Literary jaunts
The following is a literary story that features two Bay Area locals’ courtship, set against the backdrop San Francisco and the Bay Bridge lights.
By Emily Russell
The headlights of his parents’ Prius barely punctured the fog in front of us as we wound down the hills of Outer Sunset. June gloom was no joke, rendering the sun obsolete in San Francisco and shrouding the streets instead in the iconic blanket of fog that transformed our drive into a fairy tale’s mysticism.
Night had already arrived, the unseeable sky matching the Black Rose Aeoniums lining the rowhouse flowerbeds in the neighborhood we now drove through. We needed to find somewhere still open for dinner.
It wasn’t that we’d forgotten to eat, but that following the routine of a day — when that day was to be the last — transformed each passing hour into a threat. “The day is almost over!” dinner warned. “You are almost out of time together,” routine smirked. We didn’t heed it until it begged to be remembered, sailing through the hilly descents in Japantown and finding mutual calmness in the angsty-femme rap songs I queued.
I couldn’t distinguish between the jitters from my hunger and those from the overwhelm of watching the clock move forward, onward, into a tomorrow where he would be gone. But before I could be overtaken by thoughts of his impending absence, we pulled onto the side of the street beside a glowing OPEN sign and tucked ourselves into the corner of a ramen shop, finding comfort from summer’s deceptively-cold night in the steaming bowls of soup.
Sensing the incurable mourning that accompanied us, he offered a fistful of mushrooms as an antidote. We ate them in spoonfuls of broth and sat through the wait until they delivered us glee.
Back on the city’s streets, this time on foot, I danced wildly without looking for traffic. I sprung across crosswalks and bounded between alleys. I watched colorful panoramic lights twinkle and shift on the top of the city’s tallest towers and followed my feet forward, spinning him into my dance. Anytime we were together, I felt fearless. Danger did not scare me. I would pay a high price — the ultimate price, maybe — for these hours. Traffic be damned; I needed to twirl.
Finally, breathlessly, I looked up from the path my feet charted and found myself embraced in his arms at the water’s edge. We looked into the sea and watched the lights on the Bay Bridge dance just like us, calm waves twirling the light and scattering it around for all to see. I gasped at its bounty. He stared at its glitter. We held onto each other tightly and let our eyes be teased by every flicker.
Surely, the hours must have passed. But their passing shapeshifted into a celebration thanks to the confetti of light.
A year and a half passed. I knew he was gone because he was awake at different hours than me. I knew he was gone because if anyone asked how he was, I had no clue how to answer. I knew he was gone because his public pictures featured someone who was not me. And still, I took none of it as evidence that he was really gone from my life. He was a lover who I could not leave, no matter how far apart we spun.
Then the newspaper posted its top story of the day: San Francisco’s Bay Bridge Lights Go Dark. And I knew he was gone.
Emily Russell is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Stanford University.
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