New York City is on a generational run this summer. Personally, I’m on a generational biking streak. Every day after work I take the B line home, change, bike the Prospect Park loop two times (or more), shower, then go to bed.

At this point in the streak, nothing gets between me and the loop. Not even a tornado watch, which is technically what happened the day in late July when the sky went black and the Citizen app kept buzzing my phone. But there was no wind so I scoffed it off like the born and bred Missouri girl I am. There were only a few other people at the park, which was a welcome change from dodging little kids running into the bike line. When the rain started, I enjoyed it. It had been a hot week. It wasn’t a problem until I biked back home down Church Ave and the water sheeting sideways was going directly into my eyes, making it hard to see on a road that is already quite unfriendly to bikes.

This probably isn’t the glamorous dispatch anyone wanted from my first month in New York. Biking around Prospect Park and getting rained on isn’t something Jay-Z and Alicia Keys sing about. But it is the truth. My body decided that moving to NYC, starting a completely different job, learning a new subway map, introducing myself to new people, and pretending none of those things were difficult required 12 hours of sleep both days of the weekend. Which has been helped very little by the fact my bedroom has an entire wall of east-facing windows and I went quite a long time without curtains.

I had no reason for not buying blinds or curtains other than just not wanting to install them. I had spent my first week assembling furniture from flat boxes: a bed frame (my first ever, actually), a desk, and a chair. When it came time for curtains, I was simply done being a person who assembles things. There are only a finite number of Allen wrenches a girl can use before giving up on domesticity altogether.

Instead, I just committed to being the Ugly Naked Girl of my apartment complex. At all hours of the day or night, someone could just look into my apartment and see what I was up to. Until one night, three weeks in, I was showing my older brother my new bedroom on Facetime and he recoiled at the sight of my free-for-all windows. Older brothers don’t get disgusted easily, they usually do the disgusting things. If he’s disgusted, it’s real.

So, I ordered the easiest blackout curtains I could find from Amazon. It is amazing how much better you can sleep when the sun isn’t shining in your face at 6:30am.

I do believe I might be acting too modest here, because despite this new characteristic of needing 12 hours of sleep to function, I am still extraordinarily outside. “Lowkey omnipresent” as someone in Tulsa once described me.

I spent the 4th of July on the roof of my building in Flatbush and could see fireworks in every direction. I stood up there while talking to my brother until it got late and someone on the street below started shooting fireworks at me. They were coming diagonally from the street below and exploding right over my head, in a very loud manner. The burning ashes fell down onto my head and bare arms as I tried to run for cover. After the third time, I learned my lesson and went back inside.

I’ve spent a large amount of time in Chinatown, it’s the perfect neighborhood for having absolutely no plans. I needed a haircut, Googled “cheap haircuts near me” from my desk in Soho, and ended up at Mian Tian Hair Saloon, where a woman skipped the part where they walked you to the sink and just dropped a big splat of shampoo directly on my hair while I remained sitting upright in the styling chair. Two spray bottles and a full lather later I felt like a frosted cake. Only then did she decide I had earned the sink after all, and washed it out, gave me a scalp massage and deep conditioning.

After this I was handed off to a male hair stylist who didn’t speak English, preferable, honestly, since I usually don’t want to talk. He asked how I wanted my hair done and I just said, “I don’t care” which must have been the right answer because he smiled and gave me a blowout in five minutes flat. I’ve never had a blowout before, and left the saloon feeling like a 1950s housewife who had just found out something devastating about her husband. I have every intention of going back every 6-8 weeks.

Two weeks later, Ada and I booked Saturday appointments at Renew Day Spa to get rid of our tech necks. We went in looking like Mindy and came out as new women. My mom called me later that night to ask about my day, “It was amazing, Ada and I got massages in Chinatown.”

“Oh really? What was it like?” She asked.

“Well,” I started dramatically, pulling out yogurt, strawberries, and dark chocolate to make my favorite evening snack. “The waiting room was in a different building than the spa. So this woman came into the waiting room, took us outside, down the street, into a different building. We got into the elevator and went to the basement.. Then she put us in separate rooms and told us to take off all our clothes. Then she lotioned me up and touched me all over my body.”

“Lovely,” Mother responded, perturbed, and changed the subject.

I’m not preoccupied with the lettuce problem or The Upper East Side Disease like a lot of New Yorkers, although I did fall victim to the stomach bug last month. I woke up Monday morning feeling odd, which I dismissed as just being a woman. It wasn’t until I was stuck in a subway car on the Manhattan Bridge between DeKalb Avenue and Grand Street that I realized something was very wrong. Since I have POTS, my body has developed an irritating inability to combat any kind of sickness without hot flashes and blacking out.

Listen, you pass out on the B train ONE TIME and suddenly your mother texts every morning asking if you’ve made it to work alright like you’re on parole.

Since I was already basically at work, I went into the office, sat in the air conditioning, got sick in the bathroom, then blotted my face with paper towels trying to revive myself. It reminded me of the sweaty day I put myself back together in the bathroom of the Lighthouse Campus in Greenpoint before sitting for a Tribeca Film Festival talk.

I got back on the B train to go home, but I did not head to Prospect Park. I worked from home the entire week, sitting at my desk from 9am-5pm and spending the rest of the day half asleep in bed watching H2O: Just Add Water (with the blinds open).

I have been to way too many readings at Nightclub 101 and I forget everytime how hot it gets in that basement. I found a favorite thrift store in Flatbush. I’ve gone to the beach most weekends. I have yet to attend any parties, which is really hard on me because I looove to party.

I’ve been manhandled by change this summer, but the one throughline is strawberries and dark chocolate. I go through three containers a week. Luckily, there are plenty of fruit stands between the subway and my door. I wash them, melt down dark chocolate chips, dip, and eat for dessert every night.

Talk soon.

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Personally I don’t think DC has a labor problem, I think it has a leisure problem. As both a workaholic and an economist, I am qualified to make this distinction.

One of the core equations you’re taught in microeconomic theory is the labor versus leisure equation. The equation is quite simple:

Daily consumption = wage(24 hours - leisure) + non-labor income

Every person has 24 hours in a day. Every hour you spend working is an hour you cannot spend on leisure, meaning that you’re constantly making a tradeoff. Your wage is essentially the “cost” of your leisure. If you earn $50/hour, then every hour you choose to relax is costing you $50 you could have earned. A higher wage means that rest is more expensive.

In salaried jobs, the marginal wage for extra hours is effectively zero. By the model’s logic, you should work the minimum acceptable hours, because additional hours cost you leisure and pay you nothing extra.

There are two effects at play when wage starts to increase.

The substitution effect says: “leisure just got more expensive, so work more.”

The income effect says: “you’re richer now, so you can afford to buy more of everything, including leisure. Work less.”

In the country’s capital, the substitution effect runs rampant. Jobs on the Hill are prestigious, but barely lucrative especially by private sector standards. Instead of monetary compensation, employees are paid in social status, access, and the feeling of proximity to power. Since the rewards are non-monetary, the income effect never kicks in. Every wage in that economy is a rumor about who you might meet, what you might become, or what door may open if you stay late enough. This kind of “status economy” acts as a broken wage signal. There is no salary at which a congressional staffer suddenly decides they have enough prestige.

A lot of times, this lifestyle can continue to flourish because of non-labor income. It comes in many forms past the stereotypical trust fund. Like an unpaid internship a parent is still subsidizing, the expensive studio someone else is covering, or just the family friend who made a phone call. The status economy continues to be underpaid and is cross-subsidized by people who can afford to be.

In 2013, John Pencavel published the study “The Productivity of Working Hours” with Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). The goal was to “examine the relationship between [workers] output and their working hours.” In the study, Pencavel finds that productivity per hour declines sharply after 49 hours of work per week. After 55 hours, the decline is so severe that workers become no more productive working 70 hours than 55. The extra 15 hours are, in an economic sense, pure waste.1

Aristotle had more to say about labor and leisure than most economists. He argued that leisure is not a reward for work but the point of it. He also explains there is a difference in relaxation (recharging the body for more labor) and leisure (the space in which a person becomes fully human). Many people mistake relaxation for leisure, or waste their leisure because they have never been taught leisure, only labor.

After four weeks of living in NYC, I returned to DC this past weekend to move the rest of my things. The oversized winter coats I had kept in the closet of the apartment I’m still paying for because I left before my lease ended. The bike that was still chained up in the backyard because I didn’t have room for it in the first minivan. I missed walking through the homes in Shaw and riding the metro with people who know how to let you exit before they start entering the train. DC is so calm and quiet compared to NYC and of course has many more people in suits.

When I moved to DC I thought my workaholism would translate into becoming obsessive and excellent at my job. In college, the workaholism was scattered throughout many places, not wanting to use it all up on one thing. I studied economics, art studio, and Spanish, I wrote about football for the city newspaper and photographed for the athletics department, I did internships with fashion magazines and private equity companies. I expected my workaholism to flair up and flourish, and maybe start to be directed in one direction instead of many.

Instead, working a full-time job confused me, because for the first time I started to question what the point was of all the ambition.

Which I think happens to everyone at a certain point. Just last weekend, one of my friends from high school, Ada, brought it up. We were sitting on a shady bench in StuyTown, watching the people workout at the outdoor gym.

“I was so ambitious throughout high school and college,” she said. “There was always something to work towards. Like going to a good university or getting a good job. But now I’ve been at my job for two and half years, and now when I’m still at work at 8pm, I’m like What am I even working towards? There’s nothing.”

As someone who has already had and quit her first job out of college, I feel very educated with this feeling. When I was considering leaving my job, I kept remembering how badly I had once wanted it. The memories made me feel guilty. I thought I should be grateful for the position I was in, because just a year earlier it had been such a success to get. I would think to myself, “What’s the point in being ambitious if it just lands me in a job that I want to quit after 10 months?”

My parents started giving me the same advice they have given over and over in college: Stop thinking so much about work!! Spend more time doing things you actually love. In other words, everyone wanted me to stop thinking so much about labor and learn how to leisure. And for the first time in my life, I started to take their advice.

“This sounds super cheesy and European,” I said, turning to Ada. “But I think you just have to stop asking yourself ‘What am I working towards now?’ and you have to find things that make your life feel larger than a career.”

Obviously, she wasn’t satisfied with the answer. And I’m still not entirely satisfied with it either. As two girls who spent 23 years of their lives striving for greatness, we’re still looking for more. When we meet up for our weekly dinners, we still talk about work and possible side gigs to earn us more money. But at least we’re leaving work at 5pm and going out to dinner, which is more than we did in high school.

I did begin teaching myself how to leisure in Washington, DC. Which is a strange decision for a workaholic living in a city of workaholics, but also surprisingly easy given everything DC has to offer.To me, the ingredients of Aristotelian leisure seem to be wisdom, contemplation, friendship, and beauty. I only spent 11 months living in DC, but I believe that the city has all of these things in abundance in a way I have yet to experience in another city.

I <3 you DC.

My favorite ways to leisure in DC:

Wisdom is in the 17 free Smithsonian Museums, the Profs & Pints lectures in the basement of Penn Social, the dozens of independent book stores, and how every person you talk to is smarter and more ambitious than the last.

Book More Travels Substack

Washington DC- A Bookish Guide (And complete list of bookstores!)

Hot take- but I am not a museum person. I much prefer to experience the cities culture then stay inside all day. Don’t get me wrong, there are some exceptions (obviously I visited the Van Gogh Museum when in Amsterdam for example) but walking around a city and really experiencing it is my favorite…

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6 months ago · Book More Travels

Contemplation is sitting in the courtyard of the National Portrait Museum after seeing Obama’s portrait, painted by my favorite artist.

Friendships come fast in DC, arguably the easiest place in the country to make friends. I joined a Volo soccer team in Shaw as a free agent and the team adopted me into their college friend group. I met my best friend, Tanvi, at a book club that we never went back to.

Beauty comes in many shapes and sizes. Like a large brown trench coat someone mistakes for a Burberry or a perfect size 7.5 black moto boot. Two of my favorite thrift stores are in Columbia Heights, Rosario’s and Frugalista. In addition to Fia’s Fabulous Finds in Petworth. Or seeing the baby elephants at the zoo or riding your bike down the Anacostia River Trail.

• Taking my computer and using the free Wi-Fi to work outside at the tables at CityCenterDC in Mt. Vernon Triangle

• Spending all summer long in Banneker Rec pool

• Taking my parents to Old Town Alexandria, riding the trolley, and going in and out of all the stores

• Taking cycling & pilates classes at Vida (City Visa) gym

• Eating froyo at FroZenYo with Tanvi after a long day of thrifting

• Writing on Sunday mornings on the patio of Big Bear Cafe while the neighborhood farmers market was happening outside

• Getting drinks at Death & Co

• Having horrible experiences on the third floor of Sauf Haus at 2am

• Attending writers happy hours at The Writers Center in Bethesda and going to monthly readings at The Inner Loop

• Eating burgers at Shaw’s Tavern

• Eating chocolate croissants at Un Je Ne Sais Quoi before going to the holiday markets

• Watching concerts and going to oddly themed raves at DC9 Nightclub

• Being super hot and sweaty but watching great shows inside The Pocket at 7DrumCity

• Finding a dress for my mom at VINTAGE VINTAGE VINTAGE and then finding her old McDonalds uniform she wore when she was a teenager that they were selling for $60

• Taking photos to be framed for work at Blick Art Materials but taking an extra 20min to walk up and down the aisles

• Getting my nails done at Four Seasons Nails and Spa

• Sitting on the patio with my Volo team at Dacha Beer Garden in Shaw while it poured down rain

• Attending 730DC events at The DC Arts Center

• Watching movies in the theatre at the French Embassy

• Taking my parents to walk The Wharf and see the live seafood shop at the en

• Seeing how the Barbie Pond on Avenue Q changes with the holidays

• Sleeping on a blanket in Meridian Hill Park

• Making my own perfume at Mecca Perfume

Exactly three weeks ago today, I put in my two weeks notice at my first job out of college. My parents were worried about me the entire weekend leading up, as it was the first job I ever quit. But on that Monday morning on May 11, 2026, a date I will keep the same way people keep wedding anniversaries or favorite numbers, I practically skipped the entire mile to my office and couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. I bought a cinnamon roll from Panera, heated it up in the office microwave, licked the frosting off my fingers and Slacked my boss, “Could you give me a call this morning when you have a minute?”

