A Poem for a Corona Quarantine in Berlin in the Spring

Hobbling along the cobblestones of New Cologne, I notice the small purple bluebells push past the döner wrappers and cigarette butts. Butter yellow daffodil petals compete with the screaming neon of some American's latest electro-swing band flyer to dance in the wind.

Blackbirds sing over the garbage bins.
Swans squabble in the canal.

The corona erases our physical presence and turns our attachments to our loved ones into electrons vibrating across the Atlantic Ocean.

My love language is Zoom.

Your love language is Instagram Chat.

Plague ships haunt my dreams while you act as if nothing has changed at all.

Quarantine suits you. I"m kidding a bit. Shelter in place makes my hair glow like candles on a Buddhist altar.

Which flower will bloom tomorrow?

Socially distancing Germans line up at the Edeka to buy their geraniums but I prefer the wild trees bursting forth in the void that was the Death Strip.

Alone but together. Calls form Fiji where I sing of bombs bursting in air. Colombia sends me minions. But nothing from Sweden.

There was never ever anything coming from Sweden. So normality, at last.

--inspired by a book of prompts from Chen Chen and the poem Night Falls like a Button.  Prompted by the fantastic Jane Flett of the Reader in Berlin

Welcome to Liberia: Creative fiction excerpt

When I was 24 years old, my mother died.  She was the strongest and toughest woman I knew and fear of her had kept me on the straight and narrow path – afraid to really live. In the past, I had rebelled against her by refusing to get an office job and becoming a bartender but her influence still controlled me. I was terrified to try the joints passed to me at parties because I was convinced that the moment I placed one to my lips, the police would burst through the door and arrest me.  I could vividly picture my mother’s disappointment and anger as she bailed me out of “Drugs Prison.” It was clear that this would lead to my bright future unraveling and a destiny as an “unwed mother” working in the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. However strong my fear, she was also the one who always fixed things.  Without her, I didn’t know how to navigate my life and I had lost my magnetic North. So in my haze of grief and untethered from her disapproval, I found myself adrift – and looking for an escape from responsibility and from suburban America.

So I followed a timeworn path followed by other mad white people from around Europe, North America, and Australia – I went to Africa to save the people. Classic White Savior trope. I was going to use my heartbreak and grief and powerful American passport to save Africa – even if I didn’t yet realize that Africa was not a country, white girls like me were a dime a dozen, and that all humanitarian aid workers fell into one of three “M”s: Mercenaries, missionaries, or misfits.

That’s how I found myself on a plane from Lagos to Monrovia in 2003 with a more experienced 27 year old aid worker named Michelle. She was showing  me the ropes and was an old hand. She casually tossed out facts to me that in retrospect were designed to terrorize me – “ there are about 5000 Nigerian and Ghanaian peacekeepers in Monrovia right now,” she told me as she casually sorted through her purse. “They are there to keep the rebels and the government forces from tearing each other’s throats out. But god knows what will happen if they are tested. They are completely outnumbered and can’t even control the airport.” I nodded and tried to pretend like I knew was happening and desperately tried to look cool.

The tiny plane bounced along over the rain clouds- rainy season in West Africa. The outline of the West African coast was our map. This was the “milk run” – we stopped and expelled passengers and picked up new ones in Conakry, Abidjan, and Freetown. The people getting on and off the plane could have been in a John Le Carre novel. Skinny bald French gangsters in plaid suits with fat gold chains, sweaty fat Nigerian business men, bored Lebanese men who smoked incessantly and tried to catch my eye. Aside from two flashy women in outrageous weaves with skin tight clothes – better suited for the disco than the dinky airport in Freetown – Michelle and I were the only two women on the plane.  I wore my aid worker uniform – khaki pants, a black tank top with a white no-iron shirt opened over it, and tevas.  But my tevas were new and my white shirt was unblemished. Michelle’s tank top was grey and stretched out and baggy- which proved she was a real aid worker who had “field clothes,” unlike me – who had purchased everything on a shopping trip to Old Navy with my sister two weeks before.

My father frets about me doing this work – do you have health insurance? Do you have a pension plan? I know he worries about the men I’ll meet – freaking out that I might show up with a Liberian child soldier turned business man and some illegitimate child. My father is proud of my daring, though. But he also worries. Mostly that I’m going to be killed in some sort of Hollywood shootout. I don’t know how to reassure him that I feel safer going into this war zone than I did in my cheap apartment in Washington DC where I heard gunshots on a daily basis and was once chased down O Street by a hooker for daring to poach her territory. I don’t know how she thought I was going to poach customers from her unless there is a group of DC men who have a secret yen to get it on with hippie girls in grateful dead skirts, ankle bells, and Birkenstocks. I wish there were – I never seemed to get dates in that uptight city of student body presidents and “the man behind the scene” types that populate that place.

Finally the plane begins its descent to Monrovia – I lean towards the window to get a glimpse of where I will be living for the next 8 months. To my disappointment, it looks just like where I left – South Carolina. Red clay, rambling green trees, and grey squat buildings. Except these buildings are mostly missing roofs, and the runway is not paved – just a slushy strip of that deep red mud. We land and the door opens up and the smell of Liberia washes in  - wood smoke, dark pungent earth, and something faintly sweet – something I can’t place.  We start to climb out down the stairs and onto the runway – not mud as I had assumed – gravely but covered in puddles of muddy red water.

