Darrow Montgomery

Father Ray East

Across the street from the White House on the edge of Lafayette Park. Midnight-wintertime Washington, D.C. It’s a tooth-hurting 15 degrees on the coldest night of the year.

“How are you fixed for food? Is the sleeping bag still holding up?”

Buried underneath two faded Alpine climbing jackets, a wool cap. Army surplus blankets, and one ripped, green cotton sleeping bag, all of it lumped against a two-foot concrete wall, the muffled, female, Castilian-accented 50-year-old voice replies, “Yes, yes, everything is fine"

From left to right: Father Ray East, Jon Voight, Congressman Randy Cunningham, Jim Bates, Shannon Bradley

Christ, it’s cold out here. Another sharp gust of wind cuts through my rented tuxedo; testicles shrivel, ass tightens.

I’ve arrived from the newsroom of the Washington Times. Earlier, Margaret Rankin, the paper’s society writer, escorted me to a society soiree and she is now at close grips, writing on deadline, so I’ve peeled off and gone for a walk.

When in D.C., I always stop by Lafayette Park to visit Concepcion Picciotto, a swarthy, Rubenesque woman who has been standing, sleeping, sitting, passing out pamphlets in this one spot seven days a week, 24 hours a day for the past ten years. Her possessions include a milk crate, two 4x4 plywood billboards crowded with pictures of Nagasaki taken right after we dropped the big one. She says she won’t leave this spot until all nuclear weapons have been destroyed.

Jesus. A decade of living in wind, rain, occasional snow, occasional sleet, and dependable summer humidity. The scope of her obsession, her loyalty to it, and the futility of it, have always touched me. Somehow, quietly, without being able to mark the moment it began, she has become one of my rocks, like a home town, like a mother, like believing there’s time enough left so everything can still be okay.

Concepcion and I look into the darkness across Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, 100 yards away. A large, orange welcoming light shines over the front door, setting to a million postcards. I ask, “So what do you think, late at night, when you look over there?”

“Oh, I don’t think about him. He’s a zombie.”

"Concepcion, do you have a home? I mean a home town.”

“I have a home town. It’s back in Spain. People there were friendly, everybody know everybody, people took care of each other. Is not like here.”

“Are you ever going back?”

“No, this is my work.” Full stop. “I’ll never go back.”

I can’t decide if this is said with regret or with an involuntary shudder brought on by bitter cold.

Home towns are spooky — they grab you, they mold you, you carry them around with you unconsciously, mindlessly, effortlessly, like fingerprints.

Washington, D.C. has often been billed as Imperial Rome, the London of the 1890s, some would say the Berlin of the 1930s, the capital of what used to be called the Free World, and for a great many people, in a great many countries, these last 50 years, it’s been the center of the known universe.

And since the beginning people have always been drawn away from home towns to centers.

Let every head be bowed. God gives light to everyone that comes into the world. Let somebody say amen.”

A chorus of “amens."

Addressing us is the very clear, accent-less tenor voice of Father Ray East as he begins Sunday Mass at St. Teresa of Avila, a Catholic Church in Anacostia, one of D.C.’s roughest neighborhoods. Father East is black, 41 years old, thin, tall, athletic body, expressive brown eyes, which are magnified by large rimmed glasses.

The church is full. Father East has a large and technically adept chorus backed up by a five-piece electric band, but the music never makes the congregation squirm, never takes us up to our feet or demands that hands clap. Even here, there is a reserve, there is a formality inside the Catholic Church.

After Mass, Father East escorts me downstairs to the basement. Snacks and punch are laid out; 50, 60 parishioners mill about wearing Sunday best, chatting, munching off paper plates. We continue a conversation that began a couple of days ago in a Connecticut Avenue McDonald’s.

We’d met at three in the afternoon. Overhead, Muzak was playing the Beatles’ “Fool on the Hill." Father East seeks out the men’s room, I collect two coffees, one cream, one sugar. He returns, I ask, “So did you start out in San Diego?”

“I started studying for the priesthood in San Diego, but I discontinued my seminary studies out there, finished my BA at the University of San Diego. Never thought I would leave California. San Diego’s home, and I was quite happy there.”

“How big is your family?"

“I’m the oldest of seven children. Five boys. Two girls. I was seven years old when we moved to San Diego. It was 1957. We lived at 630 Cotton Street, near 47th and Market. Then we moved across the street to the other side of the hill, kind of the edge of the canyon.

“I went to St. Rita’s, and then University High School, then University of San Diego. My brothers and sisters went to Crawford and Horace Mann.

"Dad was a trustee at Chollas View Methodist and still is active. And mom directed the Head Start Child Development Center at St. Rita’s. We were one of those Babto/Catha/Methodist families,” Father East enjoys a sweet laugh.

“In 1968, you’re a senior in high school, the whole country is going nuts. What would you do on a weekend, that spring?”

“Growing up in San Diego, as a teenager you were pretty culturally fit into grooves; like, you were either a surfer or you were a freak or you’re in the ghetto and acted tough. My family worked. I was a commuter student, so I went back home and worked. We had jobs. Mine was at Jack In The Box, at Euclid and 54th.”

“How many hours a week did you work?”

“As many as I could get, 20 or 30.I also worked at the University of San Diego library. The weekends were for working, and then every opportunity that was free we’d go to Mexico or go to the beach.”

“When did you get the calling?”

“I think I had it for a long time. My grandparents were missionaries to Africa, South Africa. Dad was born in South Africa on the missions in what’s now called Transkei.”

"When were you first aware of it?”

“Third grade, fourth grade.”

“Did you think, ‘I want to be a Catholic priest, I want to be a pastor’?”

"We would have meetings in those days. They would show us movies about the missions. That was something I could relate to because we had always grown up hearing about our grandparents. My aunt was in the missions in Liberia, and so she would write us letters. I always thought I was going to be involved with foreign missions."

“Was there any kind of formal moment that you had that you knew this was it?"

“Yeah, in high school we had a pre-seminary program, and what you did there was you went on retreats and you heard about religious life and you got a chance to do some field trips. You’d go down to the cathedral or campus ministry at San Diego State.

“It was 1968, and for a short time I was in the seminary. Things were going crazy, the whole black consciousness thing. I was the only black seminarian. The first semester I was there, we only had four black kids at the whole University of San Diego. The EEO programs and the grant programs hadn’t started yet, so I was one of a very few black students on campus and the only one in seminary. It was a lot for me, so I took some time off to think about it. I stayed at the University but dropped out of seminary. I graduated in ‘72 in business administration.