I sat back and ate my cinnamon roll and wondered if I had officially become a bad person on May 11, 2026 just because I wanted him to feel the slight pang of anxiety in his gut when he read my Slack message, the same anxiety he had often incited in me.

I had signed the offer letter five days earlier and not told anyone. In game theory, this is called information asymmetry. I LOVE information asymmetry. In organizations that run on power the same way cars run on gas, the whole engine of the place is devoted to making sure everyone knows exactly where they stand. I had spent 11 months as an entry level employee, trying to get good work done while constantly being reminded of where I stood. And then I signed a piece of paper and, overnight, the whole thing became very funny!

I kept myself muted on Zoom calls where they wanted me to defend why I started an email with “Hello” instead of “Hi.” I giggled at things that used to make me spiral. The thing about power is that those who have it tend to underestimate how easy it is for someone to take it from them.

The Thursday before my final day, they sent me an exit interview with 30 questions. I stayed up until 2am and wrote five pages which included a line I plagiarized from ’s Guest Lecture on . I figured the odds of her reading my exit interview were sufficiently low, so I would be alright.

But that is ENOUGH about my old job. My life has turned onto the next chapter. Welcome to my life in NYC.

The first time I visited NYC I was 13 and my older brother was touring NYU. While he was on the tour with my dad, I REALLY had to pee. My mom bought soda so I could use their bathroom, but as soon as the worker unlocked the bathroom door for me, a naked homeless man ran past us holding his backside and locked himself in the single stall bathroom. The worker apologized and took us next door and told them to let me use the bathroom. For years, that was my primary memory of New York.

The second time I went to NYC was the summer of 2023, right after my junior year of college. Instead of accepting a finance internship in Oklahoma that probably would have resulted in a full-time position post-grad, I decided to take the summer intensive program at Parsons School of Design. During the two courses I lived in the 6 person, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom dorms of Kerrey Hall located at 5th Avenue and 14th Street. During the two week break in between the courses, I illegally sublet a one bedroom apartment in Williamsburg.

The first course was fashion merchandising where my professor, Joan, radiated the glamorous star power of someone who was perpetually photo-ready, even at 9am. At the beginning, I felt out of place with my economics degree and finance internships amongst a sea of people who had their own fashion brands and were studying PR and marketing. Joan was the one who told me, “Amongst the artists, you are the best economist. Amongst the economists, you are the best artist. That is your power.”

The second course was photography & video. I minored in photography and already worked for my university’s athletics department and the city’s minor league hockey team so I felt more confident walking in on the first day. We went on photo field trips to Coney Island & the High Line, went gallery hopping in Chelsea, and I completed photo projects on the underground music scene in NYC and the wildlife of Manhattan.

Now I am BACK in New York City to work in fashion after 11 months of living in Washington D.C. and working in international trade. My parents helped me make the move from DC to Brooklyn. On the second day, I took them into Soho and showed them the store of the brand I now work for, and the outside of the office on Broadway. My mom started crying and they both started taking pictures of the building, blocking tourists who just wanted to go shopping.

My parents traveled home over the weekend to get back to their jobs and I have the entire week to myself until I start my new job on June 8th.

On Sunday I walked the short distance from my apartment to Prospect Park because it was nice outside. I just walked around and watched families grilling and couples lying in the grass and people paddling rowboats across the lake. I walked down the trail until I felt like leaving.

Yesterday I took the subway into Manhattan because I read there is a froyo boom happening in NYC and I feel the need to be the judge of that. I ended up in the West Village with a cup of chocolate vegan froyo from Mimi’s loaded with cookie dough and M&Ms. The thing was so enormous and good that afterwards I needed to sit down. I found a little park where two teams of middle school girls were playing softball so I sat on a bench and watched them and thought about when I was a middle school girl playing softball in the summer at a park.

By the time you read this, I will be on the D train headed for Coney Island. My friend from Los Angeles called it an “insult to beaches everywhere” but I am from Missouri and I’m pretty sure a beach is just ocean and sand. The only thing I’m anxious about is getting sunburnt, which feels quite manageable and temporary.

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“Callie, I’m torn between being happy for you over your new job and worried about you being so close to the capitol. At least Trump is a nice old grandpa and not a letch like Clinton was when Monica Lewinsky caught his eye. I guess she was a bit different than you are, too. Are you going to know ANYONE when you move there? I know you have been around a lot, and I suppose your parents will help you find a place to live, but I have visions of you being like a lonely little Petunia in an onion patch.”

I am in DC because of my job. A job growing increasingly indistinguishable from my life. Eight months in I got a promotion and have spent the months since wondering if I made a mistake by being good at something. I think about work all day and dream about it at night to cover any gaps. In one dream they hired a sniper to take me out. I got away, but still. I read “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu before bed to prepare. I wake up sick, can’t eat breakfast, walk a mile to the office, and arrive starving.

One evening in early March I went to bed sick and woke up the next morning even sicker. The body aches, hot flashes, and dizziness indicated I had a fever. My boss told me, “It’s just allergies, it’s your first spring in DC. Allergies are not a legitimate reason to work from home.” NOTHING WAS BLOOMING YET. I did not own a human thermometer, so I unwrapped the meat thermometer my mother had recently sent me and stuck it under my armpit. According to the meat thermometer, I was severely undercooked.

Nine months into a job that had me sticking meat thermometers in my armpits, living in a town that insists networking events are a way to make friends and produces men who ask for my LinkedIn instead of my phone number, I took my first PTO days, five of them, and flew to Sacramento with my parents to visit my grandma.

Similar to how I am too abnormal for corporate and too normal for freelance, I feel the same kind of in-between with the east coast and the west coast. I am far too high-strung for the west coast’s languid ease, but too unserious for the east coast’s work-is-life severity. I swear, at every event I’m at, within the first 10 minutes of meeting someone, I know their title, their committee, their previous appointments, and the name of the Senator they worked for in 2012. I suppose this means I really do belong somewhere in the middle, even though I always felt a bit too weird in Missouri and Oklahoma.

Across the country in California, my grandmother’s house is not exactly peaceful either, at least not in the conventional sense. I sleep in the sunroom off the living room, a room with folding closet doors instead of real ones. Every noise in the house and backyard carries. In the mornings, my dad forgets to run the bathroom fan and the shower steam sets off the hallway smoke alarm.

My grandmother is also not the normal, storybook definition of a grandmother. She does not bake or knit. She beheads the rats in her garden with a shovel and leaves hostile notes for the postman about delivering her junk mail. She eats all of the chocolate out of my bag of candy at 1am. She tells me stories about growing up on the farm in Iowa and tending to her chickens, which she hated. She was supposed to collect the eggs and clean them every day but if an egg had chicken poop on it, she would just throw it at the tree instead, so as not to have to clean it.

In the evenings, my grandma, who is hard of hearing, blasts the television until midnight. I fall asleep to Fox News or Gunsmoke bleeding through the slats. At midnight she cuts the television and runs down the hallway on the squeaky walker to open the front door for cool air because she doesn’t believe in running the HVAC after dark.

There’s something genuinely soothing about falling asleep faintly listening to Gunsmoke (especially when your only other option is Fox News). It’s like being a kid again and falling asleep on the couch next to my parents, but being just awake enough to notice they’ve turned off my show and put on their own. Someone else is handling things, and nothing is my problem right now.

On Tuesday, my grandma wanted to take me to a gold mine in Nevada County, California. It was an hour-long drive to Empire Mine State Historic Park, 856 acres of land above one of the oldest, deepest, and richest gold mines in California with 367 miles of now abandoned or flooded mine shafts. Empire Mine ran for 100 years and extracted 5.8 million ounces of gold before it shut down in 1956.

My 96-year-old grandmother is quick and nimble with her walking sticks but when the groundskeeper offered her an off-road wheelchair, she immediately said yes and told me to push her. Luckily she is also quite tiny and the wheelchair had hand breaks or else I might have lost her a few times going downhill.

We spent most of the day at the mine where we walked through the gardens, toured the Bourn Mansion, descended 40ft into a mineshaft, and met a volunteer blacksmith who was flirting with my grandma – and she flirted right back. When we returned home, I heated up Chinese takeout and fell asleep watching Hawaii Five-0 in my parents’ bedroom at 6pm.

The next day, my cousin and her boyfriend came for game night. We played Apples to Apples and forced grandma to play, despite her protests. When it was her turn to judge, I put down the card “Lil Peep” just to see her wrinkle her eyebrows and angrily spit out the name, and see my cousin burst out laughing.

“I don’t even know what that is, what is a Lil Peep?” She stuttered, throwing the cards down into my cousin’s lap. “I don’t want to play anymore.”

Instead she sat in her favorite chair and read her book.

My favorite part about visiting my grandma is how slow everything moves. She doesn’t wake up before noon. I take my parents hiking around Folsom Lake to ogle at the backyards of rich houses in Granite Bay. We walk to the froyo place on the corner and eat outside. I thrift in stores that carry summer clothes instead of pre-worn blazers. I only realize I’m sunburnt when the hot water hits me in the shower.

For the entire week nobody asks what I do for work or whether I dreamed of working on the Hill as a little girl. The only time my grandma asks about work is on my last night, while I bleach her hair in the kitchen.

“Are you happy?” She asks, which I was hoping she wouldn’t. It’s a question worth sitting on.

She was right last summer that I was a petunia in an onion patch. But the onion patch was the job I was coming for, not the loneliness.

Sacramento didn’t fix everything, but for seven days I got to be someone’s granddaughter instead of someone’s employee, and it created an inexplicable difference in my body.

The lights dimmed and The Montaines took the stag first. Drummer Charlie Christofferson walked on and sat down. Bassist Jack Flood, lead guitarist Jack O’Brien, and lead vocalist and guitarist Alec O’Brien followed suit, picking up their instruments with their backs to the crowd.

The moment the music started and the three turned around to face the crowd, everyone around me screamed, and I knew at that moment I had come across something special. They all wore sunglasses, even though the lighting was so dark I worried the photos would come out grainy. Alec performed until he had to shed the black denim jacket he wore over a white tank top, and his sunglasses fell from his face. While Alec sang, Jack and Flood met behind him, riffing on the guitar and bass together.

When their set was over, I felt like the night was over. Is it time to go home? The main act had just finished. I couldn’t believe I had just watched an opener. I stayed for the following bands but kept thinking about The Montaines. Part of the thrill of The Montaines is the sense that everyone in the room believes they have discovered the band slightly ahead of the rest of the world.

Eight months later, we met on the roof of one of the most culturally relevant and highly regarded venues in Washington, the same night The Montaine’s were playing their sold out show just one floor down. DC9 has been a trusted incubator for indie music in DC since its establishment in 2004 and rose to the reputation of being the best place in DC to discover rising bands before they go on to dominate larger venues. The 1975 and Phantogram both played their first US tours at DC9, along with other notable alumni including Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Mac DeMarco.

Tonight, though, it’s The Montaines’ turn.

Of the four members, only Flood is from DC. He grew up in the city but went to college in North Carolina with Charlie, which is when he started getting into music. When COVID hit, Flood was looking for new hobbies. Easily bored by the limits of a Rubik’s Cube, he picked up a $40 bass instead.

“I started playing music because I saw Charlie playing music. I thought it looked like fun, so I started playing because of him,” said Flood.

Charlie, who has the most illustrious music education out of the four, still has the audio files that Flood sent from his bedroom back home in the early days of learning bass.

“My older brother played music, so he would put me on whatever instrument he needed me to learn to accompany him,” said Charlie. “He had a metal band when he was like 10 and had really long hair, but we were all like shrimp.”

The anti-Catholic metal band played one gig at the local pool and for their headlining song, “Destroyers of Faith,” Charlie learned how to play the drums, then stuck with them ever since.

“Drums can be kind of inconvenient, but it turns out to be really useful if you’re trying to meet new people because everyone needs drummers.”

After college, Charlie and Flood moved to DC together. They didn’t play much music their first year back, until the pair met Jack and Alec – “blood brothers” from Boston, both living in Raleigh after college before relocating to DC for a change. Jack started learning guitar in high school when he was home sick with mono and never stopped. He performed in Battle of the Bands, where Alec watched from the audience, intrigued by his brother’s performance. Years later, Jack’s band in Raleigh needed a new head vocalist and Alec stepped into the role, beginning to write songs for them.

When Jack and Alec first arrived in DC, Alec searched for other bandmates on Bandmix, a networking app for musicians. After acclimating to the DC music world, the two pairs of brothers, only one pair related blood, found each other. Their first show was in the same spot, DC9, back in February 2025. That was when they became The Montaines as we know them today, and the rest is history.

“It almost clicked,” remembered Jack. “We had to do a little bit more rearranging but, yeah, the four of us from then on have been The Montaines as it should be.”

The chemistry between the pairs came naturally. “We’re good listeners,” added Jack. “We listen to each other, and I think that’s really it. Nobody is ever playing over each other. We’re always listening and shaping around what the other people do.”

While DC isn’t the first city an aspiring musician might think to move to, the city does a great deal to help local bands get off the ground.

“We have to give a shout out to the Business Improvement Districts,” said Flood, to which all the boys agreed. “We’ve had the opportunity to play a bunch of outdoor shows, which I think has been really good for working out songs or figuring out how people react to stuff.”

There are 13 BIDs across Washington, DC, and together they invest over $34 million per year to enhance DC’s neighborhoods, hosting 775 events annually that draw in over one million people. Among the main music events the BIDs organize is PorchFest, a free music festival where local musicians perform on front porches. The aim is to gather community, support local artists and businesses, and enjoy music. PorchFest was first hosted in Takoma Park before gaining popularity in Adams Morgan, where this year it featured over 100 performances across 25 makeshift stages. In the spring of 2021, a group of Petworth residents established a Petworth PorchFest, which has run every year since.

Due to these prolific outdoor performances, much of The Montaines’ early audience appears to have formed through proximity rather than algorithms. People hear them while walking through one of the circles, and the band spreads organically through Washington.

Later, inside the music venue waiting for The Montaines to take the stage, I met Danielle. A fan for the past year she told me she had discovered the band through one of their outdoor BID shows.

