Tripping on DC

My first visit to Washington D.C. last weekend was strange and good. (I hesitate to call anything strange because most things seem strange to me, thus stripping the term of its meaning. Anyway…) I coughed like a dog the whole time. By the way, my head is now full only of clear snot, no longer the green variety as referenced days ago. An improvement indeed. I coughed the whole time. The weather was erratic. Everywhere I go the locals like to say, "The weather in _____ is totally unpredictable, sun one minute, rain the next." Everywhere. This was the case last weekend in DC. I stepped out onto the balcony Saturday morning with Kate’s roommate Pat. The sun was shining, the sky was crisp blue. I said, "It’s beautiful today." I went inside, took a shower. When we left the building about an hour later, the sky was heavy and gray and rain began to fall from it. Also, it was cold; my body does not retain heat, suddenly chilled to the bone. We went to Starbucks for coffee beverages. When we left the building the sun was out and all was beautiful again, and DC began to feel like some place I’d been before. Might have been the cleanliness, as clean as Iowa City and Minneapolis, in a perfectly pleasing but eerie way that is nonetheless still pleasing.

Friday night Kate, Melissa, and I went to the Black Cat to see Sons & Daughters and Clinic. If I have any followers, you may remember Sons & Daughters from an earlier post. My heart beat wildly for Scott Paterson because he looked like he was having equally wild sex while playing his guitar, singly deeply, and staring intensely (at me, of course). He brought back all that passion last weekend. However, it hit me that such wild flare-ups are only fleeting and this new relationship could only last a night, or two. One more Irish boyfriend cast to the photo album. Clinic, well, it didn’t take long to figure what each song would sound like. We left early. I’d rather enjoy Clinic on CD. Perhaps it was my doggish coughing that wound me down when they played, but I don’t really think so.

I’d like to return to DC in the spring time to see pretty trees and flowers (what am I, a dirty hippie?), though Kate will no longer be there. I’ll have to go as an obvious tourist. I have already seen the Phallic Monument to Washington rising up between two buildings in the distance, but I know there is much, much more.

(In the past five minutes infinite stupid things have gone wrong: e-mail account surpasses space limit, need to send two very large files, e-mail shuts down on its own, I misnamed a reviewer who also didn’t receive my fax in full and whose secretary called the Good Doctor’s secretary and confused things further, the Good Doctor thinks I messed up a pre-acceptance letter, won’t listen to me that I did it correctly and that there is a different confusing issue at hand, every program on computer becomes very slow. I will not let it bother me. I will eat lunch. However, I could go for a shot, say, a buttery nipple.)