Password Stories
Sarah wrote her passwords as stories to remember them better. Former password-stories ran something like:
THE BOURGEOISIE DON’T USE BUFFETS
THEY ARE FOOD CONNOISSEURS
THEY CONSIDER BUFFETS TO BE NAUSEATING
HORS D’OEUVRES, FOR EXAMPLE, AREN’T EVEN SERVED
SO THE BOURGEOISIE GO TO CZECHOSLOVAKIA INSTEAD
She chose password-stories that centered around awkwardly spelled words, often French, or ones like ‘thermometer’ and ‘Presbyterian’. Her reasoning was that malicious hackers had grown so dependent on auto-correct that they wouldn’t know how to spell ‘baccalaureate’ if it kicked them in the ‘coccyx’.
The password-story changed every three years for purposes of security. The change wasn’t supposed to be a big deal, however, the changing of a password-story tended to coincide with a major life event. Her last password-story had ended two years ago, along with a relationship that had lasted as long as the password-story before that.
Sarah didn’t like thinking that her inner password-story world was linked with the outer one. It meant connection and Sarah didn’t like connection because connection meant depth and Sarah didn’t follow depth well. Sarah wanted life to fall out like the pink tongue of a happy dog. To think life followed that pink tongue into deep and swarthy processes was overwhelming.
Her current password-story ran thus:
THE RHINOCEROSES NEED SURVEILLANCE
THEIR TERRITORY BORDERS THAT OF THE WILDEBEEST
THE WILDEBEEST IS NOT NECESSARILY VOYEURISTIC
BUT THEIR ELVEN MASTERS ARE AND
THE ELVES EMPLOY DACHSHUNDS TO WEEVIL
INTO SEEMINGLY IMPENETRABLE PLACES
THEREBY DIMINISHING A RHINOCEROS’
OTHERWISE ADVANTAGEOUS HUGENESS
She liked it. It had all the markers of a good password-story: respectable and well maintained; like clean underwear, if she were to die and be examined by strangers it would posthumously speak in her favor.
The only problem with the password-story process was thinking new passwords into existence. Sarah didn’t want to write a bad password-story. She had never written a bad password-story in her life. As much as she feared a malicious hacker attack, she feared writing a bad password-story more.
But the difficulty of creating new passwords had increased ever since Sarah moved in with Kevin. Kevin supported the idea of a free internet. He supported the idea of a free internet so much that he refused to pay for anything. So, Kevin not only subscribed to new things all the time, he also had to ‘refresh’ these subscriptions by creating new accounts before their free, thirty day-trial periods expired. The burden of this was huge, and fell upon them both equally, but Sarah felt it more keenly because Sarah held herself up to the high standards of a well-written password-story.
And then suddenly it was March. The monotony of the winter weeks had compounded like the snow and turned into a slippery rock face that sent Sarah tripping through time. She’d tripped from October to Monday to Sunday to March without knowing how she’d gotten there. She felt beleaguered and the thread of her password-story was making this woefully clear. The passwords seemed to be channeling the stress of their author. Just last week Sarah opened four new accounts that left her with:
THE ELVES HAD TOTAL CONTROL OVER
THE RHINOCEROSES, WILDEBEESTS AND DACHSHUNDS
AND PLAYED THEM AGAINST EACH OTHER
TO DISTRACT THEM FROM THE INEVITABLE…
It was the ellipsis that baffled her. She almost cancelled the HelloFresh membership she created it for. She never used ellipses in her passwords. The spelled out version of ‘ellipsis’ could be useful, but to grammatically employ an ellipsis that left a password-story hanging signaled a lack of control. Her hold over her inner password-story world was loosening. She could see it in its accelerating recklessness. She was like a dog watching suitcases collect in the living room: something was bound to happen and there was nothing her sweet passivity could do about it.
Then the party. Everyone was huddled around her. They wanted a Gaga playlist without advertisements. Someone needed to create a Spotify premium account and it was her computer, her party, her boyfriend pushing the request:
“Babe, we need to do this,” he said.
