DC Underground

The theme of this weekend has been the "DC Underground," which is cousin S-speak for the singles dating/party scene. It makes it sound like it's some sort of secret, which is weird because it's remarkably easy to infiltrate house parties around here.

Friday night my new DC best friend and I went to Columbia Heights for a dinner party at the townhouse of a guy we met last week. I made my famous pasta salad, and apparently everyone else had the same idea. There was literally a table full of noodles. And raw meat. No kidding, we had only been there a few minutes, and the host asked me, a guy from New Orleans, and a girl from North Carolina to "man the grill." I asked, "Was this a random assignment or did you pick the 3 southerners on purpose?" Of course it was on purpose. And a good decision. I may not have gone to Yale, but I can flip a burger or two.

This girl, we'll call her Houdini, got supremely wasted and started yelling about how she had the digits of every Italian in the city. "It's a fetish," she says. I ask her why she is so drunk after a glass of wine and 2 beers and she says "my people are intolerant." I think she meant "alcohol intolerant" but it's still funny because she's Indian. She overheard an Indian guy telling us that he blogs for a living and attacked him on the spot because she is a blogger too. He writes about technology and she promotes restaurants and clubs. Two professional bloggers at the same party? I write blog posts for my job, but I didn't know that companies hired people to blog and facebook all day. Sounds intriguing.

So we meet this guy J, and he is one of those guys who is from California, plays the guitar, wears funky necklaces, and uses all of the above to get girls. So I let him attempt to work his magic on me for awhile (he was trying HARD....even offered to "take" me to annapolis for crab cakes...in my car) before telling a story involving my boyfriend. See, you can't just blatantly say you have a boyfriend unless people ask, because then they can pretend they weren't trying to pick you up. So he moved on to Houdini the drunken blogger and succeeded in acquiring her number.

Several interesting people later, there was a cop-in-training who gathered a crowd to show off his party trick, which involves a Q-tip up his nose. ALL the way up his nose. I said, "i want to make a tiny cop brain joke but i just met you. oops too late." But it was all good because I've discovered that, outside of the south, southerners can say whatever we want and people still love us.

The New Orleans guy we met, I'll call Tom Sawyer because he definitely kicked off his shoes and rolled up his khakis to grill. He insisted that my friend and I come to his house party Saturday night. Having nothing else to do, of course we went. First thing, met this guy and we got to talking about football and tailgating. I told him about my effort to convince some people last night that Yale's tailgating is not really tailgating, and it turned out that he played football for Yale! Oops...he was a good sport though and generally impressed that I can talk football.

Later, I had one of those DC-type policy discussions that one must master in order to survive in this city. I was outside on the steps with a New Yorker and a California girl discussing local food vs. big agriculture, and subsidy issues. We came to a consensus that local food is good for fruits and veggies, but inefficient when it comes to staple crops like corn and wheat. And also that subsidies need an overhaul. This is actually what most people my age think, which gives me hope for "opposites" to work together in the future. Is our generation generally more agreeable and open to compromise, or do we all get more ornery and one-sided with age? It's a scary thought.

Highlight of the night story: My friend set her sights on a fluffy-haired guy with a man-bag. Sorry, "bolsa." Apparently it was from Colombia. And he is French. And he showed us pictures of his previously long long hair, which he tied in a samurai topknot. I say to another girl who knows him, "he's french, he's colombian, he's effing samurai, who the hell is this guy? He is confused." She said OMG I am so glad someone who just met him said that. Happily, we managed to leave the party without him. We now refer to him affectionately as "knob-head."

It is a tragedy that fake, attention-seeking guys like J and knob-head are able to attract girls, yet perfectly nice guys like Tom Sawyer get the shaft because they are "marriage material." I guess most girls in their early twenties in DC, or anywhere actually, date the wrong people on purpose until they are ready for commitment. The secret of the "DC Underground," is, I think, that single life persists here until at least 30 because people like to get "established" in their careers first (which usually means in a high-enough position to afford to ditch your 3 roommates and to be able to take off work for a honeymoon)...so I advised Tom to go cougar-hunting if he wanted something meaningful.

And that is my assessment of the DC Underground.