Leonidas Ain't got Nothing on Me!

In twenty-nine days i'm supposed to be a Spartan. A friend of mine suggested we all work out and get ripped over a 10 week period and then head out to a halloween party in briefs, red capes, with fake shields and masks as our protection against hordes of inebriated women. For me this is a 60% reality. I don't work out much, but i'm lucky to have the body type that makes people think I "might" work out, which is pretty cool, until I start bashing myself worse than a body builder who forgot his steroid injections.

I realize I've never even been to a Halloween party. To my knowledge we don't (and probably still do not ) celebrate Halloween where i'm from, which is Jamaica. I've always read about Jack-o-lanters and pumpkins and what not, but other than seeing that stuff in kids books and on television, there is no way in hell that random Jamaican parents are going to let their kids roam the streets asking for candy. Its just not done.

In 2002, I walked around a shady neighborhood wearing the mask from Scream, dressed in full black. I felt powerful and anonymous, watching people through the tinted veils of some mad writer's genius. But, I've never been to a Halloween party, so this year might be my first. I'm thinking about the choice of outfit. I can already foresee several other spartans in attendance, with many of them having beer bellies, hairy chests and tighter briefs than I might wear. I can also imagine one of these guys leaving with a girl for the night, while I, with my semi-okay six-pack, will probaly be sipping fruit punch and munching on condiments from the table beside the DJ.

Some aspects of being a spartan seem rather exciting, such as hearing a dancehall song play ( most likely this will be a Sean Paul song) and then someone raises their sword, shield, or fist and belts out, "SPARTANS!". Then we assemble on the dance floor and do awkward Jamaican dances in briefs and capes.
"Oh, there will be blood."

As I've always heard from a good friend of mine, Halloween is a prime occassion for people to hook up. Maybe it has something to do with wearing costumes and being relativley anonymous that gives people more confidence. A guy dressed like Batman might actually believe he is a billionaire with psychological issues, able to get any woman he desires with a swipe of his credit card. Or maybe the guy who dresses like a large teddy bear, is fulfilling some strange childhood fantasy involving himself, Teddy Ruxpin and several sweaty strippers. Whatever the reason, the rumours about Halloween hookups seem to have some merit. I think it takes a certain level of confidence or inebriation to go to a party as a Spartan. I mean, 99% of guys who watched 300 left the theater punching walls and ripping hair of their chests. Then they proceeded to engage in thousands of "Ambiguously gay" battles in their underwear, shouting "Tonight we dine in hell!" to which his friend might reply, "No! Tonight you dine in my ass douchebag!"

Maybe being a spartan will be a cool thing. I could be the one spartan that isn't filled with bloodlust, uber-manliness and a need to savagely take out his homoerotic tensions on waves of very ugly marauders. I might stand up in the middle of the party, with my cape wrapped comfortably around my torso, debating Science Fiction with the guy who came in dressed as Orson Welles. Then I may offer my condolences to Neo for dying at the end of the Matrix, give Batman a high five and then smile lustfully at any girls dressed as Nurses or Playboy bunnies.

I could have a shield, but i'm not sure how practical that would be on the dance floor. Blocking hundreds of arrows and the sharp blades of my enemies won't be necessary in the company of college students, people who work in non-profits and on the Hill. (Well, in terms of people on the Hill, I might need the shield.)

It would be fun to ben an intelligent Spartan, or maybe even a bipolar one. I could savagely kiss a girl i've never met, then run into a corner weeping because I acted like "less of a man". I could be the kind of Spartan that keeps the uber-cool "I can kick your ass with my little finger" vibe while expounding on the laudable attributes of Halo 3. I could be that spartan.

Nonethless, I have been doing nothing towards this goal. I'm too tired during the day to really go to the gym, and like I said before, I am luckly to somewhat look Spartan-esque without doing too much work. Exciting as the Spartan thing is, I think I might just go dress in a white collar shirt and a soft pair of plaid pants. Then, when I am asked what i'm dressed up as, I will give the reply Wednesday did in the Adamms Family movie.
"'I'm a psychotic killer. They look just like everyone else."

