cash money millionaires

Some friend of my girl Yakira emailed me last week to say he was living in dc and asked me out to drinks. The whole experience was pretty incredibly terrible. he works for public citizen doing CAFTA stuff, so the vibe i got was that it would be pretty much a "networking" whatever thing, but it turned out that everyone he knows in the world was at the restaurant we went to. we ended up being a party of ten, all people i didn't know. (actually that's not true, the one person i knew there was this kid i met at a party a couple of months ago, hit it off with, and then totally alienated by asking him "how gay are you?" when he mentioned dar williams in a conversation, and haven't spoken to since.) anyways, they were all young, up and coming non-profit workers around my age, and from the very beginning it was just this series of horrible conversations.
"why did you come back from mexico?"
"cause i decided that i wanted to work for change in my own country"
"oh, so where were you working on the election?" (these were all move on kids)
"well, actually instead of working on the election i ended up nursing my mother through a series of terrible back surgeries while waitressing to save up money."
"oh...(looking uncomfortable) well what do you do now?"
"well, i've been temping and applying for jobs"
"that sucks, did you just move here?" (they almost all moved here in december and immediately got jobs)
"no, i've been here for six months"
"oh...." (followed by a look of pitty and a quick move away from my stink of failure.)

Halfway through the night David, the friend of a friend, asked me why i was so bitter, and i was like "i don't expect to have a wonderful job right off, but i built a small non profit up from the ground in another country last year with virtually no outside support and i've spent the last six months being turned down for receptionist jobs" and then i burst into tears.

It was awesome!

he offered me a full time unpaid internship, and i told him i couldn't afford to work for free at a job which also didn't allow me any time to have paid work as well, and that 40 hour a week unpaid internships might as well have a "no poor kids needed" sign on them. he said that it sucked, and he knew that the system was fucked up, but since there were plenty of people willing to work full time for free it wasn't worth their while to hire people for part time.

Then he had to pay for my drinks because i only had a credit card thinking, silly me, that i would be splitting a bill for two rather than a bill for ten.

needless to say i don't think i'll be hearing back from him again.

on the upside, i got a gig saturday night working as a waitress at a private party thrown by some people Hannah knows. It was insane! a gorgeous four story row house near 19th and Kalorama (easily a $2 million house). They were serving incredible food. a brie the size of a bike tire. home made thin crust pizzas with figs and pruciutto. a variety of rustic crustini. amazing. i worked from 6 to midnight, preparing food, passing stuff around, throwing away empties and restocking the bar. i went home with $170. if only i could do that every weekend, no?

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