Drift Reality > Washington, DC > March 2003

March 23 -Friday evening was Noruz, the Persian New Year and I went to a family friend's house for a delicious Persian dinner that included Mahi and Lubia Polo. We then ventured over to the annual Noruz party at a Persian community center located in Northern Virginia.

It had been several years since I had attended one of these functions and found myself tremendously amused by everything going on around me. Persian children were running around with reckless abandon, older Persians were socializing, and the dance floor was full of Iranians of all ages.

With a few drinks in me, I stepped onto the dance floor and tried mightily to emulate the sensuous hip and arm gyrations that I was witnessing all around me. It was not too long until one young lady was nice enough to tell me that only the women gyrated their hips and their hands and that it was inappropriate for men to do this. I ceased all gyrations immediately and began shifting my weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably.

Middle-aged Iranian women tend to be ridiculously amusing at these functions and it is was not too long until one middle-aged woman dragged her niece over and essentially threw her in front of me. Surprised, I attempted to make conversation with the young Iranian lass but soon found that my attempts only seemed to be making her more nervous than she already was. I smiled and continued shifting my weight back and forth from my right leg to the left as I watched her become increasingly nervous. The crazy thing was that every time she made a desperate attempt to bolt away from me, her Aunt came out of nowhere and grabbing her by the arm, thrust her back in front of me. After a while, I couldn't bear it any more and I made a break for the bar, half-expecting the Iranian Aunt to grab at me this time.

The two things I carried from the night are that first, Iranian parties are tremendous fun and second, that Iranian women are some of the sexiest dancers in the world.

We left the festivities and headed towards Smith Point, in Georgetown. Smith Point was a relatively new establishment and would have been one of my favorite places to go had it been in existence when I went to school there.

It attracts a slightly older crowd than most Georgetown bars, and it tends to be a little less rowdy than most Georgetown bars.

Sitting at the bar, I started talking with a young attorney who lived in the area. He told me that he had just gotten into town and had to go to work early the next morning so he could only have one or two drinks. When I asked him what time, he responded by saying, "Well, about 8 or 9." Two drinks and three shots later, that estimate had gone to about "11 or 12," and the next thing I knew, I was dancing around like a buffoon.

Later, I found out that some scrooge neighbors were trying to get the bar shut down, claiming that since the bar did not make 40% profit from food, it did not adhere to DC zoning regulations and should be shut down.

After Smith Point, we headed to my old digs at Georgetown University with the intention of finding a College party to crash. Although the dorms were completely dead, we were fortunate enough to find a peace protest in the middle of red square. Sitting down with the protesters, I began to inquire as to their intentions in camping out in the middle of red square. While the activist talked, I picked up a bongo drum that was laying on the ground and graciously provided a rhythmic backdrop to her speech. Shortly thereafter, campus security came and calmly explained that it was simply too late to be playing on the bongo drums and I would have to cease immediately.

March 18 - I've been feeling a bit off lately and I'm not sure why. I left San Diego and I know I made the right choice, I felt as though I was stagnating there. At the same time, I had a great life there and now I realize that I took a lot of it for granted. I had some very good friends, a wonderful girlfriend, a great place right on the park, and I even had a gym the likes of which I'll probably never find again.

Now I feel like I'm alone. Maybe this is where I should be right now because it will help me focus on figuring out what it is that I want to do with my life. Maybe it is not as easy to slip into complacency when you are alone. Time slows down a bit when you are alone and maybe that is not such a bad thing. Time has been going to fast as of late and it has only been increasing in speed, until now. Maybe now that time is stretching out a bit more, I can find what it is that I'm looking for.

March 16 - I arrived at my parent's house to find it in a decaying and decrepit state and suddenly felt like I was in the House of Usher. To my surprise, I found that one of the current tenants was a girl who I had met and had lunch with in San Diego about one year ago. It was definitely a bizarre reunion.

I moved all my clothes to one of the bedrooms upstairs, found a spare twin mattress that I claimed as my own, and began to gauge my situation.

I'm not the type of person who enjoys aimlessly drifting on the inimitable current of life. When I'm at home, I like to enjoy things like foundation and structure and I quickly began to realize that this would not be one of the things that I would really have for the next several months and I think this concerned me quite a bit. On the bright side of things, I imagined that it would be nice to live here throughout the transformation that would occur, as this disheveled shanty gradually evolved into a cosmopolitan townhouse. Or something like that.

The next day, the Comcast people came and I got excited because way back last September, when I committed to coming to DC, I envisioned that I would need two things: a bed and a high-speed internet connection. The crazy thing is that I probably didn't even need the bed. Anyway, having 50% of the equation for habitation completed the previous night and the other 50% completed during the ensuing day, I began to feel a sense of comfort settle over my frazzled mind.

I managed to actually get some work during the day and spent that evening sucking down Bass Ale with my Father while we discussed the renovation of the house.

Friday evening, my sister and Mother came into town and we had sushi at a little restaurant in Bethesda (I wish I could remember the name because the place was pretty decent). As I munched on my hand roll, I listened half-attentively to a group seated at a neighboring table that were discussing the impending war in Iraq. From their accents (and their occasional lapses into Farsi), I realized that it was a group of Iranians discussing the looming war and I think it was then that it really hit me that I was back in DC and no longer in San Diego.

I spent Saturday evening with a friend from College and we went to a party several blocks away from my house. We had sushi at another little place that I can't remember the name of, and then headed to the party. It was sort of nice to be in a strange setting once again, surrounded by unfamiliar people.

We concluded the evening by heading to Ireland's Four Provinces, which was one of my favorites outside Georgetown when I was in school. The Sean Fleming band was playing and they do a tremendous job of mixing traditional Irish music (not that I know what traditional Irish music is) with more contemporary beats and melodies. The place attracts a diverse group of people of all ages and has a friendly, vivacious atmosphere.

The bartender lost track of me so I responded by just scooping up a semi-wounded soldier off the bar table and doing a jig while I joined the revelry.