My first impressions: A derelict old plane has been pushed over to the side in a field – rotting and covered with mildew. Giant white cargo planes with the black block letters of the UN are parked in front of the airport. Tanks line the runway and bored African men in uniform lean on top. Men in uniform are everywhere - and a contingent of Nigerian soldiers snap to attention and salute as the man behind us emerges. He’s in a magnificent peacock blue robe and wears extremely dark sunglasses even though it is overcast. A truck full of soldiers pulls up and the African soldiers jump out leisurely- laughing and joking and slapping each other the back, oversized helmets hanging over open handsome faces. They shout to each other and start throwing bags into the back of the truck. 

Michelle and I are insignificant specks of dust in this world of important men –swept away and overlooked as the Nigerian dignitary is greeted and fawned over. I hike my backpack over my shoulder as the thick humid Liberian air clogs my lungs and start trudging to the airport building. Just like in the movies, there are drums in the distance.

********

I accompanied the senior protection officer, John, to the stadium in Monrovia where thousands of displaced people live. I entered the warren of training rooms, locker rooms, and other hallways meant once for football teams and athletic demigods, and the smell was a mockery of the smell of good honest sweat and hero worship that should be there. It stunk of unwashed bodies pressed in together, of fires to cook unappetizing meals of bulgur wheat usually without even a bit of salt to enliven the taste. The building reeked of body odor, urine and shit. This is what it smells like when you press thousands of people together in one compound to help them live and protect each other just by the sheer mass of their bodies.

I walked in there, scared but also feeling rather fearless. I would not be repulsed. I would not flinch. I didn’t know what I was going to see on this, my first trip to a displacement camp, but these were human beings and they needed their human dignity restored. And I was going to do it.

Liberian society is dominated by extremely pushy men that have negotiated some power as “block leaders” or “chiefs” who you have to meet with and have long convoluted conversations with before you can get to the business at hand of trying to talk to the women and assess their needs. I was impatient but I knew I had to put on my best face, try not to be irritated, anxious, and pushy right back at them. Although I had only been in the country for a few weeks, I already knew that Liberians liked to “palaver” and formalities could take forever. As a cultural anthropologist, I knew the importance of the formalities but I hated them!

I sat smiling and writing in my notebook, listening to their grievances – there’s not enough food, you should pay us to ask us these questions… John had told me that these are common complaints. Ask any refugee or IDP anywhere in the world how things are going and they will tell you immediately – “they don’t give us enough food”. And it would be pathetic and sad if it weren’t for the old Catskills joke that immediately popped into my head. “the food – its so bad. Yes, and not enough of it.” Of course, I’m sympathetic – I struggle with my own food issues. I am not that picky about WHAT I eat but I am about how its prepared. I like spices. I like tasty foods. I wish I was a gourmet chef. But I’m not. I’m a Southerner so I travel with Tabasco sauce and instant grits so that I can always have SOMETHING I can eat if things get bad.

I look at the sacks of donated bulgur wheat with the irritating USAID logo printed on it – two white hands stretched out shaking with the phrase “a gift from the American people” printed alongside and idly watch the Liberian women cooking it over open fires inside the hallways, adding some small dried fish from the nearby market to flavor it. They are already complaining – why can’t we have rice? Don’t the Americans know that Liberians like rice? I do wonder about the bulgur wheat. Why are American farmers growing bulgur? For export to Lebanon to make innumerable tabouli salads? Has the bottom dropped out of the tabouli market?

I am sitting on a little plastic stool – the best seat in the house. The Africans really know how to treat their guests. The best food, the nicest seat, formal, treating you with importance. John is talking, explaining our mission, getting their permission. I sit smiling and nodding and waiting. I’m finally going to talk to some refugees and my real life is about to begin. I fidget and try to pay attention as the old men talk and talk. I doodle – anxious to get out of this smelly hot room and try to ignore the sweat running down my back and soaking through my underwear. I’m from the South but I can’t handle living without air conditioning. There is no air here in the inner offices of these men and it is stifling.

These Liberians have almost nothing but they hold themselves with dignity. The old men reminding you to shake hands properly, bringing out old ledger books, and carefully preserved papers that have been handed out to them by humanitarian agencies in the past. Listing their grievances carefully and formally and looking at me as if there was something I could do about it.

I’m ashamed at my impatience with them but I’m also excited.

….

The little kids gather around me. I’ve got a digital camera and am snapping photos and showing them their photos and they are laughing and laughing. The boys strike crazy macho poses- holding up stringy arms and popping out their nonexistent biceps. “White womaaa, White womaa – over here over here” they sing to me. The girls with their braided hair giggle and giggle and smile shyly and reach up to hold my hands. The boys fight and roll around and push against each other trying to get closer to me and my magic camera. Half-naked little babies stagger up to me, their faces smeared with snot and eyes round. They gape in horror at my ghastly pale skin and freakish red hair and begin screaming and crying. Their mothers laugh and scoop them up to reassure them. Most of the children have only one item of clothing – undies or a shirt but not both. The bloated stomachs and skinny legs of the girls make them seem like heavily pregnant women – they already act mature and maternal – scolding the little babies, bouncing them on their hips, and even carrying some of them around wrapped on their backs.

John and I walk slowly through the corridors - he’s talking on his mobile to our driver and I’m entertaining the children. Our bright blue t-shirts sort us into our tribe – we wear a uniform so the Liberians can tell us apart. Today, we’re not the only aid workers in the stadium – ICRC is unloading some supplies off a truck out front. They are incredibly organized and their Liberian staff wear small white tunics with the iconic red cross over their polo shirts. The boxes are sorted, the Liberian elders are overseeing the delivery and the only other white person in the stadium is solemnly shaking hands in the complicated handshakes that Liberians prefer.

