So, it's like fuck. I keep wondering to myself if this goddamned city is getting meaner, or if it's just me that's getting older. You see, I'm normally a pretty objective type of guy, or I like to think of myself that way anyhow, and I don't like to blame the world for my own problems. But I can't help wonder if things really have gotten worse.
I think perhaps it's a little of both. I think back to when I was fifteen, just a dumb suburban kid in the city for the first time. I knew nothing of it, but I was not scared; it seemed a whole new world to open up and explore. What was perhaps my first encounter with an entirely different culture was at the 9:30 club, which in those days nobody knew about. Well, maybe a few people. I still remember the bands that played. The Faith. Minor Threat. None of it sounded like music to me, because it was like nothing I had ever heard before. I had nothing to compare it to. That was the way a lot of things were to be that summer. I couldn't tell if I liked any of it, because I had nothing with which to compare it.
I can't remember which impressed me more - the bands, or the city outside. F Street seemed like fucking New York. Now that's something that's definitely changed. That's something I can't blame on myself. In those days, there were people everywhere, weird little shops everywhere, music coming from everywhere; boom boxes, stores, cars, everywhere, all massing into one incomprehensible jumble in which all was lost but the pounding heartbeat of a city very much alive, accented by jackhammers and car horns. Now there are more Oliver Carr signs than people. Until that time I had thought of Washington the way most outsiders see it: a fairly lame city with a few monuments and a lot of tourists. But one must be forgiving of ignorance.
I think I fell in love with the city that day. Yeah, that was the day. From the minute we parked in that graffiti-strewn parking lot on 9th Street. "Human Meat," said the wall in front of us. Love at first sight.
Then there was a little club on 9th Street, N.W. called Oscar's Eye. I saw a band there called Wurmbaby. So did a few other people. Not many. Not many remember Oscar's Eye, either - and those that do tend to think of it as a record album rather than a club. But I digress. In the middle of the room was a streetlamp, which seemed completely out of proportion both to the room and to what a streetlamp should be. Perhaps it would've looked better on a street. Anyway, I don't lose any sleep over that detail. Not any more, at least. Better than the lamp and the band (which was quite good) was the fact that in the back of the club, which was actually just a big room with a makeshift stage on one end of it, was a window, and outside the window was a fire escape. We ("we" being myself, Upchuck, and a couple of other folks) naturally climbed out the window, into the warm Washington night.
Now that's another thing I've always loved about this city. The way the summer nights just wrap themselves around you, sort of the same feeling as being smothered in the bosom of a well-endowed woman. Or perhaps being wrapped in a warm wet towel, but that's not nearly as much fun, is it? Oh, never mind. You know what I mean.
There I go again, off on a tangent. Anyway, up the fire escape we went, onto the rooftop of this building on 9th Street, N.W. I felt like a god as I surveyed the city around me, the Capitol to the east, all lit up, various parking lots below. A couple of people in the parking lot mistook us for drug dealers. "Yo man, send some down!" The whole roof, like any good roof should, possessed the heavenly smell of tar. Nothing like a rooftop in the summertime. Nothing. Anyway, so we talked up there for what seemed like hours, while the Capitol shimmered in the east and the stars twinkled in the sky. In due time someone found an old rusty paint can and we spray painted our thoughts up there on the crumbly limestone side of the building next door, for all the world to see ("Rick Springfield roolz"). Now I'm not usually the vandalism type, you understand, small stuff, OK, but not spraypainting. Not because of any ethical considerations, but because I was a little timid about getting caught. I didn't worry this time because I knew something special about the particular building in question and about the one we were on. But I'll get to that.
A girl recently told me she had sex on the roof of d.c. space amidst a lot of broken glass and scampering rats, and it sort of brought old memories back. Not of sex, just the rooftop.
Anyway, we came back in. End of that particular episode, except I had to drive a certain character who shall be named here only as the European Diskoman back home to suburbia, which is where I lived too, so it was cool. Here we were at two in the morning, and we got lost. I got the whole quadrant thing confused, and couldn't figure out which way to go. In our wanderings, we saw: hookers plying their trade ("need a girlfriend?" the Diskoman asked me); people roller skating; a 17th Street that looked like no 17th Street I had ever seen before; and countless other oddities. But we made it home. A week later, those buildings were demolished. That's what I was talking about with the graffiti thing. Pity. I think the parking lots are still there. It's right near the FBI Building, if you want to go look.
Also still there is a sad broken relic of that same time. Right around the corner, behind a chain link fence, was a vibrant green neon sculpture against a brick wall. It was some kind of PEPCO thing. Just a bright green squiggle, glowing in the night. No purpose other than to be there. I think that's what I liked about it... sort of the same appeal as a stoplight changing in the middle of the night when there's no traffic. Except even better than that. Anyway, just a few years later, I went by there, and although I had forgotten all about it, I suddenly remembered as I passed a chain link fence. "Isn't that where the neon sculpture was?" I thought. Yeah, it's still there. Broken now, though. You can barely see it, it blends in with the wall and is covered with weeds. So anyway, it seems that things like this just don't seem to happen as much anymore, or mean as much when they do. And I do think it's part me. You see, when you're 15 and when you're 25 are two different things entirely. At 15 you feel just enough independence to be tantalized by it, and the world seems to be waiting for you, and you can't stand it and you strain against all the things that are holding you back. And you can't wait to be free. By 25 you've realized that freedom is mostly an illusion. I hate to admit it. That's why I hated that song "I'm an Adult Now" so much. He was admitting it. I hate that. But anyway, it's for the most part too true.
Then there's the apple theory. You see a big red apple, and you can't wait to bite into it. There's nothing quite like the exquisite pleasure of sinking your teeth into its rosy perfection; to feel the resistance as your teeth press against the skin, and then to feel it give away as you press still harder, and you sink in - deeper, deeper - and the juice of the apple wells up into your mouth, bubbling around your teeth as you sink in deeper, and the first tantalizing drops hit your tongue. Your jaws clench, and you rip away at the flesh, tearing it away from the apple and into your mouth where you hungrily devour it, leaving a glistening green cavity in the formerly unbroken surface of the violated fruit. It's incredible, a culinary rush of epic proportions, but it's all downhill from there; the taste is still good, but from then on you're mostly eating just more and more green mush. The surface tension has been broken. Life is like that too. It has its good moments, and its bad, but there's nothing quite like the first few bites ever again.
So is it me, or is it the world? After all that, you'd think it's gotta be me. But F Street is being developed, the neon sculpture is broken, Oscar's Eye is gone. I feel like I fell in love, and then I got married. And now the doldrums have settled in. Is it time to work on this marriage, or find a new girl? A new apple?
Hell if I know.
