A Brush With Madness In The Nation's Capitol

I am 25 years old. It is the 90s. I work in a bookstore in Washington, DC. One day, I walk into the shop, and my friend Tim is behind the counter with an expression of stunned glee. He says, "Guess what? James quit today. He told Kevin to fuck off and then walked out."

I say, "James quit?" And Tim replies, "Or he was fired—because immediately after that, Kevin said, 'You're fucking fired. Get the fuck out.' So, it's kind of six of one, half a dozen of the other."

I’m not surprised that Kevin would fire James. Kevin hates James. He always has. But the "fuck off" coming from James? That’s a surprise. That’s more energy than I would have ever expected from that kid. Because, while I don’t really know James that well - We’ve worked together for a year, but he works the day shift, and I work nights. We’re just ships that pass in the mid-afternoon - my general impression of James has always been that he is the living embodiment of playing Morrissey at half speed. Whenever I come in, he’s just there, slumped over the cash register counter like a great, limp, ashen noodle of despair. He watches me with a listless, half-lidded gaze as I pass out of his zone of depression, and that’s it. That’s all I know of James.

But then Tim says, "After the shift tonight, I’m going to grab a drink with James and get the full story. You want to come?"

I say, "Yes, I do." Not because I care what’s going on with James—I don’t—but more to the point, I just don’t want to be in my apartment. I am currently in a long-term relationship that is very much on the rocks, and it will be on the rocks for the next seven years. The long-term part hasn’t happened yet.

Julia and I moved to DC together. We met in St. Louis, where she was attending a very fancy college, and I am the coffee shop boy she picked up and told to follow her to DC. And I did. What neither of us realizes at the time is that I have no life skills. A major theme of this newsletter which will come up again and again.

Now, a year into living in DC, I have a minimum-wage job that barely covers the rent and exactly one friend. Tim is my only friend. Beyond that, all I bring to this relationship is my raging insecurity and my terror that she will abandon me. But we’ve reached a détente of late, and I think the best way to maintain this peace is simply to not be around to fuck it up. So, I am good to go to the bar.

We walk in, and James is already there. The first thing he does—and it’s a total surprise—he smiles at us as we walk in. Then says, "So, do you think it’s too late for me to ask Kevin for a letter of recommendation?" Opens with a joke. Another surprise from James.

The whole evening is full of surprises. James is not at all what I thought. He is not the limp noodle of despair. If anything, he turns out to be witty, bright, funny—totally engaging. As the evening goes on, I find myself completely taken with him. Everything he says is smart. We range across topics: his conflict with Kevin certainly, but we quickly move on to books, music, history, politics. He speaks in a way that feels both familiar and like there’s a world of ideas just beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered.

By the time we close the bar, our faces hurt from laughing. We walk down the street, past a Masonic temple (there are loads of them in DC) and Tim makes some crack about it. James spins on his heels and mock-addresses the building: "Nothing to see here, just a joke! No need to take down our names or anything. Isn’t that right, Ed and Bob?" We all laugh.

At the next corner, we part ways. The next day, I get a phone call. It’s James. "Hey man, I have a great time last night. Want to do it again tonight? It’s my day off.” He’d just lost his job, so really, every day was his day off. But it also happened to be my day off and, as we have already established, that put me in the dangerous position of being present enough to screw up my relationship.

"Yeah, that sounds great."

So, we do it again. More beers, more jokes, more good conversation. Midway through the evening, he brings up the Masons again: "I probably shouldn’t have made that crack last night. I mean, I’m probably on their list now."

I say, "You are definitely on their list now." We laugh.

Later that night, I go home, thinking about how much I need this new friendship. Beyond just the value of James himself, Julia is an executive at an NGO, and her friends are all Hill staffers. If I can bring someone this witty and interesting into our circle, it can only help my standing.

At 3 AM, my phone rings. I grab it. It’s James.

"Have you ever heard of the Illuminati?"

"I’ve heard the word."

"They’re the secret organization that controls the world’s economy."

"Well, will they still control it in the morning?"

"If there’s a morning."

"I’m willing to take that chance." I hang up and go back to sleep.

The next day, James shows up at work. He says, "Hey man, sorry about the call last night. I had this weird feeling someone was following me. I was drunk."

"Hey man, it’s okay. We’re all drunk. But Kevin’s still here. If he sees you hanging around, who knows what he’ll do. You probably shouldn’t be here."

"Right. Yeah, you’re right."

He leaves.

And then the phone calls begin. First, my cell. Then my work phone. Then my home phone. Always James. Always the same subject: the conspiracy. The Masons. The Illuminati. The Bilderberg Group. Skull and Bones. They are watching him. He sees people on park benches taking notes as he walks by. People watching from row houses with binoculars. He’s sure they are tapping his phone.

I stop answering any of the phones.

Then James starts showing up everywhere I go. The bar. The record store. Even on dates with Julia. We’ll be at the fancy Italian restaurant we spring for once every two months and suddenly, there's James standing next to the table, signaling me to come over and talk to him. I end up standing in a corner of Tiramisu where he talks to me about how he's pretty sure that men in black SUVs have followed him to the restaurant, and DC is full of black SUVs. And I can see Julia staring at us over his shoulder, and the expression on her face says, “We've been in DC for a year, and you have two friends and one of them is psychotic.”

