I leave at 5:00 PM

I leave at 5:00 PM Eastern time. These days it's already dark when I get out. I leave from the back door. I eventually figured this way out since I started working at the ISU. I also figured out that taking the bus home from work was slower than taking the metro. The bus just gets stuck in traffic the whole way. From the back door I come onto Connecticut Avenue, two blocks away from the DuPont Circle Metro Station. I walk past the shops that are now all lit up. Past the trendy shoes, the designer stuff, the hot manikins, the gay book stores and past the two Starbucks that are across the street from each other. There are all kinds of nice looking people on the sidewalks. Everyone is wearing scarves and hats. The girls have red cheeks and shinny eyes. A guy in his business suit is walking next to me talking on a cell phone I can’t see. My eyes are alive again since working for the last eight hours staring at a computer screen. Now I’m looking at all of the people on their way somewhere. Looking at the girls. They're all going somewhere. Everyone is always going somewhere. But not the bums. And I pass a couple of them too. They don’t hang too much on this sidewalk. They are farther down at the Circle, on the benches around the fountain. And it's a great fountain too, with large Greek gods and goddesses dedicated to some war or something. On Connecticut I cross the big avenue at the first intersection. Locals know when to ignore the "don't walk" signal. I follow the locals across, that way I don't have to think about anything, and just keep looking, just keep walking. Then it's past the guys giving away newspapers, and into the metro entrance, and down the escalator that's lit from beneath, so that everyone's faces are lit up like it’s a film noire. It's a two-storey descent down the cement escalator tunnel to the metro station. The people going down lean backwards, and the people going up lean forward and keep their faces towards the sky as it gets closer. I keep looking at all of them as they go past. Tired faces, bored faces, drawn in and sullen ones. Some of them have an optimistic look to them, not really smiling though. Some of them are gorgeous anyway, the kind of gorgeous that you only find in the cities. It doesn't matter what races or continents, but you find them there. It’s a luscious beauty that you can’t capture with your memory. They just glide past and it’s gone. No one looks around, no one is interested. But sometimes I see another people watcher. We might meet eyes for less than a glance and the quickly look away. It's too crowded, you know. It’s like monkeys in a cage. Everyone keeps their nose to the ground. It's a safety instinct in animals, to not antagonize each other. I take the red line to Chinatown and switch to the green line, and two stops later I get off at Shaw Station. The world that I emerge out of is another one altogether from DuPont’s big money whitey town. This is a black part of town, next to the black university. It’s at the intersection of Florida, New Jersey, and Rhode Island Avenues. I think on the streets around here they have a ‘one white person at a time’ limit. It’s not well lit here, it’s run down. The CVS has cages on all of the windows. The Chinese takeout places sell chicken and beer and have armored doors. I guess that the street lights don’t work. There’s not much light except for the lights of the cars going by and the traffic signals telling me whether I should walk or not. From the metro exit to my house it is seven blocks, through this part of town that the NFT Guide says is making a comeback after the almost 40 years of decline that began with the 1960’s riots. Now, instead of a bunch of well-dressed business people, I see only a few loitering sidewalk characters, and maybe there will be only one other person that looks like they have somewhere to go. It's like this for a while, from 8th street down to 3rd. But at 3rd I hit my neighborhood, Bloomingdale, and all of the urban mansions of the past. They are called row houses, I guess because they are all lined up together and connected in the front. It looks like Europe, like Victorian England. This is where the rich people used to live. They aren’t rich now like they were back then. Now there are Caribbeans and Ethiopeans, black families, and some young whites. Now it’s just people chillin’ in a nice corner of a messed-up part of town. They keep up the mansions. They give the places eccentric, bright paint jobs. The neighborhood keeps the old Victorian charm, but has something else now. Some experience, some diversity. I’m walking down this brick sidewalk and I’m thinking about all of it. But I’m also thinking to watch where I step. The fallen leaves hide the dogshit, which I’ve stepped in twice on these walks home.