Cosmos Club, D.C.
It’s a quarter to nine in the morning and I’m sitting in the DC airport waiting to board a flight to Nashville. I have a dinner meeting at The Standard Club, where, undoubtedly, I’ll smoke too many cigars, ensuring my suit and mustache smell like an ashtray.
Last night as I was attempting to fall asleep on a couch in D.C, my mustache kept me awake on account of - you may have guessed - cigars. I’m at the “robber baron” stage, follicularly speaking - meaning my upper lip is burly enough to have a name, middle initial, and suffix.
Wimbledon C. Evans, Sr.
Odd first name, for sure. My fifteen-year-old son is attempting to grow a mustache too, albeit his is a bit thin: picture a wheat field blowing in the wind. He named his stache Wimbledon - hence mine (senior).
Anyway, I’m in D.C. with my mustache, looking at the usual cast of characters:
Aging flight attendants with their luggage.
Businessmen in smart looking suits.
Everyone buried in their phones.
Just another day with my fellow Americans. The same scene is being played out in Pittsburgh and Denver and San Diego - everyone has a place to be and the only way to get there involves a metal tube where ladies in blue skirts and cranberry-colored vests serve glasses of tomato juice and Cokes.
As I said earlier, I woke up on a couch this morning. Even though I’ve spent the last few weeks with ambassadors, special forces guys, and presidential appointees, I crash on a pumpkin-colored sectional because it’s free.
Conversely, I have spent a few nights at the Cosmos Club: a swanky affair on Embassy Row where my days start with an hour of newspapers, coffee and eggs, and when the mood strikes, a breakfast cigar.
Sometimes I’ll retire to a writing desk in the library to pen correspondence on club letterhead.
I’ve been fortunate enough to stay in places like the Cosmos, but most of the time it’s a pedestrian existence.
For every meal at The Occidental, there’s a baker’s dozen at gas stations. For every cigar in a swanky club, there’s a pack of cigarettes in a motel.
We’re about to start boarding. And in that spirit of transparency, Wimbledon and I are having dinner with a cast of characters in Nashville, from a Hollywood stuntman to a spy … so it’s not always gas station hot dogs and fizzy drinks.
*Composed, Edited, and Published in Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Arlington, VA
