21:11 - September 18, 2002
old lunch box
I talked to an absolutely terrific-looking boy on the bus on the way home tonight. Unfortunately, the encounter with him reminded me in a very harsh way why I should NOT leave the confines of a safe, friendly, community of loved and trusted people while completely wasted on weed. He's slouching there at the bus stop, his black dreads pulled back lazily with a red ribbon, tapping his fingers on his thighs absentmindedly, when I come careening out from the corner of Imig Music going, 'Is it here yet? Has it come? Oh my God, I I think I missed my bus back to my dorm. It's 3 in the morning and I think the last one goes at 2.'

'It's nine,' the guy says, squinting. 'At night.'

As I realize that I'd had my watch on upside down, a group of girls wearing funny hats comes marching down the street, holding unreadable signs. 'I Am Woman! Hear Me Roar!' they chant, over and over. 'Hear Me ROAR!'

'What are they saying?' asks the guy.

'I am woman, hear me roar, I believe,' I respond. 'If you were a woman, wouldn't you go around screaming that as well?'

He throws his head back and laughs, showing perfectly symmetrical crooked white teeth. 'Hell, yeah.'

At some time later we'd moved on to roommate woes, and as I was asking him in quite a roundabout way whether drinking to pass out was worth it, we both suddenly lost the thread; the subject matter just slipped right through our fingers and down the pothole with yesterday's rain.

'I don't remember what you just said,' he told me.

'That's because you're high, you're high, yes you are,' I danced and sang, pushing the tip of his nose in with a pinky. 'High high high. Bad boy, bad.'

He was still laughing, but in amazement, now.

I suppose it all comes up roses in the end, as when the bus finally came we sat in the seat in the way farthest back and talked the whole time about when we were kids and used to fight the other kids for that space in the bus; that space where every time the bus went over the tiniest crack, you'd bounce and soar like you were on a carnival ride.

So ten years later, here we are in the new age moonwalk painted gold with the CU insignia, bouncing and soaring with our heads coming dangerously close to the ceiling; his dreads actually touch it on the bump over 28th street. We're laughing and I'm clutching my binder like it's an old lunch box with Sesame Street characters on it, Ernie in his bathtub with the Rubber Duckie.

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