished product. I see every iteration. Tall, skinny, quiet, softspoken when he does, can’t get used to the fact that he doesn’t wear a stocking cap every day. Can’t believe he and John Schutza aren’t a thing at lunch anymore.
Zac is going to become a bridge from my old life to my new one, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. I know Jason wouldn’t necessarily look for me at the concert, but what I do know is that he would be disappointed if I came to the concert and didn’t say anything. If I had my life to do over, I would have loved to be as serious a jazz musician as Jason. But, on the other hand, I did not have the ability of Konrad Johnson to “see where they were going and go with them.” I did not have Jason’s ability to see the rules of composition in such a way that he plays as if they aren’t there. No open fourths? Here’s seven in a row. Deal. Not a real example, but on brand.
Jason, like I am, is an unapologetic artist trying to get the audience to come to him, and he’s so good at his craft that he deserves to be a leader.
If there’s anything in my family that starts with me, it’s a love of music- the only special interest I had before intelligence because the first time I ever sang in front of an audience (congregation), I was three. Never in my lifetime did I think I’d get involved with it enough to understand what an open fourth might be, but here we are.
I know that when we talk about dishes, we’re often talking about the things put on the table. To me, sharing music with someone is every bit as important as a Christmas or Thanksgiving table. It’s where my mind goes now that I don’t have to cook for either holiday.
I also talk about music not to talk about what is going to be missing.
Also, here is a meme to express my feelings, one of my love languages:
If you’ve read me even twice, you probably know I love intelligence. I believe wholeheartedly that I could have been a spy based on my preacher’s kid upbringing (really, really not much different growing/maintaining a congregation and recruiting/handling assets), genetics (great uncle was C/DIA), and the fact that I’ve “done” news like cocaine since I was eight.
There is a direct correlation.
When I was eight years old, I came to Washington for the first time. It was love at first sight. A miracle dropped in my lap that the first offer Kathleen got out of school was from ExxonMobil, because we got to choose whether we lived in Houston or DC. Moving became a monotropic thought process in which I envisioned my life playing out much differentlyโฆ.. and it did. Absolutely none of the plans I made for myself materialized, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have a hell of a good time making them.
If you’re that kid, the one that grows up in a small town and travels so that they see how much bigger the world really is than 40 square miles, you become a “type.” By 10 I had been to Mexico, the UK, and The Bahamas. I noticed the highs and the lows, the looming cathedrals and the neighborhoods made with tin. Global issues become important early. News becomes important early. Politics become important early. You begin to see that working for the government might be a positive thing because instead of reading the news, you are helping create it.
Kids like me end up at State or at the Washington Post. Rarely do we want to be the story. We want to shape it, especially for writers who process “verbally” in stream-of-consciousness spaghetti code. Writing about my life in DC is learning how to say “Hello, World” in every language.
(Sometimes when I write, I imagine people’s faces as they’re reading and now I’m smiling to myself knowing my programmer friends. Just for them, that line should be “every languageโฆโฆโฆ.. except JavaScript. Fuck JavaScript.)
My autism and ADHD are why my plans haven’t come to fruition, and my bipolar disorder threw my first choice out the window. So, right now, I am trying to concentrate my energy where I feel it can manifest. I am a better writer than I am anything else, and I know that I’m not the best. What I do know is that by writing every single day, there’s no way to get worse. I am sure that this brings hope to many, many people. Living in DC is where I feel the most alive, because I’m tapped into The Source. The United States is a living, breathing entity, and I am deep within the carotid artery (or the vena cava, depending on administration).
When I go to The Spy Museum, it’s not about seeing the exhibits. I’ve done it 10 times, they don’t change it that much. I hardly ever go during the day anymore, because it’s more fun at night. After the museum closes, all the Bond mannequinsโฆ. kiddingโฆ. after the museum closes, that’s when they do book talks and record SpyCast, how I met Jonna Mendez and Tracy Walder.
Jonna is one of my writing heroes, because she writes about the stuff I like in the way I like to hear it. She’s got a very concise, no bullshit tone and the wit of someone like David Halberstam or Rachel Maddow, who have also written a wealth of political non-fiction thrillers. I should tell Jonna that if she sees an uptick in sales the next few days, merry Christmas. The post I talked about yesterday for reddit re: Spy Dust and Moscow Rules has had 471 upvotes in 23 hours. I hope I sold her a thousand copies, and I’m not even going to tell her about it because “Secret Santa” is a thing. Book sales are the best gift I could have picked.