“It was last summer, I was in DuPont Circle,” Danielle said. “I was just taking a walk by myself and stumbled upon them, I took out my headphones and I was like ‘wait, this is so good!’ I sat in the Circle for a little bit and listened to their music. It was really fun.”

Since then, Danielle has been to three Montaines concerts and was excited to introduce her boyfriend to the band that night, as it was his first Montaines concert. While she likes to listen to them on Spotify, she believes it is nothing compared to seeing them live.

“I like bringing other people into the fold of the local scene, maybe the more international scene,” she said. “I feel very at home at a concert.”

Beyond the help of the BIDs, The Montaines have found a real audience in Washington, DC.

“Since living here, I feel like I’ve noticed a hunger,” said Charlie. “People get a hunger for something uniquely DC to come around for a young crowd. I think they would be very proud if some local DC band really took off that they could claim as their own, so I think there’s potential there.”

During my time in DC, I would agree with Charlie that DC is a city starving for cultural ownership. In a city where so many people are arriving and leaving for government contract jobs or internships, the idea of a “DC band” carries an emotional weight. Supporting The Montaines feels like supporting the possibility that DC can belong to people outside of politics.

The band embraces the DIY mindset of DC’s music scene as well as the layer of activism that runs through it. Last month, the 6:30 Club hosted the second annual Mosh Madness where local bands perform and compete in a 3-3 basketball tournament competing for the title of “The Best Balling Artist in the Whole DMV Who Also Signed Up For This Particular Tournament.” All proceeds are donated to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Jack has “Free Palestine” taped to the body of his guitar.

In November, The Montaines joined Lovejoy for the second half of their North American “One Simple Tour.” The tour started on November 10 in San Diego, California and ended on November 26 in New York City, with shows in seven other states in between.

“We played our first show in San Diego,” Alec said. “We weren’t expecting anything really, and we had set up a little merch stand. It was rickety, it was terrible. We barely had things set up, and we got off state and went to it, and it got flooded after the show with people. They were trying to get us to sign everything they had, we signed someone’s shoe. They were taking pictures with us. No one had wanted to do that before, it’s still really awesome. I mean, we love it, and it will always be awesome to have fans. There’s really nothing for that, I think that’s what you want at the end of the day, and getting to interact with so many awesome people who love our music.”

“People were outside our van when we were leaving waving bye to us,” Charlie added.

The mythology of bands still revolves around complete disintegration of all else in their life except music. Of dropping out, risking everything, living out of vans – the starving artist facade. But the Montaine’s belong to a different generation of musicians, one less shaped by self-destruction than by PTO requests and constant Slack notifications. Despite what being on a 16-day tour might suggest, all four of The Montaines hold full-time jobs in DC.

“We’re a corporate band,” joked Flood.

Before shows, they hang flyers in their offices and supportive coworkers often turn up, impressed their colleagues are playing venues like 9:30 Club or DC9. Fortunately, the band has never had to rely on colleagues to fill the room. Jack has been dubbed Best Guitar Player in The Office.

“My HR manager is super cool,” Charlie said, pulling out his phone to show me a photo of a Montaines sticker on a bench. “She sent me this today, her daughter found a Montaines sticker. It was actually way easier than I thought to take a month off and go play.”

Flood’s advice for fellow musicians hoping to take time off of their 9-5 to go on tour is “find one thing at your job and do it really well and don’t cross-train anyone. They have to have you back.”

Balancing full-time work and a successful band demands serious time management skills. One workaround The Montaines use is working out their songs on stage, live, in real time.

Alec, who writes all the lyrics, often experiments with different lyrics that aren’t yet finalized while on stage. For their song “Same Faces,” Alec sang it three different ways before the fourth performance, when the line clicked and he knew immediately it was finished.

“The emotion of the instrumentation will decide where the lyrics will go,” Alec said. “I still haven’t finalized the lyrics for one of the songs, so you’ll see me either move back from the microphone slightly and mumble some things, or you’ll hear some nonsense lyrics.”

“All the songs get worked out in front of everyone, and genuinely, that is how the song gets worked out,” Flood jokes.

“I think that’s what is really cool, we’re really well-rehearsed, but we’re doing something live,” said Alec. “It’s a performance, it’s not just four guys on stage playing the recordings. We’re trying to put on a performance, too, and get you to engage and have a good time and be part of an experience.”

When the four are ready to record their songs, they head out to Thirty Eight North Studio on Falls Church’s Music Row to work with audio engineer and live sound engineer Reese Clutter. The studio has won Best Music Studio at the Washington Area Music Awards (known as The Wammies) two years in a row.

The Montaines met Clutter when he ran sound for them at an outside gig at Water Park in Arlington. Impressed by his live mix, Clutter invited them into his studio to record. Ever since, The Montaines have referred to Clutter as “the fifth Beatle.”

“It’s really easy because he gets the music,” said Jack. “He hears what we’re hearing and we don’t have to tell him. He just does it.”

The Montaines have thoroughly established a following in the DC area, found an audio engineer for their albums, and toured to the opposite side of the country to still find fans. Which begs the question, what’s the goal of The Montaines?

“The Anthem,” Alec answered immediately. “I think we want to play the 9:30 Club again. I would love it to be our show, and we sell out as ‘The Montaines’ headlining. I don’t think we’re that far off either.”

The Montaines are no longer two pairs of brothers put together, but four people so closely bound it becomes impossible to distinguish the actual brothers from the honorary ones.

Follow The Montaines on Instagram here

Listen on Spotify here

Every summer camp in Missouri has some sort of religious affiliation, even if you think it doesn’t. This one was Presbyterian, since my best friend, Natalie, invited me since my straight-laced Catholics didn’t have a middle school summer camp to send kids to.

The camp sat somewhere in the middle of the state, a lake adjacent summer camp just a two-hour bus ride southwest. The cabins were adjusted to sleep more than they were originally built to hold with six bunk beds, twelve girls, one bathroom, and nowhere to store luggage. By the end of the week everything, your clothes, suitcase, hair, and Bible all smelled faintly of bug spray and algae.

What I remember most is the band.

The best thing and the worst thing about this particular Presbyterian summer camp in Central Missouri. It was the best part because at eleven, I was finally realizing the intoxicating high that was live music. No matter the genre. It becomes even more addicting when you’re away from your parents for the first time and slightly unmoored.

It was also the worst thing because the Christian rock band was made up entirely of semi-conventionally attractive young men, which meant the entire week of seventh grade camp became an exercise in longing and humiliation. An entertaining and frustrating five days of lingering after worship, inventing reasons to walk past the stage, and narrating small, inconsequential interactions.

At that age I really did not care for boys. I had spent the first half of my summer with a brother three years my senior and his friends as they attempted to perfect the art of eating as many beans as possible before trapping me in enclosed spaces to listen to them fart. To me, any boy, no matter how cute, was inseparable from the knowledge that boys were GROTESQUE. However these were not “boys.” They were not even ambiguously older teenagers, they were fully adult men. The youngest was 26; the oldest, 42.

Gavyn, the 26-year-old guitarist, was the closest I came to understanding the appeal. He was, objectively, a little cute. As if Harry Styles had been raised in the boonies of Missouri. But 26 was soooo old. I remember thinking to myself, “Gavyn is closer in age to my dad than me.” Which was entirely inaccurate, as my dad was 56 at the time.

On the second day, it rained in the afternoon so I went to the gym. I joined a basketball game and when it was over, one of the boys on my team, also in the 7th grade, said, “All the 7th grade guys are upset that the 7th grade girls are so obsessed with the boyband instead of us.”

One morning halfway through the week while seeking solitude, I took a book and climbed a tree to sit and read. Perched high in the tree, the camp counselors and youth minister sitting at the picnic table nearby were unaware of my presence. They discussed how “weird” the 7th grade girls were and how they were all concerned about our “obsession” with the boyband. The youth minister had spoken to the boyband, who were instructed not to speak with the middle school girls and that they now must keep their shirts on while swimming.

Later that day, our cabin leader and the youth minister gathered all the 7th grade girls and told us we were no longer allowed to speak with the band. That things were becoming “inappropriate” and that the point of the camp was to “have fun with your friends and praise Jesus.” This only seemed to heighten the drama and intensive the desire with stakes and obstacles. Girls cried over men who could legally rent cars.

Meanwhile on a separate plot line, I was getting in trouble for OTHER things. Things like taking the limp, half-deflated balloon used to decorate for Natalie’s birthday, filling it with water, then hurling it off a third floor balcony. Or jumping from the back of one paddleboat to another one. Or attempting to baptize other campers in the lake.

Years later, there are certain details that have stuck with me. Like Bryce, the camp director, on the first day explaining that if we didn’t stay hydrated, our urine would eventually come out as powder, “like when LeBron throws chalk into the air.” That is the image I think of to this day whenever I start to feel dehydrated. Bryce was my favorite, because he was always a bit dubious. They way he walked around barefoot, and how quickly any minor act of rebellion would be met with a chorus of campers chanting “lick the foot!”

I remember the mysterious allure of the blob and the talent show at the end of the week where we performed a dance to “Single Ladies” even though we had been lusting after older men for the entire trip. I remember the last worship session of the camp, where everyone cried and I would look around uncomfortable. I remember the industrial orange drink cooler at every meal with the slightly metallic, too-sweet Gatorade and how grace before meals always went on a little too long and how the counselors would always sit backwards in chairs when they were having a “serious talk.”

Every year on the last night, the counselors took turns driving us all to the local Walmart to buy candy and treats to eat while staying up late on the last night. In 8th grade, Natalie and I bought matching sheep nightgowns and wore them until the bus pulled back up to the church parking lot in St. Louis and we said our goodbyes.

Eleven and twelve are weird ages to spend a week at a summer camp in Central Missouri. The ages that feel like a threshold, like a door opening into a life I wasn’t sure I wanted to enter but knew that I was supposed to. At that age you’re incredibly aware of yourself as someone in transition. You notice the way the older girls carry themselves and the kind of certainty they speak with.

Mostly, I remember the feeling of leaving. How relieved I was to climb onto that bus and drive home in the slightly damp clothes that had never quite dried all week. I would get home, empty all the contents of my suitcase straight into the washer, and take a shower that lasted nearly an hour.

After a nap on the couch I would tell my mom the same thing every year. I didn’t want to go back because I didn’t fit in with the girls, the food made me sick, and I needed more alone time than that. It all felt very unnecessary and was completely avoidable.

And then May would roll around again, heavy and humid, the air thick with promises of jumping from paddleboard to paddleboat and riding down that dangerous waterslide where you’re required to wear a helmet and when Natalie would ask me if I was coming back to camp that year, I would always say yes.

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The camp in Missouri I went to was a small one out of a tight knit Presbyterian church. However, there is a well-known camp held in Southeast Missouri called “Kanakuk” that has been running since I was a kid. It continues to run, despite a prolific history of sexual assault by the leadership that is still in place today.

The following is a good video essay to watch on the matter:

For the past few months, I have grown accustomed to bundling up and rocketing out the north exit, beelining for the warm metro and only see the monument in the mornings over the top of my building. But the seasons are changing and there’s no reason to jet to the metro anymore unless I have somewhere exciting to go after work.

Last Wednesday, I took a right out of my office and headed for the south exit for the first time since winter started. The building spit me out into a dense crowd of people also enjoying the warmer days.

I walked the short distance to the grass of the National Mall while talking to Anjali, my high school friend in NYC, and slowly shedding layers of clothing, trying to believe that just two hours ago I was turning on the space heater under my desk to stay warm. I hung up with Anjali right as I met my friends sitting on a picnic blanket on the grass outside of the Smithsonian metro stop. I took off my button up to reveal a tank top and pulled up a pair of gym shorts underneath my black skirt, which might be a bit too short for the workplace. I crumpled the work clothes into a ball and shoved them into the bottom of my Osprey backpack, which I had dug back out of my closet now that it’s warm enough to bike to work. I cannot bike with my big brown purse. Spring requires mobility.

The four of us sat doing a crossword puzzle until Rohan biked up.

Pulling out a pack of beers and a Spikeball kit from his backpack he laughed, “Ever since it has regularly been above 60 degrees, this is all I’ve been carrying around in my backpack.”

I met this group of people back in October when I signed up to be a free agent on a Volo soccer team in Shaw. Every other team seemed far too serious, but I was placed with a group that had started as college friends and gradually expanded though Volo. I hoped to make a friend or two but instead was absorbed by the friend group. Six months later and I am on the Mall until dusk on a Wednesday playing Spikeball until it was completely dark and we could no longer see the ball or the net, and then a little later. When we finally split ways, the weather was too perfect to head underground to the metro but I was too hungry to walk the mile and a half back home. Instead I hopped on a motorized Cabi bike and sped down the protected bike lanes on Pennsylvania and 9th Street as fast as the motor would let me. I knew where to turn without hesitation and without needing to take my phone out of my pocket to check Google Maps. For someone notoriously terrible with directions, this is the prime indicator that I have created roots somewhere. Less than a year ago I was still living in Missouri and preparing to move to DC, a city I had never been to before, and that night on the bike I knew my way.

When I docked the bike and walked up the stairs in my house, I was hot and sticky in a way that could not be replicated by sweating in a gym or a sauna. The kind that can only be produced by a humid day spent outside. While I know that come mid-June I will feel disgusted by that same feeling, that night, the first time I had felt that kind of heat in 2026, it felt like a gift. Like someone had finally scrubbed my brain clean after a harsh winter.

The drastic increase in temperature means I now regularly have to dig the massive duffel back out from under my bed that holds my summer clothes. I keep meaning to switch them over to my closet properly, but the last thing I want to do on a warm day is spend it in my closet. So instead, I continue to dig through it, take what I need, and give it a swift kick back underneath.

On Saturday, I pulled out that duffel bag again to grab my favorite orange mini skirt. I bought the skirt, which is actually a swim skirt, in a Value Village in Winnipeg two years ago with Sigga when I was in town for Folk Fest. It has built-in orange underwear and is so short that when I bend over I am worried about flashing everyone behind me, which, in my opinion, is the perfect length.

