Clarity                           sampled from SlushPile #2 - Buy it!                                                                                                              by Chris Estey                                             The bus driver wouldn't let me off at the Westlake stop in the tunnel. It was another case of institutional coercion--he doesn't know that the soft tissue in my feet is tearing, and he would probably care less if he knew that I would have a hell of a time walking back to my tenement from the Convention Center. He's got a job to do and he's just doing it. He's got orders. Just like my boss, who wouldn't let me off early to get home safely. Hey, he's got a Porsche, he just drives from one parking garage where he lives to the parking garage of the business that he owns. No hassle with the hoi polloi, the lepers above ground. Every man for himself---unless you're in his employ, turning out "Christian punk" albums for the sanctified alternative music masses. Then you better do your shift no matter what, and who cares what happens to a poverty-level, non-driving, unprotected employee when he leaves work at night. When the area between where he lives and works is in utter turmoil. As we pass Westlake, I have this awesome feeling of dread, as the bus doesn't stop. I yell out, "Hey! You passed Westlake!" as the bus continues driving through the long cement tube to the Convention Center stop, the final one in the tunnel. The guy in front of me in the sideways seats in the accordion part of the double bus says, "Hey, at least it's taken you up here." But i didn't want to be taken "up here" to the Convention Center. I resent his sudden involvement and "consolation." My legs ache, my feet hurt, and I'm scared of cops and rioting frat boys. (Because of the television reports, I figured most of the real, original protesters have been arrested or driven away by now--just because personal reports while I was at work confirmed that my friends had been.) It's dark and chilly, the end of November. I say, "No thanks," to the driver and unboard, taking the escalator up into the ebony early evening. As the moving stairs carry me towards the mouth of the bus tunnel entrance/exit, I see pitch black sky ahead. Then i hear some punk band playing. The loitering crowds around the block outside the abandoned sci-fi/art deco station seem, well, happy. Blacks and whites and Mexicans partying together. No authority. No consumerism--or the oppressive void it leaves when i'm coming home after hours on an ordinary weeknight, being told that downtown is only for the rich to buy things. (You see, the rich of this city have already made up their minds. This isn't a community--this is  a huge mall, and with the Convention Center construction, building skybridges and downtown parking between the department stores, it seems more like that all the time.) As I walk past the shifting clots of darkly-clad young people slamming trash cans at Planet Hollywood, kicking the windows of the odiously cheerful Warner Brothers store, or just watching the band, I realized there were no police around. For some reason, I wasn't scared. Nothing felt malicious about the scenario. In fact, I felt relieved things went as they had. It was actually blissful--the first time I ever felt totally safe at night returning to 2nd and Stewart. Then I see the well-groomed employees of the department stores lined up, looking terrified, standing behind the windows of Nordstroms, and the Bon, and the other stores, dressed nicer (probably because they had to) than the crowds "threatening" them out here, in the cold November night (actually just threatening those stupid windows). I am shocked and amazed. This astonishes me. Would I do this for the company that I work for? What would I do if I was asked to stand in the window to protect the glass and property of my employer? I wondered how were these people different from us. I had to work today, too, in an office in Pioneer Square, at least--so I understood why these people couldn't be protesting. But protecting all of this gaudy shit? It was wickedly absurd seeing them in the store windows, looking like human displays. The obviousness of their position in life as exploited "Human Resources" probably had never been more clear to them. They stared at me with trembling eyes as I walked past, as if I would fling a rock straight at them at any second. (A combination of my disgust at them for being such suck-asses to their employers, and a liberating sense of the power they were giving me by fearing me made me want to lurch angrily towards the windows every now and then, but I felt too sorry for them in their mutually despicable positions). Gypsies ran downtown for a little while. Smiles abounded. Spontaneous singing, clapping, and chanting crackled around fires set in barrels. I realized, for the first time in many years, just how heavy the vibe is downtown when things are "normal." This was real diversity, and a sense of comfortable purpose filled the lingering small crowds--the lack of the usual gobs of drooling, card-holding, rude shoppers was so refreshing. Then, as I was nearing home, two blocks away from my building, dozens of heavily armed and uniformed troopers stopped me in my tracks. Almost home, and my Perfect Scene was over and done. They didn't care about my I.D. They wouldn't let me pass in either direction. They didn't care that i lived in the tenement behind their military line. They would not speak to me as an individual. Holding their weapons to their chests, they were poised, ready to drive anyone in their way out of the city. Within a matter of minutes, my tax money was being spent on filling my eyes and lungs with tear gas. As i ran through block after block of gas, confusion, and anger, I felt like an animal released from a cage, then shot in the back.