Embassy Bros

Abundance?

Here we go again. This one’s full of tech drones and adjacent feds from four letter institutions. I can’t tell the difference. Caterers squeeze around bros in yellow-stained collars, U Chicago quarter zips, blazers over t-shirts, a man in a trucker hat that says “REINDUSTRIALIZE,” at least four men who know my ex-boyfriend, one guy I went on a date with three years ago, and eight women total. There’s a massive binder labeled “Epstein files” left conspicuously on the coffee table and a Russian nesting doll of presidents lined up side-by-side on the mantle culminating in monster Mother Hillary shining in the candlelight under a portrait of George Washington in a white MAGA hat. I grab some wine and get to work.

I only know a handful of people here. I greet one of my ex’s friends in the normal-sized dining room under an abnormally massive crystal chandelier - bit of a theme I’m picking up on - and he’s rather curt. I don’t know why; it wasn’t exactly a bad breakup. He makes a quick exit before I can ask him anything but after introducing me to someone else. Breakeven. The new guy is blessedly friendly. He urges me to start introducing myself as a socialite instead of talking about my real job. “It will work on these people,” he advises, “if you lead with the shitposting.” I remind him that I have online beef with a quarter of the room. He doesn’t seem to care. It’s all business here. Someone else tells me I look good for my age. At least five years younger than I really am. I take the compliment; in these circles it’s not exactly a neg.

It’s impossible to move from room to room because people keep congregating in a crush around the foyer. “Why do you go to these?” asks one of the women as she squeezes by me, as if she’s not there too, as if there’s an abundance of good parties in DC. “I keep getting invited.” I reply, making my way to the banister. The host - so close to Gatsby I tell him he needs to buy a green light for the porch - urges me to get people to move upstairs. “There’s another bar up there. Just do your thing,” he says, shoeing me up, “Do what you do and get them to move.” I don’t know what he means but I desperately need to breathe. Soon I find myself hovering alone on the second floor next to a plate of sweaty prosciutto. I introduce myself to the man with the sweetest looking face and lead with the shitposting.

“Audrey Horne, like from Twin Peaks?” he asks. He sounds like Saul Goodman. “Audrey’s good, but Donna was my favorite.” I am taken aback. I assume he means because of her looks. “Donna,” he continues, “had the purest heart. She was who she was. Audrey, Laura, Shelly, they were all leading double lives, hiding behind their insecurities.” I am charmed by this take but can’t help but feel he is being unfair to women overall. It isn’t easy to be straightforward in a fallen world. Are whole women the most lovable? Are broken women too difficult to be loved? Don’t we all have to put away childish things someday? Audrey and Shelly and Laura are forced to fight their way back to wholeness because of their trials and tribulations. Donna doesn’t even understand that wholeness is something to preserve. “I think that’s a good take.” I reply, “but isn’t Donna a little boring?” He agrees. He has kind eyes and tells me he hasn’t slept more than four hours a night in two weeks. I forgive him for flattening women. He is with the FTC.

I got a little too into that conversation. I am being too intense. Talking to people for too long, hijacking their time. Let’s take a lap. I say to myself, and head back downstairs. I kneel on the carpet and leaf through the Epstein files, half expecting someone to stop me, but no one does. The front says in italics “The Most Transparent Administration In History The 45th and 47th President of the United States Donald J. Trump.” There’s nothing interesting that I can find. Pair of women’s cowboy boots; black; size 8. CD labeled Nude girls. A Guggenheim on one of the flight logs. JE GM, JE GM, JE GM, JE GM. Oliver something. Is that anyone famous? A director maybe? I don’t have my phone so I can’t look it up. The binder is enormous. I give up.

I strike up a conversation with another jovial blazer-and-ballcap type who claims that the dearth of romance on television is due to the fact that we are currently in an ironic era. I say that the ironic era has already passed. He gestures to the chandelier - so enormous - and says that we are reliving the 1920s, and also that it is much better to talk about the zeitgeist than it is to talk about drones. He likes the White Lotus, and Severance too. When I get home, I am surprised to see that he’s messaged me on X:

I find myself a man without a demographic… between the Scylla of a left wing with all the moral Fibre of overcooked fettuccine and the Charybdis MAGA right with all the swagger of a twentysomething Iowan drunk on Miller Lite who has just gotten a high score on a bucking bull machine.

My STEM education has left me with an impoverished catalogue of classical references that the philosophy salons I attend have only barely made up for. I have to look up Scylla and Charybdis. I tell him he should publish his writing. He says he’s “too long an apparatchik in the bowels of the national security complex” to do so. I get to work.