The orange skirt was for my Saturday with Tanvi, when the temperature had reached 86 degrees and we decided that it was time to go shopping for new tank tops and sandals for the summer. The plan was to walk to one of my favorite thrift stores in Columbia Heights which has an entire back room full of shoes. A lot of people think that DC doesn’t have real thrift stores, but they just don’t know where to look. We walked up 14th Street to get there and gave ourselves makeovers in Sephora using the tester products, me with purple eyeliner & eye shadow, blue for her. I decided DedCool Mochi Milk would be my scent of the summer and we bought matching Kulfi lip balm. As we kept walking towards Solid State Books, we smacked our lips and I told her we now needed to find new boys to kiss with our new lip balm.

The thrift store was still transitioning from winter to summer, with coats marked down 50% but only a limited supply of tank tops and shorts. We took over the shoe room and tried on every sandal that looked as though it would fit us. I tried on a pair of black pump sandals

“I don’t think I could wear these to work,” I told Tanvi, looking at the shoes in the mirror. Since the only way I keep my sanity at work is by walking to work every morning, I have to make sure I can walk the mile in every pair of shoes I wear.

“But can you wear them to party?” She asked, without hesitation.

It felt, immediately, like the more important question. Winter is about getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Spring and summer are about the in-between. I looked at the shoes again and imagined wearing them at the kickoff-to-summer party Tanvi and I are going to throw in May. It is going to be a masterpiece. We’re both going to open up our gates to connect our backyards and invite everyone we know to have a water balloon fight. Water guns will also be supplied, along with kiddie pools full of water to sit in. I’m going to make strawberry watermelon slushies and spike them with vodka. Sometime in the next month I need to call my Uncle Al and have him teach me how to barbeque. You’re not allowed to be admitted unless you’re wearing a swimsuit. Someone might make an apple bong, if that’s a thing in the Northeast like it is in the Midwest. Nobody is allowed to take an Uber home afterwards, they’re required to ride a Cabi bike and experience living. The rats that live in our alley will be invited too, obviously. I’m already starting to make a playlist for it, the two cornerstone songs are “Sheila Ki Jawani” and “Summertime” by Kenny Chesney. If you’re in the area and want an invite, text me.

I ended up buying the shoes. We each bought three pairs of shoes at $9 apiece. Tanvi put one of her new pairs on immediately.

After a trip to Old Navy and scarfing down food at Dave’s Hot Chicken we decided there was only one way to top off the perfect summer day. So we got on the Columbia Heights metro, transferred at Gallery Place, and took the red line up to Woodley Park to the only frozen yogurt place in DC. I’m currently working on an analysis to show the more frozen yogurt places per capita, the less stressed the people are. California is the case study. My favorite part of frozen yogurt is getting a little bit of yogurt and filling the rest with toppings.

We sat outside at the picnic table and talked about raises, how we’re going to be neighbors for the rest of our lives (but never roommates), and about having a “Judy Moody and a Not Bummer Summer” summer. Halfway through, Tanvi noticed the new sandals she had been wearing were both split completely in half. I told her that the split was what was making them so comfortable because they bent with her feet as she walked. As confident as I was in my Shoe Goo after multiple seasons of gluing my cleats back together towards the end of season to avoid breaking in a new pair, she ultimately decided to throw them out in the FroZenYo trash can. They were so cute. RIP. Although we never actually got around to day drinking, we were giggling on the froyo patio as though we were intoxicated.

I am excited for more spring and summer days filled with Spikeball, biking home late at night, shopping, frozen yogurt, giggling and seeing the baby elephant at the zoo. I want to find an outdoor bar that we can become a regular at and then bring a Sharpie and write my number on boys’ arms until one of them invites me to a Nats or Spirit game and buys me a beer with a lime.

But if none of them do, I know Tanvi will always go with me.

New books on my TBR after our Solid State trip:

• “Stag Dance” by Torrey Peters

• “Murder Your Employet, McMasters Guide to Homocide” by Rupert Holmes

• And of course I have to finish reading “You Deserve Each Other” by Sarah Hogle

When I was 19 I was the photographer for the minor league hockey team in Tulsa, the Oilers. That season, the mascot was a scrawny 16-year-old who would flirt with me before each game, chase terrified little kids around in the lobby, and once told me that his dream was to climb the corporate ladder to become a professional mascot.

I was a sophomore studying economics and finance and a career as a “professional mascot” was not something I had modeled for. My world was being split wide open in the stuffy staff room post-game as the mascot, still in his suit but much more sweaty, told me that there are entire financial ecosystems built around men in foam heads terrorizing children.

You see, being 19 in Oklahoma was quite a strange time for me as I was rediscovering the world. I was reacclimating with life after quarantine and a concussion that had quietly rearranged me for three years. I picked up a camera during that quiet time because my doctors told me it was time to find a hobby other than playing sports.

I photographed the men’s soccer team first when I got to college. Photographing a sport that I had played since birth felt natural to me. I found it easy because I always knew what the player would do next and was able to snap the photo right as the action happened. I couldn’t play anymore but the camera was my way back in.

On a whim in late October I emailed the director of marketing for the Tulsa Oilers with my soccer portfolio asking if they would let me shoot games, and on an even greater whim they wrote back and invited me to the offices. I got dressed up and prepared myself for an interview but when I got there, they weren’t looking to interview me, it was an onboarding meeting.

They gave me a pass that said “Photographer” and told me I could come to as many or as few games as I wanted. This was the Oilers handing me my first real proof that I was back. That something I had taught myself alone in my parents’ house could get me somewhere real. I showed up to every single home game and eventually the real photographer just stopped coming, reminding me once again that I am capable of anything except moderation.

At two corners of the rink, diagonal from each other, there are circular holes in the glass just big enough to fit a camera lens through. You shoot through these to avoid the smudge marks. The corners are also, I came to understand, where the players check each other the most.

Jimmy Soper was the most physical one on the team, which is why I remember his name four years later – I remember it in the way you remember anything that scared you into paying attention. His favorite thing to do was instill the fear of God into everyone, especially me. I could tell by the look on his face when he was locked in on his next hit. He would launch someone into the boards so hard I’d have to step back to give the glass room to give. And it does give, more than you’d think, something you don’t realize until you’ve pressed your face against the glass, lens through the porthole, and felt boards lurching after you as you step backwards when multiple two hundred pound men meet the plexiglass at full speed. Then it becomes something you know and can’t unlearn.

On the rare occasion I stumbled backward last-minute, he would turn to me after the hit, smiling his boyish, missing-tooth smile, then skate off, looking for the next hit.

Standing at ice level was cold. I started to wear two layers of long sleeves under my sweater or blazer. The other photographer would always wear black shorts and a black t-shirt and was never cold. I learned to walk on the ice in any kind of shoe and then I learned to run. It is a party trick that only comes in handy approximately one week in the winter when ice riddles the sidewalks.

Hockey moves fast, too. The rules and strategy were a mystery when I showed up to my first game. It felt like an odd combination between lacrosse and field hockey, both sports I knew inside and out, so I was frustrated that hockey was so confusing to me. I faced an obstacle that I hadn’t encountered photographing soccer. I didn’t always know what was going to happen next, and sometimes looking through my 200mm lens I would lose the puck, only to take my head away from the viewfinder to find the puck was on the opposite side of the rink than I had thought. You can’t get a photo by just reacting and clicking the shutter after the action has happened, you have to react before and take it as it is happening. As time went on, I learned to read the change in the players shoulders, the slight tilt of their knees, and knew the difference in how they pulled the stick back. The subtle indications of intention.

The regulars off the ice were sometimes more entertaining and I got to know them well. There was a short man with glasses who tried to come across as innocent as he took photos with each individual Ice Girl every game in the same pose.

The season ticket holder in the front row next to the photography hole turned out to be the head of security for my university. One night when a bomb threat got called in on our campus stadium mid-game, I had insider information before anyone else. After the game I was supposed to meet friends on frat row, one parking lot over from the stadium. She assured me the threat was fake. In Oklahoma we don’t take these things seriously enough. We went.

Now I’m 23, sitting next to Tanvi in the 10th row of the Capital One Arena and I’m trying to explain this all to her but it’s not translating. This game was the first time being inside a hockey rink since that winter. Tulsa doesn’t translate to any other city. Being 19 and accidentally becoming something doesn’t tend to translate, it just sort of lives in your body like a habit you forgot to break. We’re also just trying to figure out whether we’re supposed to be rooting for the red team or the white one.

The lights dimming to almost black in the arena pulls me fully back to Washington, present day.

“Oh my god, kiss cam! Put us on the kiss cam!” Tanvi squeals next to me with a french fry in one hand and a mozzarella stick in the other.

“Blast it to the public while we give each other a big smooch!” I respond, my hand completely submerged in a bucket of popcorn.

Tonight, the seats came to us only four hours before puck drop. A small, mysterious gift from someone who shall remain unnamed, which is one of the best ways to end up somewhere good. Tanvi was supposed to be scrimmaging for mock trial and I was supposed to be at a work event but instead we were at the Capital One Arena, booing along with our fellow Washingtonians whenever the ref made a call against us.

I’m trying to teach myself that I don’t always have to dig and scrape and earn my way into the game through the staff entrance with a pass around my neck. Sometimes I can just accept the two free tickets that are handed to me. I don’t always have to be at eye level, sometimes I can be in the tenth row with my best friend eating stadium food and yelling about being put on the kiss cam.

my favorite media about hockey

• “Beartown” by Fredrik Backman

• “Miracle” movie

• “Tooth Fairy” movie with Dwayne Johnson (my enemy)

  ---

A list of things I’ve been really into lately:

• Pretzels & hummus at 10am

• Taking Benadryl before bed instead of my sleeping pills

• Showering in the dark

• Lighting candles in the bathroom and sitting on the bathroom floor to write

• Going over my supervisor’s head at work

“Man down on Florida Ave!!” I yelled dramatically into the blistering wind instead of running over to help her.

“I’m transferring to Stanford!” Tanvi yells back.

As my primary accomplice in becoming a girl about town, transferring to Stanford Law School is a threat that Tanvi regularly holds over my head as we slowly trudge through the months where the temperature rarely rises above freezing and black ice waits for us on the walk home from the bars. Although I stomp my feet and insist she’s not allowed to leave me here alone, I cannot argue that moving to California sounds quite nice right now.

As much as I enjoy feeling fabulous in my faux fur cheetah print coat, I am outrageously over the winter. When I wear my micro shorts in my apartment while cleaning on the weekends, I look in the mirror and shutter at the thought of showing off my pale skin in public. I am sick of the time it takes me to bundle up whenever I leave the house and of how my scarf always seems to snag on a doorknob and choke me.

Just five hours before Tanvi became a woman down on Florida Ave, we had high aspirations for an exciting and riveting night out. What would start at a birthday party in DuPont for her law school friend would end at DC9 for a themed “Vampire Goth EDM Rave.”

The walk from Tanvi and I’s house (we are neighbors, very handy) to the Shaw metro quickly became a sprint. Any skin I had left exposed as a way to further push my “Washington D.C. is a southern city” propaganda was quickly attacked by the 45mph freezing winds of the night. I had never been so happy to feel the thick mugginess of the green line. The hot air and the slight rocking of the train car as we made our way to Dupont could have lulled me to sleep. We debated staying underground in the warmth all night long – we could ride the line back and forth until the sun came up the next morning. As my fingertips and thighs slowly started to return to their normal coloring, the allure grew stronger. Still, when we reached DuPont, we both exchanged similar looks and exited the train.

A decision that we had a long time to regret as we slowly rode up the 170ft escalator from the DuPont Metro, bracing for the piercing cold above. Huddled together on the escalator step as we rose toward the surface, I felt like Katniss emerging into the Hunger Games arena, fully aware of what awaited her. Both of us were fighting for our lives. She fought other children; I fought the freezing wind on the way to a party.

Inside the safety of the law school party, coats hung precariously on two hooks glued to the wall. I took off my coat and added it to the hook, hoping mine wouldn’t be the one to take it over the edge and pull the hook off the wall. Inside the small studio apartment packed with bodies, I once again welcomed the hot mugginess that comes with enclosed places and body heat. I felt a bit out of place in a room full of law students all wearing the same low waisted jeans, black loafers, and black sweaters while Tanvi and I were dressed on theme for the second event of the night, which meant head-to-toe black lace, layers of obsidian earrings, and a cross necklace around my waist. Sometimes sacrifices must be made to stay on theme.

I was on my second Jell-O shot of the night, a batch so suspiciously solid that digging it out of the container with my tongue required avoiding eye contact with everyone in the room, when the host ushered everyone onto her bed and told us the show was about to begin. I sat on the ground at the foot of her bed next to Tanvi and someone’s boyfriend who also chose the floor instead of the king sized mattress. We all passed around more Jell-O shots until music started blasting from the speaker in the corner and a man emerged from the front hallway dressed in golden pants and started shaking his hips all around and clapping. A Michael Jackson impersonator was among us.

The MJ reincarnation performed for an hour while the crowd of fifteen hooted and howled in admiration before the old neighbor came knocking, insisting it was quiet hours and therefore we must stop all the yelling and stomping. Unfortunately, we had just finished chanting “ONE MORE SONG! ONE MORE SONG!” so the cranky neighbor had to wait an extra five minutes and nineteen seconds as Mike J performed an encore of “Man in the Mirror.” We begged Mike to stay at the party with us a bit longer and although he was breathless, sweaty, and tired he agreed as long as we all took a Jell-O shot with him. We got to know Mike well. His mom is his manager, he is a Pisces, his birthday is September 18.

On the way to DC9 we split up the cold trip by stopping into Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street right outside the metro. We were stopping STRICTLY to stay warm but once inside, we decided that as two economists, we should buy a little something to stimulate the local economy. It is our duty as educated women.

Once we finally made it to the Vampire Goth EDM rave, DC9 slapped us in the face with another consequence of the cold weather – capitalism. Our $5 cover fee was not enough for the venue, they needed $3 for a coat check as well. Tanvi and I are girls with morals, ethics, and principles. We are not girls who pay $3 for a coat check at a party we hadn’t vetted yet. As we walked to the dance floor, the facade I had cultivated with my black clothing and cross jewelry was destroyed with the navy blue and yellow puffer coat and Real Madrid scarf draped over my arm.

Not paying the coat check proved wise, as it only took one step onto the dance floor to reveal a very thriving subculture in Washington that was not going to be easy to acclimate into. As much as I love committing to a theme, the people there were not “playing dress up” for fun. They just normally walk around with knife hair clips and what looked like an entire pen of eyeliner.