The white man turns to watch us walk by. He’s young - a thin European man – I can tell by his haircut and by the way he wears his jeans – much thinner and tighter than an American man would ever be comfortable with. French, I think – looking at the stubble. He’s unrumpled and fresh in his blue button up shirt opened just a bit too low to be formal. He looks like he just stepped out of an air –conditioned office somehow even though the truck standing next to him is covered in dust and mud.  I feel sweaty and frizzy just looking at him. Self-consciously, I throw my chin up a bit and try to project confidence and authority. “He can tell I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, “ I think – “He thinks I’m a fraud.”

“Sebastian!” John waves towards him, tucking his phone between his shoulder and ear and pointing at me, “this is our newbie.” I smile. Sebastian nods and smiles politely. The smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. John keeps talking into his mobile and we keep walking with our retinue of Liberian children plucking at my shirt and begging for my attention. I am aware of Sebastian’s eyes following us and I feel silly and frivolous and young.  What an arrogant Frenchman – typical cheese-eating surrender monkey. Oh great- now I’m channeling Donald Rumsfeld. What has Liberia done to me?  I hear him laughing at something one of the Liberians said and my bravado crumbles - I have the sensation that I am a small child pretending to be an adult in high heels.

Turning Point: Creative Non-Fiction

A turning point

I came to work early that day which was unusual for me.

I’m not a morning person and I am a rebel by nature.  Getting up early to go to work is anathema for me. Even, if by some chance, I wake up early, I’d much rather procrastinate, listen to music, play with my cat, stand in the shower for along time or even do chores than get out of the house and go to work early. Something about the mundane routine of waiting for the bus and schlepping in with thousands of other young women in identical uniforms consisting of sensible Anne Taylor skirts, drab colored blouses and grungy white athletic shoes over nude toned pantyhose depressed me. I had postponed this moment of adulthood for years by tending bar and peddling herbs and macrobiotic food in the Carolinas. I went off to graduate school and learned how to write about “development.” I had procrastinated for long enough and now was officially an “adult.” Despite my membership in the health-insurance owning, work-clothes wearing club, I still hated adult-ing and resisted it as much as possible, specifically by coming to work late every day.

However, today was different! I was going to Haiti for the first time ever for work. I had just reached a point in my career where constant travel was a distinct possibility – an exciting and thrilling feeling. I wasn’t thrilled with the work in the “monitoring and evaluation of health information systems” but it was a job and it was going to get me into the field! I was still figuring out what I was meant to do with my career. The only thing I was clear about in my career plan was 1. I needed to see the world and travel and 2. I wanted to help people – and by people I meant women. That was it. I wanted to do something to help women in the world. It wasn’t a clear or compelling manifesto. In fact, in Washington DC – a city filled with thousands of other women exactly like me, it was not nearly good enough. Washington may be the most competitive city in the world. It’s called “Hollywood for Ugly People” and the competition is fierce. You will never be smart enough, connected enough or powerful enough. But at least I had a job. I was an evaluation associate(a term I didn’t understand) and I had health insurance. Basically, I spent the day booking other people’s travel while I gritted my teeth in jealousy and dreamed of the day I would be demanding diva and insist on my preferred flight routes via Geneva or Paris or Morocco as part of my “contract” to another unfortunate young wretch.

But that day was different – I was anxious to get to work! I woke up in my orange bedroom decorated with Colombian blankets, Guatemalan paintings, and hand-me-down furniture in Adams-Morgan Washington, DC that I shared with a Colombian woman who worked on human rights. She was still asleep in her room so I didn’t have to wrestle for space in the bathroom mirror that morning as I performed my morning ablutions. I was particularly worried about getting my nose nice and clean which required privacy.  I had spontaneously pierced it two days before and did not want to get some sort of exotic Haitian infection that might cause  permanent disfigurement when my nose to dropped off. I put on my adult face and off I went to the grim quasi-suburb of Rosslyn, Virginia. 

As I stepped out onto my street, I realized that it was a beautiful morning – the sky was the sort of clear cerulean blue that the east coast of the USA gets on an early September morning. There was a hint of briskness in the air but the golden glow of the sun was promising a gorgeous Indian summer day which meant lunch outside in the park. The usual foot traffic of Salvadoran men walking to their construction jobs and professional African American women hustling off to work in the suburbs was lighter than normal and I even got a seat on the 42 bus which was a miracle in and of itself. I felt the self-righteous glow of being an early riser and found myself promising to turn over a new leaf and become a ‘morning person’.

The good mood didn’t even wear off during the drudgery of the bus transfer to the underground train to Rosslyn. The Virginian military officers and federal government contractors were early risers.  I joined the flow of white middle aged men with cropped hair in uniforms – either in the blues, olives, or black of the US military or the khakis and blue button down shirts of the civilian mingled with the interns and young professionals like me who were still clinging to their Grateful Dead hippie bracelets or wore bright colors. We moved slowly and determinedly into nameless office buildings filled with identical lobbies, break rooms, and grim office cubicles.

I strode the well-worn path past the fluorescent lit lunch place (where you were rumored to find bandaids in the salad) and the cheerless Ruby Tuesday’s to our anonymous office foyer and then into the dimly lit office elevator. I breezed through the empty reception area and into my office. Not even my office mate was present! I plopped myself down at my desk, booted up the computer and got to work – not even pausing for my normal morning beverage and chat in my “work husband”, Alec’s office. A few minutes later, Alec passed through the hall on his way in and did a double-take and stopped in my office in shock.  “It’s 8:15! What are you doing here?” he stammered. I self-righteously informed him that I had “COME TO WORK EARLY” and he retreated to his office to recover from the never-before-seen sight of me at work BEFORE the required hours.