“At that time there were so many opportunities for black students. I tried out for the big eight accounting firms, interviewed with a couple of them, and ended up going to work for my uncle, who’s a contractor in San Francisco. I lived in Oakland and worked for him and then worked for an association, still exists, the National Association of Minority Contractors. They worked with Hispanic, African-American, native American, women contractors, Asian contractors all over the country.

“In ‘75 the NAMC, the contractors, and the magazine that we published, Minority Builders Magazine, were moving right along. I worked as circulation manager and also did some production, advertising, and writing for them. We’d have national conventions and would do lobbying out here in Washington. We ended up spending so much time in Washington that the directors decided to move headquarters here, so that’s how I got here. I thought it was going to be temporary, just a couple years, and I was definitely headed back to San Diego.”

“So you land in D.C. with a lobbyist’s job. Did you have a sense that you had arrived?"

“We were too poor and it was too much of a struggle to think that. There was a lot of violence on construction sites. It was a tough and challenging job. It took a missionary’s spirit.”

“How long did that go on?”

“I was with Minority Contractors for five years. Then a kind of tug, the old call tugging at my coattail, and I entered seminary again in ‘77. At Holy Trinity at Dallas.

John Voight in Conrack, c. 1974

“I thought about going back to San Diego, I really did. Through the years I’d kept up contacts with my old priest buddies, kids that went to the University of San Diego who are now pastors there. Weighed it over carefully all four years I was in seminary and then thought about it right before I got ordained and decided to work out here in the African-American apostolate. It was so important, so urgent, that I felt that I was needed more in Washington."

“What is your position here?"

“I’m pastor of Saint Teresa of Avila. It’s a little church that used to be in the suburbs 110 years ago. The city grew around it, and now it’s what they call the ghetto or one of the worst neighborhoods in Washington. But I find it a lovely place, right across the bridge from the Navy Yard. The thing that makes St. Teresa famous is its former pastor George Stallings. [Stallings resigned from the Catholic Church and formed his own sect.] He launched Imam Temple from there. I took over after George left. We were a pretty big church then, but two thirds of the folks went with him, so in the past couple years we’ve been rebuilding. But it’s been an exciting time.”

“Did you have a sense of letdown?”

“Sure, sure.”

“You must have discussed this at length with him. He came to the conclusion that the Catholic Church was seeped in institutionalized racism, beyond reform. Did you agree with that?”

“I understand the frustration and could understand the fact of George exploring a lot of possibilities and found that he had to make that decision. I understand the decision, I really do understand it, but I chose — and it was a choice because I could have gone over with him pretty easily, but I decided not to because I’m connected in this way with 400 black priests and sisters around the country.”

Father East

“Do you have a sense of pride, as a black person, to see George make his move?”

“Certainly the community felt a great deal of pride. They said, ‘Yeah, go, George.’ And on one of my bad days I’d wake up and think, ‘Doggone it, George was right.’ But then George’s church has split into two.

One of his priests formed a separate parish and was ordained bishop and has formed something he calls the Independent African-American Catholic Rites. So there he is on the other side of town, kind of essentially doing the same thing we’re doing, which is the same thing essentially as George is doing. You look at it and you say, ‘What kind of sign is this giving to people?’ ”

“What do you see as different between Washington, D.C. and San Diego?”

“Washington is very cosmopolitan but in a different way than San Diego. San Diego is multicultural. It’s the shores of the Pacific, waters that have been all through the Pacific and Japan and Asia and lapping against Mexico and California. It’s just like these fault lines, the pressure of peoples coming together from the Pacific Rim, and you really feel that. You step off a plane, and you can taste it and you can see it. Washington, it’s a bit more formal, it’s a lot more formal. The East tends to be broken down into rigid categories. In Washington, it’s very much black and white racial consciousness, very racially self-conscious.”

“I see you have a photo of San Diego in your briefcase.” Inside open briefcase is an 8 ½ x 11 color photograph of downtown San Diego and the bay.

“San Diego has a way of staying in your blood. There’s a certain civic pride. We always felt we were the city by the bay, ‘Mississippi of the West,’ but still trying to work together. Lots of problems, but a city that could rally behind things like the 727 crash. That has stayed with me. I know I’ll never be a Washingtonian. They don’t let you, so I always keep that San Diego identity real strong, keep the old placemat in the bottom of the briefcase to give me that vibe.”

Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham

It’s extremely odd to be on the Mall, Capitol building behind me, I Washington Monument in front, what is called the Federal Triangle, between 8 to 9 a.m. in the morning. The subway system in D.C. is superb, 70 miles so far, most of it underground, all of it feeding into this area, and you can stand on real grass and watch an endless stream of white males wearing red ties riding up from the earth on escalators like Nintendo game characters on their way to do battle with the universe.

Walk over the Mall to F and Seventh, tucked away is the National Museum of American Art. Wander inside, it’s free, meander up to the second story on threadbare brown carpet. View forgettable portraits. Stop at gigantic window, look across the street to Star Wigs, Hi-Boy Donut Shop, Cousins Clothings, Fun Fare Adult Books with “Private Viewing Booths, Magazines, Books and Discount Videos.”

Exit building, walk two blocks to greet the fairly new J. Edgar Hoover FBI building. This is the real-deal bare concrete multi-storied cubes free-standing fuehrer bunker. Over the front door an enormous flag proclaims "Drug Free America” on its top. On the bottom, “The Right Choice."

One of the nuances of the East Coast that pops out at you is cops. You don’t see young, lean faces or tight tan shins and Ray-Bans around here. Local cops are much more working class, much more a shot and a beer, and much more union. Here, unions live, they are real, and they have power. The Washington D.C. Fraternal Order of Police operates a private club, actually, a substantial bar, right across the street from the downtown police headquarters. One walks into the “fraternal club" and sees a line of cops hunched at the bar talking cop talk.

I make it a habit to stop by, bullshit my way in, make friends, am looking to find a D.C. cop from San Diego. D.C. is a wonderful place for the Daily Blab; it’s the only town I’ve ever visited where TV sets in bars are routinely tuned to the evening news. After three or four visits, I’m introduced to a cop I’ll call Greg, an undercover narcotics officer, graduate of SDSU. We shake hands, order a couple of beers, then a couple more. Overhead, a TV runs the five o’clock news. A male reporter is doing a week-long series; the subject is, ta da, Walking the Mean Streets of Washington.

Scene opens with shot of trashed-out ghetto row house. Male Reporter: "Last night when we were on the air, two men were shot. The shooting occurred in the back of her house.” Cut to homeowner. Cut back to airhead. "Now I talked to her last night. She said she’s not afraid. And that is typical of those who live here in the W Street corridor; they simply point to the positive instead of the negative. They say, ‘Proof? All you have to do is look into the eyes of the children.’ ” Camera pans to three children playing on ripped-up sidewalk. Airhead’s voiceover, "Children laugh on W Street. It is a sign that things here are changing.”

