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I lived in Washington, D.C. during the last presidential election, so I know what it's like right now in the nation's capital: twenty-four-hour work days, ceaseless adrenaline, coffee-and-Altoids diets, and the raw need to have sex. Sex with anyone. Sex with the person you work for; sex with the enemy; sex to make November 2nd arrive faster; sex for a way onto and up the political food chain. The pressure to meet the city's social and professional expectations is so intense that its inhabitants rely on sex to maintain their sanity, especially during an election year.
The sexual mania of D.C. wasn't exactly something I'd expected when, after college, I moved there from Texas and secured a job on Capitol Hill. I did my best to fit in. I wore bland suits, religiously read the Washington Post and Hotline. I avoided tourists on the mall, greeted congressmen and -women with deference and attended the myriad pre-parties disguised as fundraisers. There, free wine flowed while staffers flirted with congressmen and senators. Married or not, they would flirt back. Then the under-thirty crowd would head off to a local watering hole. Later, they would sleep with co-workers who had slept with other co-workers three cubicles down two nights before.
President Clinton's schedule set the tone in D.C. at the time. He socialized and stayed up late, so people lingered at dinner parties until 2 a.m., then went to after-hours clubs and made out by the FDR memorial. On the evenings when there wasn't a fundraiser or a dinner party to attend, we often congregated at each other's homes. One night I was at my boss's apartment playing drinking games — an embarrassingly common occurrence among young staffers — with a group of people all in their mid-twenties, including my boss. We started off with "asshole." (For those of you who've never been to a frat party, it's a card game in which the goal is to dispose of all of your cards.) Then we moved on to "I Never." The rules of this game are equally complex: a sexual declaration is made in the form of a negative (i.e. I've never had sex with a Republican), and those who have committed that act drink.
"I've never had sex in a public place," said one player. Everyone drank.
"I've never had a threesome," said another. Only a handful of players picked up their glasses.
Then people wanted to hear the stories. "Chris, what about that night I hooked up with Kelly early in the evening, then you hooked up with her later? Does that count?" asked Mark. "Guess not, since we didn't hook up at the same time. But you fucked her, right?" Chris smiled and said nothing.
I ended up going home by myself that night, but the girlfriend who came with me slept at my boss's apartment. At work on Monday, all I could think about was how he and my friend made each other's lips raw and bloody from kissing.
My closest friend in D.C. was Karen, a girl I went to college with. I didn't know her well in school, but our incredulity at the city's Stepfordesque demands brought us together. Soon we were inseparable. Karen and I came from the same state, had the same color hair, knew men asked for us and knew why. We would storm into bars wearing silver and pink tank tops, bony elbows swinging to music, playing our different parts: she was the
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Our lips locked. Pool sticks pounded shouts of encouragement.
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charismatic, giving one, and I was the closed-off tough girl. We built a reputation for ourselves; we'd kissed a lot of the same men. This facet of our relationship often came up, awkwardly, over a few glasses of wine. "You thought he was a good kisser? Really? I thought he swallowed my tongue…"
One night we were at the Capitol Hill bar, Politiki. Clinton's impeachment trial was just getting under way. Earlier, I'd changed out of my work uniform and into a black dress that came down to my mid-thigh. I started doing shots early. I think it was something like absinthe; it stung my throat but then cooled it; it made my eyes dilate and my mouth loose. I've seen pictures of myself from that night and I have a crazed, wild look — one eye is looking directly at the camera and the other seems to be focused elsewhere. Yet I was contained, balancing my perfect D.C. form with my third shot, talking about the upcoming election and the potential candidates. I stated the obvious: Al Gore was much too boring to follow in Bill Clinton's footsteps, and we needed to write some sort of legislation that would extend Clinton to a third term. I was lost in a sentence about a congressman from Illinois when Karen handed me another shot. I swallowed hard and started to dance with her.
My dress kept riding up on my hips; I stopped trying to pull it down. I thought about getting up on the bar but knew I wouldn't make it past the row of barstools. I knew we were being watched. We liked the attention, so we moved closer together, and I heard my friend Ben chant, "kiss, kiss, kiss…" He'd wanted that for some time; he always coyly brought it up like it was an obvious answer to a boring D.C. night. "Kiss. C'mon, you know you want to," he'd say periodically, hoping we'd eventually be drunk enough to take the bait.
