The Revenge of the Nerds, and They’ve Got the Pentagon

It’s during those lingering lunchtime walks that I feel most like a stranger in this self-important place where Presidents live and bossy bureaucrats call the shots. For one, I’m blind to the city’s celebrities--I couldn’t tell an FDA big shot or White House chief of staff from the dude who rips those saxophone riffs on the street corner near my office. And I possess not one red cent of its currency--I don’t hold political office or even a position on staff for someone who does.

Heck, I don’t know a soul within a million miles of any seat of power--unless, of course, you count Saleem, the man in the straw hat who puts a mighty-fine spit shine to my shoes every Wednesday.

The result: I am invisible here--at parties. At bars. On the subway. And, especially, on the street.

For the past two months, I have been a Southern Californian examining the nation’s capital through West Coast eyes, jealous at the majesty of the place and turned off by its brusque indifference to anyone it deems doesn’t matter .

All around me, stony-eyed professionals pass purposefully each noon hour, scurrying from their power lunches back to the office to finish the requisite 12-hour Washington workday.

Me, I’m a malingerer here, a non-player--clad in suitable L.A. or Seattle fare. Blue jeans and a T-shirt featuring Pete, the Little Rascals dog, under a denim work shirt.

Maybe I’m being confused with the biggest Washington loser of them all, the lowly tourist--that plump bottom-feeder from America’s Heartland, like the one who stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial gazing into the Reflecting Pool, observing: “Lookie, there’s where Forrest Gump walked on water!”

Every day, Washington offers us both a million little disrespects or, as they say on the street, disses.

I call this place the Diss-trict of Columbia.

Maybe this city is no more mean-spirited than Los Angeles. But in L.A., people at least scowl from cars that pass at 75 m.p.h., so slights recede quickly in your rearview mirror.

Here, in this pedestrian town, the Diss comes face-to-face, the insults sink in water-torture slow. Like the man who literally refused to give me the time of day. In Washington, it seems, friendliness is interpreted as stupidity, or craziness.

A cleaning woman where I work is the only person to ever strike up a conversation with me, in an elevator, around midnight. She liked my goatee, said it reminded her of Hollywood.

Bingo.

L.A. and D.C.: The abbreviations roll off the tongue with a symmetry that belies the fact that these two cities couldn’t be farther apart on the geographic, political or cultural maps.

They’re like Venus and Mars. Miss Hathaway and Ellie Mae. Madonna and Mrs. Clinton.

As a card-carrying L.A. resident, I am irked by a few things about this place. For one, Washington at its heart is a humorless beast. It’s like “American Gothic,” just not as happy--a place run by power-hungry hordes who steal the charm from an otherwise genteel Southern city.

That power play spills down from Capitol Hill onto the streets, which during noon-hour rain become the domain of battling umbrellas that refuse to yield for fear of losing face.

If Washington were a restaurant, it would serve up only one dish: healthy portions of some government slumgullion. People eat, drink and sleep politics here. Big Brother is big news.

In Southern California, we suffer from a misguided Geographic Arrogance, thinking we’re more sophisticated than people in say, Kansas, by our mere proximity to the Coast.

In Washington, that arrogance reeks of power lust. If you don’t hold power or aren’t close enough to whiff it like some reprobate kid with a glue container, you read about power.

Every day, the local paper chronicles the day’s juiciest, inside-the-Beltway power struggles like an insider sheet. Nobody is ever quoted by name, but rather as a “source close to the nearest observer.” Often, the approach to news is as narrowly focused as the tiniest local rag: How world news plays through Washington eyes.

And people inhale the stuff each day as though cramming for some first-period test. Unlike L.A., this is one of the brainiest towns in America--smarts that come in nerdy, button-down little packages.

Washingtonians are always reading. At my gym, people read while they exercise on bikes and Stairmasters. Many bookstores here are open until midnight, a few even 24 hours. I once saw a gentleman lost in a book as he strolled in the middle of a crosswalk.

Sure, this is all a refreshing change from L.A., where people don’t so much read as gawk at the pictures, a place where the daily horoscope takes precedence over anything loosely described as news.

But after two months of enduring public-policy debates in almost every imaginable corner of this town, I almost long to hear the nasal whine of some West L.A. club-hopper talking about the latest leather fashions with her nose-ringed best friend.

I said, almost .

But at least Angelenos have a certain savvy to their sexual expression. Here, amid the down-turned faces and institutional dress code, lurks a strange outdoor spectacle: a public display of affection straight from your first junior-high dance.

Couples walk goo-goo-eyed, holding each other in this eight-armed juvenile love grip--smooching like 2 a.m. drunks as they block pedestrian traffic, as if imagining themselves in some motion picture love scene, proclaiming: “Look at me! Somebody loves me!”

The only thing that pries them apart is seeing somebody famous. But here in the nation’s capital, celebrity comes in a decidedly different form from Los Angeles.

Recently I was walking near Georgetown with two Washington reporters from a Florida newspaper--otherwise intelligent, feet-on-the-ground professionals. Until their heads snapped around like randy dogs on a short leash.

“Hey, did you see who that was?!” one said.

“Yeah, that was David Kessler, the FDA commissioner!”

Who? All I saw was an owlish-looking man in a rumpled suit.

Indeed, Washington is a place where the stars are decidedly four-pointed, as in square. People of note here aren’t athletes or movie stars--they’re mostly bespectacled men and badly dressed women, all with access to--you guessed it-- power .

And talk about dweebs. If I see one more guy wearing an Izod shirt, collar up, with wrinkled shorts and loafers without socks, who thinks he’s really letting his hair down, making some kind of off-work fashion statement, I am going to scream.

Still, Washingtonians like their city. They see it as a refreshingly intellectual alternative to the wasteland of L.A., its falseness and smarmy operators, the place where racial tension abounds and crime runs rampant.

Well, D.C. is no nirvana. Every city has its South-Central, making headlines for social, economic and murder-ridden woes. Here, there’s southeast Washington, which in recent years has been the murder capital of the nation for black males--a place that often makes Florence and Normandy feel like a walk in the park.

Talk about walking, in Washington--and here’s a concept to boggle the mind of any motorized Angeleno--people don’t need cars. The metro system is clean and safe, and it pierces deep into the suburbs.

No wonder. The road network here is a confusing, car-sucking black hole. Washington streets are sketched out in typical gridlock fashion with a wagon-wheel spiral laid down on top.

That means streets whirl off every which way. You take one wrong turn and you’re in another state. And, talk about maddening, since the city is mapped out in quadrants--northeast, southwest and so on--there are as many as four versions of every street.

During afternoon rush hour, some roads change direction in their traffic flow. Others close entirely. Little wonder that a friend of mine gave his car to charity.

For all its foibles, Washington can bombard a visitor with cultural images, like the Vietnamese family of six who squatted at a bus stop near Dupont Circle.

There are the well-educated taxi drivers hailing from every nation on Earth providing insights into this town, comparisons to other world capitals where life can be just as ironic.

And while I miss the unpremeditated clash of styles that is Los Angeles, time away has shown me that there is no perfect place to be. Every city has its sirens to scatter the Satans.

Both L.A. and D.C. can bewitch as well as insult. Whether it’s a cobalt-colored Pacific Coast sunset, or the sight of the stately Capitol dome, beckoning and resilient after a warm summer’s rain.