June 7, 1991.
Sarah has been back from Los Angeles for a few weeks now and her friends are finally trickling back to Boston after the end of their freshman year. Sarah had spent the last year working at a diner on Melrose, spending her weekends on the Sunset Strip, barely seeing her best friends since high school graduation. But, Mika is turning 19, so the high school posse’s all back together to celebrate.
They had gotten Thai food for dinner and were leaving the Harvard Square Movie Theater on Church Street after seeing Spike Lee’s new movie “Jungle Fever” when they ran into Dana and Sekou.
Despite the assumptions that Sarah had made about him at the start of freshman year, Dana hadn’t turned out to be that bad. At first, she thought he was an over-confident jock and a total player. But that changed after senior year when they had English, African American History and a competitive elective course called the Nuclear Age together. She realized that, despite his record-breaking streak on the track team, he could effortlessly carry his side of a heated argument about James Joyce’s “The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”
Over the year since graduation, Sarah had sent him the occasional postcard from her apartment in West Hollywood, and he had given her the occasional call from his dorm at the University of Pennsylvania.
Over the year since graduation, Dana had quit the track team he had originally been recruited for, started a grunge band with his new friend from Seattle and developed an obsession with Jane’s Addiction.
Dana is suddenly up Sarah’s alley.
So when she and her friends run into him in the Pit behind the Harvard Square T stop on a double date with two tall, blonde Swedish girls, she is momentarily disappointed. Perhaps he really is the predictable player that her 14-year-old self had believed him to be.
Reunited after a long nine months, the group exchanges niceties, banter and laughs. Dana’s foursome is on their way to a techno club — at the request of the international visitors — for the rest of the evening.
Even so, something about that balmy early summer night and the glow of the Harvard Square street lights, Dana looks different to her.
As they are about to part ways, Sarah can’t help but wonder, “How did this random Swedish girl have the right to determine the outcome of this perfect June night? Who was she to claim Dana in all of his newfound, punk-rock glory?”
She takes control.
“We’re going to the Paradise to see the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Come.”
Dana politely declines. He is dedicated to his position as wingman for the time being and can’t abandon Sekou — although she’s certain Sekou wouldn’t mind. He declares that they’ll have to catch up more soon.
So, standing outside the Greenhouse Coffee Shop and Restaurant, she kisses him on the cheek and they say goodbye.
Like many teenagers growing up in Boston, Dana and Sarah came of age in Harvard Square. It had been where they had each experienced their first taste of independence. Where Dana had bought his first commit book at the Million Year Picnic when he was 6, where Sarah had purchased her first imported vinyl, The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “You Trip Me Up,” at the Newbury Comics in the Garage when she was 11, where she got her first bag of weed when she was 15.
But Dana never went to the techno club. When he and Sekou arrived on Commonwealth Avenue with their dates, Dana realized that they were next door to the venue for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones concert. He abandoned his post as a wingman and went to see a girl.
But even if the magic of Harvard Square started it all, that magic wasn’t strong enough to draw the attention of Sarah and Dana’s own daughter. So she’ll walk through the streets where it all started this weekend, proudly rooting for the rival team.
