Gettin' on in Years? Try the Sedgewick!

The forces of gentrification, like commercial-strength Liquid Plumr, are foaming into the holdout buildings and street corners preventing DC from achieving the demographic ideal coveted by the myriad holders of interest-only home loans. All the easy growth has pretty much come and gone, with the bombed out crack houses and brownfields of yesteryear transformed, by this obliging developer or that, into gleaming towers in which no surface goes ungraced by high gloss granite or endures the shame of non-recessed illumination. Oh yes, and there are the Viking appliances; can't forget that. Takeout and Whole Foods fricassee just doesn't taste the same without them.

But with the profits from no-brainer investments long since diverted to the oversized flags fluttering from every crane in the universe - Americans, like beavers, are natural-born builders - a smaller battle rages, building by building, for the remaining real estate unoccupied by people partial to the joint ownership of Metrochecks and BMW 700s. In the new calculus, cash poor homesteaders are selling out to dual-income power couples in an uneven process of organic change. Sure, there are still more new construction projects than you can count on your fingers and toes and teeth, but with homebuyers finally trading their heroin for methadone, it's less likely entire blocks and buildings will be rejuvenated overnight.

This also means rickety rental apartments, once fixtures on the condo conversion watch-list, will remain entry-level dwellings for commitment-phobes and non-profit do-gooders for some time to come. And then there's Northwest's forgotten elderly, who, if they're not living in well-appointed row houses, are often leasing tiny apartments near sunswept patios flooded with margaritas, young scrappers, and puke. Changing economic conditions have surely saved their asses, though I'm certain this blessing doesn't extend to residents of the The Sedgewick on 19th St. just north of Dupont Circle, which is where old folks go to die, unless the management is simply killing them, I can't figure which.

Tonight, for the fourth time in about a year, I came across the possessions of an expired senior splayed on the sidewalk outside the building. The cool spring air deprived my senses of the musty odors no doubt wafting from the afghans, mattresses, and easy chairs clogging the walkway, but this sad fact didn't hinder my inner scavenger from embracing the upside of the circle of life. I spotted a three foot tall table piled onto a heap of plastic bags, its 18-inch square top perfectly sized for my hard to furnish foyer, but an unfortunate split on its surface dashed my hopes to benefit from Louella Barkley's death.

I continued to poke through her things, however, and was intrigued by a pair of brass lamps dumped in a box filled with her old pill bottles - treatments for diabetes and ossified stools. Alas, the lamps were also damaged. I walked away, though, with a wide-angle photo taken in 1936 outside the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, just before the Supreme Court came to its senses and started striking down the communist provisions of the New Deal. Everyone's smiling, perhaps even Louella somewhere among secretaries - trust me, all the women were secretaries back then - packed in the front row. It's a simple piece of history, but I intend to keep it as my own personal treasure, nevermind the disregard the landlord and maybe Louella's family have for the stuff that, in the end, is her legacy.

Hopefully my demise will inspire more recognition, but even if it doesn't, one thing's certain - there's no fucking way I'm moving into that damn Sedgewick.

Lost in Cerebrum

From time to time I think of leaving DC, permanently, in defiance of my ten-year record of lauding the place top to bottom. And that record is voluminous; just ask those poor fools, among my friends, who insist life's worthwhile in the far-off hinterlands of Bethesda and Arlington, not to mention those more distant upstarts Fairfax and Loudon counties. I've refused many an invitation, in lieu of the polite "no, thank you" my mother has long suggested, with a sophisticated reply of my own choosing, modified as circumstances require, but generally amounting to something like this: "Huh? You want me to go where? I'd have to drive you know. (Sigh)... When are you going to move downtown?"

There's something lovable, I've found, in each of the many inconveniences linked with living in the District, from obvious nuisances including petty street crime and public urination, to the lesser troubles induced by ridiculous taxes and incompetent bureaucrats. Under the right conditions - lots of booze, the psychic safety net provided by one's cushy Northwest surroundings - even the city's most discomfiting sights can prove endearing. The homeless looking man meting out compliments for your spare change. The woman parading down 12th St. in too high boots and a tiny fur coat, and little else, hoping to strike up some impromptu social engagements.

I've found it easy to love them all, but have had a helluva time getting anything resembling reciprocity out of them. I'm a vote to the city councilman, a score to the street hood, an ATM to the man begging for small money by the upscale coffee shop. Yet despite this, I consistently choose the solitude of their company - walking the streets in my law-abiding way, or watching them over the top of my newspaper or book - over that of my friends, the people who care about me, in concept if not fact. Unlike these other folks, the flacks and hucksters I know only by sight or smell, my friends are stubborn organisms. They are forlorn when I demand happiness, inert when I'm looking for action. So often not what I expect and command, so disappointing.

As for those others, they never seem to deviate from my notion of what exactly they are.

Whore. Alcoholic. Homosexual. Whatever. All neatly categorized, all serving their purposes, drip dropping muted smiles and blunted heartache in the day-to-day of my existence, a facsimile relationship borne of familiarity but not knowledge. I've spent countless hours in this milieu, passing up actual human interaction in defense of the pure archetypes, unchanged by time or experience, in my mind. The friends, well, they're consumers, not unwittingly, of the non-stop charming, arrogant, childish, bullying, insightful, combative, hilarious performance that is whatever me I'm trying to sell at that moment in time. You might call it the Un-Me. Or Facet of Me.

I've been in it for the laughs, but, of late, those laughs are mostly bouncing around in my head, echoes of the mirth of yesteryear. Families and careers, or perhaps some problem with the tired haunts and routines of the deposed ringleader, have left me laughing at myself. It's still fun, but with each lonely cackle, another tiny link to everyone else fails and breaks away, like a fleck of paint chipping away from a high-gloss figurine, and I retreat further into my mind and the nameless characters that inhabit it.

People want more than good times, I think. Authenticity. Open arms. Vulnerability. These are the requirements for the new age, my new age, the fourth decade. With some laughs, sure, but with honesty too. I've understood this for some time, but it's amazing how one weekend, 36 hours at an out-of-town wedding, can crystalize the difference between bullshit, the freaks and cads from my beloved hometown, and those wonderful people who've been dragging me down life's path all these years, trying to get me to see.

The irony - and what would this disjointed tale be without any? - is that I stopped kicking and screaming, and took a good look around, not at the behest of my stalwart friends, but through the contrivances of a lovely five-year-old.