We also quickly realized we were underdosed on molly, weed, or whatever else people were using to enjoy the music, which sounded like that “Friends” episode where Ross debuts his “music” and it’s just him pressing buttons that make a varying array of odd noises.

So we walked home from the nightclub down Florida Ave where Tanvi threatened me once again with transferring to Stanford and I went home and thought about how much harder becoming a D.C. socialite would be without her while I thawed my toes in a warm shower.

It is nights like these that I have to try my hardest not to wish away time before it passes. But with 35mph winds, it’s hard not to always be pushed to think about what is next. The next scalding shower, the next mountain of blankets, the next time I can wear a mini skirt and tank top without needing to worry about a coat. The next time my legs are tan enough that I don’t cringe at my reflection.

As I write this, the weather is starting to warm up, which makes everything a bit sweeter.

Last weekend Tanvi and I went out on U Street and I wore a brown tank top, green mini skirt, and my new brown boots with no fleece tights underneath and only my leather jacket on top. We bought ice cream from Jeni’s before going to the bars and walked outside eating it, unbothered by the cold. When our night ended we strolled home at a leisurely pace as we were in no rush to escape the cold. It was the last day of the month which meant sidewalks were filled with items people were giving away in their moves. I found a fancy lamp with a remote and different lighting hues and carried it all the way home. I ran into my roommate at 2am in the kitchen while bringing my lamp upstairs in my bar clothes and he just smiled.

If it were below freezing, none of that would have happened. We wouldn’t have walked home, we wouldn’t have rummaged through other people’s throwaways, my roommate wouldn’t have smiled. Cold weather closes things down, warm weather lets them happen.

Being a girl about town is never easy, but it is always rewarding.

If this sounds familiar, it is because I posted something similar a few weeks ago but a lot of people thought I was being SERIOUS which, in my opinion, is the absolute worst thing a girl can be accused of. It was a drastic reminder that I have an economics degree and never studied creative writing and therefore cannot always transfer the sarcastic tone in my head to paper. I also wrote most of it at my work desk (while I was supposed to be listening to webinars) instead of my usual spot, sitting on my floor late at night, drinking a smoothie while a suspicious Marshall’s candle burns next to me.

As an unphotogenic and only semi-attractive girl from the suburbs of Missouri whose single raw talent includes dribbling a ball up and down a 100-yard field with reliable consistency, I always assumed the closest I would get to fame was being profiled in the local newspaper my senior year of high school for field hockey.

I always liked writing, though I never thought I was anything special at it. I never properly learned how and always thought of English class as an easy A instead of something to learn from. In 2021 I started a Substack, mostly out of boredom and a vague search for community, and discovered I possessed another raw talent in which strange things seem to just happen to me. Nothing catastrophic or hugely impressive, just slightly odd situations that made good stories.

Pairing this new raw talent with writing has propelled me into a new level of fame. People actually… read my Substack…

Which is never something I could have imagined when I first started this blog back in July of 2021 for two subscribers, neither of whom ever opened the emails sent to them. You can’t imagine the readership increase that occurs when you move from Missouri to Washington D.C.

Which is how I find myself in the living room of a house in Columbia Heights, which also somehow functions as an office, at a Valentine’s Day house party for Secret Ballot, talking to a short, bald man in a suit who, I eventually deduced, knew me from Substack, even though he did not want to admit it. There are plenty of people at this party who looked familiar from their little profile pictures, but those people are writers in Washington. I am simply a weird girl from Missouri who writes.

I got the hint three minutes into the conversation when he called me “Calihan” when I had introduced myself as “Callie.” Calihan is a name I only use on Substack and official government documents. The odds that this man had seen my Substack were far higher than the odds he had seen my birth certificate. He didn’t notice the discrepancy like I did. I asked him if he had a Substack and he said yes before asking me the same question.

I crossed my arms, sat into my hip and gave him The Look. “Yes, I do,” I said slowly, nodding, while taking a drink of my beer and trying to remember anything I learned in my senior year game theory class that might explain why he is playing his cards this way.

“Oh, let me subscribe to you,” he said, pulling out his phone. At this point he was in deep and I was too intrigued to call him out on it.

He opened his phone to look me up and when I looked over his shoulder at the glowing screen in the dark room, I saw that I was already sitting at the top of his recent searches from earlier that day. He pulled his phone back smoothly and typed in my name, oblivious yet again that I had noticed anything. He subscribed to my blog in front of me then looked up with a small, satisfied smile.

It was almost time for my speed dating appointment upstairs so I excused myself and as I climbed the steps to the second floor, my mind started racing in that giddy way the way it always does when something particularly odd happens to me that I know I can spin into a much more entertaining tales for my Saturday evening calls with my older brother, the text recaps I send Blakely and Archer daily, or the stories that I write for you all. By the time I reached the speed dating room, I had decided that from now on, that man would be known as my stalker.

Inside the speed dating room I was still in an energetic mood from getting such a good piece of material so early in the night that I wasn’t even annoyed when I saw my stalker walk past the doorway and glance inside at me. On the couch next to me, the man I was supposed to be paying attention to told me that “having kids” was his non-negotiable in a relationship right after I jokingly responded “Hannah Montana” when he asked me what I put on AUX when I get in a car with friends. I blurted out “How old are you??” before I could think better. Despite being only 27, he started to see me more as the kid instead of the one having his kids. The next morning I was laying on the foot of my bed, scrolling through Twitter, when I saw a profile picture of someone I recognized only to open the profile and find it was him, and I already followed him.

When the speed dating ended, I went over to the other girls in the room and said, “Why did they never let us speed date with the other girls??” and started talking. When my stalker saw the actual speed dating was over, he immediately came back in and sat down next to me. He did not choose to join the conversation, he just watched. When we all went downstairs, I went to the bathroom and luckily he was gone when I came out.

Downstairs I flirted with a more normal man who had recently moved from New York City and got into an animated conversation with my friend Anna. Halfway through an excited retelling of her proposal he came up and just stood next to us, looking up at us the same way I did when my mom talked to people too long after church on Sunday morning and I was just standing there, waiting for her to take me to get donuts at Schnucks. He interrupted her mid-story just to look at me and say, “Don’t mean to butt in here…” and started asking me more about my Substack.

A few moments after, I found Anna and her fiancé upstairs in the third-floor bar. A dimly lit room crowded with people leaning over the makeshift bartender stand servicing a short list of specialty cocktails. They had just refreshed their drinks when I ran up to them with the unmistakable energy of someone who had a story. They became the first audience for my dramatic retelling of the night’s most important development.

I left the party earlier than I usually do because although I had marked my 2026 New Years Resolution as “becoming a Washington socialite,” I also had firmly told myself earlier that week that it was time for me to go on a wellness bender, which entailed a 9am reformed pilates class the next morning.

On the Uber ride home, I immediately put on my headphones and opened iMessage to fill in all my friends on the eventful night. My friends look to me for entertaining stories which means sometimes I have to take liberties in order to fulfill their needs.

“Attention all: I have a STALKER. I’m not even kidding. I’m being serious this time,” I sent to Archer and Blakely.

Because they know me well they did not believe me, even though I warned them “I am being serious this time.” They know that if there is one thing I never am, it is serious. It is the same reason I was told that I giggle too much at work. I told them the story and Archer responded, “We need to get you a gun.” Which is pretty much his response to any sort of minor inconvenience and makes me worried that he has been in Oklahoma for too long.

I posted a picture of my outfit on my close friends story with the caption, “Update: I have a stalker”

I texted Samara in a way that appeared more like a New York Magazine title than an actual story: “I met my stalker at the Secret Ballot Valentine’s party.”

She responded, “Well on Valentine’s Day this is actually called a secret admirer.” I let out a giggle loud enough that the Uber driver, who had been on the phone the entire ride, stopped mid-sentence and gave me a startled side-eye. I added the screenshot to my private story to enhance the comedy of the night.

I have blocked his account on Substack, so he cannot read this retelling, but if you are my stalker reading this from a different account or incognito browser, I hope you at least upgrade to paid.

After six months of dealing with strange men who pretend to not know me when they clearly do or who voluntarily read books like “Empire of Cotton: A Global History” during their commute home on the metro, Tanvi and I started ranking men based on how corn-fed they are.

describes the concept of corn-fed as the following: “Corn-fed: a darling, ideally mid-western gentleman whose upbringing in the great corn fields of America taught him manners, how to open a door for a lady, and beefed him up appropriately. Shout out to all my California gentlemen who are also corn-fed, just with masa and una tortilla con mantequilla instead of on the cob.”

Corn-fedness is not wholly about corn and more about instinct and how a man moves through the world. In a more scientific manner, the corn-fedness of a person functions less as a dietary descriptor and more as a sociocultural phenotype because although there is often a positive correlation between actual corn consumption and corn-fedness, correlation does not imply causation. Corn-fedness is produced through early-stage investment in social norms such as community surveillance, church basements, high school athletics, and intergenerational etiquette training which then generate a downstream of returns in the form of behaviors such as politeness, spatial awareness, and a kind of physical solidity. A man raised within an ecosystem that rewards steadiness, physical competence, and gendered courtesy will rationally internalize those incentives. Corn is merely the shorthand for a broader ecology of upbringing. The clustering may occur in regions where corn is plentiful, but the mechanism is social conditioning, not starch.

I have spent a majority of my life in Missouri and Oklahoma, so I have an intimate understanding of corn-fed men. Men who have lived in Washington D.C. for over three years are the least corn-fed people ever.

They are not worried that the old woman at the supermarket they failed to hold the door open for knows their mother. They were not raised on humidity or drinking hose water in the backyard or cheering for a 2-8 football team because loyalty is non-transferable. And even if they were raised on those things, the memory that once existed has since atrophied under the pressure of Washington. They are now optimized for networking breakfasts, policy panels, and resume language. Social capital here is portable and transactional rather than embedded and inherited.

I have learned that the men here also exchange LinkedIn at the bar instead of phone numbers and schedule drinks through encrypted messaging applications. Last Monday I was at a work happy hour (a sentence that makes me less corn-fed every time I say it) when a man asked for my LinkedIn. The next day he sent me a DM to get drinks and gave me his Signal username for easier communication. It was the opposite of romantic and instead reminded me of being in Sacramento and overhearing the Fox News anchors discuss the US government Signal group chat leak while my MAGA grandma laughed along from the couch.

One Monday we met at a bar after work for something that he never explicitly called a date, though Archer and Blakely continuously told me it was. My mother insisted he was just trying to make a friend. I showed up either way and stayed seated when he walked in, not wanting to choose between instigating a hug or a handshake.

We went to the bar to order. I ordered a beer. When the bartender asked the man what he wanted, he turned to me and said, “I don’t really drink that much,” then he turned to the bartender and ordered a Shirley Temple.

In that moment my mother’s voice was solidified in my head, this was definitely not a date.

It is not that I am against the Shirley Temple. In fact, Tanvi and I declared at the start of the year that 2026 is the Year of the Dirty Shirley. I am just saying that there is something about a grown man ordering one with complete sincerity on a winter night on 14th Street that suggests a life unacquainted with eating corn or sitting on cold bleachers or drinking warm beers in the bed of a pickup truck or the sort of reckless self confidence that comes with being corn-fed. Ordering a Shirley Temple in the winter is a prime signifier that you are not corn-fed and you never will be.

The bartender tried to save him by saying, “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that, I love a Shirley Temple every once in a while,” but when the man pulled out his wallet to pay for the drinks, the bartender shooed him away saying “no alcohol, no charge.”

The bartender then handed the receipt for my beer directly to me, as even he knew this was no longer a date. Although I could see the man fumbling with his wallet, awkwardly still trying to pay for my drink, I put my credit card down and ignored it.

In Washington, it is often difficult to tell the difference between a date and a networking opportunity. The difference between interest and research, between admiration and surveillance. You notice the difference only after someone calls you by a name you did not give them.

The sentence intrigued me, especially coming out of the mouth of someone who grew up in Boston and got her bachelor’s and master’s at Georgetown. I wondered if she had ever stepped foot in the SEC, or if it was just her way of trying to connect with me when I told her I went to school in Oklahoma.

Just three months later, my Volo team decided to play flag football during the November-January season. The games would take place in Navy Yard. It was finally time to live out my SEC football player dreams.

Throughout college I worked as a beat writer for my university’s football team, writing four articles a week during the season. The University of Tulsa is extremely bad at football and I swear on my life if they had put me in as wide receiver or quarterback, they would have won a game, or at least scored a touchdown. But I have since graduated and now have a new team I can lead to victory.

The first game of the season was at 9:00 pm at Randall Rec in Navy Yard. A luxurious park with a playground, two grass fields, and tennis courts lit up late into the night. Our first opponents had multiple players who played flag football on ‘national teams’ and while I knew that in reality I was not playing football in the SEC, I don’t think any of them ever internalized that. The real SEC is about talent and hardwork, but this team was a good reminder that it is also about performing. They brought their own custom flags then yelled at us when we pulled on them as if that isn’t the whole point of the game. They bellowed into the air when their pass went incomplete and they jumped up and down and screamed when they scored a touchdown.

The key thing that will make you great in this league is realizing that flag football played in Navy Yard for Volo is starkly different from the football you watch on television on Sundays. While the objectives are the same the physics are entirely different.

Flag football rewards speed, agility, and precision while tackle rewards mass, strength, and the willingness to absorb impact. One cannot successfully blow past a swarm of defenders by staying on their feet, they must also keep from getting their flag pulled.

Because of that, defenders don’t win by overpowering you. They have to win by cutting off the angles, blocking the lanes, and forcing the offence to make bad decisions. In flag football, containment matters more than collision as the defender doesn’t have to stop you, they just have to get close enough to grab the fabric.

A low stakes playing field also means players are more conscious of their actions. When you are playing on a national stage while receiving millions, you will put your body and others’ on the line for the game. The same is not true in recreational play. When the 250lb running back decides to head towards my side, he has no advantage in flag football. He has two legal options: try to avoid getting his flag pulled or step out of bounds. In tackle football, he would have just lowered his shoulder and trusted that physics would do the rest. Though it is initially terrifying to have a man double my size barreling towards me, I can feel the space he can’t cross before he even steps.

