The Mandate of Heaven

Now we get to the part where I tell you about The Others.

Parking on Capitol Hill has been hairy as long as I've lived here and over the years has evolved into a nightmare- there's simply not enough space to accommodate all the cars. Almost all the townhouses on the Hill are narrow and deep, and were built long before automobiles where the norm; transportation was provided by trolley, and the few horse and buggy combos some of the more affluent residents maintained where sheltered in the carriage houses and shacks that make up the central nucleus of many blocks, or in large public stables that dotted the landscape. If it sounds charming, you haven't been around horses much. Nobody back then had cars, nobody planned for them, and now nobody can park them.

To make matters even worse, most of the newer AB residents have more than one car, and as often as not the second (or third) vehicle is a space-hogging SUV. In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I used to drive a beat up old pickup truck. It was perfect for the time- there weren't as many cars around then so I could usually find a place on my half of the block, the people who measure out their own car's parking space by thumping bumpers got their headlights knocked out or trunk dented for their effort, and the one time that someone parked illegally behind me and blocked me in overnight, I was able to simply put the truck in reverse and push their car out of the way. (If that was you car and you're reading this, don't do that any more.) Now I drive a sensible mid-size sedan.

It's frustrating, it's maddening, to try and park somewhere on your block and see an unbroken string of cars lining both sides of the street. People get territorial about the space in front of their houses and eye any strange car parked in 'their space' with hostility or contempt. Everyone's in the same unhappy boat: You have to have a DC-issued Zone 6 parking sticker, but any car that has one can park anywhere on the Hill. And there's not a damn thing you can do about it. The girl who lives above me almost always seems to find a spot close by, but I think she's a witch.

Most people simply grumble if they have to park one or two blocks over, but that's life and twice a day life is all about parking. There are, of course, those who take things to the extreme.

'The Banshee' is a woman of a certain age (65 if she's a day) who lives across the street from me and about five townhouses over. She's mainline BB, tall and was probably attractive at one time; she carries herself like somebody who was once sought out and admired. She's got shoulder length gray hair cut in a sensible way and she dresses well without being flashy. Maybe at one time she was more of a human being, but now she's one unfilled prescription away from being the sort who paints her windows black to keep the CIA from spying on her. And the curb in front of her house belongs TO HER!

Actually, it would be unfair to give her a pass by painting her as crazy. She's not crazy. She's a bitch and a bully, and long after her looks and money had weathered to the point where they were no longer effective in manipulating people, she was trying to structure her reality through bravado and bullshit. Heroic in a way- when you're too old sway an audience by playing Antigone, you play Medea.

I first met her about eight years ago, one Saturday night about 11 when I was trying to park my truck between two cars. There wasn't enough room, so I drove around the corner and found a bigger space. While I was walking back, she stopped me. At night. On the street. Late. "I saw you trying to park." Oh really? "Yes, and I knew you wouldn't be able to." Oh really? Why's that? "Because you don't live here and I do live here, so I know how to drive in DC." She was right about one thing, I didn't have DC tags. I thought about pointing out that I was trying to park a truck in the space she just glided her Mazda into, but I just shrugged and told her I lived here too. She asked me where and I pointed out my house, wished her a good night and walked inside. That was a mistake, because by not telling her to suck it, she thought that she owned me. Still, I was raised in the countryside of Dixie, and it's against my nature to tell old women to get laid, get bent, but get the hell out of my way.

That was to change. The second time I crossed her path, I had just parked in front of her house (in my new car with DC tags in the trunk to replace the cheap paper dealer tags) and was getting out when she pulled up in back of me. She hops out and said "I want you to move you car." I asked why, and she said "Because I live here and I want to park in front of my house." She wanted me to leave so she could move up one space. I pointed out that I lived here too, and she started screaming "WHERE?! WHERE DO YOU LIVE?! I LIVE HERE!" I pointed to my house and wondered if she was crazy, or dangerous crazy, or just showing off for the younger woman who was her passenger and who I hoped was her nurse. Then I made my second mistake; I started to laugh. It was so ridiculous; I suddenly felt like I had been cast to play opposite Blythe Danner and this was a plot point in some Lifetime movie about The Edge. She just seemed to get confused at that, and then even angrier because I was laughing.