He swung back into my office around 8:55am – the office halls were still surprisingly quiet and I remember thinking “so I’m not the only person who is usually late.” “Hey,” he said, “do you wanna go to the kitchen and look at the news? They put a tv in there – a plane hit the World Trade Center in New York.”

I paused to think about it… there had been a small passenger plane that had hit the White House some months before and it was not a big deal. Normally I loved an opportunity to get out of work and socialize. But today I was an adult. “No thanks,” I said… as he walked off. I was busy after all, no time for my typical lolly-gagging which characterized my morning work schedule. But I did have to go to the bathroom, so I walked past the kitchen. As I came close to it, I noticed almost every person in my office was there - some sitting in chairs around our lunch tables but most leaning against the wall. No one was talking. No one was fixing coffee or microwaving oatmeal.  Everyone was just staring at the television. Just as I turned my attention to it, there was an audible gasp through the room.

In front of my eyes, we sat as a group in stunned silence as a second plane crashed into the burning World Trade Center South Tower. This was not a novelty news story – this was not a small single pilot plane. This was a full-blown passenger plane filled with people. This plane crashed into an office tower probably identical to the one I was standing in with my office colleagues. As the building on-screen erupted in flames, someone next to me began to cry.  I knew then that my life was about to change forever.

Ghosts: creative non fiction

As a young aid worker, I always sought out the most dangerous current crisis and took pride in my ability to face scary places. I was always jones-ing to be the first on the plane to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Somalia, Haiti, Iraq – you name it, I wanted to go. I thought very little about the dangers in the job and was naively focused on being where the action was until one afternoon in Norway. 

In June 2011, I was sitting in Oslo in the Grand Café preparing for a job interview in the spring sunlight when I read about the attack on the Continental hotel in Afghanistan. I had just spent three lonely weeks in Kabul at that very same hotel leading a workshop for Afghan aid workers. Every morning, I rode in an armored vehicle, jumped out in front of the hotel,  and greeted the construction crew who were refurbishing the lobby  with a cheery Salaam Alekum!  I ignored the fact that the metal detector was unplugged and trusted that the UN security advisor had assured us that the Continental was the “top safety choice” for Kabul.

In Afghanistan, I had thrown myself into work because my flaky long-distance "special friend" panicked and broke up with me while I was en route to Kabul - ruining our plans for a romantic summer meet up in Oslo after my work.  I was depressed and angry but hid it by putting all my energy into work. I showed up early, worked through the lunch hours, and focused on my work and hid my pain by being very chatty and energetic with the training participants.

One of the secrets to being a humanitarian aid worker is to never think too much about what danger you might be in. It’s a plus to be blissfully ignorant because if you took the time to actually think about what might happen to you, it would be impossible to get up and do your job. Better just to get on with it and think about it later. 

Flash forward to two days after a long grim flight from Kabul to Bangkok to Berlin to Oslo where I sat drinking a glass of white wine in the Scandinavian sunshine. I suddenly realized how dangerous that job running a training workshop in a luxury “UN approved” hotel had actually been. The hotel had been the scene of a bloodbath the night before  - those construction workers were disguised Taliban fighters who had been apparently plotting my death every morning. They had sprung their attack in the evening (when I was normally relaxing with a cup of tea) and had targeted the dining area -  shooting indiscriminately into a wedding party. There were five suicide bombers who detonated themselves and fought floor to floor as terrified guests huddled in hotel rooms until the US forces managed to secure the hotel by landing helicopters on the roof and having an extended gun battle through the night. Reports suggested that it was an inside job as the hotel ‘security personnel’ ran away as soon as the gunmen arrived. 

A chill ran through my body as I read the article - I was probably one of the ones that they had excitedly planned to kill – a red headed American woman teaching about gender equality and how to provide support to a woman in a violent relationship – the very embodiment of the principles and ideals that they detested.  I felt an uncharacteristic stillness creep over me. Minutes later my mobile phone buzzed, there was a contrite message from the "special friend" saying he had been wrong and could we still meet? Shaken, I said yes – postponing for 4 months the inevitable autumnal breakup in a Swedish Ikea cafeteria.

I didn’t realize it at the time but that’s when I subconsciously decided to take a break.  For the next two years, I hung back a bit and worked in easier places - nothing near a front line.  And I retreated from the front line of dating too – easy in Bangkok where white women are invisible. I wrapped myself in a ‘security blanket’ to avoid the ghosts that were haunting me – the ghosts of romantic rejection, my own frail human mortality, and my idea of myself as an invulnerable superwoman.  

But time heals all wounds, I guess and suddenly, I found myself bored and accepting a job in Jordan to work with the Syrian refugee crisis - a new country and I felt excited as my plane touched down in the desert turned green and lush from the winter rains. Time to confront those ghosts and to open up my heart again.

A little creative writing....

After years of ridicule, a gossip columnist receives a very important phone call (a writing prompt)

It wasn’t supposed to end up this way. Originally, I was to become the female Bob Woodward – investigative journalist, truth teller, defender of the free world, protector of the innocent. But after years of slaving away at the Metro section and never uncovering a true scoop, I started idly entertaining myself with catty, snarky, observations of the politicians I covered. I started a blog about the foibles of the Washington DC policy wonks I continuously ran into at parties and events that I covered for the lesser known of the big city dailies in DC. My mean “mot juste” from “CYNICAL INSIDER” hit a certain chord in a city not known for its compassion.