Cop on my right focuses on TV, blinks twice. Four patrons simultaneously expel massive sighs. Greg observes, “God, the shit you guys feed the public.”

Greg graduated from San Diego State in 1976. He’s tall, with an unkempt blond beard, longish beach-blond hair, and manic brown eyes, the sincere appearance of a Schedule I drug offender. He did a tour in the Marine Corps, most of his duty was in Washington, security at the Pentagon, decided to settle in. We set a date to cruise his district.

Right on the minute, Greg arrives at Logan Circle. I open passenger door, hop in his maroon Jeep Cherokee.

Greg asks, “Now, you’re not familiar with the district?”

"I’m vaguely familiar. I know where Northwest is.”

“Okay, the Third District is mine, and it’s the smallest because it has the most crime. At one time we had 25 drug markets that were outside where street selling of drugs was going on, and I would have called 7 or 8 of those major. ‘Major’ meaning 24 hours a day you could go out and buy dope. Now, we probably have 2, and while you can still get drugs 24 hours a day, it’s nothing like it was before.”

"How is this different than San Diego?”

"Well, different drugs. We don’t have much meth problem here, and the gangs here are more evolved, more organized, have more history behind them.”

“What’s the demographics of your district, rich, poor?”

"It’s probably more 5/7 poor, 2/7 rich.”

“Is the drug of choice still crack?"

"That’s a bit deceptive. Because while crack is still popular, there are large numbers of people who absolutely stay away from crack. Heroin never went away. The media just chooses to write more about crack than heroin. But we still had almost the same number of people coming through, every day, buying heroin.”

Cunningham

Ten p.m. We drive down Columbia Road, turn right past residential street comers, which seem oddly crowded with three, four, five black males. Greg says, “Look over here on the left. That guy standing there is selling crack cocaine. We ran an operation up here last year and we made buys. We do a couple things a little differently than San Diego. We’ll take a neighborhood and we’ll buy from everybody and we’ll videotape the buys and then when we close down, we literally lock up all the — " Greg interrupts himself, nods towards the next comer, "These guys here, they’re shooting craps tonight, but they sell a lot of crack right here. This is bad, this is real bad.”

Said like a rancher looking over a neglected herd of underweight cattle.

“Now how do you make the buys, I mean, the mechanics of it? Say, this group here, you couldn’t park your jeep and watch. You’d be obvious as hell.”

“What you need and what we don’t have on these two spots are observation posts. The thing isn’t to go out and lock up 50 people at one time. The thing is to lock up 2 people every week for three or four or five months. This street is a classic example. There is absolutely no drug selling on this block."

“Amazing, this street is just 50 yards away from the other.”

"Now this street was what the street down the block was in 1983, my second year in the drug unit. I got a call one day from a guy who works in a clinic here, who was talking about the drug problem. I said, ‘The only way we can do anything is if we get an observation post.’ He said, ‘I’ll let you in anytime you want.’ And for the next year and a half, once a week. I came up and he let me in and we made observation cases.

"This is a fascinating story because you saw how they reacted and we counterreacted, and then they reacted and we’d counter. When we started out in that one block, there would be 10 or 12 different groups selling. And they were so confident that they held the drugs on themselves. After we starting making some lockups, they started using stashes. But they were still very brazen about the sales. If I walked up to make a buy, they’d leave me standing right there, they’d go over and get the drugs in my view, come back, say, ‘I’ll take the money.’

“We kept making lockups. But as we kept making lockups, people on the block were starting to see things were getting better and began to trust us. They knew the police were obviously paying some attention here. So we started to get other observation places. So now the sellers knew that if they sold in this spot, they didn’t get locked up. So they started putting their stashes there and taking their buyers back there, but now we had additional observation posts that were at our beck and call and could look down on the new spot. So we started to hit them there. Then they began to put their drugs inside, where they were completely out of view, but by now we had enough people who had been arrested enough times so that we had informants, and when they went into the apartments we really got them because we had search warrants, and we got good seizures of heroin and cocaine, and we got the masterminds out of the block and the block cleaned up."

“Jesus, it sounds like being an anthropologist in Fiji in the ’30s.”

“Oh, yeah. You sit there, like those guys on that comer," nods to another group of three, “are up to no good. What’s happened here is, we haven’t done anything about the problem down at that real bad comer we went by, 17th and Euclid Street. When you get a core area that you leave untouched, being good capitalists, the area can’t accommodate everybody, so people start to branch out. If somebody walks into that block who looks like a potential buyer, those guys might say, ‘Hey, man, you looking for rock?’ and they’ll try and pick off the buyers before they get down to the core area."

We cruise Georgia Avenue, drive past Walking the Mean Streets of Washington TV van with satellite antenna on top, parked on main mean street under yellow anti-crime lights. Greg turns again, guns us towards Connecticut. “This is the affluent pan of the Third. This is the first time I’ve been here in four or five years. We just don’t ever get drug dealing over here. These are some magnificent old places."

“How many people and how long does it take to clean up a block?"

“It took a year and a half for Fuller Street.”

“Jesus.”

“Look at these guys, that’s pathetic right there,” glances at a group of four blacks. “It took one in the observation post and one arresting. To me it is a great success story because all we did was chip away. There was nothing dramatic, nothing that ever went in the Washington Post, but it worked. It absolutely worked.”

“Do you ever think about going back to San Diego?”

“No, I hate the place.”

Five p.m. In residence of rented basement hovel-room. Big decision. If I take my second shower of the day and wash my hair again, then hair will be frizzy and unmanageable. Pace room, decide on shower without over-wetting hair. Time to mount the rented tuxedo. Am booked into a society do with Washington Times society writer Margaret Rankin.

Okay, we have tux encased inside plastic thing like you get from the dry cleaner. Rip, rip, rip. Lay suit and shirt on bed. Do the studs go on first or last? Inside recycled cardboard pouch are four studs and two things you put on the end of your sleeves, called cuff links. Try first stud. Success. Now, number two. Good Lord, there’s two already done.

Jesus, it’s hot in this room, 85 degrees at least. One, two, three, four studs. Step two is put on shirt. Now cuff links. Can see I should have had Ray at esteemed Scogna Formal Wear show me the goddamn cuff links. I don't get it, bastard keeps falling out. In, out, in, out, in, out. Jesus.

Leave that for a minute. Now the suspenders. I forget whether to put the long end of the suspenders over my back or in front. Hell with it, go long in back, seems to work. Collar button time. Stand in front of bathroom minor, fingernails rip skin of throat, create actual wound. Starting to sweat profusely now. Suspenders flop over my shoulders, snapper ends equidistant from zipper command central. Okay, now cummerbund. Does it go outside the suspenders or inside the suspenders? Decide to go inside. Nope, outside. Now for the big moment, donning of the black tie, which has been underfoot since noon. Retrieve tie from the dust-ridden orange rug. Just sweating like a Liberty Ship bilge rat now.