And finally, he starts coming to the store. Not directly into the store. He waits across the street, watching. Watching me. Waiting for Kevin to leave. And then he is there, following me around the shop, leaning close, whispering about black helicopters. I take enough cigarette breaks to give a nuclear reactor cancer just to get him out of the store and out onto the sidewalk.

I do not know what to do with any of this. It is the 90s. There’s no Google. There’s no research. You just make shit up as you go and you always get it wrong and that’s just how the 90’s worked.

After two weeks of this, I finally think I'm going to get a reprieve. Because I come into work one day, and there's Tim with that expression on his face, and he says, guess what James did? And I say, “Dear God, what?”

And Tim says, “Last night James went down to the White House, stripped off all of his clothes, got completely naked, and tried to climb the gates of the White House.”

And I'm like, “That's insane”.

And Tim says, “Yes, that's James. James is insane.”

And I say, “Why did he take off all of his clothes? Why did he get naked?”

And Tim says, “Oh no, that's the one sane thing he did. Because when you strip naked, then the Marines that guard the White House can see that you are not armed and they don't just shoot you.”

What they do instead is what they did to James. They dragged him off the gates and hauled him off to the psych ward. And that's where he is. And I think, “All right, I am off the hook. Now this kid is in the hospital and he is going to get the help he needs.”

And I think that because I know nothing about the American healthcare system. Because what happens instead is after a 48-hour hold, they kicked James out onto the sidewalk in a hospital, Johnny. I get a phone call from Tim.

“He's out. He showed up at my place looking for clothes. I gave him a coat and some boots. But he's on the street and I thought you should know.”

And I'm like, “Thanks.” And I spend the rest of the day looking over my shoulder, like wondering what bush is James going to pop out of.

Then it’s time for me to go to work. And it is a Friday night, the place is packed. The bookshop that I worked at was kind of a single spot. Only in DC is a book store also the hottest meat market in town. Someone once said that DC is Hollywood for ugly people and that is pretty accurate for the elected class. But for the young staffers, it’s more Fire Island for nerds. So it is full of Congressional pages and Senate office types trying to pick up books and one another. And I am riding herd on their pheromones when all of a sudden James is there.

Not just on the other side of the counter, but now around the counter standing there with me and the cash register. And he's speaking into the side of my face. And he's saying, ‘I'm pretty sure they know that I know what I know. And if they know that I know what I know then they must know that you also know what I know. And if they know that you know what I know, then they know what you know. So, you need to watch your back.”

All I can think is any minute now, Kevin's going to walk in here. And he's going to see James behind the counter with me and he's going to fire me. And then I have to go home and tell my girlfriend that the one thing I had going on in this town, I just got fired from. And then she's going to dump me. And this entire time, the entire year I've been in DC will have come to nothing but heartbreak and total poverty. My own sanity, my own mental health has been hanging by a thread. I am always on the precipice of hurtling into a depression of my very own. Which means that, right now, this feels like it's a matter of survival. Like it's either me or James. And I decided in that minute, it's going to be me.

I turn to him and I say, “James, let's talk about this outside.”

And he's like, “Right, let's do it.”

We go outside. I give him a cigarette. I take one. I light them both and I lean in and I say the following.

“Look, man, don't worry about me. I have got this covered. I can watch my own back. But you're in the heart of the thing, man. If they know what you think you know, then everybody who would want to know that, they're here in DC. This is the belly of the beast, man! And you cannot be here. You have got to get out of here - out of DC – tonight! Is there anywhere outside the city you can go?”

James thinks and then he says, “I have friends in Richmond…”

And I'm like, “Great, go there. Tonight. Don't go home. Go right to the bus station and go to Richmond.”

And he's like, “Right! Good idea!”

And he turns on his heels and he walks down the street.

He gets to the corner and he looks over his shoulder and glances back at me one time before turning the corner and disappearing into the darkness. And as he does, I know in that moment, I have done the most mercenary thing I could do. I have thrown that boy to the wolves of his own insanity, but I had no other choice and I don't feel bad about it, I can’t afford to feel bad about it. It was him or me.

It also turns out that I, by pure coincidence, have done the exact right thing for James because he followed my advice and the friends he went to in Richmond, they were actually friends of his family. So when he barreled in the front door and went to the bathroom and locked himself in and wouldn't come out because they were spies, they called his parents. His parents came down and hauled him back to Connecticut to get the help he needed.

I did not see James for a year. And then one day I am walking into the Tryst coffee shop a year and there's James sitting in the window surrounded by people. He looks up and he sees me and we make eye contact. But there is no look of recognition on his face whatsoever. I don't even really know if he knows that I am real or that I am someone he ever knew.

And my own life in that year has changed dramatically. I got a second job at the Phillips Collection, so I'm making more money. I took up classes at the Story Studio Acting Conservatory and I've made more friends. And I would like to say that oh this was a day that I realized that that's what James taught me to live my dreams or whatever. But, that's too cute a button to put on it.

I do think that it was part of the wake up call, though. The fact that I could not take care of my relationship and I could not take care of the situations that I found myself in, at some point, I had to realize that all of that started at my inability to take care of myself and that had to change.

But I didn't tell James any of that. I don't know if I was conscious of it at the time. I didn't return any look of recognition back at him. I gave him the same blank stare that he gave me. I got my coffee and I walked out and I silently wished him happiness and mental health from a safe distance.