I got picked up by the larger DC gossip column – “Wonkette” and my pieces got more attention. I loved hearing that people were quoting me at parties. “Did you hear what Cynical Insider said about Clinton? How getting more botox might help her win over Pakistan more than wearing those unflattering pantsuits?” – I got a rush… that was me! But of course, I couldn’t tell them that. I was still incognito and it wasn’t like Wonkette was paying much. I got $50 an article and a percentage of the ad revenue from clicks driven by my page. I relied on my daily job at The Washington Daily Star covering committee hearings to pay the rent in my one bedroom in Columbia Heights.

Then it happened; I got drunk one night and decided to brag to my latest conquest from Match.com. Adam was a typical arrogant Washington DC guy who worked for Representative WhoCares from BumFuck, USA and full of himself. Over dinner at an overpriced Ethiopian restaurant on 18^th street, he bragged about his influence and how he knew Senator so and so and Congressman this and that. I had had too much beer and the lentils and injera were swelling unpleasantly in my belly. I wanted to get out of there. It didn’t look like I was going to get laid so I just decided to cut to the chase. “Yeah – you’re very important.” I said sarcastically. “But you don’t know the real shit going on in DC…all you see are unimportant nobodies.”

“How would you know?” he demanded, his fragile ego wounded.

“Because I know your Rep is known as an idiot do nothing and is sleeping with her intern. And everyone laughs at her behind her back and no one invites her to the parties with the big dogs.”

“What?!”  He shouted. Other diners looked over from their tables as he started to struggle to his feet from our “romantic table with the stools.” (DC Asshole characteristic number one… sensitive to other cultures so thinks eating Ethiopian food is a sign of sophistication. No one eats Ethiopian food if they want to have sex later that night. It was just too filling.)

“I read about it on Cynical Insider the other day.”

“That shit! They don’t know anything. I think that guy is a dick anyway. He’s so full of himself. Half his stories are shit and no one really reads that shit.”

“Guy? Why do you think it’s a guy?”

“Well only a man would have the balls to say that shit. Women are too smart to write like that” (DC Asshole characterization number two… the “pretend feminist/sensitive guy” who says what he thinks are the right things about women to win us over but is as big a sexist as any Republican. Give me a sexist Republican any day. At least they are honest.)

Well that was it for me… my inner feminist rose up.

“A guy, huh? Well I’ll have you know that I fucking know for sure it’s a woman.”

“You are full of shit. It is not a woman. You don’t know anything. You’re just some low level journalist at the fucking Washington Daily Star! You couldn’t even write a proper press release.” (DC Asshole characterization number 3 – assume everyone wants to work on the hill and those who don’t just couldn’t get a job there.)

“Oh yeah – what if I told you that Cynical Insider was me?”

“Bullshit.”

“For real.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’ll prove it.”

“How? “

“Read tomorrow and see if there is anyone you recognize in it. “

And I stormed out after rising gracelessly to my feet and throwing down some cash on the table. Thank god I had cash. Its impossible to storm out when you have to use your debit card to pay your half. And because I’m a DC woman, I always pay my half. (See DC Asshole characterization number 2… no “sensitive guy” wants to offend your feminist sensitivities by offering to pay for dinner.)

That night, I stopped by the liquor store and bought a shit bottle of Chilean red and sat miserably at my computer. “Dating in DC aka Hollywood-for-Ugly-People” I started. And then I was off. The bottle finished around 2am and I had my guide to dating in DC. How to tell apart the types: the congressional staffers who were in love with themselves, the power gays, the closeted gays, the want to-be punk rock NGOers, the euro-trash World Bank guys, the military married man, the surprisingly hung wonks at the think tanks, the impotent student body presidents, and the perverted bicycle messengers.

I starred Adam, my thwarted date as the star… typical grade A  DC asshole. In love with the sound of his own voice minor-level Midwestern wanna-be power-player who would wine and dine you with cheap food that you had to pay your half for, show his knowledge of foreign affairs with some boring anecdote about what someone from the foreign relations staff (who he would only refer to by their first name) said to him in the ‘halls of power’ and how the evening usually ended with lackluster dry humping and grinding on the dance floors of Habana Village and if you were lucky, he could keep it up long enough to go a couple of minutes in your room later that night before passing out and trying to sneak out in the middle of the night.  DC: the land where sex goes to die.

As I hit “post”, I thought… maybe I shouldn’t do this. Fuck it. And up it went. I passed out and the next morning my phone beeped. My friend Annamaria was texting. “Had a bit too much to drink last night?” she said with a winky smile. Brunch at Lauriol Plaza? I hated going there. For some reason, she liked it even though me and the rest of my bratty friends referred to it as the “Bridge and Tunnel Crowd”. But the salmon salad was delicious and the chips and salsa good. If you went early enough on a Sunday, no one else would be around.

She and I met outside and she taunted me lovingly about my post from the night before. I told her in long boring detail about the date and she sympathized. Single dynamic women were a dime a dozen in DC. The men were shit and we were never going to get married. Same old Sunday morning.

When I got home, I checked my email. There was an angry email from Adam, my Match.com date. “You bitch” it started and went downhill from there. “You’ll pay for this. I’ll make sure you never get a job in this town again.”  I should have added more about the petty tyrant Napoleonic complex in there. I thought. And the fact that every dickhead in this town thinks that he has power and is some sort of mover and shaker. I was unconcerned. I logged onto Wonkette and the comments were running hot and heavy. Women from throughout DC were adding their own miserable anecdotes about the lackluster sex they were getting and the Men’s Rights Activists were calling us all castrating bitches and threatening to go to Thailand to find “real women” who “treated them right”. But… wait… what was that? There was a comment from “DEM69” saying “Yes, I know who this bitch CYNICAL INSIDER is… I went on a date with her last night. What she’s not telling you is that she is 15 pounds overweight, 34 but looks 44, and an angry bitter feminist. When I wouldn’t fuck her, she got nasty.”