A woman said her dad wouldn’t read a book about intelligence if it was written by a woman, and I think that if Jonna can’t convince him, he’s a misogynistic lost causeโฆโฆ. being Chief of Disguise at CIA isn’t impressive or anything (my eyes are rolling out of my head). I like Spy Dust better in terms of being able to pick out Tony’s voice from hers, but The Moscow Rules is my favorite of them allโฆ.. and I thought Argo was hard to beat. The book was made in reaction to the film, and it was still better.
I have a different relationship with/to Tracy than I do with/to Jonna because Tracy is so much younger, and in fact, is a bit younger than me (I think). Do you ever have a moment where someone says something and your heart just walks out of your body in empathy? I know it happens to people with their families, but Tracy was a complete stranger to me when she told the audience that she was born with hypotonia. I had never met another person who’d been born with it, she’d never met anyone outside her family. It was not just that kind of moment for me. The emotions we felt at seeing each other mattered. It is one of, if not the most intimate moment of my life. I wasn’t proposing or having a baby, and yet it was still that big because the chance of us connecting was so small, our affliction so rare. It’s one of the few times in a relatively unfamiliar situation in which I’ve been able to breathe that deeply.
However, there is a reason I chose Jonna over Tracy with the reddit comment. That dude is already predisposed to disliking female intelligence writers, so handing him a book with a sorority sister protagonist didn’t seem like the wisest choice. You get Jonna until you can handle pink coffee mugs without being an asshole about it. But make no mistake, he definitely needs to read it. There’s more dirt on scumbags like him inside FBI who don’t trust women in intelligence. To be clear, Tracy did not have problems at CIA. She had problems with FBI. Tracy has a problem with FBI, so they have a problem with me. It’s just that simple.
I am sure that Tracy appreciates the support in which I do legit nothing but talk shit about the FBI on my web siteโฆโฆโฆ but hey, she has a great autobiography called The Unexpected Spy. It’s a thrill ride through her life having worked at both agencies, and thrilling to find out that CIA is actually as forward-thinking as I thought it was. Tracy also made an interesting style choice. When you write a book involving CIA (and I’m not sure if it applies to me, but it definitely applies to employees), it has to go through a publications review board. When Tracy got her manuscript back from the PRB, there were parts that were blacked outโฆ.. and she just left them in and published as is. Tracy’s is the one book I don’t have on my Kindle, and the one hardback I’m grateful to own, because the words come across the same on e-paper with Jonna and Tony, but the feel of the paper with its saturating amount of black ink looks official.
And in fact, I liked it so much that she signed my book after the lecture and as she was writing the inscription, I asked her if she would black out a word. Tracy understood the assignment. ๐ She blacks out one word, and you can still see what it is, so she asks around and finds a black Sharpie. She hands it back and it says:
To Leslie-
Go [redacted] the world.
Then she says, “there. Now no one knows what I told you to do to the world.”
We’ve (sort of) kept in touch- I should reach out and see what she’s up to these days. Last I heard she was in Dallas (went to SMU just like my dad, went back to teach at Hockaday). If she ever comes to DC, first coffee’s on me.
Here’s to hoping we can [redacted] the world togetherโฆโฆ..
because the Spy Museum is my favorite place in my city.
I am including the link to both book talks, and I’m in them at the Q&A. In the Walder video, I’m wearing my CIA baseball cap. In the Mendez video, I am “Sir Not Appearing in This Film,” because the video cuts off right when Jonna stops speaking.
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Sometimes I use old West Wing episode titles rather than making my own because I live in DC. They’re plays on words for something that really happened. 18th and Potomac is where Mrs. Landingham died in a car wreck. The car wreck in this case is that my smallest dream (therefore my most desperate, my heartbeat) is the least affordable- a house in the DMV is going to set you back enormously. You, your children and grandchildren may buy well and it returns your investment fivefold. But in order to do that, it takes about half a million dollars (at least- better if it’s a 500k downpayment to make the mortgage reasonable).
That’s because in order to get an actual deal, you want to buy the worst house in the best locationโฆ. anyone can make money in Georgetown these days no matter what you buy, but the jump in value will be much smaller from the time you move in to move out.
It takes special skill to buy a house in SE Waterfront, which one of my friends did in 2001. If you weren’t there, you have no concept of what it looked like. It was a concrete jungle in a neighborhood with high crime, and this is important, at the time. He completely overhauled the entire thing, building custom everything. That house is worth at least a million just because of the land, more because the house is absolutely one of a kind.