The men on opposing teams always take a while to catch on when a woman is capable in athletic endeavors. While this is not usually spoken out loud, there are always cues. Like how the quarterback always runs to my side or how I’m barely guarded as a receiver.

They tend to think the ability to catch or pull a flag is just beginner’s luck and will exhaust itself if they wait long enough, and therefore they should focus on the men on the team instead.

When I was a little girl being underestimated in athletic endeavors, something that it felt like my body was made to do, frustrated me and felt like a humiliating injustice. But then I grew up and realized that it was just another terrain I could explore with rules I could exploit. And the longer my opponents underestimated me, the further ahead I could get, sometimes reaching the point of no return.

I played quarterback on closed plays, meaning the ball had to be thrown to or by a girl. The other team stayed close and disregarded their safeties for more linemen, based on the assumption that a female quarterback could not throw the ball far. Our receivers were wide open behind the defensive line and we scored two touchdowns before they reinstated their safeties.

Playing quarterback felt as natural to me as catching the ball, even though it is something I have not done as much of. In high school, winter club field hockey was held inside of a football training warehouse. While waiting in line for drills, I watched the quarterbacks train on the field next to ours. The body has always made sense to me. It is easy for me to watch, absorb, then execute when it comes to my body and sports. The exact footwork, the slight turn of the hips, the exact degree of the angle of the elbow. For me, instruction through language is unnecessary when I can watch a body in motion. Even years later on a low-stakes field, I can remember how a body at quarterback is supposed to move.

On December 17 the unthinkable happened. It was an electric night filled with action. In the last two minutes I played quarterback and threw a 20 yard pass down the field to a receiver who ran it the last 20 yards into the endzone. We went for two extra points and got them. The other team had the ball, ready to host a comeback. I blitzed the quarterback on the fourth down in the endzone. It was a safety and a turnover. Victory was ours! We went out to Dacha and drank beers to celebrate. I didn’t get home until 12:30am and worked virtually the next morning because I was hungover and had not packed for my flight leaving that night.

Throughout the two sports I have played with this team, that was the only time we have won. In soccer, we celebrated like it was a victory if we even scored a goal – which happened only three times throughout our eight games.

Our final game was last week. We played the same team from our first game, even though we weren’t supposed to. But when they sit around from 7:30pm - 10pm every Wednesday night waiting for a team to need a sub, eventually a team is going to let them play. Personally, my team would have forfeited before ever letting them play with us.

The Navy Yard is not like the SEC. Our team was named after our captain’s Puma sweatpants. We played with one quarterback and seven receivers. There were no screaming fans in oversized orange overalls. Nobody got drafted, but that isn’t surprising, none of us are committed to the game — we’re all playing dodgeball next season.

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Yours truly,

Calihan

At least that is what he jokingly told me as he cut me off a piece of his medium rare steak when I ordered my filet mignon well-done. After chewing at his raw steak bit for 10 minutes with the taste of the scallop I ate for an appetizer still lingering in my mouth, I think my palette is about at the end of its rope.

My company’s holiday dinner this year took place at The Occidental on Pennsylvania Ave, near the White House and my office at the World Trade Center. It is the fanciest place I have been and, for the first time ever, made me look back questioningly on my decision to skip cotillion for soccer practice. The choice wasn’t a difficult one when I was 12 and all I knew was my love for soccer and my discomfort at the thought of dancing with boys. A small decision I made when I was 12 is why I now sit in this place wondering which fork I use for the salad and how I elegantly cut steak with a knife.

The dinner also took place one week after the gum covering my wisdom teeth became inflamed, making it impossible to eat on the left side of my mouth – or the right side. This means the dinner also happened three days after I threw up in the work bathroom from taking Advil on an empty stomach and two days after the dentist lasered off the excess gum and cauterized the wound.

Prestigious restaurants have always felt unwelcoming to me, especially when paired with a gaping black hole in my lasered mouth. Looking through the menu I wished my work would have paid for my laser gum removal instead of the dinner, which would cost about the same amount.

However the holidays are a time of joy and gratefulness, not comparing the prices of dental surgery to overpriced restaurants. I put on my pretty blue overcoat and admired the Christmas decorations at Cafe du Park, the Willard Hotel, and The Occidental as I walked over.

They ordered the golden scallops ($22) for an appetizer. As someone who exclusively eats land animals, the only reason scallops sounded familiar to me is that little hipster otter in Animal Crossing that always appears when I’m diving. The three of my bosses watched me as I cut off the tiniest piece, dipped it in tartar sauce, and cautiously chewed. It tasted like the inside of the penguin exhibit at the St. Louis Zoo smells, but I ate half before surrendering.

Someone ordered the hot mushroom soup ($18) which came with the ingredients and soup separately. Seeing nothing but four mushrooms sitting in the bottom of a large soup bowl tickled me and I giggled in a way that rich people eating at The Occidental don’t laugh. Rich people at The Occidental lean their heads back so you can see the two perfect rows of veneers and let out a deep, metronome of a laugh - “Ha…ha…ha.” Finally, the waiter came by with a large canister and poured the soup into his bowl.

The best part of the night is always the bread. Bread is how you differentiate restaurants between good and great. We ordered the Buttermilk Biscuits ($14 for 3 rolls). The bread easily peeled in half to butter the inside. It was good but nothing revolutionary. I wondered if they knew Texas Roadhouse gives you rolls and cinnamon butter for free.

For my main course, I ordered an 8 ounce filet mignon ($59). Every year for Christmas my grandma sends us a box of filet mignon from Omaha Steaks that my mom cooks in the crockpot and serves with french fries. The taste of the filet mignon felt like a slice of home and reminded me that it was only a week until I flew to St. Louis for the holidays. I ordered it well-done because I like my meat cooked, especially if I’m paying a restaurant $60 to cook it.

My CEO ordered the end cut of a steak, which is supposed to have more flavor than a cut from the middle. Restaurants typically only serve two end cuts a night, which is why we dined early at 6:30pm. He ordered medium-rare, which is restaurant code for “give this man a slab of raw heifer.”

He told me I couldn’t go any longer in my life without eating a piece of steak “cooked correctly.” He instructed me to take a bite then drink a sip of wine as the combination was “magical.” It was the saltiest thing I have ever tasted and I finally understood why doctors tell you to cut out red meat after heart attacks. I do understand why red wine pairs well with steak but I’m not mature enough to like red wine so instead I just nod and try not to pucker my lips as the wine hits my taste buds.

Since moving to DC, my taste has been increasingly mistaken for compliance to be reached through refinement and self-improvement instead of my enjoyment. Ordering my steak well-done was seen as a flaw, not a choice.

The filet mignon was delicious. The exclusivity of the night made me feel like a kid playing dress up as an adult. The raw meat gave me heart palpitations. The conversation was about work. They asked about my work New Year’s Resolution. My real one is to be more of a bitch (which my friends try to correct me to say “be more confrontational”) but instead I told them my goal is to upgrade the company’s systems into the 21st century, which I talk about often.

Everyone else waited outside for an Uber but I ran to the Archives metro stop. I walked home slightly giggling as I passed all the fancy buildings still lit up at 10 p.m. and the fellow stragglers in suits headed for the metro with me. My body feels like the only reliable narrator. The back of my mouth still ached and my heart still raced. I could still feel the dry wine at the base of my throat.

If I can learn to love raw steak I can learn to love anything. Long hours, bad systems, polite condescension. A lot of the things we call taste are really just habits we learn in rooms like that.

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Yours truly,

Calihan

There are people who climb mountains for fun, and then there are people who climb mountains for a greater reason. Before last week, I had only watched the former. National Geographic documentaries featuring people who could stop climbing at any point with nothing to prove.

On Wednesday I went to a screening of the documentary “Second Wind” at the French Embassy in partnership with the Ukrainian Embassy. The film followed four Ukrainian lower-limb amputee soldiers and one female sniper severely wounded in combat as they climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. At 19,341 ft above sea level, Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain above sea level in the world.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the country has been reshaped by loss. There have been “over 40,000 civilian casualties, while 3.7 million people are internally displaced, and 6.9 million have fled Ukraine. 12.7 million people need humanitarian assistance.”1 German officials estimate that between 30,000-50,000 Ukrainian soldiers and citizens have become amputees because of the conflict.2 According to Ukraine’s chief military surgeon, one in four of those amputations are from the improper use of tourniquets because the medical devices were made for the US military and simply translated into Ukrainian, not updated to fit this style a war of attrition, where opponents aim at wearing down an opponent through loss of resources.3

The director, Masha Kondakova, was born and raised in Kyiv, Ukraine and started filming on the front lines of the conflict in 2014. She focuses on the survival of Ukrainians rather than the war itself. “Second Wind” is the final movie in a trilogy about how the Russo-Ukrainian war has affected the people of Ukraine.

The four amputee climbers were Roman Kolesnyk, Vladislav Shatilo, Mykhailo Matviyiv, and Oleksandr Mikhov. At the lower elevation levels, they struggled to keep their stumps dry in their prosthetics and at the higher elevation, struggled to keep their footing on the icy trail. They were led by Olha Yegorova, who was severely wounded in war with gunshot wounds to her stomach. They all struggled with altitude sickness, extreme blisters, and the endurance it takes to climb the highest peak in Africa.

Once they reached the top, they became the first Ukrainian soldiers and amputees to summit Mount Kilimanjaro. They unraveled a Ukrainian flag and other hikers at the peak helped them spread the large flag out.

The production team, headed by producer Gena Hazin, worked in extreme conditions for over 12 months to finish the documentary. Even the cinematographer Serhii Mykhalchuk, the highest regarded cameraman in Ukraine, was a soldier.

Once the climb was over, many went back to the front lines to become some of the first amputee soldiers for Ukraine.

In a statement to the press, the Ukrainian Ministry of Veterans Affairs said of the film, “This is a story of strength, support and brotherhood. The story of those who did not stop after injuries, but found a second wind in themselves - to live, act and inspire others.”

There was an obscure and unsettling feeling to the night after the movie ended. We were all watching war on velvet seats placed on the multi-million dollar grounds of the French Embassy. The screen flickered with mud, blood, prosthetics, and men dragging themselves to the top of the mountain while I snacked on pieces of baguette baked at the in-house kitchen. I felt uncomfortable watching their struggle for entertainment, especially with one of the amputee soldiers in the audience. But it also felt ordinary. We have learned how to watch suffering beautifully framed.

After the film, guests were given the opportunity to pose questions to a panel of Masha Kondakova, Gena Hazin, and soldier Mykhailo Matvieiev. Mykhailo was recruited for the climb from a friend who was part of the Second Wind Club, a community that supports veterans in their reintegration through adaptive sports and outdoor programs. The friend texted Mykhailo, “Do you want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro?” and without asking any details, Mykhailo immediately responded “yes.”

While the film ended as the soldiers spread the Ukrainian flag out on the summit, the team still had to descend the nearly 20,000 feet they had climbed. On the second day of the descent, the team decided Mykhailo was not healthy enough to climb down and had to be airlifted off the mountain. Once they returned home, Serhii was hospitalized with a heart condition, in part due to the climb.

When asked by the audience if Mykhailo would still do the climb, even after he had to be airlifted off the mountain, he immediately responded, “yes.”

The people in Jimmy Chin films climb because they have the choice, the privilege of optional adventure, but these five soldiers climb because they can’t stop fighting, even when the war has taken their legs. The climb isn’t really a choice, but a refusal to surrender.

Yours truly,

Calihan

Recently I’ve been in a time of input. I think about output every day but the pendulum has not yet switched. Which is causing fair amounts of frustration and concern on my end, since I thought moving to a big new city would kick my output into overdrive with all the new places I have been exploring and people I have been meeting.

I believe this lack of output can be attributed mostly to work, as most negative things can be. In addition to staring at a screen for eight hours a day and not wanting to come home and do the same thing, this job is my first post-grad 9-5 full-time job. Before I even adapted to the routine of an in person 9-5, I had already been promoted to a new role. And while I muttered, “Who’s surprised?” to my brother when I told him I had been promoted to a full-time employee only three months into my thirteen month fellowship, I have to admit that I was, actually, quite surprised.

The best part of my new job is that I now have health insurance. I did have health insurance for the first two months of my fellowship, but then the government cancelled my healthcare.gov plan because I never paid the bills. In my defense, they only sent reminders via mail to my parents’ house in Missouri despite having a perfectly valid email address for me. Since the cancellation I have been riding high on the dexterity of youth and feeling blessed whenever I arrive somewhere safe after biking on the street.

The worst part is that I now have Responsibilities that sometimes cause worries to linger in my mind past the 5 p.m. end time. Sometimes I can’t stop thinking while I’m trying to fall asleep and then all of the sudden it’s 1 a.m. and I’m exhausted the next morning.

Which means I finally feel the need to take naps during the weekends. I also regularly go out with friends Friday night which creeps into Saturday morning while I have the inability to sleep past 8:30 a.m. I have come into a quite domestic routine in which I wake up early, eat breakfast, brush my teeth, then get back into bed for a nap. During these naps I turn on “The Diplomat” or “VEEP” to play in the background like a lullaby. Both of these shows sound enough like work that it just lulls me right to sleep. A lot of people talk about how much they love “The Diplomat” so I tried to watch it on Sunday and ended up falling asleep at 3 p.m. on my futon. I’m on episode 10 and I still don’t know the main character’s name.

This past weekend warranted a Saturday “The Diplomat” nap because I went to ’s Halloween party on Friday. I kept telling my friends that I was going to a Substack party and they kept reminding me it was also a Twitter party. I have nothing against Twitter, I just really love Substack. I went dressed as Penny Lane from “Almost Famous” and got nervous and covered my face when anyone asked if they could read my Substack. Halloween house parties are easy because there’s a built-in opening line of “What are you dressed as?” By asking the question, you also learn about new things. For example, I learned that “Paris, Texas” is a classic 1984 neo-Western drama film and NOT the cheesy new rom-com with Miranda Cosgrove that my mom told me to watch when two men told me they were dressed up as the men from “Paris, Texas” and I yelled, “THE MOVIE WITH ICARLY?”

There were some very cool people at the party and I met a few who were total enigmas and a few who tried really hard to be one. I tried to talk to everyone in the house, learned I can share my contact info through tapping phones, found a new tennis partner, and snooped in every room of the house.

