14 July 2003

Pool Party

It is Monday morning and here is a news flash for you. It is raining in Washington. There is going to be a lot of moisture coming at us, too, as Hurricane Claudette is intensifying and nearing the Texas coast in the vicinity of Brownsville. There is a mix of the familiar and the unexpected this morning. Lance Armstrong is leading the Tour de France, which is not unusual. But unexpected is the announcement of the new interim government in Iraq. It was selected from a broad variety of exile groups. Paul Bremmer , the American Administrator of the oil rich nation, was careful to select from a broad segment of Iraqi society. The locals will  appreciate that there are members from the groups headquartered in Detroit and New York. The first act of the Council was to abolish six national holidays from the Saddam years and to make April 9 the Iraqi equivalent of the Fourth of July. That is interesting, since today is the observance of the expulsion of the British, and once had the same meaning. Solid start on democracy, and Detroit is reportedly optimistic about the long-term prospects for peace.

Meanwhile there was a coordinated RPG attack on a convoy of the Third Infantry Division passing through the wealthy Al Mansoor district of Baghdad. One American was killed, six injured. That brings to 32 the total of U.S. troops killed since major combat operations were declared over on the first of May. A major operation has been launched to find weapons caches and clean up the insurgents. I wish them luck. This is gong to be as challenging as the British experience in Ulster, I fear, and I hope we have the courage to stay the course and root out the bad guys. I am prepared to bet that Saddam's thugs are not as committed as the IRA, but I could be wrong. I hope not. I will be interested to see what the President will announce about American participation in a multi-lateral presence for Liberia. Charles Taylor, the local thug there, claims he will go into exile in Nigeria if a peacekeeping force shows up but not before, and the opposition claims they will fight on if he doesn't leave immediately. It has the prospect to be another one of those endless commitments, but I sympathize with the President. What is a superpower to do? Particularly if the roots of this problem go back to the establishment of an African-American elite at a time when repatriation of American slaves was considered the solution of choice to the Peculiar Institution. Charles Taylor's opposition to that elite is where the current crisis began, and the dissolution of the artificial nation-state commenced.

Meanwhile, in Paris, a major conference on fighting HIV/AIDs has opened, and my Department's Secretary is there. So is Tony Fauci from the National Institute of Health, and I get to go to meetings with him sometime. He is making a keynote address explaining why it has been twenty years and there is no vaccine to combat AIDs. He contends that it is a tougher problem than any other disease we have encountered. He is quoted as saying it is astounding but true that of all the millions who have contracted the virus, not one has managed to clear it from their systems. He still contends he is a cautious optimist. But one of the centerpieces of this thing is convincing the rest of the world to follow President Bush's $15 billion dollar AIDs initiative. So I expect this will be a conference as much about resources as much as disease, but I suppose they all are.

My immediate Boss is taking advantage of the Secretary's absence to go to New York to meet with Rudi Gulianni. There is nothing on the calendar about meeting Iraqi opposition groups while he is there, but there could be pop-up opportunities in the cab on the way to the meeting. All these things mean it is likely to be quiet in the office and perhaps we will get some work done. I also get to travel this week, and part of my job today will be to gather together some materials on the personalities and issues confronting the Indian tribes of the upper Midwest. I am to be one of the Washington figures on the podium, a position of some discomfort at times. Or so I understand. Should be interesting, and it will get me out of the office. Probably in the rain.

It did not rain this weekend, and I have the sunburn to prove it, melanoma be damned. There is a new administration here at the Condominium building where I live. It is drawn from a broad spectrum of the resident of the population, including people who once lived in Detroit and New York. There is a new Community Manager, too. He is drawn from the former Marine Community, and I applaud the Board for its commitment to a muscular approach to shared living. In order to commemorate the establishment of the new regime an old tradition was renewed. We have no celebration of the expulsion of the British, though the conversion of this great old pile of pink brick from apartment to individual ownership is about as old as the Baathist government in Iraq. They used to have pool parties in the elegant facility tucked under the northwest flank of the eight-story edifice, and the newly installed entertainment committee decided to try to renew the tradition.

