Mildly awkward times in our nation’s capital
So, we’re prepping for the charming flight across the Atlantic to Heathrow here at Dulles Airport, home of the airport shuttles untouched by time, and I’m hoping to avoid any situation like in Airplane! when Stryker forces that grandmother to hang herself. I’m also FAIRLY certain that if I were to announce to my seatmate that the flight attendant has supple, pouting breasts and firm thighs, I would be removed from the plane for sexual harassment. That hypothesis will not be tested.
If you care for a little in depth discussion of foreign defense policy, the mechanics of economic sanctions, and investigative journalism, other people here on the old Prague Blog (…blague?) can do it better than I can. Here, no, we will not discuss that. Last night, we had the CN Alumni & Friends event (infamously known as the Thing Katherine Fell Down the Stairs At Two Years Ago) at the University Club in D.C. Jonathan Karl of ABC News spoke — which, sweet — and then post-dinner after the event we met up in Dupont so we could go to the basement bar of Russia House. It basically looks like a hybrid of the Gryffindor and Slytherin common rooms, with like, “Dragostea din tei” meets “Listen to Your Heart” meets a Russian Shakira music blasting right next to the Lakers-Magic game.
Now, 98.9 percent of my focus was attuned to that basketball game, stomping around like a frustrated leprechaun, yelling things like “Well, they’re sure as hell not going to win with DWIGHT HOWARD taking the ball to the floor” or “The blind shoot free throws better than DWIGHT HOWARD” or “DWIGHT HOWARD,” so I naturally captured the interest of the 30 year-old Russian men in the room. It all started when I knew where J.J. Reddick went to college, my usual method of luring in men.
So, cut to this gentleman with a gray silkish shirt, sipping vodka, moving across the room to stand next to me and stand there silently. An awkward commercial break later, he pauses, looks at our CN group most of whom care not one tiny little sugar cube about this basketball game and we have this exchange:
“You are with them?” [waves glass towards the tables]
“Yeah, we’re going on a trip to Prague tomorrow.” And here we’ve got a nice long pause, as I nod and he drinks, before he looks at them again, and says:
“Your loss.”
And then leaves. He just took off back towards the bar, and the hilarity of the moment cannot be conveyed here. About twenty minutes later, another group of guys, again about thirty, because it’s either that kind of place or I’m that kind of girl or my sweater set just projected maturity I don’t have (because it was a SWEATER SET and could not have been projecting “Easy College Girl”) ended up trying to get my number and providing me with drink recommendations. So Russia House, “the perfect meeting place for the true Washington socialite,” is evidently not the perfect place to find girls who can talk basketball if this was any indication.
Look forward to more local color from the front lines of awkward situations from me soon.