In DC, the sky is the limit on real estate, because as I’ve mentioned before, DC is only 60 sq. miles. It moves fast and furious. I know other cities are more expensive- I’m not sure that the market is as consistently volatile with a third of the House rotating in and out with all their staff, the Senate rotating in and out every six years with all their staff, and the military, intelligence agencies, and State all having jobs that move them around the world (even if the DMV is home base). DC is a permanent address for fewer people than it isn’t.
You don’t get to know our city until you know our poverty. This is because poor people don’t move in the same way as middle class government salaries. Lower economic classes tend to grow where they’re planted because they don’t have the money to do anything else. Therefore, the poorest people are the richest institutional memory. You don’t go to them for history of the nation, you go to them for the history of DC. They are the authority on the riots in the 60s, the night Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated (DC is heavily black, and I think at one point the majority), the best mumbo sauce, go-go music, Duke Ellington, and, apparently, public television. We have three stations within, like 30 miles. It’s fabulous. This Old House is always on somewhere. DC isn’t a city, it’s a whole mood. God willing, I will live here a very long time.
I will never in my lifetime make enough money to buy a house in the neighborhood where I rent, though. The house is just “nice” in comparison to the location, and it’s gorgeous. My mother left me enough money for a down payment on a small house in northeast Texas if I wanted to buy it today (I’d be taxed at 40%, so no thank you), or a better area when I turn 65. Even with leaving the money where it is and not touching it until then (I’m 46 now), it still wouldn’t be a down payment in Silver Spring, Marylandโฆ.. I am open to moving within a certain radius, like Hagersville (home of the Southern MD Blue Crabs, who happen to be in the same league with the Sugar Land Skeeters, my home town minor league). I would also consider buying a small house in Baltimore, because getting between the two cities is stupid easy and Baltimore is much, much cheaper. I could even commute if I had to, more and more possible with remote work.
It’s funny, I never would have said that I wanted a house here until I had been here awhile. I lived in Alexandria, Virginia the first time I moved in 2001. (I’ve lived in both MD and VA, but not DC properโฆ. like I tell people I’m from Houston, when I lived in a suburb for most of it.) I thought of myself as Virginian until I’d been back for more time than I thought it would take. There is a much different vibe in Maryland. MUCH different. You feel it- going over the Potomac introduces you to something you ignore in the Southโฆ.. Yankees.
Maryland is the last state under the Mason-Dixon line. No one is undermining its pedigree as part of the south. However, our culture is led by New England, not Virginia. Annapolis has politics closer to Trenton and Albany than Richmond. The difference between someone raised in the North and in the South becomes clearโฆโฆ and racism isn’t everything, but it’s a lot.
The further you go into the suburbs on the Virginia side, the more people make jokes about this being “St. Bob’s Country,” where “Bob” is Robert E. Leeโฆ. or that if your last name is “Lee” in that area, you are either of THE Lees or you are Chinese. At no time do those people recognize why that’s not funny. If you have any blowback to any of their “jokes,” they will remind you that Robert E. Lee gave the government the land for Arlington Cemetery. To push back on that one is never a good idea, because it’s their only sword in the fight; they get feral when you knock it out of their hands because they’ve lost the high ground so goddamn fast.
Living in Maryland is escaping all of that, because once you cross the river, Virginia isn’t even a thing anymore. The time it takes to adjust to the culture between Maryland and Virginia is longer than it takes to drive here, I’ll just put it like that.
Culture is the entire reason we don’t cross-pollinate, why Zac thinks I live a thousand miles away and Google Maps ETA (0633) tells me that if I leave right now in an Uber it will take 33 minutesโฆ. and it’s only two and a half hours door to door if I took public transportation the whole way (leaving out shortcuts like being picked up at the Metro or Ubering from the station to take care of Oliver, who is a dog. It would cut off my commute to Zac by a large margin if he lived near the Metro, but he hadn’t met me before he decided to move (that was a joke, Zachary- please laugh).
No one I know who lives in Virginia is someone who thinks they’re a racist, and I don’t either unless they’re just white and that’s the only standard we’re going on. I do, because even when people aren’t overtly racist, they still benefit from racism.