Have tie in hand, can’t see a damn thing. Tie seems to have a little hook gizmo thing. Feel around for hook and gizmo thing. Gizmo thing in. Red Alert! Tie is coming undone. Felt pretty comfortable about attacking the cummerbund, but the tie, the tie is already soaked in sweat and drooping around my neck like a tortured, beaten reptile. Shirt is wet too. Sopping wet head hair makes me look like a pond duck in a thunderstorm. Okay, I think we’re there, sort of, good enough, fuck it.

The reception and dinner is a benefit for the Children’s Defense Fund and is held this year at the National Building Museum, built in 1887. The building has been used for presidential inaugural parties, movie openings, banquets. Enter to high heels on marble, 159-foot ceiling, envision Grover Cleveland cutting ribbon, opening a World’s Fair with theme: Moral Purity and Industrial Strength.

Margaret Rankin is 27 years old, tall, slender, funny, smart, comes with stunning, very long red hair. Been at the Times two years. We stand in the atrium, nursing a cocktail, regard the first 100 guests as they mill about in small circles served by a dozen, two dozen, three dozen waiters carrying silver trays filled with booze and eats. I point to an overweight, squat woman wearing, a cobalt blue sequin off-the-shoulder dress. I petition, “"Tell me about that dress.”

“She looks horrible in that dress, sort of like a pail of rising dough. She’s had it 20 years.”

“Is that the equivalent of a $1000 dress 20 years ago?"

“No, unfortunately, 20 years ago they didn’t have very nice dresses.”

“It does look stunningly unattractive. Also the cut in the back is ... the multiple skin folds are really ... repelling.”

“It’s a little bit too high off the ground. Today, women always wear their dresses to the ground even if they trash them the first night.”

“How about that dress, is it a cheap one?” I look over to dishrag off-yellow mini-dress.

“No, that’s not that cheap, it’s gaudy.” Margaret reaches for a nibble of roast beef on sourdough bread.

“Gaudy?”

“And Washington women strive never to be gaudy.”

“They don’t seem to strive to be particularly sexy either. What is the look?”

“Conservative, in control of yourself."

“I see, it’s ‘I’m out here carving out a life, I can work 60 hours a week, I’m a responsible careerist, I know the capital of Romania,’ that kind of stuff?”

“Yeah, uh-huh.”

We move over to a nearby cluster and occasional movie star Jon Voight, who is talking with two women.

Jon Voight: “There’s nothing more beautiful to me than someone who is an advocate, like Marian Mysettleman, who is speaking these truths to people who are hearing them and acting on them. Nothing more beautiful or wonderful or uplifting than that to me. So when you say, ‘Voight, the seriousness,’ I say, ‘When I see her at work I say, “Wow, magnificent.”’”

Woman’s voice: “They say that tonight is the night."

Voight: “This is the night. I don’t know what this night will be. Each one of us has our own way of contributing. I’m sure we’ll see every different kind of color of the spectrum in terms of our presentation.” Woman’s voice: “Tell me. What sort of a story did they ask you to tell?”

Voight: "Something to do with your own experience, a good tale, I suppose.”

Margaret and I introduce ourselves. I ask Voight, “When was the last time you were in San Diego?”

“I was at the Old Globe Theatre for a couple of years when I was a younger fellow, before Midnight Cowboy. Since then I’ve just visited occasionally."

“What’s your impression of the town?”

"Boy, I don’t know. It depends on who your friends are. There’s many beautiful places. I used to love to go to the zoo. It was a nice respite. I used to go and visit the animals in the zoo.”

Margaret: "I have to ask you, I’ve been covering this beat for a year, and I’ve met a hundred movie stars. They don’t normally mix with the crowd.”

“Is that right?”

“What makes you feel like doing that?”

Jim Bates

“Well, I want to meet as many people as I can. First of all, we’re all here for a great reason. And then I want to do my best to make the evening successful. And then on top of that there are people here who have answers to some of the things I see as maybe some of the little stumbling blocks in getting kids some help.”

“And you’re talking to them about that?”

“Yeah, I’m interested in seeing what’s going on. I’m on the other coast, and I’m speaking to many people over there and really all around the country, even the world. And this is an opportunity to talk to another group of people who maybe have the strength to answer certain things that other people can’t.”

I turn to my companion, “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?” Back to Voight, “Have you done some work on this in San Diego?”

Just then a Pacific Northwest cascading waterfall roar fills the auditorium as several hundred civic leaders network. Margaret and I retreat, grab hors d’oeuvres, she points to an attractive black woman standing one circle over. “She just got elected to the city council, and she was almost not elected because her husband didn’t file a tax return for nine years in a row.”

“It’s easy to forget.”

We move over to newly elected councilwoman. “Hi, I was at your victory party. I’m Margaret Rankin, and I wrote a story about you.”

Slender, intelligent, mainstream attired black woman responds, “You know, I looked and said, ‘Where have I seen her before?’ ”

I am introduced, offer “Congratulations."

Margaret: "I wanted to ask you how you feel about it now. It’s been what, three weeks?"

“I went to an all-day session to orientate new members, and then I went to the White House to meet President Bush because he had all the new members over there.”

“Really.”

“He could not have been more gracious.”

“How many times have you been to the White House?”

“A lot in the Carter Administration but not once since the Democrats got out of office. When I walked up the stairs I said, ‘This does feel strange. It feels like a long time.’ ”

“How was the meeting between you guys?”

“Ah, it was wonderful. He recognized me immediately. I said, ‘Mr. President, you’re my constituent.’ He said, ‘Absolutely, I got to have my picture taken with Eleanor.’

And I said, ‘I'm going to use this picture to tell my constituents that there is a new relationship between the President and the District.’"

A stately, mature woman wearing four strands of pearls pokes her face inside our semicircle, “Hi, remember me? I gave a reception for you and...”

Eleanor releases what is commonly called a squeal of delight, “INDEED YOU DID! My goodness, how are you?”

We retreat. I turn to Margaret, “So is that the way you do it? You go in, you do three or four sentences, withdraw.”

“They know, we both know, that I’m coming to say three or four sentences.”

“It seems like that’s what everybody is doing.”

"Yeah, that’s the way it’s done. You see, the woman in the purple dress is a perfect example. She’s looking around, and when she finds the right moment, she’ll go over to Eleanor and she’ll come back to her cluster.”

“I see.”

"They’ll go and they’ll present themselves, and they’ll say three or four sentences and they’ll leave. And then they’ll come back to their group and talk about what they talked about.”

