mementos mori

 my not-niece can unlock my phone. 

pre-COVID i had an obnoxiously long passcode on my phone; it was based on a sentence that reminds me of a woman i went to high school with who died.

my phone used to use my thumb to unlock, but i figured it was time for an upgrade so i got the one that unlocks with your face.

then we were all masked up, so i couldn't be typing in the mini-soliloquy that is my password every 50 meters to play ingress. so i changed it to a passcode.

anyway, stella, now six, can unlock it... she has seen me enter it enough times, and eventually i started giving it to her, and she finally has it memorized so that she can pick up my phone and put on "my little pony: friendship is magic."

(side notes one and two: first, i recognized john de lancie of star trek and breaking bad fame as one of the voice actors, and second, i call it "my little brony" which makes stella's mom laugh but also say things like "why am i friends with you?").

anyway i figure whenever i die, and it might be sooner than later as this car has some real wear and tear, she'll be the one who gets to see all the hidden things one finds in the attic when a parent or a great aunt or a spouse dies; the private things that no one ever lays eyes on until after we are no longer around to hide them away.

mementos mori.

stella and her mom came over today for a saturday bbq – the first really since this whole thing started. i think i fired up the grill once in 2020. her, her mom, the roommate, and her boyfriend are pretty much the only people i have seen on a regular basis in person for a year and a half almost.

jimmy b. joined as well, and between the three of us, me, jimmy, and the roommate not a drop of alcohol has been consumed in at least 7 months and at most almost two and a half years.

still, the wear and tear exists, and someday maybe sooner than later stella will unlock the phone, the gmails, the blog drafts, the photos, the letters, the documents, all the little crumbs i'll leave behind me.

in my room are two metal boxes: a stiff upper lip lunch box and a little lock box - like the kind you'd keep ammo in. between the two of them there are mementos mori of the woman who died the last day i drank, 

i called off work after i got the call. i didn't know what to do, so i went out for a walk. i stopped at a mcdonalds. i ordered a fish sandwich and a quarter pounder with cheese.

it was the last time i had mcdonalds – i will have mcdonalds again the same day, october 23, this year.

i got on a bus, then another bus, then ended up at beach street and polk in the middle of a marvel comic shoot with fake muni busses crashing. i was surrounded by gawkers and film crew and security. i wandered around, i ended up by the presidio. i wandered over to another bus. i was paying for tickets on my phone, no one ever checked them.

for a year i paid for tickets on my phone that no one ever checked, not once. 

when people's tickets are checked, they don't look like me. a ticket checker passed by while i was on the bus once, didn't scan my ticket. got off before they could check mine. paid on the honor system.

i talked to john on the way after mcdonalds, i talked to bruce. i talked to jody at a gas station in the marina for a long time, drinking a kombucha i got in a gas station that my friends george and yakov made on treasure island.

she stayed with yakov, before she died, she came from massachusetts. 

before, a few years ago, she stayed with me. left some stuff.

i took the bus from the marina back toward the mission but i got out at church and market. i was walking. not feeling.

i got to the mission, my old hang out. my friends were on the sidewalk by the bar, by my friend's apartment, sitting on the sidewalk drinking. the bars were still closed, mostly. now it was late in the afternoon. 

i turned down offers of drinks. "i'm not drinking."

their faces were red.

i stopped by the corner store, picked up an italian lemon soda, a pack of smokes and a pint of smirnoff blue... because it's 20 proof more than the red label. 

funny... absolut blue is smirnoff red, smirnoff blue is absolut red.

later that night i talked to sparky. drunk and upset. it was the second to the last time i talked to him. 

that's another story, but it's too painful for now so i'll stick to this pain.

when i got home, before i opened the smirnoff, the roommate had given me the lock box and the lunchbox. it was full of jil's mementos mori. the lock box a collection of coins.

today i gave the not-niece-stella-who-knows-my-passcode the lock box and told her to pick out six coins: one for each year she's been alive. i told her those were very special coins and to take good care of them. i didn't tell her why. 

my passcode is based on the man i lived with in high school.

he died too.