Racism is a top-down system of oppression that minorities cannot duplicate. Living in that system, upholding it makes one racist. To be antiracist is to be loud about the fact that you are calling out behaviors you exhibit; you have to realize that you are at least currently steeped in those attitudes if you refuse to grow away from them. I am a huge fan of the writer who, I think, Tweeted that they were tired of catering to old people that lived through the entire ass Civil Rights movement and didn’t learn shit from Shinola.โข I’m paraphrasing.
I have become louder about this as I’ve realized that my white partners have not made the connection and I am too pissed off to be with another white person who cannot admit complicity. I mentioned this was an issue with Daniel, but he’s not the only Southern white person I’ve ever dated, either. Don’t think that shit didn’t happen more than once. I didn’t get the lines about Richmond from nowhere. One of my partners had bigger fuckin’ problems than Daniel about itโฆ. and the worst part is that white people characterize them as jokes because they think minorities are cute.
In “Go Tell a Watchman,” Harper Lee makes the point that white people like taking care of black people and race relations would have been fine if they hadn’t stopped seeing the white savior complex as a good thing. Whites weren’t hiring black people after the Civil War. They could get slave wages at best without colleges being open to them.
Abolutionists/Progressives had left slavery in the dust (introducing egregious hiring practices, redlining, the Tuskeegee experiments and Henrietta Lacks), trading it for their do-gooder feelings. “If we give to charity, we can help minorities by keeping them from falling into the river and not exploring why the current is so strong.
This is where my red mist rage is directed. Fuck the white savior complex. The Green Book was a fucking masterpiece at highlighting bullshit, brilliant because it was so fucking atrocious and satirical- if you were picking up the subtext and feeling more tender toward the black queer musical genius than his fucking driver. That scene in the bar. My God. I have never wanted to give a standing ovation to a musician more. Let’s not ignore the queer part. Mahershala Ali played a big hate double ticket.
I am not “progressive Karen,” the virtue-signaling haircut with an attitude. I won’t unload on someone about it unless it naturally comes up. Cultural norms about race inform those about sexuality. I don’t want to beat white people over the head, I want to say how I feel and have the right people come to me.
If you’re a white person who can’t admit they’re a racist by being enculturated as one, we don’t have much in common. I’d rather spend my time around people who share my values and goals. Which, I might add, means I get along more with queer POC than white, because there’s a special hell for people who have more than one minority at play. I’m not just white and queer. I have two information processing disorders, mentally ill and physically disabledโฆ. although mental illness is not a processing disorder and I am making that distinction. That is the stone cold fact that “mental health goes up and down, but AuDHD will affect you (suck) no matter what”
I am AuDHD (autism and ADHD, I can’t remember if I’ve directly explained the word before- telling you about it in case you want to watch a video on YouTube or something. That’s been the most helpful for me- here’s what to do now that you know. The bitch of it is that autism and ADHD present the same way a lot of the time, but the coding is generally different on the backend. You’re trapped, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.).
I also have a Bipolar II diagnosis. I’m a big hate double ticket in that I am both making people uncomfortable with my queerness in some arenas, and infantilized in others. Discrimination either comes from straight culture not accepting me, or all people with wrongheaded ideas about autism, ADHD, and bipolar rendering me an incapable adultโฆ.. or alternatively, the reaction to saying I’m autistic is generally “you don’t look autistic.” When I figure out how to do that, I’ll let you know. If you know an autistic person, you know one autistic person. No two people are alike, and AuDHD is more complicated than autism alone.
Therefore, I feel incapable enough on my own time. I do not need any reinforcement in this arena.
Editor’s Note:
All of the sudden, I have developed an *immediate* need for coffee. Hold please.
Now that I have coffee next to me, we can get back to why living in DC is so important to me.
I would have not grown in any of these ways regarding antiracism if I hadn’t moved, full stop. Living here in 2001 was only my second exposure to black people that didn’t speak AAVE, and had a completely different culture (the first was meeting black people in The Bahamas- Freeport specifically- with a British [RP] accent). I am no longer a product of my northeast Texas upbringing, and I just thought about this- I was no longer a product of my upbringing the moment we landed in the Bahamas.
I got out of my culture, and I noticed. The repetition of that idea had an impact, that black culture was not monolithic. The first time was in the 80s. The second was 2001. Most people don’t ever learn that when they’re eight or nine in the Deep South; most people in the Deep South don’t go to The Bahamas, and I’m not being an asshole. Look it up. People rarely leave their state and don’t have passports, and this is not limited to the South. They’re oblivious because sometimes they can’t get out, sometimes they don’t wanna. That’s a crapshoot.