The Futile Fight

The project i've been mentioning intermittently in these blogs (Three Weeks and Hurricane) is my first real attempt at writing non-fiction. It has to deal with me, and me trying to find out my next step in life, by using a month in Jamaica for that EXACT purpose. Now, to make life easier next time I feel like writing non-fiction, I will write essays (probably short blogs) to capture some prevailing thoughts of mine, so that as time passes I'll find it easier to write non-fiction. To me, even non-fiction must have some kind of story, or a framework someone can follow. I'm not sure if I have that specifically in TWAH. I'll have to polish the story, and do some heavy re-writing (like any book) but I think the "theme" of non-fiction needs to be captured in a certain viewpoint, consistently over time. The Emotion can't vary too much, nor can the feel.
So, I think this is me trying to document my thoughts for another project possibly in the future.

The Futile Fight

My friend and I are heading to a party called Wet in Georgetown. Its Saturday, and I spent Friday night at their place in Silver Spring to escape the noisy ravages of the Northwest DC. I like Silver Spring. It has a clean, well-combed vibe to it that always makes me think of family and kids. This is probably a biased perspective, because there is a particular area in downtown Silver Spring where they have Astroturf setup. On any given sunny day, you will see parents with their children roaming about, tossing projectiles and spilling liquids. My friends live no where near this area. They are about ten minutes up the road in a quiet housing complex. A friend of mine, a cool Italian guy who uses "Fuck" after every tenth word, tells me to head to this place called the Blue Gin for a free party.
"Come man, its gonna be great you know, fucking hot bitches and what not my man. " I laughed as he said this. However, it was Saturday night and like many stressed out college seniors, I needed something to do.
Whenever I think of Georgetown, two things come to mind. A certain smell, and an image of a certain strip on Wisconsin Avenue. I'm assuming these two things pop into my head first because when I went to the Georgetown Mall for the first time, it had a very odd smell, like someone sprayed Gucci No.5 in a bathroom occupied by a troop of red bull-amped chimps. The second image i'm sure is based on my previous French Connection obsession (possibly 30% of my wardrobe is french connection) and that was one of the first stores I would frequent. My two images aren't the common representation of the town. I'd say that most people (who dont' live in Georgetown) think of two things when they go there, Money and stuffy people. I personally don't like to cover everyone in a demographic under a certain blanket, but being at a club in Georgetown really does remind me of some of the really "uptown" parties I go to in Jamaica. The normal setup seems to be a lot of very nicely dressed people standing up, talking with people they are familiar with, and then ignoring everyone else. I'm sure this formula doesn't hold all the time, but like most people who don't live in Georgetown. I don't care. That's just how it seems.
I'm venturing to the club this night simply because the week has been filled with stressful night and annoyingly long classes. Like most parts of the city, finding parking is next to impossible and I end up going to the club first while my friend looks for parking. For September 15, it is unusually chilly and I frown slightly thinking of the grisly winter about to come. Blue Gin is in an alley between an Abercrombie & Fitch and Benneton store. I recognize the spot, the last time I went there was with my very assertive Moroccan friend who scoffed at the prices of the drinks and demanded to go somewhere else. After I schmooze with the bouncer a bit, he checks my name on a list to get into the private party upstairs and I go inside. Its a very nice, high-endish lounge with soft lighting, a few nice bars with plush leather couches and glass tables. The crowd is relatively mixed in the usual Georgetown way, a delicate sprinking of mostly white, mostly Middle-eastern people then a drop of two of any other minority groups. I go upstairs and greet my friend Mr. B who's with his girlfriend. We have a few moments of small talk and in between I survey the crowd.
Everyone seems like the white collar types, milling about on their third drink. I see a lot of cute girls, but i'm not inspired. Its only 11:30. I'll have to see if the mood of the place changes in an hour or so before I can dub the event a "flop" or "hot". I get a drink and sip on it while I watch the crowd some more. The birthday girl is a slim, attractive blonde with pretty eyes. She walks around almost on her toes, smiling and taking pictures. I hear its her twenty-fifth birthday. I immediately assume she is wealthy, has a GREAT job and would never speak to me.
I tell her happy birthday the next time she walks past me.

