By Darren Kaminsky
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Darren Kaminsky's novel, Sugar Spun Sisters, appears in serialized form every Monday right here on Me Three. The story follows the lives of five twenty-somethings living in Washington D.C. As far as the editors are currently aware, none of these characters work in politics.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Oct. 31 cont’d
A line of mermaids held hands as they ran down the street. People screamed and threw things. More screaming, then streamers, then another set of running transvestites, then more streamers. Red Streamers. White streamers. Blue streamers.
Towards the end, the police kept trying to close it down, but the racers kept shouting that they wanted one more race, one more race. And the cops let them and the crowds cheered and then the whole thing broke up and the cops formed a line near P street to separate the crowds from the organizers and the racers from the crowds.
Following the surging crowds, I ended up at the Embassy for Space and it looked like it always does, no one there, but the flag waved in the wind and the house was kept up well-enough. Someone takes care of it, I just don’t know when.
The sidewalk outside it was covered in people who thought this was a big cocktail party. Some of them were dressed in tinfoil or were painted silver. No one but me seemed interested in the Embassy for Space.
Could they really not have noticed? Or is it perfectly normal for there to be an Embassy for Space and I was just the only one who didn’t know? Maybe, and this answer makes sense, these people were actually from space?
In my dream, there existed, beneath the innocuous looking house, a huge subterrerean complex of meeting rooms and offices. Banks of computers with newsfeeds from every corner of the inhabited universe fed info to the dedicated corps of diplomats currently on what seemed to be a lunch break that had lasted several years, perfectly acceptable for their own home cultures, where time was probably thought of differently.
I want to get back to the Fox and Hound to see Bella, but there was no way now to break back into that part of 17th street. A line of cops blocked 17th right at P street. Too many people to push my way up and, if you tried, there’d be another wall of police to block you when you got through.
So, I wandered home, walking. I thought about taking a cab, but I wanted to see how Washington was celebrating.
Turned out that the answer was, around Dupont, very loudly, but a block north of the actual circle and I couldn’t even tell it was Halloween.
In Adams Morgan, it was Halloween again. Sidewalks full of people mostly not in costume. We pass a gang of people with masks of political figures. I spot Nixon and several senators. Someone was dressed as Patton. Someone else as Jefferson, but it’s non-specific enough that it could also be Hamilton or Washington. It was the entire history of our country in a single costume, in a single shapeless white powdered wig.
November 5
Brenna has been spending a lot of time in her room. She’s been getting brochures from all sorts of strange schools in Switzerland that will teach her French and to wear hats like Jackie O. It’s a lost cause, Brenna. Don’t pursue. (But, people love their lost causes.)
Brenna has about 50 guys who would be happy to date or marry her and she wants to wear a pillbox hat and give up her insect collection? But she doesn’t. She seems like she does, but she wouldn’t.
Nell has been on a downward spiral for a while now. Ever since she came back from Peru, it’s been like this. She seems listless. There aren’t as many idealistic and inflammatory speeches or any complex plans to protest or ‘take action.’ She seems stuck.
I tried to ask her about it. I sat down next to her on the couch and asked why she hadn’t invited any of us to protest lately? I even said that she seemed like she was in a rut, but she said that she wasn’t and that she was doing the same things she was always doing. Her voice sounded...huffy, indignant.
Peru was the apex of everything she wants to be and I think that, every moment, it was busy or dangerous or new. And here, it’s not. Still dangerous, but only because she leaves the back door open at night when she falls asleep on the couch.
In the last few days, a more ominous development, some of Gaff’s friends come over and they go up to her room and get high. Brenna says that Nell’s having sex with them, but I don’t really want to believe that.
November 10
I was supposed to visit Dani this weekend, but she’s taking a class and says that she needs to study. She also, very openly, has started hanging out with a guy that she was friends with in high school. A guy. She says it’s just friends, but that’s always the way it starts, right?
When she told me, I got this sinking feeling. It got worse when she said that she ‘wants me to meet him,’ because I ‘would like him.’ Why do people do that? You’d think that they’d specifically avoid wanting the outgoing to meet the incoming, but no. It’s got to be a big diplomatic thing, we’ve got to ceremonially become friends.
November 14
Bad things. Lots of bad things. I’m feeling surrounded.
Things at work have been getting bad for some time. I come in late because I can’t wake up and I spend my effort on my social life and taking photos and talking to Dani on the phone.
Today, Jill, my boss, told me that I was going to have to make more of an effort. That we, in the D.C. office, were being watched carefully and that we’re looking ‘baggy and unproductive’. That she wasn’t going to be able to coddle me anymore. I told her that I understood and, of course, felt completely panicked, mostly because I don’t want to be there anyway, but don’t want to make the next move either.
To top that, a new publisher is buying the City Press and wants to ‘make it more mainstream’ and to concentrate more on ads and the classifieds. To do that he wants the features to reflect the sorts of things that would attract those sorts of ads. So there will be columns on antiques and a ‘yard sale of the week.’ They’ll still do night life coverage, but they want more on bars with outdoor space and who has the best chicken wings and less on men dressed up as mermaids running down 17th street. All seems the same to me.
Darren Kaminsky is a writer living in Brooklyn. He can be contacted at sugarspun @ bigbagoftricks dot com.
© 2006 Me Three