The conversational engine cracks up a few thousand RPMs. Much hubbub and buzz, buzz, buzz.

I grab tiny morsel of meat slapped on top of absurdly small cracker, "So, what kind of people are here? I mean, how do you know who to talk to?”

“Well, if their hair is done, you definitely want to talk to them.”

“How about the guys, what do you look for in a guy?”

“Men are indistinguishable to me. Maybe they’re not to other men. I constantly rely on press people to point them out. Except if you have white hair, chances are I want to talk to you. Because old men who don’t do anything don’t come to these things. Young men who don’t do anything do come to these things.”

"To meet old women who do things.’’’

“No, he wants to meet the white haired guy and say something witty.”

“How about this dashing guy over here with the nice head of hair, distinguished gray beard, animated conversation?”

"I don’t think he’s anybody.” Margaret eyes a middle-aged couple. "They’re famous, but I forget who their names are."

Just thunder of conversations, a typhoon of chat.

People wince as the speaker at dais begins the show, certainly capturing our attention with a screeching, finger-nails-on-blackboard female howl. “This 1990 CDF Benefit is being held in this magnificent building following up on a tradition we started two years ago when we celebrated CDFs 16th birthday with a grand party. Last year... ” blah, blah, blah, applause.

Margaret: “Time to get a chair. Look around at the tables, see if you can find an empty seat.”

Speaker’s shriek easily cuts through background noise. “Now we realize you paid a lot of money to be here tonight..."

I work around the perimeter of the dining hall up near the dais, spot a table with an empty chair, approach, lean over and ask an attractive, well-groomed woman, “Is someone sitting here?”

A cultured, pleasant voice, “Oh, no.” “Splendid." Gratefully sit. Enter, stage right, a zillion kids aged 6 to 17, America Sings Inc., each wearing identical T-shirts. The mass surrounds the entire dining area, shoulder blade to shoulder blade, forming a human wall, actually ringing the vast dining hall singing “Brotherhood from Sea to Shining Sea." I feel profoundly menaced, intimidated.

Why, looky here. Discover I’m sitting at one of the honored tables, with one of the co-chairs. Next table over is Sidney Poitier. I nod magnanimously. Now what’s this. My, my. I’m at table, actually sharing intimate personal space, preparing to break bread with my old buddy Jon Voight, who, gulp, is only one chair away. I lean over co-chair, place large head six inches from Voight’s, inquire, "So Jon, what is it with you and San Diego? You know’, the heartbreak, the disappointments, the gutter stuff?”

Seven people murdered between Saturday evening and when the Post went to press today, Monday. Almost not enough time to list their names. Take cab up from Connecticut Avenue and Tilden to the Hill. Cabby volunteers, “You know, all those murders and stuff, they don’t put them all in the paper. You put all that stuff in the papers, people would flee this town.”

At the Cannon House Office Building, one of three office buildings set aside for U.S. Congressmen. As usual, am early. Find bored security guard, inquire about the purchase of coffee. He languidly points right index finger towards the floor.

Clomp, clomp, clomp. Really a dungeon down here. Pipes on ceiling, whitewashed hallways, people scurry about. On sidewalks people walk, down here they scurry. Now moving past B-94, black guy sitting on orange plastic mold chair, looks to be a furnace room, filtered cigarette dangles from his mouth, counts a legitimate wad of fresh $100 bills. Score coffee, take elevator up to the second floor.

Am here to meet freshman San Diego Congressman Randy "Duke” Cunningham, who just arrived in Washington and is using a colleague’s office for the day. Cunningham takes the couch, I draw up a chair, ask, “Are you about the business of getting a place to live and...”

“All of the above, determining where your home is going to be to determining where your office is going to be, to learning exactly what kind of computer systems you need, to establishing your staff. It’s an orientation like any other kind of orientation would be.”

“How long have you been in town?”

“Been here about a week, leave Thursday.”

“What do you notice on a personal level about Washington D.C. that’s different than San Diego?”

“There’s no greater city than San Diego, and the Chargers can whip up on the Redskins. I’m a loyal Charger fan, but luckily they’re in a different league, and they won’t have to play each other unless it’s the Superbowl.”

“Have you noticed anything about the process of looking for a place to live that is different here than San Diego?”

"Well, the traffic here is much more critical than in San Diego, although San Diego traffic can learn from Washington D.C. The metro system, in looking for a house, is very key to me, because I can’t afford, when they’re having votes, not to be able to make it in.”

"People here seem so much more formal.”

“You’ve heard the term ‘California casual,’ but there are places in San Diego where it’s just as formal as it is here, but as a general rule it is more formal here on the East Coast."

“What are you going to do here for fun?"

“I think there’s a lot to offer. I’m on my way to a gymnasium to work out. I put on a little bit of weight in this campaign, and I’m going to lose it. We’ve got all kinds of good fishing here in the bay; matter of fact, someone told me today there’s some of the greatest bass fishing right under the shadow of the Washington Monument."

"How’s your family? Are they excited?”

“Oh, they’re very excited. My wife is a principal, a very professional lady. She has a doctor’s degree in education, has two master’s degrees, she’s bilingual in Spanish. I spoke to Lauro Cavazos today, who’s the Secretary of Education, to see if possibly she could get a position in the Department of Education. She’s a pretty smart lady."

“Have you gone to any of the receptions or... "

“All of them. Part of the orientation is getting to meet the players. If you’re going to play in a football league you want to know who all the players are and where your different tools are in a trade. The things that we’ve been going to are the actual caucuses on the Republican side voting on different positions, the leadership, the committee on committee, or the Speaker."

“What are you looking for as a first-term congressman?”

“I have two areas that I think are very important for my district. One is education and labor. We have, in some cases, 40 percent of our children don’t go to college, they don’t finish high school. If I can bring an education program to San Diego that will help those kids, then I’ve done more in two years than any 100 congressmen you can think of. The other one is the Armed Services Committee. When we’re in times right now when we’re on the front step of Saddam Hussein, I think that it’s very critical to have a voice of someone who’s been on the front lines.”

“How does that work? First-term congressman, minority party, when you say, ‘I want to be on these committees,’ why would anybody listen?”

“You have to lobby. You have to — for example, there’s a position called ‘Committee on Committees,’ and there’s a California delegation. You present your case with all of the other states because they have people vying for different positions as well, and you take a look, how many members. For example, California has two members on it already. But you look at my background, and if anybody is on it, I probably have more knowledge on the subject than most of the people on the Armed Services Committee.”

