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In the fall of 2007, as an undergraduate French major at Georgetown University, I worked across the street from campus as an intern for the French Embassy Press Office on Reservoir Rd. My responsibil…

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The year I turned 16
my parents and I were staying
in a corporate housing hotel
in Rosslyn across from 
Arlington Cemetery

on a floor we shared for a 
weekend with three dozen faithful
donning fanny…

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The brilliant has a post up on his Substack about ice breakers; I thought I’d take the opportunity to reiterate here how much I, too, dislike them. Please don’t ask me to introduce myself along with a food, object or animal that begins with the same letter as my first name. I can only pretend to like apples so much. Same with aardvarks. I’m more of a platypus person, really, but my parents didn’t have the foresight to name me Patti. If you ask me in a professional setting what keeps me up at night, and I’m honest and admit, say, “whether wisdom tooth extraction1 has a noticeable effect on one’s jaw line and ages you by 20 years overnight,” then I’ll feel like an idiot when the man who takes the floor after me thinks of an insomnia-inducing dilemma that’s actually job related, like how he might optimize systems integration processes for C-suite clients headquartered in EMEA. Two truths and a lie? You already asked me about food so you know I love a good anchovy.2 Let’s see. I once performed at The Lincoln Theatre, which is the same venue where Dave Chapelle taped his 2023 Netflix special, Dreamer. I drive a Subaru Outback but I’m not a lesbian. In February, I dined at Philippe by Philippe Chow on Wharf Street SW with a good friend and her husband; we shared the Peking duck and closed out our evening with a nightcap at Crystal City Restaurant, a nondescript Gentleman’s Club located next to a 7-113 and adjacent Kabob Palace in Arlington, in a business district renamed “National Landing” to appeal to Jeff Bezos.4 The dancers exceeded my expectations; all head-to-toe butterfly tattoos color-coordinated to match their lingerie, but I kept getting distracted by a bottle of Windex on the barstool just off center-stage. If you’re going to disinfect a surface — a stripper pole, say — and immediately disrobe against it, isn’t Seventh Generation the healthier choice?

My concern about chemicals comes from my mother. These days, she worries mostly about glyphosate — the active ingredient in Monsanto’s controversial weed killer, RoundUp. Her chemical sensitivity developed in rural Georgia, where we lived circa 1992; our neighbors worked for Lockheed Martin and it’s rumored a few of them were paid off to store toxic waste on their land. I was six years old. Mom drew me baths with bottles of Evian water she heated on the stove.

Wisdom tooth extraction at least has its benefits — some models take them out to accentuate their cheekbones! My friend Travis, who still lives in Lockheed Martin land and drinks the groundwater, lost most all of his teeth for no apparent cosmetic reason.5

You’re right that I should try La Grande Boucherie at 14th and G. It seems like the kind of place a girl named Alicia who drinks Apérol Spritz would go, and she will. But I’ll admit I balk at the prices. The thing I love about France — the “real” France, say, James Salter’s France — quality is accessible. In the village where my host family raised me, a demi-sec champagne from the neighbors won’t set you back more than 15 euro, and a perfect meal is an apéro dînatoire, featuring, perhaps, a cake salé6 with some apéricubes. In that vain, nothing can compare to the pandemic-shuttered restaurant Montmartre, a 20-year staple of Capitol Hill, where rabbit leg with truffled linguine never cost more than $30. My ex, the Parisian lawyer, used to take me there on date night and always gave his compliments to the chef. He liked to choose the wine — more often than not, a bottle of Sancerre.7 We broke up partly because he never realized I (sometimes) prefer red wine and also because he insisted I couldn’t get hired in Paris as a stripper.8

If my jawline doesn’t heal, I might have to accept he’s right.

Various Things I’m Reading / Watching / Listening to in My Post-Wisdom Teeth Extraction Chipmunk-Era Convalescence:

This Brené Brown9 podcast episode featuring my favorite investigative journalist, Michael Keller. This piece on a murder trial by the always eloquent and thoughtful . on interiority in fiction writing and, ergo, Edward P. Jones’ “An Orange Line Train to Ballston.” Berlin, a debut novel by Bea Setton (a bookseller’s index-card recommendation at Kramer’s in Dupont said it would appeal to fans of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar; I agree!) ’s generous hands-on editing and a powerful deep dive into juke joints by my friend and fellow Substack writer . This incisive takedown of Lauren Oyler’s No Judgment (and Freddie de Boer’s positive reception of the same.) ’ Washington Post Op-Ed and his moving eulogy at Washington National Cathedral. The incredible Baby Reindeer on Netflix and a note on Substack’s DC soirée by co-founder . (Did my invite get lost in the mail?!)

On NPR this morning, reporters evoked the chills-down-your-spine Grammy duet performance by Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs. America needed it like the Midwest has needed the rain. Then, switching topic…

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Mark is cheating on us. He delivers the news matter-of-factly, almost under his breath, to fill an already awkward pause in conversation. None of us made it through The Book of the New Sun, but he met someone who is actually interested in stories about torturers, and now they meet to discuss every Sunday. The rendez-vous are quick and on topic.1 There isn’t anything else going on, just sometimes it feels good to discuss a book with someone who actually read it.

It’s not surprising Mark would get his needs met elsewhere. I’ve been a semi-attentive participant in our conversations at best, too absorbed in my own thoughts to focus on plot. Angela wasn’t fond of Wolfe’s violence and dislikes prose with too much emotion besides. John meant to get to it but then his firm went to litigation.

The rate at which Mark reads never ceases to amaze me. He actually finished Infinite Jest. He made it through Ulysses. To make up for my boredom with genre, I’d sworn I would attentively read Moby Dick.

I didn’t read Moby Dick.

What I lack in accountability, I try to make up for in food and hospitality.  On the menu: Alison Roman’s caramelized shallot pasta, sheet pan ratatouille with goat cheese and olives, crackers and leafy green salad. I cleaned my parents’ rural home from top to bottom and replaced Dad’s piles of tangled wires and experimental gadgets with string lights atop wooden beams.

Mark et co. pull into the circular driveway out front.

“I didn’t read,” I admit. “But I did make the beds.”

“That’s OK,” Mark says. “I’d rather have clean sheets than your thoughts on Melville.”

I know what he means, but suddenly I feel taken aback. Does he not yearn to know how my brain cells fired — or would have fired — had they corralled themselves into focus? Emily pulls up a recipe for pineapple-ginger cocktails and puts Mark to work measuring mezcal. When everyone’s had a few glasses, we give up on whales and step outside to gaze at the stars. The crumbling driveway pavement makes for a makeshift pillow; we look up while lying down. My mind drifts to the white-tailed deer who graze in the yard adjacent and I wonder how concerned we should be about tics.

This book club is going on five years now. Almost long enough for me to call everyone in it a friend. Once, at the height of COVID, Mark suggested we all meet up outside the context of club. That we might go for a walk, or play socially-distanced croquet. Again came an awkward silence.

I don’t want to meet up if we’re not discussing a book, but I don’t want to read the book either.

It’s complicated, but we’re figuring it out.

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I’m hiding in the hay when some guy named Randy pulls up to our house in Dallas, Georgia with a U-Haul truck. My parents bring out cages for my three cats, one Australian cattle dog and two hamsters …

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