And, of course, even then you’re taking a huge bet on cultural awareness. Americans are Americans everywhere we go. If there’s anything that going to The Farm would do for me that I’d value more than anything else is language skills in something besides Englishโฆ..
I’m closer to being fluent in Spanish than anything else- I identify as gringo Texican- the white girl with seven abuelas in three different cities. Incidentally, I also have a Lebanese Omm (Arabic for “mother”). She speaks the Levantine dialect, so I’m sorry if this is not the word for mother in others- I was trying to be sweet. I am at least worth a “habibi” from her most of the timeโฆ (it’s Arabic for “sweetheart,” or something like itโฆ. akin to mulkvisti in Finland- “one I hate less than the others”).
The other invaluable asset to spy training is not looking like so much of an American when I travelโฆ. especially when not starting to count from my thumb in Europe can cause such devastation. ๐
Luckily, I don’t have to go to The Farm to pick up all these things, because between retired spies on YouTube and the plethora of non-fiction books on espionage I have enough information to be able to adapt into a lot of cultures. I can’t always look “not American,” but I can at least be aware of cultural norms even if I can’t social mask them.
In effect, my smallest dream is fulfilling my largest. In order to travel, I need to know the feel of home. The feel of home is being excited about world events, making historyโฆ have always made history.
Because let’s face it. When you’re talking about the United States,
I live in the history.
Now, not only is DC where we keep the history of the nation, I am part of it. I am loud about it in some spaces, quiet in others. I will never be anything but a silent observer in Frederick Douglass’s house, the African American History Museum, or staring at the stunning photographs on the wall at Ben’s Chili Bowl. It’s actually, in some ways, a more moving experience than the entire museum. I reserve the right to change my mind when I go back to see Chadwick Boseman’s original Black Panther costume. He’s a hometown sensation and I absolutely will stand in front of it and cry.
What I have noticed through having a blog is that being a silent observer allows me to take that information away and slam it into the faces of people who most need to hear it. I am not responsible for changing the black community, I am responsible for changing my ownโฆ.. living where I most want to live in the world.
What details of your life could you pay more attention to?
By writing to and for myself, I pay attention to my life in minute detail. It is literally my job if I want to sell books later. Brene Brown has nothing on me, I swear to Christ. I am betting that we process much the same way in terms of throwing everything out on the table and seeing what it looks like. I don’t know if she’s a natural INFJ, but I do know she’s a professor in a profession to which INFJs naturally gravitate, so even if my letters aren’t hers, we’d be simpatico. I know that, because we’ve spent some time together informally.
Editor’s Note: If I sound like an ass because I keep mentioning it, it’s not because I’m trying to name drop. The answer is twofold. My audience is growing every day. Every single day. That means if you read every day, you’re in the know. Other people aren’t. Secondly, the more times I say Brene Brown, the higher I’ll be in Google rankings for searching her because it has indexed how many times I’ve said it and how many people have clicked on my link because of it. It’s not personal. It’s trying to use her platform to introduce myself to new readers, and not only is a good way to find my target audience, I know for a fact that this is not something she’d care about in the slightest.
I just taught her how to use Microsoft Word, but now that it’s so essential I know I did ACTUALLY help her in her career.
She taught me that it’s okay to throw emotional bombs on the table and look at them, because if you don’t stay silent, there’s a 50/50 chance that you’ll resolve the conflict. If you keep silent about your needs, those odds fade to zero either way.
The hardest part is developing the strength to say what you need out loud, because I call them emotional bombs for a reason. If you express a need, people who have low self-esteem will see it as an attack. You’re screwed either way, because either that person’s going to get mad at you and walk away, or they won’t. If you are in any way an anxious person, you’ll put off that conversation for eons. You don’t want to chance it. If you say you need something and they get angry, it might lead to the relationship ending. You have to learn to care nothing about that. This is because stating your needs clearly and walking away when they’re not being met is your only choice. People don’t change because they’re not willing to do the work. You are mostly the age you got married, because that’s when you set up your new family patterns and they repeat. In a lot of ways, people divorce to grow up….. particularly couples who get married at 20 and stay together until they’re 40.
This is why I’m not married and just dating. I do not want to stagnate. If it happens that I find a partner, I still want someone that wants their own space, even if we live together. I want to normalize it not being weird if I’m holed up in my office and they’re not holed up with me. I’m dating one of the biggest extroverts I’ve ever met, and I love it because I can pay complete attention to my own life while he’s off doing his thing, because he knows that partying is his jam and not mine and that’s perfectly okay. I don’t need him as a possession.
