rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

alright, the inauguration.

I didn’t have any trouble getting up to DC. made great time, listened to a lot of ‘Sticky Fingers’ and Neil Young. and I beat the road closures by a couple of hours.
ended up staying at brother’s on the floor. sat up too late with one of my cousins, who drove out from Detroit with his family to be there, and then I slept for about seven hours.
it worked out that I was able to go to an inauguration party with Va in the office suite of a friend of their’s. he works for a wetlands conservation society, it seems, and the office is along Pennsylvania Avenue.
this was legit. lots of food, and booze. and a giant game of ‘Duck Hunt’ on a projection screen.
getting there was a bitch. an elderly woman fell in front of the tracks on the Red line, so that screwed public transportation. the only way to get there was to walk. twenty city blocks isn’t bad when it’s me and Va, but the 3-year-old doesn’t handle it as well. the 3-year-old needs to be carried. like carrying a 30-lb. sack of potatoes that actively doesn’t want you to carry it.
we almost turned back. halfway there, and it was cold, and spud wasn’t cooperating, and Va told me, “this isn’t working. go on ahead.” and I mumbled something about how she’d regret missing it. some things are worth toughing out, etc. I didn’t think that I had said anything that would stick, anything of substance, but she told me later that it helped, and I was proud of that.
but I’m not going to lie and say that I saw the worst of the crowds, because I didn’t. my brother was in the middle of that stink for half a week, running on adrenaline and high-fructose corn syrup from a trailer in front of the National Portrait Gallery (I think). but all of that shit you saw on television, the Mall swarmed over, even from outer space, I missed it. fine by me. see, where I was, there was a bottomless tray of meatballs.

out of the office window I couldn’t really see shit; I think that’s the presidential limo there to the right. the view wasn’t even that great, but it really didn’t matter. I got the gist from being there. this parade, it was a little overdone, and not well-planned. I mean, there was easily another hour and a half of marching bands after Obama and his wife made the slow crawl from the Capitol to the White House. and no one to pay attention to them, everyone had cleared out. should’ve made Obama go last, make everyone work for a glimpse of this new American royalty.

DC was cold as a motherfucker on Tuesday.

here’s your boy and his girlfriend. they seem to have a lot invested in Obama’s campaign and his election, or as much as a concerned citizen could hope to have. they did the door-to-door, stuffed envelopes kind of thing running up to November. my excuse for political apathy is holding a job within the sphere of journalism, but I doubt that I’d be active even without my comfortable ball and chain. 
for people like his girlfriend and your boy, though, Tuesday was a triumph, the culmination of the repudiation to the last eight years of  asshole. on election night, Spencer said — and I remember, this, he said, ”I don’t know how to feel. someone  I voted for actually won.” probably felt pretty good.

that evening, I met another cousin — so many cousins — at a bar in Adams Morgan. apparently, it’s the place where my brother first met Va. of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world …
actually, I remember the first time I met  her msyelf. it was in Adams Morgan, too, in that tiny park where Columbia meets 18th. funny how those moments stick with you. I remember where I was when my brother asked me to be the best man in his wedding. it was over the phone. I was in Valparaiso, in my grandmother’s room at the end of the house, and he was in a checkout line at a grocery store in Washington. it was warm out, because it was August and the best kind of summer, and our conversation was very matter-of-fact.
‘yo. what do you think about being the best man at the wedding?’
‘okay.’
my cousin and I caught up, as much as you can over a couple of hours and beer. Court is legit. she works as an editor, too, and she’s funny, and … I’m fucking up by not seeing enough of my family from Pennsylvania. what’s Philly from here, five hours? okay. that’s a drive. but an accomplishable one.

me and  Court.

word.