I brought three people with me to the Substack party. One I had met just a week prior at a book club and after talking for three minutes we figured out that we are neighbors. I look into her backyard from my balcony. In my opinion, that is a sign. She brought her roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend.

The book club we met at litterhotties, run by and . It started at a book club and ended at 3 a.m. when they turned the lights on at the actual club in Adams Morgan. There were two random men fighting over our book and at one point a 1L at Georgetown said we were the “hottest book club, both online and physically.”

Litterhotties has been running for two months now. The first book was “Dogs of Summer” by Andrea Abreu which is supposed to be about a lesbian 12-year-old who is in love with her best friend but what stuck out to me more was that dry, feverish envy you get around girls who seem to have it all already figured out. Those that are braver, more stylish, and more alive. It reminded me less of being twelve and more of every time I’ve wanted to disappear into someone else’s life.

The second book was “Natural Beauty” by Ling Ling Huang which is quite weird in the best way with just the right amount of body horror and is great if you read it quickly and don’t think too much about the holes. Both books are quite weird and grotesque, where the body changes faster than you can understand it. It takes jealousy that turns into worship, and worship that turns into disgust. They allude to the need to be seen, but only in the right light. I think girlhood is also quite weird and grotesque, which is why I like books like these.

In addition to joining book clubs to make friends I decided to cut the bullshit and finally go on a Hinge date. His name was Daniel and he took me to the dog park for our first date and definitely lied on his profile because I was taller than him at 5’3” with my platform Dr. Martens loafers on. I have never been on a date with someone I had not known previously, nor had I ever been on a date from an online forum, so I didn’t know how to act. I asked him about his dating history followed by, “Oh shit, should I not ask that?” and while he responded with, “No it’s okay, you can ask whatever you want,” he cringed a little bit when talking about the long-term relationship he just got out of. Right after the date I went home to St. Louis for a family reunion and then spent seven days in Arlington dogsitting so the stars didn’t align for our relationship but I did remember that going on dates is fun and I need to do more of it before I forget again. If you know anyone cool feel free to set me up with them.

In the days leading up to my week-long stint dogsitting in Arlington I was referring to it as a “poor man’s writing retreat” because I would finally have a house nicer and bigger than my own and be spending time with a dog in a quieter neighborhood. I was excited to write at the barstools of their kitchen island, watch bad reality TV on their actual television, and take my long evening walks with a dog instead of alone.

The owner of this dog is my former boss. The first time I met him, he made me cry. It was during an informational interview where he made me feel tiny. Despite this, I hassled him enough that he interviewed me for a research position and when I got on the second Zoom call I was ready to go to war but he was very pleasant and hired me on the spot to start the next day. Anyways, we have lunch now and he hugs me when we see each other and when he found out I worked at a dog shelter in high school he asked me to watch him and his wife’s dog.

But I did not have much free time to write or paint or think because of the long commute into the city which included a two mile bike ride to the Clarendon metro station and then a 30min metro ride to Federal Triangle. I also did not have many long walks because the dog I was with only wanted to walk to Starbucks, eat a pup cup, then beg outside of Starbucks for another. Lennon said, “That is so sad, she forgot how to be a dog” but I think the dog just preyed on me to give her human food.

Speaking of being preyed on – the government. I met two girls at a Happy Hour who were interns on the Hill for two weeks before the shutdown happened and they don’t think they will go back before their intern semester ends. Imagine doing a semester internship in D.C. just for your internship to get cancelled. My sources say the shutdown will end next week, let’s see if my sources are correct.

If this piece feels disjointed, that’s because it is. The rhythm of the city is uneven, and I’ve started to move with it. The days come at odd angles, Washington is a wacky place. It is clear-eyed bewilderment. I keep trying to write something coherent about it all, and it keeps slipping away. The headlines change. The coffee gets cold. The inbox fills up again. I must make private exhaustion feel emblematic of a cultural moment!

I am trying to switch my season of input into a season of output as the leaves change and the temperature drops and it gets colder outside turning my outdoor activities into indoor activities. The time after daylight savings time when it gets dark at 5 p.m. is for the writers.

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Yours truly,

Calihan

The only person I knew in the area when I moved to D.C was my mom’s cousin, who I call my aunt. She’s 78-years-old and lives 45 minutes outside of the city. She worked in logistics her entire career. Now, she is the president of her retirement community’s “Marquis de La Fayette Club” where they get together to talk about their love for the United States and Lafayette.

This affinity for Lafayette was how she learned of the Colonial Allies Challenge Cup – a polo match in Culpeper, Virginia between the U.S. and French military polo players. When she invited me, she pitched it to me as a historical outing. I was less intrigued in the history behind it and more intrigued with the opportunity to photograph a new sport.

Which is how I found myself waking up at 5:30am on a Saturday to take the orange line to the last stop. Once there, my aunt picked me up at the station and we drove together into the country.

Throughout my four years of high school, I was required to take U.S. history three different times. These are the perks of going to school in Missouri. Despite this lucrative education in the history of my nation, I found myself stuck in an hour-long car ride at 9am into the country with my aunt as she rambled on about Lafayette and I came to the realization I had no idea who he was. TLDR; according to Wikipedia, he was a French military officer who joined the U.S. Army to fight in the Revolutionary War and was the commander during the final, major battle (siege of Yorktown).

Many of the battles in the Revolutionary War were fought near Culpeper and after the war, Lafayette and George Washington went on a “Farewell Tour” of the U.S. stopping to greet people in Culpeper, VA.

For the past 200 years, the town has clung to this claim to fame.

The event was hosted by Liberty Hall, which holds onto the description of “plantation” even in the year of 2025. The farm, now privately owned by a family, has an indoor and outdoor polo arena, retirement boarding for horses, beginner classes like trail riding or western range and roping, and a VRBO.

One must dress in a certain manner to attend events like this. I wore a pink polo Juicy Couture dress I bought at a Salvation Army in Tulsa with strappy white sandals and a big floppy beach hat my aunt let me borrow. My brown purse was stocked with my camera, a 24-70mm lens, and my massive 70-200mm lens.

The first match was with local polo players. Anyone from the 50-year-old who runs the local beef farm down the highway, to the 12-year-old daughter in the Liberty Hall family. Upon the beginning of the match, I sat down in the front row, ready with my 70-200mm lens and my camera in AI Servo. We were sitting on top of a hill looking down on the field, which gave it a unique and interesting slight birds-eye view. It also illuminated how green the grass was.

The woman sitting next to my aunt and I, who was also 78-years-old, had grown up in Charlottesville, Virginia around horses. While she knew the rules of the game, she was far more eager to speak about the animal than the sport. How you can tell they’re having fun if their ears are forwards instead of down, how they understand the game and are just as competitive as the humans riding them, and how more and more universities are getting their own polo teams.

Before speaking with Toni I believed polo was only a sport for the super rich Southern kids. Now, I understand it is far more exclusive than that. With four quarters a game, the rider has to switch out a horse at every break, as the horses can only play 10 minutes at a time. Therefore, riders need to bring at least six horses with them to every game. Not only is the cost of housing and feeding these animals insane, but then riders must transport the horses from town to town for tournaments. There were two games at the tournament in Culpeper and were both 4v4, which means that there were at least 48 horses just for these recreational games.

The “Championship” game was between the French and American military polo players. Most of them had played in college or at the professional level. In the end, Team Washington beat Team Lafayette, but I think it might have been rigged to favor the Americans. In light of their win, Team Washington received gifts from sponsors of the event. One sponsor was a knife carver from Texas who engraved “Lafayette and Washington” into the handles of the knives like two teenagers who carve their initials into trees. Another sponsor was a local tea and coffee company. When they handed someone from Team Washington a container of tea leaves he shouted, “Didn’t we fight this war so we wouldn’t have to drink tea?”

Although I was surrounded all day by people who thought this joke was funny, it was nice to be back out in the country again after spending months straight living, working, and playing in the city.

Here are some of the photos I took during the event:

View all polo photos here

Of course I had the average common cold in Tulsa. Seasonal and predictable, they never made me sick enough to stay home from classes or be so desperate as to lay my forearms on the porcelain toilet seat. Just sick enough to bring my own tissues to class and take a shot of kid’s liquid Benadryl as I walked into the lecture hall.

My mother thinks that this change in health is due to my move to a new city and therefore the new germs that come with it. In Tulsa and St. Louis, I was never shoved into the same train car that a majority of the population had also been in within the past week. However when I studied abroad for six months in Madrid I never caught the stomach bug, just the normal study-abroad strep throat in September that everyone in my cohort experienced and went to the doctor for on the same day. The summer I spent in NYC I had no ailments, other than a brief one-day stint of food poisoning from an overcooked burger I ate from a dive bar in Brooklyn.

My aunt who lives in the DMV area, who was called when I told my mother I felt as though I was going to pass out from pain, believes I am finally coming-of-age genetically and developing the stomach problems and acute stomach indigestion that the majority of my mother’s side of the family struggles with. My father believes that I woke up with illness this morning because I was drinking on an empty stomach Friday night – which I was doing, but that’s hardly the reason I awoke with severe stomach pain Saturday morning. Drinking on an empty stomach would just cause a slight headache and maybe a gurgling stomach and nausea. Not pain so severe that when I walked from my bed to the bathroom, I had to be bent over at a 90 degree angle.

My analysis of the matter boils down to the D.C. food scene. In my time here I have eaten cuisines from countries I had never heard of, the meat of three new animals, and countless new sauces and spices. I have yet to find a restaurant that serves a simple burger without some sort of twist. Even when the menu does have a burger on it, the people I am with rarely let me eat one in peace. My boss says, “You’re not in Oklahoma anymore, you need to expand your pallet,” not knowing that when I try to do so, I end up spending my Saturday morning curled up on the floor of my shower positioned so the stream hits my stomach in hopes of some relief.

The night before my early and painful awakening was spent with a fellow Tulsa college alum at The Green Zone, a Middle Eastern cocktail bar in Adams Morgan. The menu is a thick book over 10 pages long of different mixes with accompanied photos. The drink I ended up getting included Nossa Cachaça, Brazil’s national spirit made from sugarcane juice, and Arak Ramallah, a grape-based alcoholic spirit popular in Palestine & Lebanon. My mother said, “Maybe stick with the alcohol that you know from now on.”

My stomach ached, but as the day went on the heaviness in my head was worse. A dull shame of inferiority. My new friends and coworkers had stomachs as sturdy as their passports and could eat nearly anything while I felt like my own body was exposing me as weaker than everyone else’s. Growing up I never thought I was sheltered, but I suppose I realize now I was coddled into predictability with my chicken, cow, and pig meats and sauteed veggies.

There are five people in my office on a day-to-day basis. They choose elaborate things to bring in for team lunches. Each one of them was born or raised somewhere else around the world – Bolivia, Syria, Venezuela, France, and Italy. Back in St. Louis, my path of living in Tulsa, Phoenix, Madrid, NYC, and now D.C. would have been impressive but to my coworkers I am just a little all-American girl, bland as the food I grew up with.

There is no place far away that I have an anchor to like them, and so many others here in D.C. The main location in the stories I have been told of my ancestors has been the United States. They were farmers, nurses, and soldiers, influencing landmark events in the country’s history. Both sides of my family have been in the United States for so many generations that my parents usually can’t immediately recall the exact cities in Europe their ancestors originally immigrated from.

My maternal grandmother grew up in Illinois during the Great Depression and her own mother passed away when she was only 8 years old. She then grew up to go to college, become a nurse, marry her love, be the mother to nine children, and save enough to pay for the undergrad tuition of all her children. My grandfather grew up in similar circumstances and, at 17, lied about his age to enlist in the army early. He was in the Navy during World War II, made it home safely, became a radiologist, then was a medic for the Marines in the Vietnam War. He caught tuberculosis and was sent home to die but somehow made a miraculous recovery and went on to become a pilot and the corresponding father to nine children.

My father’s ancestors were farmers from Germany who moved to Russia because of the promise of cheap land. They settled in Bessarabia. After a few years they were recognized as Russian citizens and told they were required to join the Russian army, so they immigrated to the United States right after President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act in 1862 which offered 160 acres of land to any emigrant willing to become a U.S. citizen. They moved to South Dakota and built a wheat farm. My great-grandparents met through the wheat harvest and moved to Iowa to continue to farm. My grandfather joined the Navy to put himself through college. My grandmother grew up in extreme poverty, without running water, and taught herself how to use a sewing machine so she could have all the clothes she saw in the magazines.

To dismiss their stories would be negligence. The deep roots my family has dug in the United States represent the “American Dream” in the most traditional sense. There is undoubtedly a sense of pride in what the people in my family before me have accomplished, pride that exists independent of country borders.

But the difficulty, then, is that to say you are proud of the United States sounds less like respect and gratitude for your ancestors and more like allegiance to whatever government holds power at the moment. I have deep pride and respect for my grandfathers’ military careers, but saying that might seem like an endorsement to new-worldly things like the “Department of War” or the young men pulled from their families to stand outside my metro stop. Allegiance feels heavy and tradition is folded into politics I cannot easily disentangle.

My roots run deep in this soil and I know that means something, I am just still trying to figure out what.

By Sunday afternoon the spiraling over ancestors and traditions and the lack of unique culture in the United States had quieted as I was recovered enough to straighten out my back and take a walk outside. I had breakfast and dinner plans on Saturday that had to be moved. Breakfast was changed to drinks after work on Tuesday and dinner was moved to Sunday night, trying yet another restaurant that specialized in a cuisine I could not confidently locate on a map. I had also planned to dye my hair purple that weekend, which I never got around to. Instead, I stayed in my bed, watched Harry Potter, and rearranged the items on my bookshelf.

It is a particular kind of defeat, to be young in a city and unable to withstand it. I want purple hair. I want to be the kind of person who tries every plate. Instead, I am the kind of person who lies on the shower floor, calculating the percentage of days I have been sick since arriving. Eight point nine seven percent and climbing.

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Yours truly,

Calihan

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It has been three weeks since Trump declared a “crime emergency” in DC and sent the National Guard into the district to “clean up our nation’s capital.” When I called my grandma on Friday to reassure her that I was safe, she asked me “Is the city much more clean and safe after everything Trump has done for it?”

