The last time I was in a ruby-lit room was in the outdoor smoking area of some club in West Hollywood, where I became completely absorbed in the art of asking for things I didn’t have—a cigarette, then a light, then the face of someone stunned I had neither. It felt like asking a stranger at dinner for the rest of their entrée… and their fork… and their napkin.

On this particular night, I (now a lung purist) was not wafting between promoter tables in a body-suit to “To Turn Down for What” but between Hill staffers and Comms teams, all of us drenched in Puck Media red. Though Puck’s news writing has been described as “clubby,” there was no gyrating to be found in this room. Just polite nods.

The French Embassy, along with the newish media company that covers what it calls the four centers of power—Wall Street, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Washington—was hosting the third annual First Amendment Gala at the French Ambassador’s residence. Puck co-founder Jon Kelly, who once dubbed journalists “the original influencers” was awarding Washington Post’s David Ignatius for his decades-long career.

Approaching the security gate outside the embassy, my main concern wasn’t what I—someone with no background in policy—would talk about in these rooms, but why I’d chosen to wear black booties instead of my trusty secondhand Manolos, the ones I instinctively knew belonged in rooms like this. As I unzipped my black shearling bomber to be wanded down by the guard, I watched women circle the perimeter in tailored pantsuits and remembered—I’m new here.

I grew up in central Virginia: land of preps, home to UVA, vineyards, wedding destinations, and sprawling farms. I knew the understated power of geometric-print wrap dresses and solid-colored sheaths paired with a tan pump. But I’d always resisted that aesthetic—until, maybe, now.

This was my welcome-to-D.C. moment.

Inside, chandeliers glinted in the foyer, which featured a bold blue-and-white Simon Hantaï painting. My friend (and longtime Washingtonian) ushered me to the bar, past a portrait of Marquis de Lafayette, macaron carts, and Puck-branded matchboxes lined up on marble consoles. We found a spot behind Delaware Senator Chris Coons as Kelly began his remarks. A staffer mouthed to Coons how much time he had left. “For what?” he asked. “Until your next event,” they replied. The confusion, the rapport was very Veep.

Ignatius stepped up and, in his speech, offered an urgent warning: “We understand now, better than ever, that democracy could indeed die in darkness.”

Earlier in the day, The Atlantic released unredacted messages detailing specific attack plans to bomb Yemen, after editor Jeffrey Goldberg’s revelation that he was included in a Signal thread with top Trump officials—among them Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. The main bad actors denied any unlawful behavior in accidently adding a journalist with zero clearance to discuss miliary action. Signal isn’t a secure channel for federal communications, and Waltz’s follow-up text message—a fist, an American flag, and a flame emoji—felt like buffoonery.

It was as if we’d all been dropped into a scene from Burn After Reading. Except, Jeffrey Goldberg isn’t Brad Pitt’s smooth-brained gym employee Chad Feldheimer, who calls up John Malkovich’s enraged ex-CIA analyst Osbourne Cox and says, “I know these documents are sensitive, but I am perfectly willing to give back to you your sensitive shit”—mistaking memoir pages for classified intelligence. Goldberg is, in fact, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, known for his reporting on foreign affairs—and he was actually in possession of classified information. Yet the government treats it like it’s just another Monday, as if The Atlantic publishing such material carries no weight, or as if lying under oath should mean nothing at all.

Looking around during Ignatius’s speech, I couldn’t tell if the liberals were alright. Were they unnerved by the chaos or just numbly gnawing through it, trading jokes while counting down the months to the midterms.

Democrats aren’t great actors, so I was relieved to find that even outside the inner circle, the mood was cheery and warm instead of the expected deflated feeling many of us have carried since November. After Ignatius ended his speech, the notables filtered out of the main room, buzzing through and shaking hands and patting the backs of friends—many of whom are the leading Washington correspondents in slick suits. “Silver fox” my friend nudged me as CNN’s Jake Tapper passed by. Robert Costa of CBS, Sumi Somaskanda of the BBC, and former CNN Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta followed.

The room is more blended than we know. In every circle, a woman in a red shift dress seems to appear.

“What’s with all the red?” I asked.

“Those are the Republicans,” my friend whispered.

“You’ll probably become a little Republican, too,” he shrugged, then introduced me to Mitt Romney’s former Chief of Staff.

