Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress (39 page)

I had just one friend on Capitol Hill, Bruce, a communications director who worked across the hall from me. At twenty-nine, Bruce was a former journalist reinventing his career and therefore just as much of a freak as I was.

“Bruce,” I groaned. “Why do I feel like I just landed on the set of MTV’s
Spring Break?
”

He laughed and clasped his hands together delightedly. “Surprise,” he said. “Welcome to Congress.”

Unfortunately, when he explained it, it made sense: each day, members of Congress must ingest huge amounts of turgid information, craft or oppose legislation based on it, then share it in a compelling way with some 700,000 disgruntled constituents who’d sooner be out bowling. They must do this while shuttling back and forth to their district, fund-raising, attending six meetings at once, and appearing on interminable Sunday morning talk shows. Last time anyone checked, this was humanly impossible.

And so, members of Congress must hire a staff to be their surrogate eyes, ears, mouths, and brains. These staffers must be able to work up enthusiasm for congressional hearings on things like the pasteurization of cottage cheese. They must be capable of staying awake while reading “The House Subcommittee Report on Managing Bio-hazardous Waste at the Sandusky Nuclear Plant.” They must be willing to work insane hours for salaries that often make baggage handling at Dulles Airport look attractive. And, since they have absolutely zero job security, they must believe it’s worth forfeiting their entire personal life and financial welfare for a cool-looking business card and a job recommendation printed on congressional letterhead.

In other words, they must be twenty-two years old.

“After all, who else is stupid and ambitious enough to want that?” said Bruce.

Still, it was unsettling to realize that Congress was essentially being run by people whose parents—for the most part—were still paying their rent. And when it wasn’t being run by them, it was largely in the hands of the senior staff. More often than not, these were adrenaline junkies who’d spent their entire careers a) hopping from the twilight zone of one election campaign to another, or b) slavishly serving one elected official out of some sort of demented love.

The two groups running the day-to-day operations on Capitol Hill were precisely those with the least in common with the rest of America.

“Explains a lot, doesn’t it?” said Bruce.

Indeed, I hadn’t been at my job a week when a legislative assistant for the House Appropriations Committee tried to slip a provision into the D.C. budget authorizing a dog run to be built next door to his apartment. Over lunch in the Longworth cafeteria, I listened to a twenty-one-year-old staffer argue: “If girls can’t talk to their parents about abortion, why not put them in foster homes with parents they
can
talk to?” Another staffer—this one on the Senate Banking Committee—suggested a federal law requiring all banks to have “greeters” in their lobbies who’d wave to the customers and hand out lollipops. “This way, Americans would trust big banks more,” she explained brightly.

Later that week, Kiran himself proposed a bill that authorized euthanasia for any Medicare patient over eighty. “I mean, like, why should my tax dollars go toward keeping Grandma alive when she’s going to croak anyway?” he shrugged.

Given the environment we were working in, it took Zachary and me two full days to realize he was kidding.

Yet, it was not just the staff who made the Hill feel like one enormous middle school. All day long when Congress was in session, bells went off to summon the members to the chambers. As soon as they sounded, representatives scurried through the hallways, clutching notebooks and sporting distinguishing little lapel pins like members of an honors society or a fraternity. The same catty cliquishness existed among them—the same sniping, gossiping, whispering—that you’d find in any seventh grade bathroom. Names were called, tantrums were thrown. People ganged up on each other out of pettiness or sheer malice. And throughout the proceedings on the House floor, members would summon the congressional pages—glorified gofers, really—and pass notes to them. Sometimes these notes were instructions for staffers, but other times they were candy orders. In the middle of a heated debate on foreign aid, you might see a congressman beckon to a page, then hand her a note and whisper in her ear urgently. A moment later, she’d return with a bag of malt balls. Rumor had it from the Senate side that Ted Kennedy was partial to Red Hots, which caused no degree of snickering. One time, Minnie herself was filmed eating M&M’s on C-SPAN.

“So, how’s the new job?” my mother asked when she called. “Gosh, it must be so impressive, working with all those big shots.”

Naively, I’d assumed that, being the arbiters of democracy, all members of Congress were equal. Yet it turned out that some were distinctly more equal than others. As a freshman in the minority party, Minnie was the lowest of the low in the pecking order. In the office lottery, she’d come in second-to-last out of all 435 representatives, so she’d had to settle for an office divided into two separate spaces. These spaces were conveniently located on two different floors in opposite corners of the building. This meant that anytime you needed, say, a briefing memo or a paper fastener, you had to climb a flight of stairs, then walk the equivalent of two city blocks. As a source of anaerobic exercise, it wasn’t half bad, but it pretty much undermined any attempt to “make government more efficient,” as Minnie had pledged to do during her campaign. Anytime she needed to talk to us, it took ten minutes to assemble for a five-minute meeting. It could’ve been funny, except that it got old almost immediately.

Assigned to the upstairs “annex,” Kiran, Zachary, Lee, and I worked together in a space clearly designed to store brooms. Amid a jumble of file cabinets, desks, and computer wires, the four of us easily violated the fire code every day in our service to democracy.

Back in college, it had once occurred to me that my love affair with the sound of my own voice might make me an excellent lawyer. And so, for several summers, I’d worked as an intern for the New York State attorney general. The offices were located high up in the World Trade Center. The building was a gargantuan beehive of activity, and it was simply impossible to work there without coming into intimate contact with at least three million people whose tax dollars paid for my stipend each week. Xerox repairmen, corporate lawyers, secretaries, janitors, stockbrokers, dishwashers, mail carriers, travel agents—everyone piled into the elevators together to ride to the “Sky Lobby” on the forty-fourth floor, and you had no choice but to breathe in other people’s armpits, choke on their overzealous cologne, and overhear dozens of enlightening conversations like:

So, did you fuck her?

What? Are you kidding me? Of course I fucked her, motherfucker. Who the fuck do you think I am? Richard fucking Simmons, you fucking motherfucker?

And:

You hear from your kid yet?

Yeah, and if he hits me up for money one more time, I swear, his mother and I are going to take a contract out on him.

And:

So then she tells me I can’t exchange the dress if I don’t have a receipt. So I go, “Look, bitch. The tags are still on it. You think I went to my own daughter’s wedding with the tags on my dress?” And she goes, “Well, why the hell not? That’s how I went to mine.
”

It might not have been Shakespeare, and it might not have been pretty, but it was the language of real life. And unfortunately, it was nothing we ever heard working on Capitol Hill. For a place that is ostensibly of the people, by the people, and for the people, the Capitol is about as open and accessible as a cryogenic freezer. Kiran, Lee, Zachary, and I might have felt cut off from civilization in our office, but the truth was, we were no more removed than anyone else on the Hill.

The Capitol complex seems to have been designed by gerbils: situated on a mound above the rest of Washington, all the buildings are connected to each other by underground tunnels. Inside this subterranean complex, members have their own cafeterias, credit unions, post office, parking facilities, barber shop (which explains a lot about politicians’ hair, actually), and yes, their own elevators to ride, off-limits even to staffers. It is physically possible to work in the Capitol for years and never once come into contact with either direct sunlight or actual constituents.

Of course, constituents do visit all the time, eager to meet their representatives, buy gift soaps emblazoned with the congressional seal, and get a tour of the Capitol. But except for a whining child or two, they are always,
always
on their absolute best behavior, awed and cowed by the majesty of the place. Trundling through the corridors with their camcorders and fanny packs—or dressed poignantly in their Eagle Scout uniforms and military medals—they speak in hushed tones as they beamingly present their representatives with handcrafted commemorative plaques and pennants from their local basketball team. “Now, Skylar, now, Tiffany,” they prompt their children. “What do you say when you shake the congressman’s hand?” All this civility is fine and good, but it only contributes to the artificiality of the atmosphere. After all, if everybody behaved in real life the way they do when they visit the Capitol, we wouldn’t need a Congress in the first place.

My second day on the job, Vicki called a staff meeting while Minnie was away “in committee.” Vicki was a sallow, no-nonsense woman with about as much warmth and charisma as a metronome.