The thing about it was that I had been planning on moving my car all along. I'd pulled into the first place I saw on my street to change tags , and after I put them on I was going to run into my house, check the mail, and then drive to the grocery store. Still grinning from ear to ear, I walked back, opened the trunk, pulled out the new tags and said "See, street legal. I'll be gone in a few minutes, but because you yelled at me now I'm going to take my time." Then I crouched down, started taking off the dealer's tags, and The Banshee and her sidekick flounced away in a huff. Minute and a huff, tops.

After that, I started parking by her house a lot more. Sometimes I looked for parking places near her even if there were spots closer to my house, but more often than not I found I had to park there because I was getting in at funky hours and there wasn't anything else available. There always seemed to be at least one empty spot near her house, I guess because she was pulling the same intimidation crap on everyone else. And sure enough, as soon as my feet hit the pavement she'd fly to a window or come scurrying down her walk, telling me to move my car. We had this whole patter thing going on, like a call and response in church, and it never varied much. "I want you to move your car!" Why? "Because I live here!" I live here, too. "WHERE?! WHERE DO YOU LIVE?!" and I'd point to my house and then walk off, her telling me to move the whole time. I felt sorry for her, kind of, because I knew if she was pegging me with about 80% accuracy, that meant she had to be spending a lot of time keeping watch on her curb from someplace inside her house and that seemed sad and creepy.

She only broke convention once. One night I decided I wanted ice cream, so I walked out to my car, which was parked in front of her house. I got in but before I closed my door she appears out of nowhere and said, in this haughty way, "Huh! I just parked my car and now look!" Maybe it was because she appeared out of the darkness and startled me, or maybe it was because I knew I wouldn't be back before 10 and would probably have to park in Maryland, but I shot back "Yeah, I know. I saw you looking for a place and figured I'd wait to drive off until after you were done." I guess she knew that she had broken the rules of engagement, because she fell back into her pattern of "I live here!", but instead of carrying out my part by telling her I lived here, too, and pointing solemnly at my house, I just closed the door on her and left. She'd flubbed her lines and the mood was broken for me.

But all dramas must come to an end, Gentle Reader, and one night ours closed with the swift finality of a road company of Rent in rural Alabama. I was in a terrible mood; it had been a bad day and a bad week and I wasn't on my game. I pulled onto my street, looked down toward my house and saw an unbroken line of parked cars. But lo! there were two spaces right in front of The Banshee's house. I pulled into one and silently hoped that two spaces meant she was out and I wouldn't have to deal with her, because buddy I sure wasn't in the mood. I hadn't even closed the door before I heard a voice crying from the wildnerness "Move your car!" Just dandy. Fate 1,384,689: WTH II 0. Suddenly the whole lousy week jumped up before my eyes, pointed a stumpy finger at me and guffawed. I decided that the time had come to draw a line in the sand, so I proceeded to draw a line. I started off like I always did and asked her why she wanted me to move, and she said "Because I don't want anybody to hit my car when they park in front of me." That's when I looked back and saw her car. I must have missed it. The front of her house was shrouded in shadow and I couldn't tell which window she was talking from, but I had a line to draw so I just reared back and roared "Lady, I don't give a FUCK if anyone hits your car! And if you're THAT worried about it, then YOU! SHOULD! MOVE!"

This time I was the one off script, but she plugged gamely on and sort of warbled '..but i live here...' I replied by giving her a universal gesture and walked away. And after pushing the wicked old witch into the furnace, Hansel has gotten to play anywhere he wants in peace.

There is a reprise to this story, a coda, an epilogue. About two weeks after I stormed off set, I noticed that there was a new 'No parking beyond this point' sign on the side of the street across from her curb. I don't know if the city took it upon itself to put it there, or if she complained about cars cram parking right up to the intersection and the city did it's usual half-assed job and just put the sign on one side of the street but not hers. In any event, all those cars now park on her side of the street with about 5 inches between them, so there are a lot of cars kissing her bumpers every night. At least one of them is getting some action.

On the street where I live

I'm going to start my blog by gossiping about other people. But first, let me create the setting. I live on Capitol Hill in DC, a neighborhood which sprang up almost overnight from the cow fields and orchards that surrounded the Capitol dome. Construction began around 1890 and was finished by 1915; the townhouses provided shelter to a growing Federal bureaucracy that was just beginning to learn that it could be bigger than Standard Oil if it wanted and passed enough laws saying so. Because the housing boom forcibly displaced the farmhouses that had graced the land for generations, you can say without fear of correction that Capitol Hill was built on bullshit and is rotten to the core.

It's a beautiful neighborhood by any standard- late Victorian and Edwardian architecture, tree-lined streets, wide roads with picture postcard views of the halls of government, and lots of parks. Parks are everywhere. It must have been terrible for the farmers to be forced to sell their land to real estate developers, but having your field taken over for use as a public park had to have been particularly galling.

People who live on the Hill group themselves into two camps: BB and AB (Before Barry and After Barry.) Marion Barry was the mayor of Washington caught smoking crack in an FBI sting. He went to jail and if he'd been allowed to campaign he would have kept his seat as mayor even behind bars. As it was, he ran again after his release, won, and was caught snorting coke in the privacy of his own car, which everybody but congress looked on as real progress. Not long after Barry's reelection, congress took away DC home rule. From this we can learn that a sense of irony is the last thing to go among alcoholics. Barry was eventually voted out of office and was last seen wearing a dashiki over his Jos. Bank suit and pushing his way in front of any loaded news camera.

Housing prices on the Hill BB were cheap, and the people who lived on the Hill then were either very powerful state dignitaries or the kind who would wear buttless chaps on the weekend. Both sides lived in a state of bemused harmony and the neighborhood worked; the dichotomy created a resonance that was, overall, pleasing, even when you found yourself standing at a bar because you just couldn't bring yourself to sit on a stool recently vacated by a pair of ass cheeks.

Housing prices AB were not cheap. Prices doubled overnight, sometimes tripled, and the average time for a house to be on the market was less than an hour. People sold their houses in droves. Out went some of the dignitaries and almost all of the buttless chaps, and to the eventual dismay of everyone who stayed, in came a tide of upper middle management twits. They arrived by the SUV load, kids and garden hoses and golden labs in tow. Oh sure, everyone was glad to see them at first- lawns would be regularly cut, Dawson's Creek and a bottle of wine wouldn't turn into a block party, and you could finally sit down at a bar. But the new arrivals had the attitude that everyone does when they know they bought something a lot of other people wanted but paid too much for it: They were smug and they were pissed.

The people who had lived here when the Hill was euphemistically called a 'transitional neighborhood' (translated means 'you couldn't find a cop anywhere') began to fight back. Wars and the rumors of war where the norm, and everybody who lived in the neighborhood had to take sides, and that quickly. A disinterested observer would say that the BB people took a page from the Indians and called themselves Human Beings and the new tide of settlers where White Devils (Who Paid Too Much for their House). To be fair, the AB people looked at themselves as the Great White Hope, and voiced the opinion that the best old timer was an old timer tied up in litigation. Skirmishes and outright fighting broke out daily, over such things as the exact hour it was proper to put out your trash, parking spaces and the encroachment of one man's property by the hydrangeas of another. The War of the Roses had begun, would turn ugly, and eventually, as all wars must, will seem comic and petty. But not yet, as the battles still rage. If you asked an actual Indian about all this instead of just taking his page, he would say that the history of the world is the story of one group taking something that belonged to another, and there is nothing new under the sun. It's safe to say that for the Indian, the time has already come for what's happening on the Hill to seem comic and petty. I'm going to run with that.

Next time, I'll tell you about the crazy fuckers who live and fight around me, both BB and AB. To be fair, most of the genuine loons are BB, and most of the people you don't want to make eye contact with are AB. Mostly this is the case, but not always. I'll tell you about the Mean Olde Queen (BB), the Banshee (BB) and The Overcompensating Snobs (AB). And who am I in all this? I'm a ghost, an outsider, the disinterested observer mentioned earlier. You see, Gentle Reader, even though I'm BB, I'm a renter and held in suspicion by both sides. I'm your spy. Vade mecum, peeps.

Hello World

Like everything else in life, I'm doing this to make a woman happy, or at least to get her to stop bugging me. I dedicate whatever weirdness that follows to Becky- muse to thousands, gigglepuss, and my very own boot to the head. I especially want to direct her way all inquiries regarding liable, slander, or a reckless disregard for the safety and property of others; don't shoot me folks, I'm just the piano player.

My story follows...