Lovely Weather. Enjoy it?

Strolling down, say, G. Street on Saturday night my college buddy said the oddest thing. "This is perfect weather!"

Actually, it was a little cold, I thought. It was a night of such pronouncements.

G. was in DC for a competition, and though his team was defeated, he seemed thrilled to marvel at the wonders of the Capitol: the design, the culture, the colored people. G. is in law school in a small town in northern California, not far from his hometown Oakland. Apparently, there are few colored people in such town, as G. was impressed by all of the black people roaming around...Georgetown. Hmmm. when he made this exclamation, I felt assured that going to Marty's on 8th wasn't such a bad deal after all. His colored quota could be filled cross ing the street.

But racial demographics weren't the most interesting elements of the night. That DC is Chocolate City is so cliche to not even deserve mention, let alone conversation. (And of course there is the obvious point of the city becoming more diversified--to politely side step gentrification--by the minute).

Instead we continued a conversation we began the moment we both arrived in The American city, New York, as wide-eyed freshman cynics from minor American cities, Oakland (he) and DC (me). East understands west.

How California can be so chic, and yet so country. The driver of a Porsche, number 4 out of 100 on the production line, has a bucket of fried chicken and waffles in the passenger seat. How LA is a city for do-or-die artists but no one seems to hustle.

And the image thing. Shiny, polished and waxed image. (Adjectives that can describe the aforementioned car or an average woman.) Image there truly is everything. Now, it's somethere, here, too. This snippet of conversation illuminates the difference.

I told G. of a friend who was new to LA and trying to meet women.

"What kind of car does he drive?" this was seriously his first question.

"Oh, a nice one. A BMW." I was obviously impressed.

"Oh. Well. that's okay. But you see, a nice car in LA is a unique car, like a Spider."

What? Guess my 2000 Jetta isn't the hot isht I thought it was.

G., too, maintains this image. I noticed his finger nails were polished.

"Women notice those things. That's why I do it."

Image. And west coasters wonder why we presume a superior attitude. Maybe because a routine visits to the spa dominate weekend schedules.

"What about social time?" I wondered how this schedule, assuming a 50+ hour work week, allowed for other stuff, like just handing out,

"You'll go to the spa with your girlfriends, catch up on life, talk about men. you know?"

Yeah, i do. And I've done it. But it seems so much more important. No, not important. REQUIRED.

And the coup d'etat? "LA women make being gorgeous look like they didn't even think twice about it." He threw his head back exultantly. Exuberantly. Suddenly, with my eyebrows a little less than expertly waxed (if only my girl would get back from vacation!), I felt a little grubby. (G. consoled me that for an east coast gal, I wasn't so bad. It was just the culture in which i was raised.)

But that wasn't the worst of the charges. G. grinned smugly. "You all just don't know how to relax and enjoy LIFE!"

We're too busy running the country! If everybody, men and women, had their hands in a soap-dish or their backs on a massage table (like I would right now), who'd keep aimlessly chasing bin Laden? Tearing down Social Security? derisively lobbing lit bombs at Hollywood?

Ultimately, approaching my car on a clear night of perfect-for-a-light-jacket weather, G. made the ultimate concession: he'd love to marry a driven, less than perfectly coiffed well-educated East coast woman. And move her to LA.

(For the Rooster.)

Tryst, my love, it's me!

Dear Tryst,

I am so excited to be together again. It was several years ago that we first met and fell in love, me with your big windows, mangy furniture, and brazen exposed brick (have you no shame!). So many lovely first dates, late nights, and lazy mornings. And even as you became the Adams Morgan cliche, the name DC transplants would drop to sound in the know, I stuck by you.

But then. after an especially long and loving night, I awoke the next morning with a cough. It was a short cough, as if i had a piece of animal cracker scratching my throat. An hour later, I was sipping water. The next day, still coughing. chest hurting. It was your smoke, dear Tryst, that clogged my lungs and left me hacking. It was the crowds and crowds of smokers cozy like Cubans puffing away.

Faced with the choice, my lungs or Tryst, I had to cut you loose. Turn down invitations to meet friends there and look like the loser who couldn't be hip if you paid her. I had to do it.

But tonight, my love, we're reunited. In celebration of your Spring, there are Gerber daisies atop the tables, beckoning me with a friendly "We can breathe!" There is a single cigarette in sight. And she's putting it out. To us.

