Dia de los Muertos

We often have a Day of the Dead party in our San Francisco Garden. Guests bring an item for the altar, to remember someone who has passed. Some of my favorite things include a stack of Gay porn for AIDS victims, a martini glass and a made martini for a friend's grandpa, some carrots for a guinea pig named Felix and specially decorated candles. We make a wicked batch of sangria and cover the garden with marigolds; it's festive, colorful, fun and yet reverent to the dead.

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A sea of white-costumed haunts shake and sway to rhythmic drumbeats, crying out the names of departed loved ones as they weave in and out of the Crown Victoria barricades lined up along 25th Street. On the Day of the Dead, the air is electric, the night is candlelit and moaning; I feel as though in a dream. Police lights strobe on and off into my eyes, periodically filling my head with lightning, enhancing the ghostliness of the surreal spectacle surrounding me. Blinking up at a flashing squad car, I murmur, “That helps.” Not articulate enough for the policewoman in the cab, she barks, “It helps people who need to be at work tomorrow morning.” I walk on, startled back into my skin and stuttering addendums in vain while my friends laugh good-naturedly beneath their wicked skull paint.

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