"I’ve talked on the phone with your opponent, Mr. Bates. He seemed very unhappy”

"Good. Mr. Bates is why I ran for Congress. I wouldn’t have run if someone else had been there. I think he’s just a disgrace to Congress. I think he’s an embarrassment, and I think he’s done a lot of bad things, and in my campaign, I didn't push my campaign on the negative aspects. I mentioned once that he was found guilty of the ethics violations without going into all the unsavory details that his primary’ opponent did. What I did was present his voting record and how it had hurt the constituents in the district. One of the upsets is that a politician can look at you and lie in your face, and that’s where I differ, I think, from my opponent.”

Another day, another basement stroll in the Longworth Building, another miserable cup of coffee. Am here to interview aforementioned Jim Bates.

A short wait in his somewhat shabby, cramped reception room. After a while, all congressional offices take on the look of a rural electric co-op’s vice president’s office.

Bates is average height, average middle-aged features. His most remarkable characteristic seems to be a perpetual frown, one that you feel rather than see. We shake hands, I ask, “What are your demobilizing plans?”

"You mean life after Congress? What I’m doing right now, I’m on a three-track program. I’m sort of adjusting and packing up and cleaning up and wrapping up everything. At the same time, I’m looking for a new position, and I’m keeping alive the recount and the lawsuit on a slim possibility one might come through.”

“Are you planning on returning to San Diego, or are you going to do something here in D.C.?”

“That’s still undecided. My wife and daughter are still in school here in Washington, so I will probably stay here through June. And then if I decided to run again, I would move back to San Diego and take a position back there and begin that effort.”

"And if not?"

"And if not I would stay here or go somewhere else.”

“What kind of, I guess the word is job, what kind of job would you look for?”

Shannon Bradley

“I’m not inclined to go into lobbying, although that seems the most natural. You try and say, ‘Well, how can you take advantage of 20 years of government experience,’ and that’s probably the most natural, although I’m not inclined to do that. I talked with Ralph Nader about getting into, maybe, public interest lobbying.”

“What does he say?”

“Well, he gave me some leads on some efforts that are going on. He was shocked like everyone, and he was looking forward to working with me on a number of initiatives. But in any event, I’m kind of interested in investment banking, maybe getting into that or working on some specific projects, maybe doing it from the private sector aspect.”

“What is the attraction of Washington to you?”

“I think it’s a wonderful city to live in, and I like the change of climate, and it’s a very cultural and high-powered, active city, where things are happening.”

“What do you notice that’s really different about Washington as opposed to San Diego?”

"Well, this is the center of our national government, all the buildings and all the memorials.”

“Is there anything about how people act or dress or how they talk that seems to you as a little bit different than San Diego?"

"Well, they usually dress a little warmer."

"Well, yes. Is there anything else?"

“It’s not as laid back as California. Not as sterile as California. There’s more culture, more ah, I don’t want to say substance.”

Female staffer, "Excuse me, can you take a call from George Ford?

“Oh, okay. Sure”

Afterwards I ask, “How do you get a bead on what people in San Diego are thinking when you are so far away. Is that difficult?”

“No, I'll go back every other weekend, and lately, every weekend, and I go door to door a lot.”

“What would a weekend in San Diego be like?”

“I’d leave here Thursday night, get in San Diego late Thursday night, get up Friday morning, go into the office, have maybe 20 or 30 appointments, every 10 minutes, and then I would, maybe I'd speak to a group at lunch, then I would maybe tour a facility and meet with people. And then in the evening I’d probably go to some kind of a dinner, salute or something, give a speech, awards program or something. Saturday, depending on the weather and if we were in a campaign or not, I’d go out walking. I’d probably participate in some events that were taking place in the district, lunch with some key supporters. In the afternoon, more appointments, maybe going by, visit open houses.”

“Jesus, sounds utterly exhausting. Don’t you get tired of meeting that many strangers?”

“That’s what I did all my life, I mean 20 years, never let up, and I don’t know how much good it does because the 44th is a very transient district, a high turnover, low voter, and a lot of work.”

"At night do you just collapse, or are you completely geared to this, like somebody who runs a marathon and goes out dancing afterwards?”

"I have a lot of energy and I’m kind of hyper, but I run hot and cold. There are times when I get literally exhausted, and I just maybe take a day off or something and regroup.”

“How many of those flights have you taken?"

“Since I’ve been here I think I’ve taken 350. I usually take the redeye back to D.C. Fly all night, get in here Tuesday morning at eight o’clock.”

“So would you go directly to the office?" “Yeah."

“Then go directly home?”

“Yeah."

“Three hundred and fifty times?”

"Yeah. Oh, I work my ass off, I tell you. I handled 45,000 individual cases, took 350 flights, and kept all my offices open six days a week. No one else does that.”

“What would you have done different? If you could change anything, what would you have changed?"

“Raised more money."

“How much did you have?”

“I spent about two-fifty. He spent about 400. Then I had a tough primary that beat me up. Georgiou spent almost half a million, and I spent about two-fifty."

“Where would the money have gone, TV?”

"Yeah, direct mail, TV.”

“I assume that’s a fairly direct correlation. You spend X amount of money, you get X amount of votes?”

“I just got outspent. I was never good at raising money because I don’t support the special interests. I can’t complain. I wouldn’t have changed anything, I wouldn’t have done it different, I wouldn’t have changed my votes on anything. I always voted the way I thought was right even on the pay raise. I thought it was the right thing to do."

“When do you actually have to vacate your office?”

“Next Monday, a week from today."

“Do they pay you through the 20th?”

“Through the first of the year. Lose all my little perks like the WATTS line, free parking at the airport, lease car when I go back to San Diego, all that stuff.”

“What’s going to hurt the most in terms of losing this job?”

“The thing that will hurt the most is that I don’t think anyone worked harder to help people than I did. And the second thing that will hurt is that a Republican cannot work with the Democrats to serve the interests of San Diego the way I could. They won’t be able to get the funding for the sewers, say; they won’t be able to do a lot of the things I could have done.”

“How about personally?”

“Personally, it’s pretty hard on the ego to get beat. I ran in 15 elections and won 13.”

“You sort of saw this one coming, or at least you knew it was going to be close."

“Yeah, I knew it was going to be close. I thought we’d hang in there, but everything went wrong including the fact that they were quoting me saying I was prepared to lose. I never said that. That was a misquote in the New York Times. I said that whatever happens I’m prepared to deal with it. I didn’t say I was prepared to lose, and I think that hurt. And it wasn’t the sexual harassment. You can look at the polls right here,” reaches for a sheet of poll results, walks around desk, presents evidence. “In the last poll, it shows where his vote came from. Twenty-eight percent of his vote was against all incumbents. The bad publicity and harassment was only 17 percent, and the Washington budget mess was 13 percent. It wasn’t pro-Republican or pro-Cunningham, it was against all incumbents, against Washington, and against Jim Bates. And you add them all up and that was the 15-point drop. Everybody dropped 15 points; I just didn’t have it to drop. I didn’t have the margin that the others did.”