With a blended chai,
Rhonda

Saturday Errands

If you go to McDonald’s, Mohammed said, be sure not to cross in the middle of the street, be sure to cross at the sidewalk. Police are out because of a robbery at the SunTrust Bank. Some people get up early on Saturday to run errands, like rob a bank. This Saturday, Mohammed is changing the dusty Speedy-Speedy’s oil, giving me an hour to kill. McDonald’s is the closest Rode Island Avenue can come to a coffee shop, so I head over. Crossing at the crosswalk.

And entering at the moment a woman is haggling the cashier about the soda that comes with the value meal. Five-year old children know the soda comes with the value meal. But this woman doesn’t want the soda. She is about to ride the bus, and everyone knows how the WMATA is about food on Metro bus or rail (they not as consumed with the buses arriving on time, but the I has sufficiently railed them for that failure). But since she’s paying the price of a value meal, she wants a little for meal. If she can’t get a soda, what else can she get? I think they compromise on a happy meal and some milk. But only if it wouldn’t be extra cost, she asserts.

Turning from the counter, the seats near the window look clean and inviting. It’s spring, evident even on this cranky stretch of Rhode Island Avenue near the AutoZone that’s getting a new paint job. After I spread out all my breakfast-lunch combination of a fruit cup, Quarter-Pounder with fries, two teenage girls sit flush against the window. For a moment, an image of two colored girls lunching at a sandwich counter flashes through my mind. Maybe it was the simplicity in which they went about unwrapping their burgers, dressing their fries, and start eating that nurtures this vision. A predictable moment in perhaps a predictable life…

As teenage girls, they immediately begin scanning the hall of diners where various sorts of people enjoy a McDonald’s meal. In a somewhat sociological way, I’m interested in what interests them and I listen to their conversation just to get some insight in their lives. My few years teaching alighted my curiosity to the world of DC teenagers, particularly teenage girls from neighborhoods I didn’t know.

Picking here and there at their fries, the young ladies begin a rambling conversation which fast food restaurants measure up, and determine this list: Checkers, Burger King and McDonald’s. Wendy’s are nasty and the worst of the industry’s offerings. They note this particular McDonald’s is much smaller than the McDonalds’ in Virginia, which they speak about as if they were real restaurants with impressive décor and furniture.

One of their grandmother’s works at a McDonald’s out there, the ones that are really nice (nice qualified as clean) “cause they got all those white people out there.” A few elements of their conversation I file away for future thinking but this one I think about for a moment. That their grandmother works at a McDonald’s suggests she’s still of working age, of a certain educational background and financial need. Their mother, too, must be relatively young. They mention a few more relatives who work in fast food, and I wonder if the prevalence confers to them working at a fast food joint is employment to which they should aspire.

Continuing, they talk about a woman in the McDonald’s who resembles another woman they’ve seen recently; girls they saw at the dentists who, despite being born to parents with short hair, had long curly hair down to their knees—“I lie to you not!” She emphasizes her point with a limp French fry. Obviously, length and texture of hair continue to make profound impressions on young black girls. I guess not all classes are reading “Nappy,” a children’s book that celebrates the more common texture of African American hair, in kindergarten.

Their conversation and my eaves dropping are interrupted by rising noise at the front of the…restaurant. Apparently some folks spend Saturdays fussing at McDonald’s.

“You didn’t have to curse at my son!” shouts the irate customer.

“I didn’t curse at your son,” is the cashier’s flat reply.

“He said you did!”

They go back and forth, each trying to outdo each other in noise and braggadocio, until the father steps in and shuts them both down with his bass voice, exploding belly, and ample use of four letter words to demand his @#$% food.

Sadly, my inexperience in generating public spectacle fosters an unhealthy curiosity in the urban entertainment. I crane my neck and watch as if trained by Pearl from “227.” But when the mom walks behind the counter to flip more than burgers—egged on by a third party who assures us all that the mom isn’t scared to take it outside—I start stuffing my bag with intensity.

My unofficial lunch buddies, too, start thinking it’s time to get a move on. They gather up their sodas, napkins and assorted fast food what not. (Odd no manager appears to calm the crowd).

“It’s always something going on at this McDonald’s,” one says and sips and sighs.

“We just missed the bus.” They saunter outside, and walk up the Avenue. I don’t know where they are going.