Supergrover, Cora, and Bryn are the one I treat like possessions in terms of being a seriously pissed off mama bear. Come after my girls and I will end you, if combat is limited a really mean letter.
I write differently when I want to work things out, I will only say that.
Healing an anxious attachment style is built on learning to believe someone the first time. It is also learning to believe when they’re lying to themselves. Learning to tell when actions and words don’t match, correcting the story that you’re telling yourself. If someone is unwilling to help you correct that story, they should be uninvited to participate. You also can’t hold anything over their heads. You just have to wait it out. Life is long.
If you are thinking of someone else’s needs all the time, you are doing immense harm to yourself if you have low self esteem . You’re making decisions based on your own echo chamber and trying to read someone else’s mind. Those two things will put you in an asylum if you let them.
The hardest part about throwing an emotional bomb over your shoulder is that you have to walk away and see if they come back.
You have to pick yourself up out of rejection sensitivity dysphoria to be able to even trust that they will. So you wait. And you get more unhappy. By the time you do express needs, you’re mad as a wet cat backed into a corner claws extended.
Your conversations will be a mix of “well, that probably sounded better in my head” and “well, that escalated quickly.”
I realized that I had to stop interacting with Supergrover because it was killing me. She was the person that when she talked, my self esteem went up and down. It wasn’t the message, it was the medium. She has lived inside me for 10 years. Her signal is the purest, because her voice is the only one that is always in my echo chamber because our e-mails are all mixed together in my head. Who knows who said what after a while? It’s one story. It just got to where we were alternating between tennis and fencing. We take turns having the high ground, but I can be angry and still think “as you wish” all day. (I like The Princess Bride, despite the fact that it has kissing in it.) That’s because it’s not her worth going up and down.
I threw that bomb knowing she was emotionally incapable according to past behavior, but she can do something about the present.
One of the things that will stick with me is that she said she could do nothing about the past. But she could do something about the present. She didn’t realize that I was saying it as well, in heels and backwards.
It’s the reason we complete each other when everything is going well. Her IQ is higher than mine. My EQ is the highest of anyone I’ve ever met considering how much people tell me how frightening and intense I am.
Dave Chappelle (incidentally also from Silver Spring) once wrote a skit for Chappelle Show called “The Ni**er Family.” It was absolutely hysterical and I laughed until I cried. But Dave said it was a mistake, and the why stopped me in my tracks.
He said:
Everyone was just cracking up in the audience….. but then I noticed this one guy. And the way he laughed, I knew he was not laughing in the way I intended.
It changed his entire career because he left the show and really did the homework on himself. We do not agree on trans issues and never will, but I’m not going to take away from his success or be less proud that he rose from the ash of what he burned down. But the only reason he could do that is that he, Jesus, and I all know the same thing.
The resurrection didn’t happen on the cross.
Jesus went into the garden of Gethsemene the same way The War Doctor wrestled with The Moment on Doctor Who, the bomb that developed a consciousness you had to argue with to get it to go off. There are no records of his prayers there, but here’s what Dave, Jesus, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt: Jesus did not forgive everyone else for their indiscretions without first forgiving himself.
I can’t believe I’ve held out on you (without realizing it). I didn’t remember the story I was going to tell here until Zac picked me up from the Metro, because he’s not an intelligence officer, but he does work in an intelligence agency that gathers data from the other 17-30ish (depending on who’s counting). His office is at Ft. Belvoir, which is what made the story come up in the first place.
I was sitting next to a random dude on Southwest coming back to DC a couple weeks ago. I asked him if he was coming or going. He said he lived in Fredericksburg and worked at Ft. Belvior. I wait a second and say, “so what kind of intelligence operations are you doing right now?” The look on his face was simply priceless. Just “how in the hell did you know that?” We laughed together and he said “I’m not a spy. I’m their ride.” He was an airplane mechanic. Just so fascinating because he talked me through takeoff and landing as it was happening. I’m not a nervous flyer at all. This is because I automatically assume that if the plane is going to go down, there is nothing that I can do about it. I don’t have to sit there and worry because no one is going to ask me to help out.
Even the airplane mechanic next to me can’t help if the plane is currently in the air.
Up on the airplane...... nearer my God to Thee. I start making a deal, Inspired by gravity.
