Reciprocity ✧ Bob Dylan

5 - To Ramona

Young people are cursed to assume the world is turning in our favor, that everything is going to turn out fine. The truth is, everything will be fine in the end, but "fine" isn't always true to the journey. The world can turn very grim very quickly.

Colors help, though. The dim greys and blacks of New York were rotting me away, and since I've come home, I hate to wear black. Despite it being the middle of March, it's too hot for my clothes to be absorbing the sunlight all day. I wear linen shirts and pants, hoop earrings, and flat shoes I can move around in, most of the time. I try to feel the pale sunlight on my skin, visit the blue ocean as often as possible, buy and create colorful paintings, and know colorful people.

I'm a real ray of sunlight. On the outside, at least. Colors can't save you from everything, though. Definitely not the police, they hate bright shit. And now I'm running away from them with my feet and spinning in circles with my head.

"Bay?" I shout, though nobody can make any distinction between a hundred yelling voices, "Bay, c'mon!"

No response. The sit-in was held outside the Chronicle building because of a garbage article they put out about the 1919 race riots last weekend. We weren't bothered when the cops showed up, because they always do, but it turned to chaos when an argument exploded into racing bullets.

Now, I'm lost in the crowd and Bay's nowhere to be found. I can't decide if I should stress about him or not; He's old enough to take care of himself, but the cops are shooting at people and that's bad news for a clumsy Black boy.

I guess I'll just have to let him worry about himself, until we're back home. I've been running for a while, and the legion of protesters has broken off into smaller crowds, one of which I'm stuck in. Your feet take you pretty far when you're running for your life. We've made it up Geary St. and there's still police cars after us. I look around for a place we could all stop in to hide out, but everything's too small and obvious.

I cup my hands around my mouth and yell, "Hey! We gotta break this up!"

Other's spread the message. Everyone scatters quickly, most of them having experienced this sort of thing before. Breathing heavily, I scamper past storefronts, garages, and alleyways, but everybody's closing down. Why is everybody closing down when it's not even eight o'clock?

I pass a telegraph pole. There's a flier that reads 'Daylight Savings Boat Parade.' Must be where everyone's going. What can I do, then?

Careful to stay in the shadows, I pause for a moment to ensure that I can't hear the sirens anymore. I catch my breath and have a better look around. Think. The laundromat is open, but other protesters stopped in there. I could steal a car, but that wouldn't do anything but send them after me again. There's the Curran, the theater. They wouldn't raid a show looking for me, would they? Disturb all those people? I can only hope not. It's either that or keep running.

I approach the ticket booth sloppily and quickly, my breaths climbing on top of one another in a tired mess.

"I need… Whew, I need a ticket."

A lethargic teenage boy stands behind the glass, his uniform two sizes two big, "The show started two hours ago."

"Doesn't matter," I gabble, "One ticket, please."

He blinks, slow and uninterested, "Five dollars."

Shit. I put all the money I made from the gallery away already. There's $6.35 in my pocket, and it's supposed to be for groceries.