DC By the Book

Excerpt: Approaching the front of the Lincoln [Memorial], I glanced up at old Abe, who sat on his marble throne, looking down on us with indignation. I mean, Abe had seen a lot in his time, but had he ever seen a skinny gay guy in a wet hotel uniform and a massive football player in plaid boxers streaking across his front yard? Unlikely.

Excerpt: Anyway, as we arrived at the stately entrance of the Willard [Hotel], at least I didn’t feel like the only gay guy to have ever been in such a straight historical joint. Walt [Whitman] and his Civil War boys had broken it in for me more than a hundred years previous. As Shane and I stepped out of the limo, I wondered if Walt’s gay old ghost could see us. Did he sense that we were secret "comrades"? Would he have approved of our act of prom subversion? Would he have found it, I don’t know, maybe even a little poetic? This I seriously doubted.

Excerpt: Ignoring two more red lights, Dmitri made an alarming S-like turn that took us off South Capitol, swooped us left onto M Street, then swerved us right onto the curiously named Half Street. I had never heard of this street before. All the grid streets downtown were either letters or numbers, not fractions. Finally Dmitri slowed to below 50 mph, due to the fact that Half Street received about half the maintenance of most normal streets, given the number of potholes disrupting the pavement.

Excerpt: As we neared the end of Half, I saw that this pockmarked street wasn’t exactly a dead end. Ahead on the right, blocked by a concrete mixing truck, was a bent traffic sign for O Street. Walking at a leisurely pace, we turned onto O, which was a little less desolate than Half. There were a number of parked cars on both sides of the street, an unnatural purple light cast over the middle of the block. The source of this odd glow was a lavender neon sign hanging over the entrance to a squat warehouse. Getting closer, the scripty neon spelled out what Dmitri had been telling me: SECRETS.

Excerpt: Backing up a bit, I saw that Dmitri’s car had spun off the road and into one of the volleyball pits just north of the Lincoln. The spinning tracks of the RX’s tires were dark reliefs in the dewy grass, a peculiar pattern that looked like infinity on acid that led toward the sandy pit, which had stopped the car cold. Talk about good luck, right? Well, yes and no.