Sedentary Reporter

Here's the view last weekend from inside one of my favorite Dupont Circle hangouts, Soho Tea & Coffee. The red brick building across the street is a bar, the Fireplace. The FP has a signature glass-enclosed fireplace built into the outside corner of the building on P and 23rd Sts NW.

When I first arrived in DC in June of 1992, I got a second-floor room in a house a block from the university campus. My neighbors on the second floor were two incoming freshmen, in town for some kind of entering student program before classes began in September, and the mother of a local entertainer. The local entertainer was a nice young woman who visited her mother every evening about 11 p.m. to shower and get ready for work. I rarely saw her, but I loved her outfits: silver leather hot pants with a backless silver leather Eisenhower jacket and silver stilletto sandals was one I still remember. People in my Midweatern neighborhoods did not wear things like that. Our landlord was a deaf man from Singapore, and he slept on the couch in the living room every night. He kept a very big machete on the floor beside the couch to protect us from intruders.

Being a newcomer to both the university and DC and not knowing anyone, most nights I would go to my room after I cooked my supper and ate it by myself in the dining room. I'd read or write and then fall asleep, usually with the light on. I'd take out my hearing aids, open my book, and soon be in the land of nod. This would be about 7:30 or 8 p.m. Around 1 or 2 a.m., I'd wake up, exchange my daytime clothes for my pjs, and open the door to go into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Several times, the hall lights would be shining bright, and the hall itself would be filled with police in uniform.

I'd smile at the officer nearest my door and say "hi." Other officers at the end of the hall would be signing with the two young students (they were deaf), and writing things down on clipboards. I could see the older woman sitting on the foot of her bed and gesturing--often with a raised fist--while another officer wrote in yet another clipboard.

"Can you hear that?" The officer would point to a boom box visible through the students' open door.

"No. Excuse me...." I'd smile, go get my hearing aids, and put them in. Instantaneous rock & roll would often make me stagger with its force. I'd point to the floor, which would be throbbing to the beat. "I can FEEL it with my feet now, but without my hearing aids, I can't hear it."

"Maybe you can tell the kids not to turn on the boom box when they come home at night."
The officer would wave his or her hand in the students' direction. "It's very disturbing to the other woman on the floor. She's hearing, and the sound wakes her up."

--TO BE CONTINUED--