“What do you do here for fun?"

“Oh, we go to the park, what’s the name of that park, Rockville, isn’t it?” Long pause. “We’ve gone out to Maryland, and we’ve gone to the horse country occasionally — not enough, not enough — but on occasion to see the leaves, you know, and the skyline. We’ve done some things; I wish we’d done more. One year when we first got here, we went herring fishing in the Potomac. Fishes just everywhere. You could almost reach in and grab them.”

“How about your people, employees that work for you?”

"They’ll all find other jobs.”

“How does that work?”

“Well, they’re just out scrambling, and I make calls and try and line them up. They’re scrambling. I’m scrambling. I have a subcommittee staff of four people too. I chaired a subcommittee. Cunningham will never chair a subcommittee."

I walk over to the Capitol Building, watch two Capitol police play with squirrels.

Halfway up the Rotunda’s grand staircase, ten white demonstrators huddle together, each made up in Indian war paint beating drums, chanting. Off to one side, an old man cradles a hand-painted sign, “I lost my health in WWII, bad heart, high blood, I can’t get no help from USA at all. One of the World War II black dog slaves. A Negro in US of A in 1990." Am approached by young Japanese couple, asked if I would take their picture.

“You bet."

Wave down cab, experience Nigerian cab ride from hell. West African cabby takes one hour to go from the Hill to Arlington via Georgetown, with stops at Exxon gas station, directions from a fellow cabby in Georgetown, more directions from cabby in downtown Arlington, map search at BP gas station in outer Arlington. Abandon ship, walk the last mile to Channel 26 and the Washington studios of The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour.

I wait in the reception room, beg coffee from the receptionist, and in due time Shannon Bradley arrives and escorts me up to her second-floor office. Bradley is early 30s, five foot seven, brown hair, blue eyes. First thought, “This is no one to fuck with.”

“When were you last in San Diego?”

“I go there twice a year usually."

“Family?"

“Family, friends. I just like it there. Home.”

“When did you leave?”

“ ’84.”

“You mentioned you went to UCSD. How come?”

“Communications. Graduated in 1980."

“Where did you live when you were going to school?”

“Del Mar and Ensenada."

“Did you do a lot of beach time?"

“Uh-huh."

“Surf?"

“No, but I spent a lot of time in the water body surfing.”

“Surfer boyfriend?”

"Yeah, John. John’s from San Diego. We got married there in ’83, so both of us think about it as home."

“So what did you do? Here you are in 1980 with a degree in communications from UCSD."

"I looked for a job for a long time and had all sorts of pretty similar jobs in San Diego.”

“Like what kind of stuff?”

“I worked in a toy store. I worked as booking agent for Love, a rock band that operated out of their garage. It was just a disaster. I didn’t book them any jobs. I never got them anything. But I finally got a job at National Pen as a proofreader. And what that meant was proofreading the inscriptions on pens to make sure ‘Hardware’ was spelled right, and it was terrible, it was absolutely awful.”

“Jesus. How many pens a day would you look at?”

“Well, I didn't look at the actual pens, I looked at the orders. And that’s what I did with my college degree and how I was able to use it in San Diego and the reason I left."

"You couldn’t find any work in journalism?”

Prostitution zone, Washington, D.C.

“I did an internship at KGB while I was in college, which didn’t get me anywhere and part of it was my own fault. I went on a job interview at the all news stations in San Diego right after school, and I showed up in thongs and a little sun dress,” laughs, “and couldn’t understand why they didn't take me seriously. I just didn’t get it at that point. I interviewed at the Union a couple times, but I couldn’t pass the typing test, and that was in the circulation department; they wouldn’t even consider me for journalism."

"Did you know how bad it was when you graduated?”

“No, uh-uh. I didn’t pay that much attention to what I would do when I got out. At National Pen, I eventually transferred to their an department as a graphic artist. Did that for two or three years, and I realized I'm not an artist. I don’t want to do graphic arts, I want to do journalism. So I applied to the American University here in Washington.”

“And that was ’84?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you do for fun ’80, 84? What would a weekend be like in the spring?”

"Beach time, surfing. We’d go to Baja for a while, drive down the coast, put a tent up with friends or by ourselves or whatever. Weekends, we lived for weekends, and that’s not true here, entirely different atmosphere here, much more work going on.”

“This is a very exotic job you’ve got. How did you land this one?"

“I skipped around here in jobs too. Right after graduate school, I worked for a local television station as a writer. Then I was doing a freelance column for City Paper, which is like the San Diego Reader, on D.C. politics. It was fun. I wrote about the mayor and the city council. I looked for stories that the Post was not covering, and as I was doing that I realized that I enjoyed print more than television, so I went to the Hill and worked for a newspaper, Roll Call, had a ball there, was there two years, loved it. Then MacNeil/Lehrer called me and it was the only time it ever happened, someone actually recruited me for a job. So, I was ‘MacNeil/Lehrer, are you kidding?’ ”

"What did you do for Roll Call?”

“I had a column called ‘At Large,’ where I just did Senate and House races around the country and then I did news too. In fact, I did a series on sexual harassment that focused on Jim Bates, and that whole Bates thing blew up, so it was ironic for me because after that story broke, I had the San Diego Union calling, I had the San Diego TV stations calling; everybody wanted my opinion on this guy and what the goods were, who my sources were, blah, blah, blah, and these were the people I couldn’t even get in the door to talk to when I lived there.”

"What do you do here at MacNeil/Lehrer?"

“I’m a political reporter, off-air reporter."

“How does that work? Do you just go out and do the story and hand it to them?”

“Yeah, exactly. The story I’m working on right now is a piece of another story on black mortality, and we interview several people off air, and then the anchors pick who they want to use. Usually we recommend. We’ll interview ten people and we’ll say, ‘I think these three best illustrate these angles of the story,’ and then they’ll look at the interviews and decide if they want to talk to those people, then we call them back and book for that night’s show or whenever and then write the questions, write the intro, treat it as a news story. When I do it, because I’m from a print background, I usually write the story as if it were in print and then submit the interviews and the questions so they can see what I think the story is.’’

"What do you do for fun?”

"Well, I have a baby. But up until the baby was born, work was everything; my husband the same, we both just lived for our jobs and worked all the time. In the evenings and weekends, we’d get together with friends who are also into journalism and we’d talk work.”

"Is that fun?”