This must not stand! So I blasted back in the comments some of last night’s choice brags/quotes from Adam. “Rep so and so is one of the leading candidates to be Secretary of State. The President calls her regularly!” and the catcalls and the nastiness swarmed around him. Finally, he pulled out his only trump card. “Well why don’t you go out with CYNICAL INSIDER yourself? Her profile on Match.com is bookish babe.” And there it was, I was outed.

Shit.

What am I going to do now? Lay low, disable my Match account? Or maybe this could work for me? I wasn’t sure. Let’s brazen it out and see what happens tomorrow.

Monday morning – Reliable Source in the Washington Post has picked it up. There is my profile picture in the Style section with a witty little “he said, she said” date summary from the comments on Wonkette. But they lay heavily down on my side. Dating in DC sucks… lots of women have weighed in on my side with anecdotes of miserable blind dates. I walk into my office and hope my editor hasn’t seen it. But no, there it is on my desk with the dreaded post it “SEE ME” next to it. I walk into the editor’s office. He chews my ass off, tells me my gossipy ways are inappropriate and have no place in a serious newsroom, suspends me for two weeks to think over my sins. I walk home, log onto Wonkette… tons of posts still coming in as the worker bees of DC fight it out in the comments. I’ve struck a nerve. And in my in box, a note from the mother ship “Gawker.com” – let’s talk. Maybe we can hire you full time. I’ve got 2 weeks off work, let’s see what they have to say. Boom – I’m a gossip columnist.

So for three wonderful years, it was the glory days of Gawker.com. People were being swept up into the “new media” – snarky gossipy “news” was in and people were jumping from Gawker.com to amazing jobs with the Atlantic, Huffington Post, and the Washington Post. They were moving from gossip to real news and respectable “old media” jobs and some were even talking heads on TV!

I jumped ship and never looked back. I wrote ferocious, bitchy short little gossipy pieces about the “movers and the shakers” in DC. I was paid well, the meaner my piece, the more clicks I got. I moved into a bigger place and began thinking about moving to a magazine. Us Weekly came calling. I moved to NYC. I went to great parties with “literati” and I started writing about movie stars.

But then the economic downturn came and it was more about “the Real Housewives of NY”, “Teen Mom” and Snooki and their latest shenanigans. It was hard to be bitchy or snarky about these clueless fame whores and I started to feel sorry for them. The colleagues at the magazines and websites started to get younger and younger. My posts were getting less prominent and I found myself moved to the online subsidiary of Us Weekly, then laid off. I got a position with TMZ.com but it was for half the money I used to make. I started hustling part time with pieces in different gossip columns and puff pieces for other gossip weeklies including “best bikini bodies” and “worst tattoos”. 

Luckily, I had married Nick, a man with a real job as a lawyer and he paid the bills and I was allowed to continue my “career” as a gossip columnist. He encouraged me to put it aside and write a novel. “You know you have it in you! You are a great writer! Put this junk food writing away and plug into it!” he would encourage me. And I would feel ashamed and make promises and say that I was working on a draft. But I wasn’t. I was reading gossip columns and killing time in my “office”. We had moved back to Washington DC – land of the “intelligentsia” and networkers. Everyone there was running an association, a NGO, or working for a congressman. The others were lobbyists, diplomats, and scholars. But I was ashamed to tell people what I did for a living when we went to parties and when his lawyer friends found out, the raised eyebrows made me feel ashamed so I became more brazen and ridiculous and told ridiculous made up stories about movie stars. I was their “dancing monkey” and I felt less and less happy to go out and socialize. But I still wrote – unable to envision a job that wasn’t writing pithy little snarky bits anymore. Unable to shake my self-loathing and continuing to write catty bits about the latest celebutante’s std.  Who was I kidding? I was no novelist. There was no draft. There was me and my internet connection and a big cloud of shame sitting in that “office.”

One day, I was making coffee in the morning and firing up the computer. I had recently got a ‘position’ as a stringer putting together gossip bits in the morning and supposedly working on my novel in the afternoons but really, I usually played ‘Angry Birds’, read gawker (now mostly staffed by former commenter’s being paid peanuts to re-word Reddit pieces), and browsed facebook. My phone rang and I walked over to find it – hidden under some magazines. It was a blocked number. Hmmm… I pressed silent. No good comes from blocked numbers. I opened up Crazy Days and Nights … it was time to find out the answers to last weeks Blind Items. The phone rang again. Blocked Number.

So this time, I ignored my rule and I answered it. “Hello?” “Lindsay it’s me” came the answer. “Who?” “Me!” and I realized who it was. It was my former editor from Gawker – Sadie Smith. “Look, I’ve got a great offer for you. I’m starting my own website. I need a DC columnist. I immediately thought of you. It’d be like the good ole days! Would you like to join?” “Oh wow! How are you? It’s been a long time!” “Yes! But this website, its perfect for you… I want to bring us back to the glory days of Gawker… some expose, some irreverent news, some gossip, but not this crap that you are writing nowadays, what do you say?” What could I say? It would be awesome, I’d been so ashamed of my old life… so why not? Reader, I said Yes. And that decision changed my whole life.