I had run out of chores to do, or rather got to that part of the list that required more energy than I had remaining on Saturday. The sun was out and I surrendered to its enticement.  I went down to the pool deck around 3:30PM with my little survival kit. My towel, transistor radio and earphones (I was lectured about that requirement last season), my cigarettes and the thick new Harry Potter book. The party was to start at 4:00, so there was a lot of set-up activity in progress. There was a one-man band and a buffet contracted from the Red Hot & Blue barbecue. There were still places available and I took station under the umbrella furthest from the entrance.

I was minding my own business, listening to some old disco on the PA system the band-man had set up. I was tapping my foot to some Hall & Oates, deep in the world of Hogwort's School for Wizardry when I was attacked by the Finns. Or by one Finn, anyway. Marianne is a vivacious woman of a certain age and I was apprised that this was her table. She was too polite to actually ask me to leave, but instead included me as a part of her table. Promptly at four they opened the buffet and a crowd of the older residents showed up for an exceptionally early Early Bird dining opportunity. I soon found myself surrounded by residents who outranked me by a quarter century. Included in the party by virtue of my position, I closed the book and made conversation. Marianne is one of the life-of-the-party school of party goers. Her husband is Ari, a more taciturn version of the breed. Angular cheekbones and sky-blue eyes. types, a sauna-type Finn.

The band was joined by a stout resident with a Stratocaster guitar and an attractive older woman who had a bit of a lounge routine. The music was popular and loud and there was free wine and I surrendered to it, singing along with Marianne. The crowd surged, attracted by free food and drink. I was interested by the composition of building. This clearly is a place of transition. There is the geriatric component, some on walkers. The Chatham is clearly the last stop before assisted living for some, the answer to the struggle to maintain a single family home. There are many women in this category, and a few angular men whose trousers are gathered at the waist. And Jack, of course. He is the Mayor of the pool, a dapper old gentleman who is a dead ringer for the Millionaire on the "Chance" cards in the Monopoly Board game. All the women love him and he knows everything that happens here. Then there is the legion of the divorced. Middle-aged men and women who are starting over after something else. The men have a certain rakish charm and the women have an air of uncertain optimism for which they certainly should know better.  I am one of that cohort, of course, so I feel a certain kinship. All these groups are overwhelmingly white and accustomed to a certain prosperity regardless of their current circumstances.

Then there are the political or lobbying groups, people that are here because of the town and the access to the levers of power, who need a low-maintenance pied a terre in the imperial city. Marianne nudged me and said one square-jawed individual was the president of the United Mine Workers. I whistled. That union used to determine succession to its Presidency by murder, just like ancient Rome. And then there was something else. The cover of Newsweek a few weeks ago featured a picture two very attractive women named Lauren and Liz who are life partners. The interior talked about the prospect of Gay marriage. From what I could see at the pool, it is already here and we ought to just get over it. There was a cute couple who were hosting two daughters from the blonde's marriage. He had a small diamond stud and looked like the Arnie character from LA Law. They were clearly a family, the four of them, and I realized that was a significant component of my building that is gay and committed and wrapped in mortgages and life and society ought to just get over it.

And of course there were the twenty-somethings, the young professionals just starting out. The girls in their small suits and the boys who still get a kick out of doing canon-balls off the diving board. They are more diverse than the older residents, Asian and Indian and African-American. But they all seemed to get along. The young ones were funny, mocking some of the more saccharine pop tunes, as though they were not hurtling down the same parabola toward assisted living themselves. Youth is wonderful. Marianne got me to dance a few times and found myself doing the Elmer Fudd version of the Pointer Sister's hit "Fire" with the lounge singer before one of the intermissions:

"I'm dwivin' in my caaar, turn on the wadio….."

Life of the party, that is me. People had so much fun that one of the residents hired the band to keep playing an extra hour and the life-guard didn't even get mad when there were still residents in the pool at nine, when he should have been done and locking up. There were several post parties but I decided to return to the seclusion of my fifth floor unit. Before I left I got into a discussion with Ari, about how he and Marinanne had fetched up here at The Chatham. He smiled a thin smile as his wife did The Peppermint Twist with another lady of a certain age. He told me it was about the fall of the Karelian district of Finland to the Soviets, and the treaty of 1944 that preserved the independence of his homeland, even if it meant the loss of his home. I raised my eyebrows. He said it was a good thing that we beat the Russians, finally, and he expected someday he would be able to go back. In the meantime, he said, lips thin, The Chatham is a fine place to live.

Thunder and lighting began about ten minutes after the last people were out of the pool. A perfect party for the middle of July.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra