On August 1 Cloture Club held a summer bash at the 201 Bar on the Hill. If you missed it, you missed a good party. Packed out with loud music, Hill staffers anxiously awaiting vacations, lobbyists and ClotureClub.com writers happily mingling and swapping tales. And of course, whiskey samples and cheap drinks.
And as always happens in a town this small, you run into someone with whom you share a work connection or a second or third degree of separation between current or former bosses. Other folks I chatted with are trying to break into markets where I have connections. Business cards swapped, promises of emails made.
But for me, it was tinged with a bittersweet edge. Having been the svelte 22 year old staffer, wide-eyed and wearing rose colored glasses, gazing adoringly at the Capitol and coolly answering the phones “Congressman Stenholm’s office, how may I direct your call?” I gazed around the room and I realized tonight I am not 22…and not svelte either, but that’s a separate article.
I looked around the bar, sipping red wine, and each young face brought flashbacks of the 1990s, Hill receptions with co-workers and me eagerly tagging along. I don’t have any memories of being as confident and self-assured as those I observed tonight, but maybe they don’t see themselves that way either.
All in all, I met some good folks and exchanged a few cards–this is still DC and I’m still a political creature after all. But, I couldn’t help but feel a requiem for my youth and all that’s behind me. I wish I could meet that girl again and grab her by the shoulders and impart my hard lessons learned…but I know she probably wouldn’t listen or believe half the things that have happened to us. So I toast the girl I was, in part I owe her for where I am today and I thank the good Lord Almighty that I’m no longer that girl. And that every once and awhile I still get invited to the party.
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