He did that DC thing where people complain about the traffic and I said I preferred public transit because I can zone out and do something else, not advisable in a car. ๐ The thing that I really like about this area is that even if you live in the suburbs, you can use public transit to get anywhere. The Virginia Rail Express connects to the Metro, and there’s a similar line for southern Maryland called the MARC (transfer is available on lower level). It runs between Union Station and most of Baltimore. Having grown up in Houston, this is the most amazing thing ever. It’s cool to own a car, but it’s even better when you can get one because you want it and not because there’s no other option.
I also think “why drive? Let someone else do it.” I’m not talking about mooching rides off friends. I’m talking about Uber and Lyft, which I generally use to get to the train station and not my final destination. ๐
Other days, I walk. It’s about two and a half miles from my house to downtown Silver Spring, which is just long enough to feel like I’ve worked out and thus accomplished something.
I also love that I live in MD and Zac lives in VA, because the vibes at our houses are so incredibly different. I think that’s because Maryland is so small and Virginia is so large. We in Maryland do not spread.
Taking public transit is kind of the point for me. I am introverted to the point of insanity, and trying to branch out. Yesterday, I met a woman named Angel. We’ve been texting for about the last hour. She also has the cutest kids on the planet. Meeting new people is exciting, because it’s the beginning of a story. Right now the story we’re working on is hers. She asked me if we could collaborate right off the bat, and I told her I’d never been in a writer’s room vs. alone and why not? Also nice to have a friend in Brookland, which isn’t too far from me. Red line represent.
Holla.
Zac and I shot the shit and drank way too much and I hate being hungover, so this morning was a wash. I didn’t feel so hot, but was touched that I woke up next to a cup of coffee and a sippy cup of water (does he know me or what?). The train home was the worst part, but it wasn’t the train’s fault. Feeling bad physically didn’t do anything for me mentally, and I was tearing up thinking about my writing. What I’ve put out into the world lately have been the most vulnerable pieces of me that have existed so far. It’s little fragments of lines that stick with me, like “ironically the score is love when we’re the most furious.”
I think I was at the airport when that one passed by. Speaking of which, I think the Metro stop for the airport is in the wrong place, because I like the old building better. ๐
Also, it’s been years and years and years. Still never heard a local call it by its name. I won’t even say it during Pride month. The person it’s named after did more to fuck up my future than anyone could have guessed, because that was the beginning of every message about queer people on TV being that we were going to die and we deserved it.
Today has not been the best (so far, it’s only 11:30 AM). I generally get a cold at the beginning of spring, because my allergy medication just can’t keep up (gross out warning) and snot just runs continuously down the back of my throat until it’s raw and scratchy. I haven’t lost my voice, but when I woke up this morning, I did have that sexy Debra Winger rasp going on.
It’s gone now, after a really long, hot shower and something warm to drink- hence the title. I normally wouldn’t be caught dead drinking Folger’s Classic Roast,โข but I ran to 7-Eleven for essentials and it’s what they had. Seriously. That’s it. I’ve never been to a store in my life that only carried one type of coffee, and it just happened to be the Budweiserโข equivalent. However, desperation made me buy it, anyway. I haven’t had coffee in a couple of days, and like most of the population, I’m so addicted to it that withdrawal is a thing. Hey, it’s my only vice. At least give me this one.
To my surprise, when I made the coffee the way I like it (one level scoop per cup), it was more than drinkable. Probably the reason I thought I hated it was the way churches tend to make it……. not calling anyone out on the carpet, but I have had my fair share of shitty brown water that they called “coffee.” To be fair, it’s hard to know the ratio for a 40-50 cup urn.
As I am singing the praises of this blessed event (coffee is divinity), the playlist in my headphones is called Stranger Than Fiction on Spotify. It’s all the soundtracks from Argo, Slumdog Millionaire, all the Bourne movies, and The Kite Runner. It’s killer, if I do say so myself…. and it’s public if you want to check it out. Even though I put it on shuffle, I always start with The Bourne Identity‘s main theme. The English Horn solo just blows me away…. probably the only iconic English Horn solo on record for those who aren’t classical music nerds (like me). As for the Bourne series, my favorite is Supremacy, and the only thing I really liked about Jason Bourne was the soundtrack and the picture my dad took of me with the movie poster.
For instance, I was sitting in the theater doubled over in that silent laugh where you’re just shaking violently with snot and tears running down your face, because someone is hacking a computer for information on a black op, and transfers the files from a folder called Black Ops. Because of courseall intel agencies hide the documents regarding black ops in a folder called BLACK OPS.
