So I was talking about them the other night, but here they are for real. Twenty-three snapshots of San Francisco; the last roll of shots I ever took, the last roll I ever got developed. The end of my brilliant amateur photography career.
I guess the roll had twenty-four exposures, so I’m not sure why I only got twenty-three. Maybe it got underexposed or overexposed, maybe there was some kind of error when it got developed. I’ll never know. I lost the negatives, so these prints are all I have.
#1
Freeze frame of me, awkwardly leaning into a picture with May and her Japanese pen pal, Kyoko. May’s got an expression from the tail end of a laugh, Kyoko has this half smile while flashing a peace sign at the camera for some reason. I’m standing there, looking like an idiot. Forgot to brush my hair, my hands are shoved tightly in my pockets. I made the mistake of putting my arm around May while Kyoko was around before all this, and May got all weird on me. So I’m just standing there.
If you look hard enough, you can sort of see Alcatraz in the distance, sitting in the waters of the San Francisco Bay. Behind that, faded by haze, is the Marin Headlands.
Yes, this was before everything happened. Maybe you think so because we were smiling in that picture. But I think people smile for pictures out of habit, really.
#2
Picture of the famous “Painted Ladies”: Victorian houses in old San Francisco, in a park in the middle of the Western Addition. You can see a few people sunbathing in the grass just before it to the left. I’ve never lived in houses like that, but I bet it’s nice. Admittedly, they look better in the post cards, but they’re still quite pretty.
Behind the Painted Ladies lies the whole San Francisco skyline, including the Transamerica Pyramid. To the right you can see a pillar of smoke rising from the southern part of the city.
#3
Just May and Kyoko, hugging each other and grinning. Close up zoom on their faces, so close you can see Kyoko’s acne scars. That old gray 7 Seconds tee shirt that May’s wearing, that’s mine.
In the background people walk past and stuff. I think this one was taken in the Japantown Peace Plaza, but I don’t remember.
#4
Picture of my neighbor, Mr. Sumpter. He’s standing in the hallway, wearing an old polyester button-up shirt, leaning to one side and putting his weight on one foot. He has his head tilted and eyes open, mouth closed. One fist is clenched.
Mr. Sumpter’s eyes didn’t glow red when I took the picture, it just looks that way now. I think it was the flash from the camera. I didn’t know then what I know now.
The hallway frames Mr. Sumpter. You can’t see where he’s looking at, but he’s looking at a blank wall. I was walking down the hallway and saw him like that. I called out to him but he didn’t say anything, so I took a picture.
#5
Face of my roommate, Bradley. He’s grinning and the color of the photograph is bleached out by the flash. His eyes are red, too. You can see that blond stubble of a goatee that he has, and the blur in the corner is his hand holding a bottle of Miller Genuine Draft. This is important because it was the only alcohol he ever drank. He wouldn’t even drink Miller Lite or Miller High Life. Just MGD.
Bradley was always a little bit weird. I took this picture at a party we had in our apartment. It got shut down a little after this because of noise complaints from my neighbors.
#6
Picture of May, caught in a half-laugh. May hated this picture the most, though I personally think she looks really cute. That thing in her hand is a bottle of beer, I think, but I don’t remember what brand she drank. Behind are the windows of the apartment Bradley and I shared. You can’t really see the view of the west side of the city that we got, though.
Yeah, the smudges and rip on one side is from my fingers handling the sides once or twice too many.
#7
Group shot. I don’t remember a lot of these faces anymore. The couple to one side, those were May’s friends. The two guys in faded computer tee shirts, those were my coworkers. Of course, May, Kyoko, and Bradley are easy to spot. I’m not in the picture because I was behind the camera. You can’t tell where this was taken, but I’m pretty sure it was in my apartment at the party.
#8
Blurred picture of Kyoko. She’s standing in the living room with one hand raised with half of her coat off. She has her head tilted and her mouth is open, but you can’t quite see that. She just got stuck that way putting on her coat. Kind of an odd time for it to hit. The blurry black cloud-looking thing is the couch that Bradley and I bought with our tax returns. It doesn’t look like a lot in the picture but it was really comfortable.
I think the picture got blurred because May was moving past me and bumped my shoulder. This was just before we took Kyoko to the hospital.
#9
Those big brick buildings are San Francisco General Hospital. You can see all the cars in the parking lot and the crowd to one side. I took this from across the street, on Potrero Avenue.
#10
Picture of inside the emergency room waiting area. You can see it was really packed. In the corner, the guy dressed in blue, that’s a security guard who got angry at me soon after this. May you can see over by the side standing over something that doesn’t look like Kyoko but is her sleeping, I think maybe just her shoulder and maybe a leg is all that’s in the picture, but she fell right asleep in the middle of the waiting area.
Over at the corner you can see a television set, note the four people watching it and one of them is just staring off into space. You can tell his head is angled just a bit differently than the others, but you have to hold the photograph up close to your face.
I think that was the last time I saw Kyoko. Nice girl. Odd sense of humor. I can’t describe how. I guess some people who learn English but don’t speak it natively, they get caught up with one word or two that just sounds interesting to them. With Kyoko it was words like “susurrus.” She’d fit it into any conversation she could. I don’t think she even half-understood what it meant. She was just fooling around.
#11
This is Bradley and May at the Jack in the Box which was down by Bernal Heights, which is pretty far south in the city without being South San Francisco. There are a lot of warehouses and stuff there. You can’t see what May’s looking out the window at but it’s just the road, I think. There might have been a McDonald’s or something across the street, I’m not sure. But it was a pretty busy road.
Behind Bradley you can sort of see a figure that looks like someone standing in that awkward position again. But I don’t remember anyone like that when we were there so the picture probably just caught someone mid-stride.
#12
Picture of the four-car pileup outside our apartment building. I’d seen a few car crashes before, but nothing like this one. Usually you’d see a car crash and it’d be two cars, one dented, and a bunch of people arguing. Not here, though, obviously. The building to the left is ours, the shattered window is the coffee house where I used to always get double mocha lattes with extra whipped cream in them. Those mochas ended up somehow tasting like some perfect mix of hot chocolate and coffee. It’s one of the things I miss the most these days.
You can only see three of the four cars, because the smoke from the first two is obscuring the last one. That’s Bradley standing to one side with a stupid grin on his face, near him are two cops. If you look closely you can see one of them has a gun in his hand; something I never noticed or even vaguely remember from the real event. But there it is, pictures don’t lie.