Washington, D.C.

I’ll Just Be in the Parking Lot, Struggling

And if I had started to feel faint, I’m not sure I would have let her see.

The sunset memories of my teens are seared. The sunset memories of my twenties are speckled.

I’d rub my arm and think, being first hurts.

So we gathered on Juneteenth, hollering and whooping, as a testament to the impossible.

How did we find it? Where exactly did this core memory take place?

by Jon Gorter | Apr 28, 2023 | 2 comments

“You sure you haven’t been smoking weed?” he asked for the third time. “It’s fine if you have, it’s legal.”

If they checked IDs, I’d never get in. But they don’t, and I wrote my paper, feeling like maybe I understood this place better than its students.

There are single family homes and giant, shiny apartment buildings and about six 7-Elevens in my square mile.

Whenever I enter a museum, I rediscover rhythms that I haven’t used since my last trip to Adventureland for nerds.

There’s something about Waldorf, Maryland that just screams “mundane!”