The Vibe in DC Right Now

Radical Barbarism

I’ve written up like six of these since the inauguration (one for every event) and can’t ever bring myself to hit publish. It’s been giving me terrible writer’s block. So, more for the sake of moving on than anything else, here’s one of them. I’ll have a cogent analysis in 2030.

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At one AM or so we decide to roll up. Just to check it out. I’d sworn it off after the last party, after the last few weeks in DC, but texts had been rolling in all night, journos sneaking in and talking of protestors and billionaire revelers and unsavory characters. Just like during the inauguration, and sort of like in New York back when I used to have fun in New York. DC is not like New York. DC is all you’ve ever heard of. Hollywood for ugly people¹. Awash with high-strung introverts, Raytheon gays, Mormons with clearances, sexless power couples, brain-rotted libtards, soulless opinion writers, terminal careerists, philandering feds and every kind of nerd you can imagine. This cast of characters doesn’t happily sustain a party hopping culture². Usually, in my experience, it’s a one and done thing with friends, drinks at someone’s house or at an antiseptic bar and people in bed by one at the latest. But it’s a raucous time in this city. The new wave supreme in Washington is radical barbarism. The vibe has shifted.

They said there would be tight security, an ID check, resume vetting and the works, but by the time we get there that balloon has clearly deflated. Police watch as my friends and I walk in and up the stairs. No one stops us. Maybe it’s late. Maybe we look the part. A drunk girl giggles past us on the arm of her date. I ask her if the people are upstairs. “Oh yes” she calls behind. “It’s all upstairs.”

One floor up past a bunch of coat racks and I find myself face to face with a stuffed bison standing on all fours in the front room. Men in MAGA hats and dark suits filter around me and the bison. A young man stops me - “I know you!” He says. “From the salon.” I remember him fondly, from the salon. The salon is mostly a social event - liberal of course - but one of the few places in DC where the young and very online can gather to meet outside of partisan happy hours and Ivy-league debate clubs and wherever else the well-scrubbed and well-read find each other. The only problem with the salon is that to get to the social part you have to sit through an hour of monologues about Hegel, handwringing about democracy, histrionics about the futility of love, etcetera. At its best it’s like an evangelical prayer circle. At its typical it’s a first-year sociology seminar. The young man by the bison had bucked the trend a couple months ago by giving a rousing speech - possibly fabricated - about a time he had ripped the heart out of a dead deer and eaten it raw. Dragon energy. I felt he was a hero. I tell him I don’t go there anymore, I have beef. He says why do you have beef with everyone? I keep moving.

Crowds of people move with me out of the front room and into the great room, a cavernous hall with an enormous chandelier, circular sectional, fireplace and open bar in the back. A handsome older man (very drunk) hands me a High Noon and makes eyes at me while I duck under his arm and up the stairs. They lead up past the DJ booth - manned by a famed conservative - to more rooms filled with Buddhist artifacts and dim lighting and kitschy kaleidoscopic paintings. Another set of stairs goes straight to the roof and a second open bar. All these suits and MAGA hats pressing in. They’re all clout-chasers and minor celebrities, or that’s what each person is calling the other in the snippets I overhear as I circulate. These crowds are something else. Big boobs and big ideas. I think of the wedding I went to last month - beautiful affair at a club in New York I could never get into on my own. More ironic taxidermy and candles there, but also canapes and old books and Yale professors with strong opinions. The same strong opinions held by everyone - by most - here. In DC it’s all the same thing. I greet an acquaintance; a shady lawyer I know. He’s talking to girls. There are more girls here than any other party I’ve been to in the last five weeks.

I say hello to one of the hosts. He’s upset. The right people didn’t get in, and a lot of the wrong ones did. My journalist friend is here too, moving through the room like a fish in an aquarium. Probably one of the wrong people. His eyes are bloodshot. He’s been out four nights in a row and some beautiful Latina has just cornered him to talk about the drug wars. I don’t feel sorry for him. Another young acquaintance - also from the salons, also very liberal - rushes past me before I grab his sleeve and ask him how he got inside. His answer is so slurred I can’t make it out. Great party.

People filter out as my companions and I marvel provincially at the crowd. There really aren’t events like this in DC, at least not any that we’ve been to with or without invitation. For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the occasion, there’s little to indicate any sustained counterforce. The protests are lackluster. Videos the next day show three or four men defeatedly ringing bells and playing songs out of boomboxes. A second journalist texts that she’s just left but that the bathrooms are all-gender. “Go look,” she says. I don’t try my luck.

“Hear no evil, speak no evil - and you'll never be invited to a party"

-Oscar Wilde

1. I find this characterization a little harsh. A little untrue. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I live here too after all.

2. At least not in my limited experience. If you know where the parties are happening, please reach out.