About three months later, I was working on a story that seemed to go nowhere. I had a lead that there was a video out there of a popular young congressman smoking crack cocaine. I had called around, punched into some pretty awful people who were willing to make it available to me, sight unseen but for $10,000. I was ready to pull the plug on this “scandal”. I had no proof and basically this guy was alright -he seemed to be doing a good job bringing jobs home to his constituency – a hard scrabble bunch of shipbuilders in Delaware. He voted consistently against the crazy Republican pro-lifers and pro-war crowd. He was fiscally responsible, not introducing any weird bills and seemed well liked. He was young-ish, known as a bit of a party guy but that’s probably what his constituents liked about him… the famous “can you drink a beer with this guy?” factor.

It wasn’t going anywhere – I didn’t have $10,000. I didn’t think it was right for a newspaper/web magazine whatever we were, to spend $10,000 on a video for “news”. And if we did purchase it, it would be from drug dealers – people who sold crack cocaine. Washington DC was not the sort of place that one wanted to encourage crack cocaine dealers. So I dropped my inquiries.

Two days later, I was chatting with Sadie on the phone. “What happened with that Congressman Crackhead story you were working on?” she asked. “Oh, I dropped it. I couldn’t get my hands on the video. It probably doesn’t exist and if it does, its probably so blurry and smeary that you can’t even tell who it is. Besides, I like Congressman Crackhead. I don’t think this is worth ruining his life.” “What! That’s not your call!” she said, “how much do they want?” “ummm 10K” I answered, a bit shocked. “Look – this could crack us wide open, pardon the pun. We’ve not been getting the hits we need to generate online advertising revenue. We need to play with the big boys. We need a big story, even if it is one that goes nowhere to generate clicks. Start writing about it. Leave the 10K to me.” “I don’t think this is a good idea…” I started. “Do it, “she said. “I don’t pay you to think. We need to make sure our site takes off. We need to play with the big boys. We need our “Faith Hill” moment. ”

She was talking about the famous moment when Jezebel.com, my former favorite website, got someone to forward them the untouched cover photos of Faith Hill, a country singer so they could compare them with the photo-shopping that took place when they were published. Poor Faith Hill was embarrassed but Jezebel became famous for “uncovering” the vast amounts of photo-shopping and cover-up and moving around of limbs, shaving of waists, and blasting of wrinkles that goes into making a superstar look like an un-aging, perfect demigod. In the name of good “feminism”, Jezebel exposed the ruthless photo-shopping of magazine covers and got on the national radar and people talked for about 5 minutes of outlawing Photoshop. Then it was back to the same old same old. No truth in advertising.

I thought about it. Was it so wrong? If this guy was smoking crack, that was illegal and destructive and he needed to be exposed. But what if it wasn’t him? What if the video didn’t exist? Then what? Well, that’s today’s news cycle. I thought. He has press officers, they’ll cover this for him. It’ll be on the news for a couple of days, people know about him –its good for his news coverage, he can become a “comeback” kid and he’ll get eve more exposure. So I wrote up my first story on it… I spoke about the possible existence of this video and I hinted around about who Congressman Crackhead might be.

About 20 minutes after it hit the webpage, there were a flurry of hits. Click Click Click… click bait it was indeed. And I got lots of comments. Readers were outraged. Calling for full exposure of this lying hypocrite. There is nothing America likes more than a good hypocritical church-going mama’s boy being brought down by drugs. Unless its sex. That makes it better. We scold them, we put them in the stocks and throw rotten tomatoes at them. They sew the scarlet letter on their chest and make the rounds of the talk shows apologizing with their wife grinning next to them. Then we forgive them like the good hypocritical Christians that we are and they run for a different office and then its all forgiven. Look at Anthony Weiner! Look at Eliot Spitzer! There are more gay republicans than one can count on both hands and feet who have survived their forced “outing”.

My inbox started filling up with emails. And in there was an interesting name I hadn’t seen in a long time. It was my date from way back in the beginning. The man who pushed me into this career fulltime - Adam. And it appeared he was now Congressman Crackhead’s Legislative director.

“CEASE AND DESIST” was the opening line of his email. Infuriating. He was still a loathsome smug asshole. “Look, you aren’t as good a writer as you think you are, you two bit gossip. You haven’t changed a bit. I know you are hinting around about the congressman but this is libel. You need to stop this. WE WILL SUE.” Unbelievable. I puffed up in righteous indignation thinking about the first amendment and the right of the public to know the truth about their congressman.  He is a PUBLIC SERVANT! I thought – how dare he take that sacred trust and waste it!

I called Sadie. She was thrilled… “Lindsay, this is awesome! Look – I’ve got a great idea. I’m going to launch a “kick starter” to see if we can get readers to raise the 10K that we need. If we don’t’ get it, no one is out of money but if we do – what a score! We’ll change the way journalisms is practiced and be legendary!” Her enthusiasm was infectious. I was in.

I upped the ante with the next post. I had contacted the drug dealers again and told them that we were definitely interested. To increase page hits, I took it a bit further. Congressman Crackhead acquired some initials. I described him as a young ‘family man’ from a working class district. I all but named him. Other websites picked up the hunt. Photos of the young congressman coming out of the Home Depot with his young children on a Saturday morning accompanied a “Is it him?” style post. His wife was photographed coming out of an SUV in sweatpants and looking a bit overweight. I felt bad for her. She had just given birth to twins 8 months before and unlike the Hollywood bimbos that we covered, had no personal trainer and nanny and 8 hour a day job that consisted soley of working out to get back that “pre-baby body”. She was an ordinary woman who didn’t expect paparazzi. She looked a bit like me.  But you know what – that’s politics. “Why the congressman has to smoke crack” was the quip underneath a photo of her generous derriere not quite covered by her sweatpants and exposing her “plumber’s crack” as she bent over to pick up the baby’s car seat. America loved it. We linked to it, the page clicks kept coming.

