Cameron, Cameron, Ya Habibti, My Love March 25, 2007

Well ding dong, my kiddies, spring is here. It’s been over fifty degrees in the district for three days now and I refuse to believe the warm weather isn’t here to stay. The cherry trees outside my apartment buildings are blossoming as well, which is pretty stellar. I live in an older building with all of the sort of cute, echo-y details that older buildings have– little concrete bobs and flourishes on the brick, high ceilings in the lobby, etc. It’s not fancy– our front lock is prone to breaking and the call-up system long since gave out, but I do love it. I also love the fact that it’s quiet. No drunken frat boy rabble, no howling, no tenant squabbles. Recently someone with the initials E.E lost a diamond out of her ring, but hopefully that will be resolved via her friendly bulletin board posting. It would be a real shame if the Angolan kid who mined it lost half of his fingers for nothing. Seriously, ya’ll, please stop buying diamonds.

Okay, I’m done being preachy. That whole bit about my apartment building was really just a device, a way of winding my away around to the story I really want to tell you. So here’s the tag-line: Although my building might be calm, there is something pretty exciting going on right down the block. Allow me to start from the beginning.

When I first moved to DC, fall classes had not yet started and I spent an entire week riding my bike around the city in the middle of a horrendous heatwave, eating carrots and triscuits out of small tupperware container, looking for jobs, and willing myself to believe that I had not made a horrible mistake in deciding to go to grad school. Were it not for good times with my dear Loyal, my transition would have been much harder. Case in point: one evening I received a voice-mail from her, describing a visit to the consignment furniture store one block from my apartment. What made this place remarkable, Loyal said, was not what they had to sell, but the fact that there lived in the store a hairless cat. No shit.

Naturally, I went to check things out first thing in the morning, and there he was, reclined in the front window like the little pasha he is, taking in the morning sun and regarding all of Cleveland Park with an air of sleepy diffidence, his rhinestone collar glittering regally: my Cameron. So began my love affair with the cat, who could clearly give less of a shit about me.

When my sisters caught site of Cameron, they too fell under his spell and he became something of an obsession for us all: Loyal, the girls and I. Whenever I pass by his window, I stop and look for him. I have been known to go into the store and ask timidly “Uh, I was just wondering. Where’s Cameron?” This always goes over really well. What can I say? There is something about his little, hairless belly, the way you can see down to the bottom of his crenellated ears, that touches me. Or maybe it’s his total arrogance, that he cares not for anyone but himself. Or maybe it’s the fact that he is a fucking HAIRLESS CAT and HOW CRAZY IS THAT. In any case. Last week the plot thickened.

I was walking home from brunch with another friend (also a member of the Cult of Cameron), when she casually mentioned that she had been in to see Cameron recently and that when she went into the back room of the store she saw a cage in which, she claimed, resided a HAIRLESS RAT. That’s right, folks. I totally flipped and went over to the store investigate for myself at the first opportunity. Grad-school might be time consuming, but I still have my priorities straight. I scoped the joint thoroughly, but could not find any cage, nor any rat, hairless or otherwise. I had no choice but to ask the saleswoman. This was kind of awkward because, what do you say in this situation. I settled for “Uh, so I heard from like a friend who loves Cameron because we all love Cameron that when she was here one time there was this rat also and it was in cage. A hairless rat?”

The look of pity on the saleswoman’s face was pretty striking. She paused briefly, as if contemplating something and then said (direct quote here, folks), “Well, yes. There is a hairless rodent that is Cameron’s companion. He’s actually a ferret and he’s over at our Wisconsin Avenue location today.”

WHAT??? WHATTT???? So basically, Cameron (who is a cat) has a pet. A pet who ALSO HAIRLESS, and who is a FERRET. Could my life get any better? Could it? This all went down on Friday and I’m still walking on air. Obviously, I will be on the lookout for this new character, and will report our first meeting to you down to the very last detail. It’s the least I could do.

In other news, I am learning to speak Arabic. And by speak Arabic, I mean say some Arabic words. My Palestinian friends have decided that it is important that I acquire their native tongue ASAP. Their reasoning is, and I quote, “Otherwise it is hard to talk about people with you behind their backs”. Alright. I dig it. So far my Arabic lexicon includes: Weinek (Where are you?), Momtaz (excellent), Bejanen (Very Super Excellent), Habibti (Sweetie, Babe, Darlin, etc) and Biz (Nipple. Contemporarily, it has also come to mean The Little Plastic Cover You Put on the End of a Shisha Hose So You Don’t Catch Someone Else’s Cold).

Most frequently, I use these words in text messages, like the one I sent to my buddy T a few hours ago: Ani Difranco, Habibti! BTW, Weinek?

I’m growing up so good.