We went to our first DC dinner party today. After a morning of 'West Wing', followed by an afternoon of work for both Maxy and me, I had a second go at making brownies (in an ingenious foil tray, which you use to cook the brownies in and which comes with a plastic lid, so you can also transport them in the same tray. Ingenious!) and we headed out to the treacherous South East of DC to have supper at Alison's house.
As I've mentioned, the majority of white people just operate in the west of Washington, as it is said that the whole of the East is rough and ghetto-y and sure enough, there has been quite a lot on the news lately about a spate of shootings in the North East of the city.
So in my head, it has become this forbidden land that only the bravest people go to and I imagined it'd look wholly different to the Washington I've come to know. Perhaps a little more like the Fire Swamp from 'The Princess Bride'. Alison had brushed off the danger levels when we talked about it on Thursday, but she also talked about living in Durban and not leaving her handbag in sight in her car, due to the certainty that someone would smash a window and nick it while she was at traffic lights, so she's obviously used to living in the Danger Zone. Max and I are most intrepid.
As it happens - and as you may've guessed - the bit of the SE that we went to was very nice, thank you. It was all very similar to the bits we know - coffee shops, wide streets, lots of trees... And the Capitol building, which is the centre of the city, so forms the divide between West and East.
Alison lives in a beautiful apartment over two floors in a really pretty house in such a pretty neighbourhood that it almost looks like something out of 'Pleasantville'. We imagine lots of congressmen live there. And there's also a big, Spitalfields-esque flea market there which we must go back to when it's open.
It was really nice to see Alison again. She'd spent all day working at a vineyard in Virginia, to help a friend out, but by the time we got to her house, there was an enormous loin of pork cooking on the barbecue (/'grill') outside and the most delicious looking chocolate cupcakes with white frosting and a strawberry on top of each one, already made and patiently waiting for us to scoff them.
As I was scanning the DVD collection and gleefully realising that Alison is also an 'Arrested Development' fan, Patrick and Leanna turned up. They're a couple of Alison's friends from grad school in LA and they've been married for 8 years or so, because they wanted to move in together but are both religious, so figured they should get married first. Alison and Patrick now work together here, but I'm not wholly sure what they do.
Patrick is muchos fun and, with Alison and Anne, completes our triumvirate of brill new friends. He's kind of short and bearded but very mischievous, a little like a wily elf one might come across en route to Mordor. He's a real anglophile and also watched 'Dungeons & Dragons' as a child, so we got on very well.
Leanna is very quiet and had a headache, so wasn't drinking. They're also trying for a baby, which was another reason for her abstinence. So I didn't really get much of a sense of her. Though, after bottle of wine #8, Patrick whispered - apropos of absolutely nothing - that Leanna has done acid, so there's obviously more to her than meets the eye.
The sixth of our number was an enigmatic chap called Colin, who went to grad school with the other three and who's just back from studying molluscs in Australia and New Zealand as part of his work for the WWF. He is far cooler than Patrick, and more of an observer/judger as a dinner guest, than a joiner in-er. He reminded me of Jordan Catalano from 'My So-Called Life', as he was quite handsome and brooding.
It was most satisfactory to discover that he's also a fan of Flight of the Conchords, and my aggressive matchmaking skills which had lain dormant since assaulting poor Jo with instructions to pursue Mark's friend in New York, started bubbling to the surface as I thought he and Alison would make a good couple. But then a) as the evening wore on, I realised that Colin's enigmatic qualities actually translated to being kind of dull and b) when I floated the notion with Alison she firmly shook her head. Though I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of history there.
The food was utterly delicious and we were sitting at a proper dining table in this beautiful, dark wood-floored open plan sitting room/dining room. As a result, Alison will never be welcome at our flat, as it isn't as nice and she is clearly used to a far higher standard of food than I could possibly muster. That's a shame.
So it was a really really fun evening and we didn't leave until 1.30am. Conversation flowed as easily as the wine, the girls chatted at one end, with the boys nattering away - usually in peculiar accents - at the other. Max really hit it off with Patrick and Colin and I suspected he had something of a mancrush on Colin, but it transpired afterwards that he felt the same way as me - initially smitten, then realised Patrick was way more fun for being less cool. I think he was just excited that he'd found two people unable to detect how rubbish his accents are!
Turns out Alison's roommate (who wasn't there) is a Republican, so I'm really interested to meet her. But crucially she also works at the White House, so might be able to give us a tour of the west wing, though we think there might be some rules about only American citizens being allowed inside.
After the deliiiiicious main course (Alison managed to do that rough mash potato which, whenever i do it, either comes out uncooked or all creamy and smooth), Alison served up her cupcakes (yum) and my brownies which were devastatingly uncooked! Well, they were a bit cooked, but they were mostly raw and floppy underneath the top. I think maybe the foil tray didn't have a heavy enough base to properly cook them all the way through, or something. I was sad.
Very excitingly, I mentioned to Patrick that I'd like to play softball - cos I saw a bunch of people playing in the evening sun on the Mall when Max and I went to see the cherryblossom ages ago and thought it looked fun - and he said I could play for the co-ed team from his office who play in a league on the Mall every Tuesday night! Woo! I'll just have to wait to see whether it was the wine talking... (by this stage, Max and poured him and Patrick a full wine glass each of dessert wine. Thank goodness for yesterday's hangover, or else I might've joined them.)
We eventually wended our way home, at the end of a lovely evening, confident that we'd be seeing lots of Patrick and Leanna in the future. The four of us wandered down the middle of the deserted street, chatting away, and Patrick showed me a $1 coin, which I didn't even know existed.
Max and I hopped in a taxi (Maxy firmly holding onto his shoes. Which were on his feet) and got home in no time, driving past some incredible government and museum buildings and getting back to our flat from across town for something silly like £6. What a lovely night.
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