"Steve hoped to impress his Valentine date with his large package."

[Steve, on this card from my mom, is drawn knocking on a door dressed in a large, wrapped box with a ribbon on his head]. Open card. "Have an impressive Valentine's Day."

Is it wrong my mom sent me a dirty card?

District Belle, Sassy, the Pea, others, and myself met at Guarapo in Courthouse (not Clarendon stop. Damn http://www.wmata.com/ has given me the wrong stop twice in the past week!). We finished three Voss water bottles full of sangria (and one District Belle said they finished while I was walking the 10 blocks from the Clarendon stop) and several plates of tapas. The girls suggested we go to Dremo's, which meant nothing to me. You, however, the reader, may have knowledge of the place being, as the Pea said, "the most legendary dive bar and pick-up scene in Arlington." It wasn't so bad on Valentine's Day. We had full reign over the jukebox and played all the angry girl music we could find (Garbage, Hole, Heart, Madonna) and some hippie songs we HAD to hear for no apparent reason (Rusted Root?).

There was some open mike comedy night going on in the back room. When it ended, we noticed all the guys in the bar wearing these black tees with "The beer set me up!" on the back. It felt like the entire bar was blanketed shirts. I approached a larger group of them to find out the back story. We assumed it had something to do with the comedy earlier. It turns out some old guy who worked at the bar was giving out shirts sporting Bardo Rodeo (the bar's name before it became Dr. Dremo's) and a clever saying about Marion Barry liking beer.


So, of course, the sangria in me didn't fail, and I HAD to get me a free tee. The bartender gave me the very last one behind the bar. When I got back to the table with it, the Pea and District Belle decided they HAD to have one too. The bartender told them there were no more. Then, I spotted to boys in the shirts playing Golden Tee.

I approached them, "It's Valentine's Day. I'm single for the first time in 5 years. We're having a most fabulous night out, and my friends over there have been so supportive. There was only one t-shirt left, so I was hoping ya'll could donate your free tees to my friends. The shirt isn't even that cool really."

"Well, my buddy here loves this place, so I think he's going to keep his. But, it's my first time here. So, tell you friend with the short blond hair to come play Golden Tee with us, and we'll give her the shirt."

It wasn't as creepy as it sounds. They were totally normal nice guys.

"Uh," I said to District Belle, who seated chatting with the Pea and Sassy, "that guy doesn't want his shirt. But, he wants us to play Golden Tee with them to get it."

So, that's what we did. The boys coached us on choosing the right iron for the sand trap and the right level of our back swing to get the ball in the hole from 25 yards away. The boys had been playing as Player AAA and Player FUK. I was FUK. District Belle was AAA. In between turns, I got to talking to one of the boys about his hometown of Pittsburgh. I expressed my love. He expressed his despise. It was a strange conversation. We finally agreed on the aesthetic appeal of Pittsburgh and got back to getting FUK out of the woods.

We cabbed home just before 12am. The clock struck midnight, Valentine's Day was over, and guess what, I didn't turn into a pillar of salt (or worse, a lady with warts on her face and 60 cats I've named after famous poets).

You know you're at a dive bar when the decoration involves blow-up beer bottles hanging from the ceilings. We don't drink beer, but we felt like exalting the decor all the same. All hail to the beer.

P.S. How come DC doesn't prepare to salt the sidewalks? It does snow, like, every year. I don't get this city.