Ushering me into a chair before the rest of the staff, she said, “I want to discuss your attitude. It seems some people in the office have a problem with it.”

I had been on the job exactly one day.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Vicki said, frowning. “Now some people—I don’t want to say who—have complained that you think you’re better than they are.”

As a newcomer, I’d spent most of the previous day filling out paperwork, figuring out the code for the Xerox machine, and struggling to log on to the computer network. Later in the afternoon, I’d dribbled Diet Pepsi down the front of my blouse and sopped it up ineffectively with paper napkins. How this qualified as diva behavior was beyond me.

When I said as much to Vicki, she replied, “See, there’s that attitude again. If you’re going to be on this staff, you’re going to have to become a team player.”

Then she turned to the guys, who all seemed to be absorbed in staring at their shoelaces. “I don’t want any of you helping her out. Don’t give her briefings. Don’t show her the library. Don’t share any information with her. Understand? Let her find her own way around Congress.”

Kiran raised his hand. “I’m sorry, but if we can’t work with her, how is she supposed to become a ‘team player’?”

Vicki gave him a look that could fuse metal. “Don’t you start, either,” she said.

When the four of us were back upstairs, I said, “Was she kidding?”

“Afraid not,” said Zachary.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But exactly what fucking ‘attitude problem’ do I have?”

Zachary shook his head. “You don’t. It’s Vicki,” he said. “Vicki has a problem with you.”

“After one day?”

“‘Vicki has a problem with everyone,” Lee sighed.

“What about Edna?” I asked. As the deputy chief of staff, Edna was the person we were supposed to go to if we had problems with Vicki.

“Edna has a problem with everyone, too,” said Lee.

“Look,” Zachary said, “we didn’t want to tell you this right away, because you just got here. But you know that Vicki and Edna are Minnie’s best friends, right?”

This I knew. I’d met both women during Minnie’s congressional campaign. The three of us seemed to have gotten along well, in fact; Edna and I had even made several important donut runs together.

“And you know that Vicki and Edna are also lovers?” Zachary said.

This I also knew. It was no secret to anyone that they were essentially an old married couple. They even dressed alike. On the campaign, they’d seemed to have a penchant for Bermuda shorts and gum-soled boat shoes. No one could ever accuse them of being slick Washington operatives.

“Usually, you have a chief of staff
and
a deputy so that if employees have a problem with one, they can go to the other,” said Zachary. “But we can’t do that here, because the chief of staff and the deputy are live-in girlfriends. And we can’t complain to Minnie about them either, because they’re her best friends.”

“And they don’t trust any of us, and they don’t like any of us,” said Kiran. “Even me. And I’m adorable.”

“Every day, the whole stuff will meet with Minnie and agree to sponsor some piece of legislation, or create some sort of filing system or whatever,” said Lee. “But then Vicki and Edna go home, talk it over, and decide alone between themselves and Minnie to do things completely differently.”

“Then they yell at us for not following orders properly,” said Kiran.

“We have no power in this office. We’re treated like suspects,” said Zachary. “All of us are fucking miserable. Every evening, when we appear to be working late? We’re printing out our rÉsumÉs.”

“Yep. This office is totally fucked,” Kiran declared, almost proudly.

I sat down, stunned. “But Minnie seems so great,” I said.

“Minnie is great. Minnie is amazing,” said Zachary. “Minnie is the only reason any of us stick around.”

“But Minnie is almost never here,” said Lee. “She’s always running back to the district to stay connected to the voters.”

“So we get left with the two evil stepmothers downstairs,” said Zachary.

“Sorry we had to tell you this so soon,” said Kiran. “But it seems that Vicki already has a problem with you. And no offense, but after one day, that’s kind of a record in this office.”

That night, my mother called again. “So? How’d your second day go?”

“Well, the chief of staff informed me she doesn’t like my attitude. Her girlfriend is the deputy chief of staff, so I have no one else to go to, and I found out all my colleagues are miserable and looking for other jobs,” I said. “Other than that, I guess it went fine.”