The Washingtonienne (7 page)

April shook her head.

“No, that’s not true,” she said after doing another bump. “Most people have really boring lives. I really think that we have a tendency to attract weirdos.”

“No,” I argued. “We just have a tendency to find strange ways to entertain ourselves.”

I took off the Heatherette Hello Kitty minidress that I had worn out the night before. My eyeballs hurt and I could feel a headache coming on.

“I think I’m coming down,” I said, pulling my Donovan McNabb jersey over my head.

“Then I’m out of here,” April said, throwing her Coach bag over her shoulder. “If I talk to Laura, I’ll let you know what she had to say about last night. I hope things don’t get weird between the two of you.”

On her way out the door, I didn’t want to burden April with the regrettable truth that it was too late.

Laura came by the apartment that afternoon to discuss.

“I think we need to talk,” she said, sunglasses clamped to her face.

We were both fighting coke hangovers, and I wasn’t in the mood.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I offered. “We were both high as kites and we got carried away. It’s no biggie.”

“Speak for yourself,” Laura said. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me. I’m really not the threesome type.”

“Well, who is?” I laughed. “Everyone has at least
one
threesome at some point in their lives.”

“Maybe where you come from, they do,” she snorted, “but where I come from, people don’t do things like that.”

“Not true! Haven’t you ever watched Jerry Springer? Apparently, poor white trash have threesomes all the time.”

I knew that it was a mean thing to say, but someone needed to knock Laura off her high horse. No wonder I didn’t have many female friends: Girls were such goddamn bitches.

“How dare you make yourself out to be the innocent Southern Belle,” I told her. “What does that make me? The Big City whore? Give me a break! We both know what happened last night, so just cut the shit.”

Laura smirked.

“Well, I’m glad we finally got it all out into the open,” she said. “Now I can go home and get some sleep.”

“Good for you,” I retorted. “Now get out of here and take your ugly Vera Bradley bag with you.”

She walked toward the door, then turned around.

“Jackie, I would really like for us to be friends,” she said, taking off her sunglasses. “I hope we can keep what happened between you and me.”

“I don’t really give a damn if people know shit about me, and I hope that you don’t think that having a threesome is anything to be ashamed of, because if you do, then you shouldn’t have done it in the first place. Besides, I already told April.”

“I assumed that you would. We girls love to share secrets, just not with the world, okay?”

Her pleading eyes filled with tears, and I couldn’t help but feel bad for the girl: crying in front of a bitch like me was not a fun thing to do. As much as I would have liked to be, I wasn’t made of stone.

“I’d really like to be friends with you, too,” I admitted. “I promise not to tell anyone else.”

We kissed each other good-bye (on the cheek), but there was something about this girl that I didn’t trust. Despite whatever label we put on our relationship, she was no friend of mine. Like I had said, I hardly knew her, and I didn’t owe her a thing. I could go out and get drunk with her, but that was about it. Such was the nature of most friendships in DC, I supposed.

Chapter 12

M
y new office was in the Russell Building, the oldest of the three Senate office buildings. Unlike the more modern offices in Hart and Dirksen, the Russell offices had these awkward, old-fashioned floor plans. The staff was divided into seven separate rooms along the same side of a corridor. Moving from one room to another was like switching classes in school.

My desk was in “the Locker Room,” an office full of male staffers. Unfortunately, they were all unattractive. (Fat and/or beard and/or bald.)

On my first day, they were overheard (by me) debating which strip club had the best lunch buffet in DC.

If my officemates liked to jizz inside their pants during their lunch hour, that was their business. I mean, sometimes I had actual sex during
my
lunch hour, but nobody wanted to hear about that, did they?

“Maybe you guys should IM each other about this stuff,” I suggested.

“We shouldn’t have to do that just because
you’re
in here,” one of them (fat, beard) told me. “Whatever happens in the Locker Room stays in the Locker Room!”

Since when did a Senate office become the new Las Vegas?

I guess anything goes here.

After lunch, Janet pulled me out of the mailroom to meet my new boss, the senator. We had to catch him in the hallway between appointments because he didn’t do “sit-downs” with anyone from out of state. (I didn’t have any votes behind me.)

So this was my one chance to make a good impression. Janet introduced me, giving him a brief summary of my job description.

He stared at my tits the whole time.

Even as we shook hands, he stared at them, and they weren’t even that big or anything.

“Sorry about that,” Janet whispered as he walked away. “The senator is a horny guy.”

I returned to my desk and e-mailed the story to my girlfriends right away.

April wrote back:

Blogette.com was our favorite Washington gossip site, written by some cool girl who made fun of everybody. This was exactly the sort of material she was posting at the time, but I wasn’t about to risk my job and embarrass my office just to give Blogette material for a few cheap jokes.

I TOLD THE STORY TO
Phillip over dinner later that week. Maybe he would tell his friend to show some restraint. Horny or not, couldn’t he control himself for those few seconds? He was a
senator,
for crying out loud.

“I lost all respect for him after that,” I told Phillip. “Not that I had any for him to begin with. Did you know that he’s pro-life and shit?”

“Remember to behave yourself in that office! I recommended you to them,” Phillip reminded me. “I don’t want to hear any complaints about you.”

I downed the martini he had ordered for me. He was trying to get me drunk, gesturing to the waiter for another round, and it was working.

This was my first time at The Prime Rib, a fat-cat restaurant on K Street that was popular with lobbyists with big expense accounts. If not for the hideous drop ceiling, it would have been a very handsome place, with its chic black walls and leopard-print carpets.

Pretty office girls sat at the bar, waiting for rich guys to buy them drinks. A few of them tossed their hair and crossed their legs, trying to catch Phillip’s eye. He looked very handsome in his pinstripes, French cuffs, and Tiffany cufflinks. Everything about him said, “I have buttloads of money—come and get it!”

I guessed that he was pushing sixty, which made him the oldest man I had ever dated. At his age, he knew a few things about women. At least, he knew what they wanted to hear.

“Is there anything you’d like me to buy for you?” he asked me.

“Sure, lots of things,” I replied. “I’m only making twenty-five thousand dollars a year, you know.”

“I put a few of my girlfriends through law school, and I bought the last one a condo,” he bragged. “Anything you want, just name it. Jewelry? A car?”

“That’s very generous,” I said, resisting the urge to laugh, “but I hardly know you.”

“That’s just the kind of guy I am. And you’re a beautiful woman. You deserve to be happy.”

“Whatever,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You are so full of it.”

It was all bullshit until he proved otherwise. Even drunk, I knew the rules. You were supposed to fuck the guy
after
you got him to buy you the condo or whatever. But I never did it that way. Sex came first, and if he liked me, he would deliver. If he didn’t, then at least I gave it a shot. It wasn’t the most lucrative way to operate, but if I wanted to be pragmatic I would have just worked as a call girl.

OF COURSE, PHILLIP HAD
a house in Georgetown, and it had the crystal chandeliers, oriental carpets, and mahogany furniture that all “rich guy” houses were supposed to have. It was generic-looking, like a movie set.

He served me the most vile-tasting cocktail, which only tasted better the more I drank of it.

“Are these real?” he asked, groping my breasts.

“How dare you!” I laughed, swatting away his advances. “Are
you
for real?”

I gagged my drink down as fast as I could. That way I could tell myself,
I’m not a slut, I was just drunk
when I looked at myself in the mirror the next morning.

I took off my dress and sat down. He stood in front of me and pulled out the biggest dick I had ever seen in my life. Thank God I was drunk, ’cause this was going to hurt.

Luckily I had no gag reflex when I was drunk, so I could take the whole thing down my throat easily.

This was how you made a man with a huge penis fall in love with you. You had to give them what they had been waiting for all their lives: a
real
blow job. They didn’t want or need any more halfway blow jobs in their lives. And, no, they didn’t want you to use your hands. You had to use your head. (But not for thinking.) Actually, the less you thought about it, the better. And if he ever wanted me to do this for him again, he would buy me anything I wanted in the future.

So that was my first date with Phillip. He got me a job, so I gave him one in return. And they both sucked.

MY JOB WAS TO READ AND
sort the constituent mail. At first I found the letters amusing. Some of them were so hilarious, I thought that they might make a good coffee table book someday. But soon I just wanted to save everybody the trouble and throw them all in the trash.

I probably should have quit this job, given someone who cared a shot at all this glory, but I couldn’t bail out on April. She needed help with the bills. Besides, I was always too hungover to make a decision either way.

I opened the first letter from the stack on top of my desk. It was from out of state, so I tossed it. The next three were form letters, so I tossed those out, too.

I tried another one.

Dear Senator,

I am OUTRAGED over Janet Jackson’s performance at the Super Bowl Halftime Show . . .

Another one of these. I added it to the pile. I guess people get outraged pretty easily in the Midwest. I entered the person’s name and address into the database, and five weeks later, she would receive a form letter with the senator’s signature Autopenned on it. Our tax dollars at work. Seriously, I didn’t know why we all didn’t just shoot ourselves.

The only good thing about working there was that I could still meet April for lunch in the cafeteria every day.