The potential to swing sides was, admittedly, seductive especially as I weighed it against the shrinking journalism job market. That morning, a recruiter had reached out via LinkedIn about an Opinion Editor role at a conservative newspaper here in Washington. I was dumbfounded; they clearly hadn’t read a word I’d written. I asked a few trusted editor friends what they’d do. The answer was swift: no.

But in a town where red and blue attend the same galas and their politics interwoven, I found myself wondering: how long could I keep grandstanding on my liberal values?

I spoke with a young man who was currently between jobs because his last job had “become DOGE.” I asked if he was one of the 21 federal employees who’d signed the anonymous letter refusing to help dismantle the government. “That was me,” he said.

Gin and tonic in hand, I found myself talking to two people whose resumes I didn’t fully grasp in the moment—Michael Falcone, now Director of Special Projects at Uber and formerly ABC News' Deputy Political Director, and Chloe Ross, a booker at the BBC. A group asks if they mind if we move out of view of the Hantaï painting for a photo of themselves together. Falcone tells me they are the entire Washington Post PR team. I told them I was both an actress and journalist—something they probably didn’t care about. Ross offered, gently, that a performance background can be helpful on camera.

In New York, I’d grown used to the insider/outsider dance of certain rooms. Most recently, I’d been dabbling in the literati crowd—readings and guest panels hosted in art galleries or designer stores. One night in Soho, at an event centered on Janet Malcolm, I found myself in a doorway with The New Yorker Editor-in-Chief David Remnick. He was looking for the nearest subway station, and I—answering like an obedient intern instead of a working writer—pointed him toward Canal Street.

There were readings at McNally Jackson Books, more panels courtesy of professors or friends with book deals.

Then came the book launches—like Taylor Lorenz’s for Extremely Online, DJ’d by a journalist I admired who offered nothing more than a fist bump to me when I’d arrived. All of us pretending to enjoy overpriced margaritas in a crowded room with everyone’s eyes scanning just past you—not to find the next conversation, but to clock the face worth name-dropping later.

But the parties for actors—more gritty than glamorous—were the ones I’d come up in.

There were the nights at 54 Below, the basement of Studio 54, spent watching Broadway or past-Broadway actors, who, with their kind of semi-celebrity, attract fans and other actors to hear them sing musical theatre numbers to the gods. Then there was the side where you, if you were lucky, maybe scored an invite to the Tonys or a Tony after-party.

I remember telling my friend, who invited me to one, not to talk to any of the other actor-cater-waiters. I know. I was atrocious, but hear me out. “We have to act like we actually belong here,” I told him. I mean, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that I was crushing his hand and telling him this. I was truly a kind of demon. My friend who kindly invited me was an usher at a Broadway theater and an actor like me. I couldn’t see the value in lapping it up in a world where we didn’t truly belong. I so wanted to belong that I was willing to fake my way out of my circumstances.

I, too, was an actor cater-waiter, who at the time was spending nights offering Richard Branson shrimp tempura on some windy rooftop in midtown. Stuffed into my Febreze-soaked Hervé Léger knockoff, sneaking bites of arancini balls in the security camera blind spots with the other broke and starving girls.

“Maria, am I going to have to order you a Medium?” my manger would threaten.

I’d held firm at this Tony party, clinging to the principle of not powwowing with people who were just like us—actor-cater-waiters—until we both spotted someone we’d gone to school with. He’d just finished two back-to-back Broadway runs, and there he was, across the room, lining up with his tray of passed hors d'oeuvres.

Unlike the literati parties or the embassy crowd, actor parties never pretended otherwise—the line between the invited and the ones carrying trays was always paper thin. How could any of us ever get comfortable or feel like we belong?

At the ambassador’s residence, I went to retrieve my jacket from the coat check—a job I used to loathe when I was the one assigned to it. A girl, a communucations head for a congressman and potential new friend, I’d spoken with earlier kindly offers her number, suggesting we meet up the next time she’s in Old Town, where I live.

I turn back to the foyer and watch as the final wave of staffers and officials raise their last cocktails of the night. I’m new here. But I always feel the same in any room.

And maybe that’s the point. I don’t plan to leave my principles at the door. Not even here. For the first time in a while, I feel something close to optimism—even if it’s awash in ruby light.