A Pilgrim’s Digression

Whenever I see a man wearing a pink shirt, the theme from Miami Vice always starts playing in my head. I think it was Don Johnson who first popularized pink in men’s fashion back in the eighties.

I went out to lunch today and saw not one but two young men in khakis and pink dress shirts, walking down the sidewalk together along with three other men. I don’t even know if the term yuppie applies anywhere in modern culture, anymore, but that’s what I thought of: yuppies named Brad and Chip, blond hair and pink dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up. All they needed was a sweater draped over their back, the arms tied around their neck.

I see a lot of pink shirts on men, and I wonder what it means. Or maybe the better question, as my therapist would say, is what does it mean to me?

So I went out to lunch and made the mistake of eating at Bullfeathers, and I ended up having to charge my meal, because it came to $20.00 with the tip. Lunch specials are supposed to be cheap. That’s why they’re called “specials,” right? I wanted to eat healthy, and the lunch special looked healthy: blackened swordfish on a bed of rice, spinach on the side. Itw as delicious. In truth it was probably the beer I had to drink with it that ran up my tab. But it was draft beer! Again, draft beer is supposed to be cheaper.

Behind the bar where I was sitting, in front of the tiers of liquor bottles stacked against the bar mirror, there were three Grey Goose Vodka bottles sitting on a small lighted pedestal. The lights shone up through the bottom of the bottles, giving the wraparound label almost the appearance of a 3-D effect. I wasn’t drunk, but I felt I would get sick if I looked at those bottles too long. I can imagine what someone on a real bender would think.

The geese are coming for us! Look out!

I’m just woolgathering today, the result of not having much worth writing about lately.

Leaving Bullfeathers and heading north on 1st st., when I got to the Capitol Hill Club, two important-looking old farts cut me off as they exited the club. I had to stop and let them cut into traffic on the sidewalk. They were talking importantly together, and a photographer was stumbling along in front of them, walking backwards as he snapped photos.

I wondered for a moment if the two men were really talking, or if like extras on a movie set they were just mouthing their ABCs to give the semblance of talking about important state affairs.

The only one of the men I thought I recognized looked like a slightly seedy Robert Wagner. He had Strom Thurmond-red hair and wore an expensive, light brown suit and white cowboy boots. The other old guy was dressed in an ordinary blue suit. They looked very important.

Too bad I have no clue who they are.

That’s usually the way it is, though. I consider myself fairly current on the news and important figures of the day. I could pass one of Sean Hannity’s man on the street quizzes.

“Name one of the Supreme Court Justices.”

Anthony Kennedy.

“Who is Nancy Pelosi?”

House Majority Leader.

However, I rarely recognize anyone I feel I ought to recognize, when I see them on the street.

There is a congressman I see almost every morning at Starbucks. The first time I saw him, I was behind him in line, and he held things up by asking the cashier for one of the little green, plastic plugs for his coffee cup lid.  She had to get some from elsewhere in the store.

I remember feeling irritated that I had to stand in line behind this dork.

When she brought a small baggie of the devices and put them in an empty coffee cup on the register, he took one and held it up and showed it to me.

“This keeps your coffee from splashing out when you’re driving, or even when you’re walking down the street.”

“Oh really?” I said. “I never knew what they were for.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling, “You just put it in the little hole on your coffee cup lid…” (he demonstrated the proper technique) “…and not a drop will slosh out on you.”

“Wow, I never knew,” I said.

“I didn’t either,” he said, “But then the inventor came to my office and gave me a whole box of them.”

I imagined some greaseball coffee cup plug magnate passing a box of his product to the congressman–a box whose bottom was lined with a layer of bound, crisp hundred dollar bills.

“Supposedly they are working on making their product more green friendly. You know, recyclable and all.”

“That would be great,” I said.

He was still standing at the counter stirring his coffee when my coffee arrived. Since the Congressman was watching, I felt obligated to take one of the plugs, and he smiled in self-satisfied fashion as I sealed the drinking hole in my lid.

Now I see him every morning, and he watches to see if I take one of these miracles devices for my cup. If I neglect to do so, he looks disappointed.

I suppose at this point we have become friendly enough I could introduce myself and find out who he is and what state he represents, but there is a stubborn, taciturn streak in me that refuses to acknowledge power. If I introduced myself and found out his name, everything would change. It’s sort of like in those horror movies, how a demon can be controlled if you know its name. Except this works the exact opposite: if I don’t know his name, I still maintain some vestige of power of my own. He’s just an ordinary nobody to me, as long as I don’t know his name.

So I smile when I see him in the morning, and he smiles back. And I like to think he looks faintly troubled. I like to think he wonders why I don’t try to find out who he is. Everyone wants to be recognized here in Washington.

Walking down the street just today, I heard some young upstart in a suit say to another, “I want to own this town.” Maybe he was being facetious. I hope he was being facetious.

Me, I’m on my way to being a curmudgeon. I prefer not to recognize anyone, thereby making everyone equal. Recognizing someone as a person of importance changes the dynamic between people slightly. I still remember dining in the cafeteria once when Henry Waxman and his entourage came in. I recognized him easily enough. Others did as well; he is quite distinctively ugly. People looked at him; people whispered. You could tell he liked it.

I don’t want to give important people the privilege of acknowledgment. Not that they would care one way or the other–there are enough people willing to give them as much attention as they would like. It’s just a personal thing with me. I’ve got my pride, probably too much of it.