“Just try not to get fired. And don’t quit, either. We need to make rent,” she said, flipping through the classifieds section in the back of
Washingtonian
magazine.

“What are you reading the personal ads for?” I asked, peering over the table.

“Are you kidding? The personals are the most interesting part of the magazine. Listen to this:
Married white male, 55, in search of slender female, 18 to 25, for mutually beneficial relationship. Must be discreet.
There’s, like, a whole page of ads like these!”

“Wow, that’s depressing. I can’t believe that the
Washingtonian
would print that stuff. I thought it was a magazine for soccer moms or something.”

“If these married guys really want to find some needy young women, they should advertise in
Roll Call.
There are plenty of them on the Hill. Maybe I should write to one of these guys.”

“Oh, April, don’t! I’m sure they’re all serial killers with grudges against women or something,” I surmised. “Besides, if you want a man to give you money, all you have to do is ask.”

“Yeah, right,” she snorted.

“Well, it’s not hard to meet a rich guy in DC. I’ve only been here a short while, and I already have Fred
and
Phillip paying my rent every month. It’s the oldest trick in the book, but apparently, it still works.”

“Yeah, but you’re
fucking
them,” April whispered. “It’s hooker money.”

“It’s an
allowance,”
I reminded her.
“
And don’t be mad just because you’re still going Dutch with Tom.”

April huffily grabbed her tray and stood up from the table. She could be such a drama queen sometimes.

“If you think I’m jealous of you, you’re crazy,” she said. “At least I
have
a boyfriend.”

April left me to finish eating my lunch alone like a loser. But I was too self-conscious to sit by myself, so I threw my lunch away and started back toward my office.

On the way back, I ran into Dan. It was the first time I had seen him since I left his office.

“How’s the new job?” he asked me.

“Good,” I lied.

(Why be a bummer? No one wanted to hear the truth anyway.)

“I want to hear all about it,” he said. “Do you want to get a drink after work?”

“Sure,” I replied. “Where do you want to go?”

“Let’s go to Lounge 201. I get off at six.”

“When you get back to the office, ask April if she wants to come,” I suggested before we went our separate ways.

Despite our little tiff this afternoon, she would surely be down for some drinking with Dan. If she wanted, I could cut out of there and leave the two of them alone together.

LOUNGE 201 WAS THE MORE
“upscale” bar on the Senate side of the Hill. The drinks were priced slightly higher here, to keep interns and other lowlifes away. April and Laura came here frequently to “network,” but it was my first time here.

I walked in alone, still wearing my Senate ID badge. I took it off immediately, noticing how
canine
everybody looked walking around with their security badges around their necks. People in DC never seemed to take them off. It was pretty tacky, but at least it gave everyone here a point of reference. All you had to do was read their tag, and you had a person’s name and place of employment. If a guy ever got out of line, you could call his office and embarrass the hell out of him the next day.

April and Dan weren’t there yet, so I sat at the bar and ordered a glass of red wine. (Good for the skin.)

“You’re already drinking,” Dan said when he arrived. “That’s my kind of girl.”

April wasn’t with him.

“She said she was going somewhere with Tom,” Dan told me. “Sorry I couldn’t convince her to change her mind.”

“No, that’s okay,” I said. “We’ll have fun without her.”

Dan told me that he was meeting up with friends elsewhere later, which immediately put me at ease. He was already making excuses to ditch me, which meant that he wasn’t trying to pick me up. We were just two Senate staffers having a friendly drink together after work.

“How’s Kate?” I asked.

“She’s still there,” he said dryly. “Did you like working with her?”

“Not so much,” I said, remembering how she accused me of “entertaining” male staff in my cubicle.

“Kate was pissed about the shoe thing.”

I rolled my eyes.

“She’s such a bitch,” I scoffed.

“Everybody hates Kate,” Dan said. “But I thought what you did was awesome. It’s, like, legend around the office.”

I laughed at this.

“Your presence there is missed,” Dan said. “Especially when you wore those low-cut dresses to the office. There was always a lot of, uh,
commentary
among the male staff whenever you walked by our desks.”

“Those were
wrap
dresses,” I pointed out. “You know, Diane von Furstenberg? They’re, like, classic.”

“Whatever. They really showed off your rack.”

“You’re too much,” I said, blushing.

I always liked people who could say what was on their mind. Yeah, Dan was a lech, but he was good-looking, so on him, it was endearing.

He went to the bar to buy another round, and I quickly reapplied my NARS lipstick.

“I wish you hadn’t gotten hired away from our office so fast,” he said, setting our drinks down on the table.

We smiled at each other.

“It’s too bad you have a boyfriend,” he went on. “I wanted to ask you out. So, are you still with him?”