The one where I can't make up a witty title!

I am sitting in a little café/restaurant in Dupont Circle right now, and it’s lovely. There are piles of black snow along the road, the weather is terrible and I have to lug around very heavy bags in the sleety/slushy rain but it is lovely. DC is my city. After being here for two days, I know this is where I belong. Everything is here. Every organization, every consulate, every groups of thoughtful individuals who want their voice heard is here. True, I was here at the same time as CPAC (I saw Ann Coulter within hours of arriving in the city! …ew) but I have never felt more in sync with a place than I do with DC. I didn’t get to see any museums or see any of the amazing things this city has to offer but I know I will. I belong here.

I spent two days with 600 progressive activists at an “unconference” sponsored by the New Organizing Institute. It was amazing. I swear, if you were to map my brain waves, there is no difference in the activity when I’m talking about politics than when I’m having sex. It is just such a rush. I focused my weekend on LGBT sessions and learned quite a bit. It was great! The last session I attended really got my blood going. It was discussing this idea that instead of fighting whole-hog for marriage, we need to take incremental steps. It was run by the IT director for the Approve 71 campaign out in Washington state. They won domestic partnerships statewide this past election. Thing is, they didn’t settle for it. They didn’t aim for marriage and get knocked down to DPs, this was their original intent. Is that wise? Opinions differed greatly, and I saw a stark divide among the generations. The men and women who have been fighting this battle since the 60s and 70s saw incremental steps as a victory, and we should take what we can get. My generation was much more apt to defend the idea of going for marriage and not settling for anything else. My argument for marriage, not civil unions or domestic partnerships (or “garriage”… fucking stupid) comes from New Jersey, where they have a civil unions law. So the argument for marriage was no longer “we deserve these rights and protections” but now “why civil unions aren’t enough”. That’s a very difficult conversation to have. We heard senator form NJ talking about “fixing” the civil union law and making harsher penalties for people who break that law. I’m sorry, but instilling harsher penalties for people who discriminate against LGBT couples are special rights, which is just fueling the right’s argument that we’re trying to gain those “special”, not basic, rights.

In Maine, we lost and we don’t have marriage. In Washington, they won and they don’t have marriage. In Maine, we know how to structure the marriage conversation so that it fits Mainers, but now in  Washington they have to come up with an entirely new strategy of why domestic partnerships are not enough (and maybe having to combat the question “if DPS are not enough, why didn’t you go for marriage?”) and make sure that is tailored to something that Washingtonians can understand and buy into.

It was a fun discussion, let me tell you.

While in the city I met up with a bunch of people that I worked on the Maine marriage campaign with, which was delightful. I got into the city and had dinner with three of the folks who were organizers. One lived right in the city so instead of staying with the other two (way out in Bethesda) I stayed with the one in DC we went to a few bars, came home, and promptly fucked. It was... weird. I mean it was good, but it was weird. Because there had never really been any of that tension or anything back in Maine. I'm about to meet up with him to say bye since I fly back to Maine late tonight.

The last two nights I stayed at my other friend's place also right in DC. I have had a very big crush on him since I first met him back in... September, maybe? He works for the firm that did all the polling for the campaign, super hot, super smart and really funny. I was all excited to see him because since we last saw each other, I have lost some weight, toned up a bit and, quite frankly, looked good.  Saturday morning he tells me that he wasn't going to get back into town until Sunday around 4 or 5 in the afternoon, but that his friend Chris who he works will can hide a key by the door for me that night. I get to his place, find the key (after a little confusion) and settle in. He has one roommate, but she was staying in Virginia for the night, so I had the run of the place. His bed was so. Goddamn. Comfortable. It was amazing. Like sleeping in a cloud. I sat down at 10:30 at night to watch a movie (I needed an easy night) and promptly fell asleep.

The next day he texts me with when he's going to be in and that he wants to make dinner for "everyone". I ask him who that includes and he replies him, his roommate, his friend Chris and me. And then texts me to let me know that he and Chris have kind of been seeing each other for the past month and that his roommate was a little weirded out since they had all worked together. Eugh. I felt my stomach just drop. I got over it rather quickly and was able to just go along throughout the day anyways and when I did finally meet up, the pangs of jealously weren't as bad as I had anticipated. Chris is (of course) great, and cute, and funny. 

Damnit.

But then that got me thinking (baaaaaad thinking) about something. Like the Julie/Julia project, where a woman cooked her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I started toying with the idea of dating my way through the dating sites. Chemistry, e-Harmony, Match.com, Plenty of Fish and Lava Life. More to come with this as I flesh out the idea to determine it's viability.

I’m going to try to find a job in DC sometime over the next year. I think it would be a great move for me, but I’m conflicted about it. I love working in politics (let’s see if I still say that after November… I may swear it off again, but who knows?) but I really want to pursue acting, and part of me feels like moving to DC will cement that politico in me as the dominant career desire. Maybe it’s for the best, since I haven’t been on stage in a long, long time. I guess this is all up in the air and I don’t think I’ll really have to start thinking about it until the summer. At which point, I now realize, I need to test out what DC feels like then. I hear summers in DC are a new kind of hell, and that’s not really something I want to have to deal with, unless I have A/C with me everywhere I go. Which won’t happen.

In other news, I've moved and I really enjoy the new place. Still in Maine (DC is calling very, very loudly), but at least in Portland now. I've quit my job and next Monday I start working on a gubernatorial campaign.

**Note: by the time I actually post this, I'm sitting in the BWI airport (where I had to pay $9.95 to get on the goddamn network) listening to a HILARIOUS Dan Savage podcast. He is so funny, so smart, and so ridiculously sexy.