By the time my friend finds parking and comes into the club, I've been talking with Mr. B's girlfriend and her two friends and found some interesting information. One friend will be leaving on Tuesday to go to New York to be a producer for the MSNBC show HardBall. The other girl, when I asked her "What do you do?" she smiled, looked to the left as if to say ' How do I say this?'. Then her friend, Mr. B's girlfriend touched me and said "She's a dancer." "A dancer?" I said repeated. "No, she's actually a stripper."
They both laugh and I take another look at her friend. She is attractive, with long jet black hair, and a shapely body, but I wouldn't have pegged her for a stripper. I hadn't even been to a strip club in DC yet. In between calling a strip club a "Gentleman's club" and laughing amongst each other about something happening near the bar, I left and went downstairs. The music had started to pickup now,( meaning the DJ got smart and started playing Hip-hop) and I headed to the dance floor. This is where the "Futile Fight" begins. The first thing I notice is what I call the "defensive formation". Like the Roman Phalanx, women who go to clubs have a formation I call "The Ring." Its pretty explanatory. The girls form a ring and dance and laugh amongst each other while any guy who tries to break this formation generally gets rejected. The only thing I've noticed with this military exercise is that as 'the ring' grows in size if two or three guys come in all at once, its hard for the other friends to help them reject the fellow,s.

I'm on the dance floor and I see three rings. In the corner six very cute girls dance with themselves with their backs turned to everyone. Beside me, a gorgeous Euro-looking chick and her two Indian girlfriends are dancing three millimeters apart. Behind me, a gaggle of black chicks dance in a similar ring. To the left of them, a mixed bag of Asian and white girls are dancing as well, also in a ring. I see four guys try with different groups to get a dance, or to get in, and they are all shot down. I don't try anything. I'm dancing by myself and having enough fun to not be depressed. I've seen "the Ring" so many times that if I go to a club where there are more than five rings I either dance by myself or leave shortly after. A friend of mine once told me, "Guys are so grimy in the club. All they want to do is grab your ass and try and sleep with you that night. When I go to the club, I go to have fun, so I don't dance with anyone."
To this, I chuckled. Of course there are guys who go to clubs to do just that, but most guys are insecure, working and have little time to socialize. They go to clubs to meet women, end of story. So i'm thinking, If I go to ten clubs in a night, and let's say 90% of the girls who I like don't want to dance/meet anyone. Then no matter how good looking you are (this actually might help ) you might be fighting an uphill battle. Add to that the fact that a lot of people dress and act the same, so there is nothing really to distinguish you from anyone else. 99% of the black guy in the club had shaved heads and had on similar outfits (light coloured dress shirts, nice pants). 90% of the white guys in the club were dressed in a similar fashion also. What distinguishes everyone? Well, for the black guys they had different heights, skin tones and builds. For the white guys, they had different color hair, heights, and builds. But let's say for the most part everyone looks "the same". What's going to make you anymore interesting than me? Since all black men supposedly can dance, what's to make a girl want to dance with me more than the next guy? Or, what's to make a girl think this guy over here has a better job than that guy?

Futile fight? Who knows. But I left the club after an hour and headed to Wonderland, on 11th Street in Northwest DC. I headed upstairs to the dance floor and a slovenly looking man in a red shirt rested his hand on my chest.
"You're overdresed." he said.
I glanced at his hand. He patted my chest again.
"You're overdressed."
He walked away and I smiled to myself. In a Sports Jacket I was overdressed for Wonderland, which is a residential bar in Columbia Heights (everyone was wearing a t-shirt). But I was more comfortable. Wonderland broke the mold. There were no rings. I might not have a victory, but its not that much of a futile fight.

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