The kick starter was making money. We were up to $8k. I kept writing little snippets of gossip about congressman Crackhead and his run-ins with the law when he was 15. The phone calls from Adam were starting to get frantic. Finally, I took one. “Look you bitch,“ he snarled, “ this isn’t funny. The congressman does not smoke crack. That video will not be of him. And you are not playing with amateurs here.” “Bring it on, Adam,” I said coolly, “There’s this thing you seem to have forgotten about called the First Amendment and I’m covered. I have never mentioned him.” And the clicks just kept coming. I had daily conversations with the drug dealers as they tried to negotiate a higher price. They were in conversation with our rivals who said they would offer them $12K. Would we match it? “A deal is a deal!” I pleaded –imagine that trying to appeal to some sense of honor that I imagined that crack dealers who record their clients getting high might have. “Plus –we’re almost there with the money. If we give it to you first, you have to give us the video”.  Meanwhile, I typed up an “expose” of a friend of Congressman Crackhead from high school who talked about the time they got high on pot behind the movie theatre one time. Damning evidence.

We hit our $10K. Sadie was talking to the publisher to figure out how to turn this into a payment to some drug dealers without having to disclose on our taxes who the drug dealers were. It was pretty murky and unclear. My husband was out of town for the night – business trip to NYC. I was pulling a late night session putting the finishing touches on the article I was going to run, keeping in mind, I had not ever seen the video but Sadie had and she was sure it was him. I got another blocked call. “Shit, it must be Sadie calling from skype.” I thought so I answered.

“Is this Sadie Smith?” came a voice of a man. “Yes – who is this? Who am I speaking to?” “Its Congressman Joe DeCosta.” I was silent. What was I supposed to say? Finally, I answered, “Yes? What can I do for you, congressman?” “Look. I just wanted to talk to you and ask you why you are running with this? What have I ever done to you?” he sounded sad. Sad and a little drunk. “It’s nothing personal Congressman… I’m a reporter, I report the news.” I said a bit nervously. “Its not news… how could it be news? It’s not me. I swear to god it’s not me.” He said. “Well congressman, we’ll have to play the video and let our readers be the judge of that.” “Look, my family is freaking out. My wife thinks it is me. I used to have a coke problem when I first met her. She made me go to NA and promise to keep clean before she married me. I did it. I’ve never touched anything since then. I’ve been clean.” “Well why have you never mentioned this before, Congressman? Surely a savvy office staffer should have told you to make a statement!” I said thinking of Adam and his arrogant smug face. “Is this on the record?”

“Oh they have begged me to do this but I’m not going to. This is off the record, I’m going to take the higher ground. I’m not going to comment on your work. This is America. I still believe that everyone is innocent until proven guilty and I’m sure that my constituents do too.” “Well then you should be fine, congressman. Think of all the good publicity you are getting. This might even take you to governor or senator from Delaware.” “No – I’m appealing to you and your sense of decency! Its not my political career I care about. It’s my wife, I think she’s going to leave me. She doesn’t even care what the video shows. She believes that I broke my promise to her. My vow. She’s packing up the children’s clothes now…”his voice shook, “I…I can’t live without her. I can’t do this.” “Look, congressman, why don’t you have Adam Smith talk her out of it. You’ll need her by your side tomorrow on the morning talk shows. She’ll know the drill. All political wives do.” I said snarkily as I looked at my blinking “inbox” indicator. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m on deadline. I think the video is here.” And I hung up.

Finally I was uncovering a big scoop. It was going to be my “Watergate”. I would be able to hold my head up at the next dinner party full of intellectual snobs. It would put me back on the map as a legit journalist. I opened the in-box. The first message was from Sadie - “Lindsay- been trying to call you. Can’t figure out a way to legally buy video. Plus when you look at it, it’s just not clear whether its him or not. So spin your article that we’ve decided the ethical thing is not to run the video. Let Gawker have it. There’s nothing really incriminating on it.” Shit. Oh well – the congressman will have what he wants – publicity and his name cleared. My name will still be in the byline. Maybe he’ll be relieved tomorrow. I’ll call him and see if I can get him to give me his NA story on the record. So I wrote up the story and hit send. Nick was out of town at a conference. It was 1am. I decided to take a sleeping pill so I could pass out and I put the phone on silent.

Around 10am I awoke. I felt groggy. The pill had been too strong and I wasn’t used to them. I went to make some coffee and turned on the TV. The stats from last night’s football game were up, Redskins lose again. And then “Coming up next, the tragic death of a congressman. Was new media to blame? Where do we draw the line at gossip?” What? Fuck! I sat down and watched the 3 minutes of commercials silently gripping my coffee cup as if it were a life preserver. The distinguished looking greyhaired newsman came on with his deep sonorous drone -“Congressman Joe DeCosta is fighting for his life in Sibley hospital this morning.” He started. “The congressman was tragically driven to the edge by gossip mongers spreading stories that he was smoking crack cocaine, Congressman De Costa appears to have taken a weapon and shot and killed his wife and two 8 month old twins last night before turning the weapon on himself.  Police are investigating PRIVATE EYE website, a notorious new gossip site that promised an illegal video of a man who appeared to look like Congressman DeCosta smoking crack cocaine. The video was posted by rival Gawker.com last night and is too blurry to definitively tell if its Congressman DeCosta or not. Police will be looking into this further.” I looked over to my iPhone. It was vibrating with a blocked call. I dismissed the call. 35 missed calls. Some from the DC police.  And one from my husband. And one from my lawyer. And one – from about 5 minutes after I put the phone on silent from Congressman DeCosta. Life was never going to be the same again.