And of course, that led me to think about what I would have named that folder. Probably something like birthday_party_pictures or cat_photos. At the very least, something that someone wouldn’t click on immediately after logging into my computer. HELLO!
Of course, as a computer nerd, it’s probably something only I and my IT peeps would pick up, because it’s supposed to be exposition for the audience. That didn’t not make it hilarious.
It was especially fun to go to the International Spy Museum and to see Jason Bourne with my dad all in the same trip. I don’t know if it was a special exhibit or in their permanent collection, but there was a fantastic James Bond adventure.
Most of the intel agencies around here now have entertainment departments (CIA was the last to get on board), so recent movies like Salt and Atomic Blonde, as well as TV shows like Homeland and The Looming Tower have real-life advisers that make the shows fictional-yet-believable. According to a book I read on the subject, the lives of spies are blown way out of proportion, sometimes to make the movie better and sometimes to divert the public’s attention from the way The Agency really works. For instance, it’s not as interesting to watch a movie about espionage if all that happens is a huge amount of paperwork. Also, no intel agency is ever going to publish in any form the way they operate, because lives depend on it….. publishing it all for us is publishing it all for “them,” whomever they are.
…which invariably leads me to my white hot hatred of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. Disagree with me all you want, but I’m not going to change my mind. Not only did they put American lives in danger, but all the friendlies we’d managed to turn in other countries as well. People seem to forget that they’re called “confidential informants” for a reason…. mostly because they could be executed by their own governments. I haven’t read every single document that was leaked, because first of all, I don’t want to. I’d prefer to stay frosty and let the professionals handle it. I couldn’t spy my way out of a paper bag. Second of all, I am sure that it wasn’t just American covers blown, but Mossad, MI-6, etc. and I don’t want to read about it because it will just feed the anger I already have. I have enough anger in my life. I don’t need to add anything on top of it.
That being said, the Julian Assange biopic, The Fifth Estate, is very good. Even the title is clever- moving us forward from newspapers to the Internet. I don’t know how much of it is real, but I liked it, anyway. The biopic about Edward Snowden (called Snowden, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the title role), however, kept me up for three days, because I would be frightened to learn that even a third of it is real. Don’t watch it at night. Hold someone’s hand. It will creep you the fuck out. I’m serious. Take my advice or don’t- at your own peril (safety not guaranteed, no refunds, you break it you buy it, etc.).
As you can tell, I’m a fan of intel movies, mostly because now it generally involves computers and hacking (BLACK OPS folder…… hahahahahahaha). I am not clever enough in that arena to figure it all out (and don’t want to), but fictionalized versions are awesome. In my daily life, I am just a regular geek who loves Linux, but would crap my pants if asked to write any sort of program. In terms of the logic behind the languages, I’m barely a step above “Hello, World.” It is not my calling to learn to hack, crack, or program…. but that doesn’t mean I don’t love a good piece of media about it.
The only intel show that I have problems with is Homeland. I watch it anyway, because it’s a good story and I like all the actors (particularly Mandy Patinkin). But I just get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach every time Carrie Mathison goes to her “crazy place.” I realize that she’s Bipolar I and I’m Bipolar II, so basically nothing she does is something I would do. But there’s a part of me that knows her portrayal of that kind of crazy is dead on, and to me, it is not comforting in the slightest that I understand. I feel like I get her in only the way another bipolar person would, and in those moments, watching truly sucks. It’s like a train wreck- I can’t look away. I’m too invested in knowing what happens now.
Leaving out the part that nearly everything Carrie does would, in real life, have landed her in federal prison (or a dark site) long ago.
But it’s just a TV show. Suspension of disbelief and all that.
Am I crazy, or is this Folgers really working for me?
As I am singing the praises of this blessed event (coffee is divinity), the playlist in my headphones is called Stranger Than Fiction on Spotify. It’s all the soundtracks from Argo, Slumdog Millionaire, all the Bourne movies, and The Kite Runner. It’s killer, if I do say so myself…. and it’s public if you want to check it out. Even though I put it on shuffle, I always start with The Bourne Identity‘s main theme. The English Horn solo just blows me away…. probably the only iconic English Horn solo on record for those who aren’t classical music nerds (like me). As for the Bourne series, my favorite is Supremacy, and the only thing I really liked about Jason Bourne was the soundtrack and the picture my dad took of me with the movie poster.
Stories That Are All True 