Getting off at Davis on Oscar Sunday

I like how stepping on the escalator the white light flashes up from below the metal steps through the crack. I feel like I am on an over-sized copy machine. (30th edition of copies)

Tufts girls clad in khaki, dark denim, stretch black, earth tones all. The sway of their hips as they ascend the escalator. I dated an earthy Tufts girl briefly when I was in college 9 years ago. Kissed her on the grassy roof of the library on a serene spring night. Now, whenever I pass this station I feel like I have vactioned here, climbed its hills, gotten lost in its valleys.

Crossing the street to the Store 24 - I see a drug deal go down right in front of me. I am invisible. I have to break the Creation of Adam like a marathon tape to enter the store. I see the crumpled bills go from downturned knuckles to upturned knuckles ticking out of a frayed gray hooded sweatshirt with Emerica written on the sleeve.

I search through the fluorescent lit database of fatty foods and settle on some Planter's Trailmix.

The cashier has 4 American enamel pins and ribbons stuck to her blue Store 24 vest, a large button that says 'We Card Under 35', and a Goofy doll sticking out of her breast pocket. Betsy Johnson eat your heart out.

She is picking something out of her ear and is looking at it momentarily as I fumble through my change strewn wallet.

Now I am sitting waiting for the bus, chewing the salty nuts and sweet m& m's; hearing old surly guys shoot the shit as foreign students huddle and young working people look bright eyed - 'ready for Monday'.

4 banks of Verizon phones stand guard like riot police in front of the bus exit.

Obvious words spill out onto the blank pages at the end of Invisible Monsters:

And the Oscars will go on, and the war will go on, and the trail mix will run out, the drugs will run out, Goofy will be hung up, and the photocopier will keep copying.

The Saturday Herald says "AWE" in 140 pt Helvetica with shadow, the Boston Globe says "A Blitz of Baghdad" in 72 pt Times, the Chineses Daily News is sold out.

As the bus arrives I think to myself how some things can not be filtered through the fine screen of funny anecdotal coming of age memory, no matter how hard you push or how hot the water is.