{"id":1493,"date":"2010-10-25T07:33:21","date_gmt":"2010-10-25T12:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=1493"},"modified":"2018-10-30T16:53:11","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T20:53:11","slug":"flights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=1493","title":{"rendered":"Flights"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve completely failed at my Two Novels and a Baby project<\/a>.\u00a0 It had me depressed for a few weeks\u2026 But then that feeling passed largely thanks to the main reason I haven\u2019t been able to focus on writing a novel \u2013 I work six motherfucking jobs. I have just enough energy to pause outside the gun store and mutter dreamily, \u201cIf only\u2026if only\u2026\u201d
\n<\/p>\n

It was recently suggested by someone we\u2019ll call the Zombie Queen that I give up the pressure of traditional writing and just do a series of short vignettes on topics such as how fucked up my family is, how my neighbor is the wolfman, and how I like to bake in the nude and stare across the quad at my other neighbor who, always, is staring right back at me.<\/p>\n

Is quad the right word?\u00a0 We have an l-shaped apartment building, so the two wings are staring at each other.\u00a0 Courtyard, I guess.\u00a0 Quad makes me think of that little square at high school where the guys who eventually bought my name for millions of dollars and made their fortune beat me up every day.<\/p>\n

And\u2026back to the gun shop.\u00a0 If only\u2026<\/p>\n

The Queen outlined all this as I drove her to Dulles Airport. Currently, the Metro is expanding out to the airport and all the demons in construction hell have made the trip to and from Dulles a horrific, waking nightmare.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t realize how bad it had become because, as a rule, Dulles is always bad and I avoid it at all costs.\u00a0 The worst part is getting home.\u00a0 Getting back to Maryland from Dulles is a test of skill and cunning. And, now, with all the construction, it feels like I\u2019m being chased by monsters through an abandoned amusement park log ride.\u00a0 Shooting through jersey walls that give you inches of space on each side, in the mirror a black, monolithic SUV, ahead of me a rental car holding the panicked, stroked-out remnants of tourists, beside me a Super Shuttle van that somehow leapt over the jersey wall and is now going 80 on dirt and gravel with a screaming, teeming mass of Japanese visitors in the back calling for help.<\/p>\n

I hate Dulles.\u00a0 Yet, without fail, my friends always fly into Dulles.\u00a0 They\u2019ll call and say, hey, Nacho, we\u2019re coming to visit.\u00a0 Why does your idiotic small town have three airports?\u00a0 And I say that we\u2019re not just any old small town, we\u2019re the capital of the goddamned empire and they\u2019ll just have to shut up and take it.<\/p>\n

Then I tell them to fly to National.\u00a0 At which point they\u2019ll be able to take the Metro to my place and I won\u2019t have to drive all the way out to load up their fucking bags of gold bricks into my car.\u00a0 Assholes.<\/p>\n

But the taxes at National are through the roof and my cheap friends dismiss the idea, usually coupled with \u201cI can\u2019t figure out the Metro.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t?\u00a0 Really? Because it was designed by an eight year old boy with a Lego set.\u00a0 You can close your eyes and get on any train and you\u2019ll eventually get to me.<\/p>\n

Well, unless you get off at Anacostia. An old girlfriend did that once.\u00a0 Flew into National and, next I know, she\u2019s calling me from the platform at Anacostia and the last train had just left.<\/p>\n

I sat in the dark and listened as she left that desperate message on my answering machine. She sounded pretty scared. That was ten years ago.\u00a0 I wonder if she\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n

Anyway, next I tell them to go to BWI.\u00a0 It\u2019s a longer ride, but they\u2019re in Maryland so there\u2019s no reason for them to go through elaborate shenanigans to try and conceal the way out.<\/p>\n

The only problem with BWI is when you\u2019re picking up a former Washingtonian.\u00a0 You know who you are, assholes. You left town in the 90\u2019s or whatever and you take the goddamned red eye and we\u2019re out and on 95 at 2am because you had to have a fucking cavity search in customs.<\/p>\n

I like to take a sneaky little back way into Columbia and down US 29, bypassing the wicked potential of I-95. But everytime I go to flee the interstate, any former Washingtonian goes: Woah!\u00a0 Woah!\u00a0 NO!\u00a0 Stay on 95!<\/p>\n

Everytime, without fail, no matter the hour, I run into bumper to bumper traffic coming back from BWI.\u00a0 It\u2019s like I tripped an alarm when I left the airport. So I sit there at 2am with an exhausted traveler who says, \u201cGosh, DC\u2019s changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

No it fucking hasn\u2019t.\u00a0 You knew this would happen.\u00a0 You\u2019re in on it!<\/em><\/p>\n

But, still, I prefer that to Dulles any day.\u00a0 Knowing this, Dulles-bound friends appear to make an effort to select the worst possible tickets.\u00a0 I\u2019ll get the call \u2013 Hey, Nach! Coming out to visit.\u00a0 Got cheap, cheap tickets\u2026 We\u2019ll be landing at Dulles at 4:45pm on Friday.<\/p>\n

No!\u00a0 No!\u00a0 Stop. Just\u2026let\u2019s be quiet for a moment. Just\u2026just catch our breath\u2026relax\u2026relax\u2026<\/p>\n

How\u2019d I get on that? This post is really about giving up the Two Novels and a Baby thing and announcing that I\u2019m going to try something else. But then I started thinking about Dulles and now I\u2019m typing all this into my phone while I wait for the gun store to open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve completely failed at my Two Novels and a Baby project.\u00a0 It had me depressed for a few weeks\u2026 But then that feeling passed largely thanks to the main reason I haven\u2019t been able to focus on writing a novel …<\/p>\n

Flights<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268,5,12],"tags":[36,269,397,399,262],"class_list":["post-1493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project-mondays","category-rants","category-dc","tag-commute","tag-project-mondays-2","tag-rants","tag-dc","tag-two-novels-and-a-baby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1493"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1515,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1493\/revisions\/1515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}