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I've had several requests for further explanation of where I live. D.C. is divided into four quadrants, with the Capitol building at t the center of the dividing lines. The northwest section is the best-known and the most affluent. When I moved out here I started looking for apartments in the other sections and was laughed at for it. I was told that the other sections were too "sketchy" to live in. I always had to laugh at the fact that I, after having lived in the poorest parts of my state in Mexico, after having made it through rioting in Bolivia, and after having been robbed at gunpoint (two of them!) in Peru, was being warned away from parts of D.C. Irony aside, we found a row house (two separated stories in the same house) technically in the NW section, but only four blocks away from the NE, which is close enough to pay a little less in rent than the rest of the NW ($1975 a month between three of us).

Our block consists of the following: us three white kids, a Chinese woman who owns a dry cleaner (breaking some stereotypes there, aren't we?) and who speaks so little English that I speak to her in Spanish without her even noticing, and such an assortment of other people that I can't really tell who lives on the block and who doesn't. There are quite a few houses on the block that have been in the same families for the last 100 years, and the current inhabitants refuse to make any improvements on the houses that might result in higher property taxes. They also keep the houses in a constant state of "construction", thus obviating the levying of property taxes at all. A couple of the houses also don't pay any sort of utilities bills, which means that they are dark all the time and their inhabitants spend a lot of time on the front porch. I will leave my front door at 615 in the morning to go jogging, leave at 830 to go to work, and get home from work at 1230 at night, and I can always count on multiple someones hanging out on the porches. Unemployment seems rampant, unless you count drinking Mad Dawg 20 20 all day as gainful employment. I am, however, in D.C., so I suppose that political correctness is in order. Therefore, the people who don't have utilities aren't poor, but they're economically disadvantaged. Also, the "transactions" that take place in the alley by my house and which involve plastic bags and rolls of ones aren't drug deals, but are "participation in the unofficial economy".

Some of my readers may be familiar with my sleeping patterns, which tend to alternate from sleeping outside, to sleeping on the couch, to sleeping on the floor. Outside is not really a possibility here, but my sleeping quarters are almost always located in the living room. This is prime real estate for auditorily experiencing the interactions between the porch-dwellers on my block. We've had fights, two breakups, one very...ummm...passionate reconciliation, a death threat, and a royal rumble involving close to 8 pugilists. I love where I live though. My other options were all suburban enclaves in either Virginia or Maryland. You know the type; yuppie couples walking their golden retrievers to Starbucks where they enjoy their soy chai lattes while perusing the latest Eddie Bauer catalogs. They then go home, get in their Volvo (high safety ratings!), and go to the latest restaurant out of the Zagat guidebook and order the newest Chilean wine. I'll stick with the porch-people, thanks.