I had heard a story that fit the theme, from another Senate staffer. About a year earlier, Feinstein had approached Senator Tim Scott, stuck out her hand, and told him she had been rooting for him and was so happy to have him serving with her in the Senate. It was obvious to Scott and the staffers in tow that Feinstein had mistaken the South Carolinian for Raphael Warnock, the newly elected Democratic senator from Georgia. Scott had played along. “Thank you so much,” he had told Feinstein, according to the staffer who told me about the incident. “Your support means a lot.” (Feinstein’s office declined to provide comment for this story.)

When I relayed the story to Purley, he leapt out of his seat, put his hands to his head and crouched to the floor.

“This is what I’m talking about!” he shouted.

Some of the other Eastern Market patrons looked over. There was an older Black woman sitting alone at the table beside ours who had overheard our conversation. After Purley sat down again, she spoke to him directly.

“I worked in the Senate for Strom Thurmond,” she said, referring to the South Carolina senator who had supported racial segregation and had lead an unsuccessful 24?hour?18?minute filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. He moderated his racial politics later.

“So listen to me,” the woman continued. “You have the opportunity to work in that building right there. Write them down. Don’t confront.”

“No, I like to confront,” Purley said.

“No listen, listen.”

“I don’t need that advice.”

“You got to listen to understand the game.”

“I do understand. I do.”

“You could still be there journaling. I could read your journals and write them up from your insider experiences. The problem is too many young people are outspoken. …”

“No, no, no,” Purley said. “I don’t need that advice. I definitely don’t need that advice.”

It was hard for him to take this woman seriously. She had worked for a famously racist lawmaker. The woman would tell Purley that Strom “wasn’t perfect,” but that even flawed politicians could accomplish a lot of good, and that there was value in learning to work with them.

“Listen to me, Jamarcus.” Her voice was calm but stern. “They want to cut you off at the head before you get an opportunity to speak. They know how to run the game on you.”

“OK, OK.”

“You understand the game. You’re very intelligent. But they know how to run the game.”

She wasn’t telling Purley something he hadn’t thought of. He had essentially played her version of the game all his life — it was how he ended up in Feinstein’s office to begin with. But that game had broken something inside him, and he just couldn’t do it anymore.

“Jamarcus, next time you get an opportunity, because you’re very smart,” she said, “write it down. I would love to see the insider book, but for that, you need to be inside. … How many people get to be in that position? You’ve got to slow down a little.”

“That’s real, I do be on 100,” Purley said, slouching in his chair. “I do be on 100 out of anger.”

“You aren’t really angry; you’re trying to process some things.”

“You’re speaking fact,” he said. “You’re preaching right now. They won’t trust anything you say, no matter what you do. You know better than anyone, as a Black woman.”

“I didn’t want to eavesdrop,” she said. “I just don’t want you to disappear.”

By the end of the year, Jamarcus Purley would disappear from Washington and move back home to Pine Bluff. Three days before his departure, I met him on the roof of his D.C. apartment building. It was a bright, cool morning. Purley wore a silver chain and a gray peacoat, which he removed, revealing the crimson Harvard sweatshirt underneath.

Purley once told me he had been playing roles his entire life: In elementary school he pretended to care about church, in high school he pretended to care about academics, in college he pretended to care about whatever his white friends cared about so he could fit in. In Feinstein’s office he had pretended not to care — for years he held his tongue about the senator and what he considered a lack of support for his community. But now, for the first time, he said, he could be truly himself.

He had come out as queer. He told me he’d always wanted to run for office someday and had, for years, convinced himself that the only way he could be accepted as a politician was if he acted like a “stereotypical heterosexual Black man.” But when things started to go south in Feinstein’s office, he got to reading James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and had a realization.

“I was like, ‘You’re never going to do anything radical in your whole life if you can’t even come out as queer,’” he said.