I responded, “I always thought it was clean and safe, I think Trump needs to get out more, doesn’t seem like he knows what he’s talking about.”

Which made her take a pause to process, then burst out laughing. She laughed for so long that by the time she stopped laughing, she had forgotten what we were talking about.

So far, I have not seen the National Guard do much guarding. I see them underground at every metro stop, standing in trios right next to the ticketing machine. But they don’t stop the people who jump the turnstile nor did they stop the crazy man that spit on me Friday. In the Washington Post and New York Times, the only photos I see of the National Guard are those of them posing with eager and curious tourists from out of the country or walking back and forth on the National Mall, arguably the safest part of the city.

Sunday night I went to the Wharf to have dinner with friends and saw the National Guard armed for the first time. A squad of six were walking up and down the boardwalk carrying M4 semiautomatic rifles as they wove in and out of the crowds of families and little kids trying to enjoy the chilly August evening. It is hard to believe that the powers that be think it’s a good idea to arm soldiers with assault rifles in the most crowded and family-oriented area in town. If they did open fire on a “criminal,” the bullets would no doubt hit innocent bystanders in the meantime.

This is the same situation as when Blakely’s boyfriend was deployed for six weeks to a downtown L.A. during the riots. He was 45 minutes from his house but still had to sleep on a concrete floor in a sleeping bag and go weeks without seeing Blakely. All he did was patrol an under-construction FBI building and play football with his squadron. The Los Angeles Times published an article titled, “National Guard came to L.A. to fight unrest. Troops ended up fighting boredom”.

In addition to the National Guard, Trump also called Homeland Security into the city, which includes ICE and other Customs and Border Protection agents who believe they are doing the Lord’s work. The “Lord” in their mind is, of course, Trump. A few weeks ago, a video went viral around the district of a man in a yelling match with a Customs and Border Protection agent before the man threw a sub sandwich at the agent.

Sean Charles Dunn, a 37-year old man, Air Force veteran, and (former, he was let go after this) employee of the Department of Justice was arrested at his apartment and charged with felony assault on a police officer. The arrest somehow warranted a SWAT-style raid with enough agents to field a football team and deep bench. The White House even posted a hype-video of it on Twitter. The arrest likely won’t hold up, as a felony assault must “cause significant bodily injury.”

https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1956114803295953325

Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “If you touch any law enforcement officer, we will come after you,” which is something I’ve heard an offensive lineman say about their quarterback.

Stickers and graffiti drawings of a man hurling a sub sandwich have quickly popped up all over the city. There are multiple on my walk to the grocery store. On Friday I bought a sandwich from Subway for lunch. Viva la revolution.

I opened up Hinge Saturday morning for the first time in a few weeks and the first 10 men in my likes had a mirror selfie in their National Guard uniform as the first picture. Not even in the safety of my own bedroom can I escape them. I bet most of them have girlfriends back in Ohio or Georgia or wherever else they’re coming from and I’m not interested in being some deployment Jody fling.

While sitting on my balcony talking with my grandma Friday afternoon in an attempt to make her feel better about my living arrangements, I mentioned the only time I feel unsafe in DC is when I’m out running early in the mornings and the rats haven’t gone to sleep yet.

She was utterly appalled. “There are RATS? In my Nation’s Capital? I cannot believe that. There’s something Trump should be doing something about! Calihan, you need to write to him about that. Maybe I will.”

I hope she does write to him about the rats, and maybe I will too. I would love to see these National Guarders chasing rats and setting up traps instead of just staring at me while I reload my metro card.

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Yours truly,

Calihan

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Fall means I will finally get to dress to the full extent of my closet. But it also means I have to unpack the massive duffel bag that I have been using as a futon.

Since the weather has been in the 80s the past few days, I have been concocting how to dress wackier at work without my boss getting upset. I wore a pink blazer to my final round interview and they knew I was an art major when they hired me, so I tell myself they were expecting this.

I am planning on lots of layering, red tights, more unique jewelry, and the integration of cowboy boots. I am looking forward to wearing my oversized leather jacket and moto boots again. Fall weather also makes it easier to put cute little things in my hair. Maybe not the sparkly butterfly clips I used to wear to uni, but interesting headbands and starting the search now for cute winter hats. Right now I am really wanting a faux fur Ushanka. I still don’t have the commitment levels for a tattoo, but maybe I’ll grow up sometime soon. If I get a tattoo, it will be a snow leopard.

Unfortunately, the thrift stores in the DC metro area are lackluster. Which is disappointing for me as a shopper, but intriguing to me as a business girl. One weekend I plan on taking the metro to Northern Virginia and finding a Salvation Army. There are good vintage stores, but using the word “vintage” means they can upcharge by $40. I recently bought a vintage 80s business professional set from the vintage store Elephant In My Room in Petworth.

I also plan to dye my hair dark purple next weekend after our Wednesday Board meeting. I am starting to miss my bangs as well. Here is the inspiration:

My goal for the fall is to attend more interesting events and maybe make a friend. I haven’t made out-of-work friends yet which honestly doesn’t bother me but mostly because I am too good at spending time alone and I have a hard time wanting things I don’t have. I usually just make do with whatever I have, whether good or bad.

I joined a co-ed rec soccer team which means the cult of Volo has officially captured me. I am nervous to be judged as I walk around the city in a bright t-shirt with the organization's name displayed across my chest but I am excited to be part of a team again. Before the first game I either need to buy shin guards or have my parents mail my old ones from home.

On Thursday night I got into bed with my laptop at 8 p.m. and scoured the internet for intriguing events in September to build out my calendar for the month. Partially also so I would have something to tell my coworkers when they ask, “Doing anything after work today?” other than going for a run, reading on my balcony, or painting gauche. My boss thinks I should be having a coffee chat once a week with someone in the international trade space but I haven’t looked into who I would want to speak with yet, and I don’t even like coffee.

So far, I have RSVPed for the opening receptions of three art exhibits, an artist talk from one of my favorite photographers, Sally Mann, a vintage market, and a reading event from one of the writing societies in town. I joined a book club hosted by two DC Substackers and started reading the book, but it turns out I’ll be out of town for the first meeting.

I am trying to get connected with small bands in the area to be their photographer, but nobody from 7DrumCity will answer me back despite offering free photography services. Since emailing hasn’t worked, I might start soliciting around their place of work with photography business cards. So far I have photographed one concert last month which included three different bands. It was in The Pocket, a super small venue in Shaw. I am going to start hanging around more coffee shops and getting in with the baristas of the city.

This afternoon I am going to the hardware store to get a fake bamboo divider for my balcony as a new man is moving in my apartment on Thursday into the room I share a balcony with. This means I will now be living with FOUR adult men. Ada told me that under no circumstances should I tell boys I am going on dates with that I live with men, but I tell her not to worry because I’m not going on any dates.

Talk soon.

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Calihan

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When I told Londyn I received this piece of constructive criticism, she asked, “What’s even so funny in a corporate office that you’re giggling about all day long?”

I was talking to her on the phone while walking from my apartment in Shaw to The Baked Joint to get a cupcake and just crossed into Mount Vernon when she asked. It was a good question that I didn’t really have an answer to. What do I giggle about all day long?

Most of the laughs come before 10am when I’m still energized from my morning commute or after 3pm, which me and the coworker I adore, call “the 3pm witching hour.” On Wednesday it had just hit 3:15pm and I loudly pulled out a family size bag of Swedish Fish from one of my many backpack compartments. He was already silently laughing when I held out the bag for him to take a few but then they fell out of my hand onto the ground and I silently yelled, “They’re jumpin’ out the water!” which made me snort so hard snot came to the forefront of my nose and he collapsed onto his desk. Our boss literally shushed me from the other side of the divider and I ate my Swedish Fish in silence after that.

At lunch, he and the intern cohort grill me about my living situation. I live in a co-living townhouse which means I have my own bedroom and bathroom but the kitchen and living room are shared with people who come and go. The shortest lease available is one month. They get a lot of students and traveling nurses. I still don’t know how many rooms are in my house (maybe 10?) or where a majority of the doors lead to. I told them about my nocturnal roommate and said, “It is unfair, I wanted to be the weird roommate!”

My colleagues' eyes got real big, he cocked his head, and smiled his charming little sarcastic smile and said, “Oh don’t worry, I’m sure you still are.”

Too which I, of course, giggled too much and got told to contain myself.

The day prior I announced that I was having a coffee chat with a man I had met at our annual benefit dinner. He is a partner at one of the largest law firms in DC, a former USTR, and one of our VIPs. My supervisor was flabbergasted that a man of such intelligence and experience would be taking time out of his schedule to talk with me, a wee little girl from Missouri. She asked how we even met.

It was right after the annual dinner, where the speaker had thanked me for my hard work organizing the dinner and announced I had graduated from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. After the dinner, this VIP ran up to one of our interns asking, “Who is the Oklahoma girl? Where is the Oklahoma girl? I want to talk to her.” And our intern, who knew exactly who he was, was overjoyed to come and usher me towards him. He is from Oklahoma and we spent 10 minutes talking about small towns in Oklahoma, which I know well after doing my senior photography project on that exact thing. He gave me his business card and told me to email him so we could meet up. When a VIP tells you to email him and set up a chat, you do so. We talk on Tuesday. I’ll let you know how it goes.

There aren’t many people from Oklahoma in Washington, according to my mom’s cousin who spent a few childhood years in Oklahoma herself and has lived in DC for 40 years. Even though I am not technically from Oklahoma, I do feel like I grew into myself there, which means Oklahoma is one of my homes. I feel comfortable saying that I’m from Oklahoma, even when it makes my parents roll their eyes. I don’t consider myself to be a very warm, nice person – I’m a bit shy which often makes people think I don’t like them – but I suppose some of the Oklahoma hospitality rubbed off on me.

I was tasked with escorting a Senator and his three staffers from the parking garage to the ballroom and then back when he was ready to leave. Our building is huge and complicated and I was worried the whole day about getting us lost. The Senator’s schedule kept changing, which meant I was waiting in the back of the room with a to-go meal for a majority of the night until he was ready. The next day, my CEO told me that the staffers sought him out to inform him of how hospitable I was and emailed me, offering a private tour of the Capitol. When I told my work friend he started laughing and asked me how he can get himself into the scenarios I get myself into. I informed Work Friend that I was happy they were pleased with me, as I was worried they were going to find me unprofessional since I texted their whole team, “I am in the parking garage wearing a white cowboy hat” so that they could find me.

(To be clear, our dinner was Western themed so all the staff was wearing white cowboy hats, I am not Oklahoman enough to just randomly wear cowboy hats.)

My Work Friend also told me the next day that he was impressed with my contacts and outcomes from the dinner since the morning of, I was five minutes late to work because I stopped at CVS to buy Benadryl as my right nostril would not stop running. I have always had trouble swallowing pills, so I bought the children’s liquid version and poured out 20mL in celebration of the annual dinner and took the shot like a champ. It made me dead tired for two hours in the morning but I didn’t have to re-medicate and bounced back after taking the upper of an iced latte with almond milk.

Holding the title of Weird Girl of the Office is okay with me, because up until this point the title only includes having a good time, meeting important people, and giggling a lot. Plus I have an individuality complex, like most Americans, so I would rather be called weird than basic.

However, there is another aspect to the “weird” agenda. I seldom feel like I belong in such a structured setting like this, where my supervisor still looks over all the emails I send to make sure they have the correct corporate jargon in it and tells me that I can’t react to the CEO’s Slack message with a bow emoji. But then again I don’t feel as though I would belong in an artistic freelance position where my days are not structured and I cannot live by a routine that is dictated by someone other than myself. I am too normal for freelance and too abnormal for corporate.

It is still weird to me that I am in a position like this at all. I failed the only international trade course I ever took in university. Imagine my professor, who once called me dumb using a .edu email, learning that I am now working in global trade in the nation’s capital.

The course was “International Trade 101” and I took it the semester I studied abroad in Madrid at one of the top economics and finance universities in Europe. I fell behind from the start of the semester. I sat for hours with my head in my hands at our dining room table on Sunday afternoons, trying to make sense of the jargon I had scribbled into my notebook. I commissioned three different tutors to help me with my problem sets, and all three of them eventually quit telling me, “I don’t know what your professor is asking, I’m sorry.” At the end of the semester, once I had accepted my defeat but still wasn’t okay with it, I fled the country and backpacked up the coast of Portugal instead of spending any more time studying at that dining room table. The trip was a good use of my time, especially since my home university waved my failure as they later realized it was a Ph.D. level class. They apologized profusely but I was just glad to be done.

Although the trauma from this course eventually wore off and I was no longer afraid that all professors were out to get me, it was a while until I got back into trade. Even then, I fear I do not take professional or academic things as seriously as a corporate company in DC might want me to. When I passed my Certified Global Business Professional exam, I posted online and told everyone that I was not Certified for Global Monkey Business.

At my desk when I do not have things to do, I doodle weird-looking big-eyed girls into my notebook and Doodlebug surfing instead of finding extra work I could be doing.

My advice on being the weird girl of YOUR office:

• Decorate your work bag with cute little keychains and other things that hang

• Stick a Sonny Angel on your phone so that she flashes her ass to anyone you take a picture of. Then, take a picture of the CEO and managing director at your team bonding cooking class.

  

• Sit crisscross applesauce and occasionally decide to work from the conference table all day

• Never have anything that you actually need but always have at least five things that you don’t need

• Have a life outside of the office and occasionally leak it a little. Nobody is too mysterious, but nobody is going home and just scrolling on Slack either.

• Call the clients “freaks” whenever they do something wrong

• Bring the same thing for lunch every single day (toasted bread, lemon rosemary chicken breast, avocado, and chips)

• Decorate your desk with unsettling items (bonus points if you have a small rock collection)

• Don’t drink coffee and just remain energetic "solely because of the vibes”

• Adopt the office plants that are holding on by a thread and become very protective of them

• Give the faulty printer a full on pep talk before hitting Print

• Draw funny cartoons on the office whiteboard when you arrive to the office first in the mornings

• Special submission from my friend Archer, who is a nurse: “start carrying a pair of trauma shears everywhere you go”

Tell me other ways you are the weird girl of the office.

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Yours truly,

Calihan

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I still love this video and now that Substack has videos I wanted to share it here <3

More writing coming soon, work as been crazy :P

Yours truly,

Calihan