Why Would You Name a Frat-House to Begin With?

Just a tad more on my recent book tour in Washington. I hadn't been back since I graduated years ago and I wondered if I always romanticized D.C. because I had so much fun there in college. It was, after all, the first city where I learned to shoot blue Jello-shots, where Redskin fans made me cement my love for the Dallas Cowboys, where I fell in love with someone while holding hands in a Georgetown park. Everything was so ridiculously new and hadn't been jaded yet by the Los Angeles out-of-work-actor pool. Even Bill Clinton (who I was and still am madly in love with,) had for the most part only shown himself to be an honest man, incapable of deceit. (For the record, I don't condone infidelity, but if Bill and Hillary had an "understanding," I wish I'd known his affinity for short, Jewish girls. Right here, Bill. Right here.)

Turns out that I wasn’t just romanticizing that city. It's alive. It's thick with hope and movement and yes, some struggle but still…it's alive. One thing I will say is as the cabbie drove me from National (I refuse to call it Reagan) Airport to my hotel in Chevy Chase, I began to tear up from so many memories. "Ah, there's the seafood restaurant where Craig broke up with me. Oh wow, that's the Metro station where I threw up. Ohhh, that's the off-campus frat house which the fraternity guys named "Gyna-Land." (Yep, it took me until I was a Junior to realize why they called it that. Gross.)

When people name the city in which they grew up, they usually say the one where their parents raised them. For me, college is the place I grew up. It's where I learned that when you love someone, they might love you back and they might not. I learned to do my laundry and set my own alarms and kinda figure out just who I wanted to be. Don't get me wrong, Texas is my home and I love it, (Hook Em'!) but D.C. is where I grew up. "Ah, Gyna-land."

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