My pupils felt like they were floating on water. I looked at Karen; she smiled. I grabbed her hand and started twirling her around. My breathing sped up and my face grew hot. I'm not sure who grabbed whom first, but our lips locked. Pool sticks pounded shouts of encouragement, Jager shots were passed, red fingernails dug into skin. I remember the smallness of my friend's lips and wrapping my hand around her neck, as if we were in a movie. I remember the room asking for more. Finally: something hot and raw, something unexpected and real. At least that's what I told myself. You could feel the intensity in the room, everyone giddy that the rules were being broken; hoping something else was going to happen, hoping something would happen to them.
I had only kissed one other girl before, my best friend in college. After three bottles of wine, we wanted to see what it felt like. We kissed, passed out and giggled about it the next day. But kissing my friend in public in D.C. opened up something else. It wasn't about us. The make-out session ended, the guys in their Dockers and white socks high-fived one another and bought more shots. I looked ridiculous with smudgy red lips and droopy eyes. Karen fell down on her way out, making the whole event look like a high-school prom.
Everyone gossiped and emailed about it the next day. My friend and I attempted to rely on, "Shit, we were so drunk last night, do you remember what happened?" to avoid confronting what really happened.
A guy who sat across the office sent me an email with the subject line "Get home late?" I sat at my desk and watched herds of men pile into my supervisor's office. I felt like the girl in high school who slept with the homecoming queen's boyfriend. No one said anything to me about it directly. Instead, I got a lot of "Heard it was a wild night last night" from male colleagues and the silent treatment from all the women. They wouldn't talk to me, but they had no problem talking about me.
People on the Hill sleep with co-workers and assistants, senators with senior aides, congressmen with junior staff members. It's commonplace, but it's all done behind closed doors. I knew of two extramarital affairs going on at the same time; one involved two people in my office. They were always careful not even to look at one another at work or at happy hour, but we all knew they were sleeping together because of their simultaneous departures from after-work events. There was also a man in our press office who'd become unusually friendly with a married press secretary in another congressional office. Everyone speculated about their relationship, but there was no proof of an affair. After I left D.C., I found out that she divorced her husband and married my former colleague. I had a flirtatious, fairly innocuous email relationship with one guy in my office. I always thought it never escalated beyond crush status because we worked together. After the election was over, I found out that he
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"After W came into the fold, the lobbyists' skirts got shorter and interns got hotter."
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had been sleeping with a girl who sat two cubicles away.
But Karen and I freely jumped beyond speculation; we gave people something to take home with them. For a young woman to kiss her best friend in public was unheard of. Senior staffers immediately cared less about my views on the upcoming election and more about whether or not I'd be at the next office party. My social agenda suddenly carried more weight than my professional one. I was bombarded with party invites, happy-hour emails, and fundraiser invitations — all from men.
Clinton's impeachment for lying about an extramarital affair gave me some redemption, but I carried that night with me until I left D.C. three years ago. It's probably the only thing I'm remembered for. I was never recognized for the hours I worked or the work that I did. I was only praised — and, alternately, condemned — for revolting against an old establishment.
I left D.C. the day Bush was inaugurated. That morning, I intuitively felt an emotional shift in the city. As I jogged down the mall wearing a Texas sweatshirt, good ol' boys in cowboy hats and shitkickers shouted, "Go Bush!" and gave me a thumbs-up. I assumed late night dinner parties would be replaced with early nights and early mornings. But apparently that's not what happened. "After W came into the fold, the lobbyists' skirts got shorter, alcohol consumption increased twofold, interns got hotter, and staffers began to wear Hermès ties," says one friend who still lives there.
Recently, I had to go to Washington for work. I wondered if the D.C. insiders would peg me for an outsider, the family member who had escaped and returned seeking retribution. I wish it had been that interesting. Instead, I walked into the Fairmont hotel wearing my old Banana Republic suit and blended in quite well. I'd forgotten about the row of boys with their Blackberries, khakis and French-blue shirts, the girls with their pricey cellphones, Kate Spade purses and Nine West boots. I'd forgotten how their eyes searched you in the elevator, straining for evidence that you don't belong.
If Kerry is elected president, the sexual tone in D.C. will inevitably change again. As one D.C. insider told me, "intellectualism will be the new sexy and hookers will be tipped better." And we could, for the first time since Jackie Kennedy, have a first lady who exudes a subtle but eloquent sexuality. Unfortunately, Teresa Heinz Kerry's sensual accent, eclectic scarves, and acidic tongue would probably be too overwhelming for the repressive community to handle and would do little to justify irreverent behavior. The novelty of two young women kissing in public probably wouldn't wear off, but I'd at least like to think she might hear such a story and say, "So what?" n°
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
| Laura Price is a writer in New York |
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