"It is. More so than I thought. I never dreamed I’d get so into politics, and I love it. It’s fascinating. When I get away from it sometimes I think, ‘God, I can’t believe I just live and breathe this stuff.' I was in Del Mar in ’87, a year before the ’88 campaign, and one of the news shows had some Democrats who were vying for the nomination, and I was all excited, ‘Oh God, look what Gore’s done. Oh, he changed his statement from yesterday, you know.’ My friends thought I was out of my mind. They could care less. It was a year out from the convention. But you get so into it that everything is interesting and means something."

Phone sounds, she answers on first ring with a strong, self-assured, clipped enunciation, “Shannon Bradley. Hi, John. No, I’ll call him right now. I thought I’d give him 15 minutes.”

“Yeah, I think about San Diego all the time. In ’88 we decided definitely we’re going back, and we went back and I even talked to the Union about going there. We also looked at property there, and the houses are so expensive, and I want to live near the beach. But yeah, we talk about it a lot. I have a little girl who’s going to be ready to go to public school before too long, another four or five years, so I’d like to be back there by then.”

"What do you miss about it?”

"The ocean, the weather, the coast. I have nice friends there too, but I see them here. They come to Washington a lot. But I miss the ocean.”

“It’s amazing with all the glamour here, San Diego would still have an appeal.”

"No, this isn’t glamorous anymore. It’s political, it’s fun but besides that...."

The first three stories on the local news are D.C. murders, eight minutes top of the news, endless. Then something on the Soviet Union, break for commercials, then back on patrol with DEA agents as they break into a D.C. crack house.

Prostitution zone, with sign restricting cruising

The first time I saw 14th Street was spring 1981. It was nine o’clock at night, and the scene reminded me of an old-fashioned circus parade. There was a continuous line, elephant trunk to elephant tail, of promenading hookers that stretched on for six blocks. Scores and scores of women in tight dresses and spike heels asking prospects for dates. On weekends so many gawkers, male and female, would drive down 14th, two and three to a car, that traffic backed up, buckled, choked, strangled itself, and the D.C. police, donning red vests and flashlights, had to be called out to keep all the Toyotas, Chevys, and Pontiacs moving.

It seemed perfect, walk two blocks east from the White House, turn left, continue down 14th for five minutes, and one encounters booming primal commerce. I’ve often wondered what it must have been like for a young foreign service officer, fresh from Poland, posted to the capital of the universe for the first time, to arrive and discover the show.

It took a full-court press, hanging out for several days, enlisting every cop I’d met, but I was eventually introduced to Darlene, a 31-year-old black prostitute from San Diego working 14th. We agree on lunch at Donatello, a pompous restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue catering to law firm attorneys and executive-level government managers.

Darlene arrives 20 minutes late in a throbbing purple two-sizes-too-small miniskirt, which showcases one of the East Coast’s great butts. On top is an equally tight gold blouse, long Afro hair, wide, deep-brown eyes. The maitre d’ swallows whatever he wanted to say, gathers two menus, escorts us to a window seat. I order two glasses of Zinfandel, ask, “Were you bor in San Diego?”

"No, I was born in Arkansas. My mother moved to San Diego in 1964."

“Where did you live?"

"Logan Heights.”

"Do you have brothers, sisters?"

“I have one brother and two half sisters.”

"Are you still in touch?”

"Not really. My mother died of cancer in 1985. My brother’s in jail the last time I heard. I don’t really know where my sisters are.”

“Your dad?”

"I never knew him, the only....”

Waiter appears, blandly interrupts our conversation. “A couple things to think about. Soup de jour today, tomato-based soup, chunky tomato soup with chopped, fresh-grated Parmesan cheese. We have our entries. Two fresh catches today. We feature the oriental red snapper. It’s sautéed, topped with sherry butter, carrots, snow peas. We also have catfish, hickory grilled, topped with a Coming dough butter, served with tomatoes au gratin and green beans. And we also have a couple rotational items. The chicken today is orange avocado chicken; it’s a boneless breast of chicken. It’s hickory grilled topped with a horn of butter, chunks of avocado, and orange served with potatoes au gratin and green beans. We have an artichoke and pistachio pasta, which is egg linguine, fresh artichoke hearts, and fresh pistachio nuts tossed with butter."

I glance up at late-20s, air-blown blond waiter. “I’ll take a burger, plenty of mayonnaise, no sprouts, more wine.” Return to Darlene, "So where did you go to high school?”

Darlene orders a green salad and ice water. Two soulful brown eyes look through me, "Why do you want to know all that?” "Just curious. So where did you go to high school?”

“I went to Horace Mann, but I didn’t graduate.”

"When was that?”

"Oh, something like ‘75, ‘76.”

“What happened?"

“I didn’t like school.”

“What was a weekend like then, say, May of 1976? What would you do?”

"Nothing much. It was party-hearty time. There were about eight or nine of us, and we’d go over to somebody’s house and party. We did party, Courvoisier and junk food.”

“Drugs?"

“Oh yeah, it was the whole deal.”

“How long have you been in D.C.?”

“About a year, year and a half. My boyfriend is from here. He has family, so I came back with him."

“How do you like it?"

“I don’t like the cold.”

Waiter returns, I pause, prepare self to reach up and rip his throat. Instead, he quietly places lunch on table, tiptoes away. “Were you a prostitute in San Diego?"

"Well," laugh, “I don’t know what you mean. I turned some tricks, but it’s not like this is some kind of a full-time job. I mean, it ain’t no 40-hour-a-week kind of thing, ain’t no certificate you get, ain’t no retirement."

"Is there any difference between your customers in San Diego versus the clientele in Washington?"

“There’s more money here."

“Do men ask for different services here?”

Laughs, “That’s a funny question."

“Well, I don’t know, I just thought East Coast, West Coast, warm weather, cold weather, might be some difference in customer preferences.”

“Well,” pause, thinking, engaging now, “it’s pretty much the same. I catch a lot of federal servants on their way home from work. They just want, you know, something quick, you know.”

“Oral sex?”

“Yeah.”

“In every job, there are parts you hate and parts you like. If you had a choice, would you rather do standard intercourse or oral sex?”

Laughs, laughs. “God, this is weird."

“Yeah, I know.”

"Look, it’s all money, that’s all it is.”

"How much can you make in a shift?”

"Two hundred. On a good night, a real good night, $300."

“Is there much trouble with the police?”

“It comes and goes. If you get arrested, you get a warning from the judge the first time. They fine you the next three or four times. ’Bout then you’d better leave this town."

"How come?”

“Oh, they will put you in jail, if you keep coming back to them. Sooner or later, they will take you away and shut them doors."

“What number are you?"

“I figure I’m a one and a half. I’ve been arrested twice. The charges was dropped once."

"What happens when you’re arrested, say, for the fourth time?"

Laughs, “Well, sugar, that’s about the time I’ll be going back home to San Diego.”