But her mind was soggy. She couldn’t remember where she’d left off with her password story. Had they already done the inevitable thing? Or were they still waiting?
She sat down at the computer. An impulse stretched her chest. She opened her mouth to yawn, found herself on the verge of a scream, closed her mouth and re-directed the impulse to her fingers.
“Oh god,” she whispered, staring at the result on the screen, “That’s violent.”
She turned back toward the party. They were fishbowled around her. She felt like a fish.
“What? Sarah? What?”
No one could read the horrible incrimination. It was dotted. She was protected from their judgment. She turned back to it. Thank god. It was dotted. Oh shit. It was dotted. What was it again?
“What! Sarah! What!”
Someone at the back of the room demanded Bad Romance.
“I don’t know!” she screamed.
Kevin reached over and finished entering her information. Bad Romance blared. She folded her hands in her lap and pretended to be high but all the while she was thinking: shit.
The next day, Sunday, their Netflix account reached its twenty-ninth day of activity and Sarah was required to make a new one.
Kevin was avid:
“Babe, we need to do that now.”
Sarah automatically moved to the computer. She raised her hands to the keyboard, awaiting the sonata, when it hit her: shit.
NOTHING — she thought — NOTHING IS HERE
She stood up with a jolt.
“I’m going to shower first.”
She turned on the shower and cooped herself up on the toilet, watching the steam cataract the mirror and trying to avoid imagining the same thing happening inside her brain.
“Shit,” she whispered, “what did I write?”
She recapped the night: there was wine. She drank the wine. The label was beautiful and she wanted to appreciate it more so she drank more of what was inside. Then she went to the living room. A lull. Then they turned to her and she felt like a fish and then:
“Shit!”
The mirror fogged up. She dotted two eyes and streaked a frown.
“Violence,” she whispered suddenly.
She ran to the computer:
THE ELVES CUT LIMBS AND SOLDERED WOUNDS
Denied.
She added an exclamation mark.
Denied.
She tried a period.
Denied.
She put ‘12345’ afterwards.
Denied. Everything was denied. Life was denied.
“Babe, are you doing it?”
“No!”
She went back to the bathroom.
“God damn it Sarah,” she whispered to the mirror, “You had to get drunk last night and be the hero. Violence. When have we ever used violence? How am I going to track that down?”
Her password-stories had never been violent. Her choice of Elves was more romantic than violent. At the time, she had been suffering from a lack of romance and Elves magically entered her mind. She was opening a paypal account. Then she moved in with Kevin.
But this had been outright violence. What happened? Had her appetite for romance mutated into this? Was this going to get sexual? Should she warn Kevin?
These were the deep questions she loathed and avoided.
“Shit.”
After the shower she returned to the kitchen. Quesadillas from last night were still on a plate. Her stomach flinched. Quesadillas should never be cold. Very little separates a cold quesadilla from a cold pizza and yet the principles dividing their edibility outstretch oceans. It was sickening. She frowned.
Kevin walked in:
“Did you do it?”
“Who ordered quesadillas?”
“You did.”
“I did not.”
“You made them.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I never make quesadillas. I hate quesadillas.”
“You made them last night.”
“Shit.”
Sarah struck the hard marble of the kitchenette. Kevin bunched up his brow like underwear bunches, or at least, in this moment, that’s how Sarah interpreted it.
“Did you make it?” he asked.
“You just told me I made it!”
“The account, Sarah. Did you make the account?”
“I can’t right now.”
“Hey,” he said, “you need to take an Advil.”
“Don’t tell me that. You know I hate it when people tell me what I need to take.”
“Babe, I can’t make the account. If I make the account, I have to make a new e-mail address and I already have too many.”
“Erase some.”
“That’s impossible. I’d have to set aside a whole day to figure out what to keep and what to throw away and today is Sunday. So I can waste our Sunday doing that or we can enjoy it together. Your call.”
“God damn it, Kevin.”
“Just tell me when you’ve made the account.” He took the quesadilla plate. “I didn’t know this was going to be a thing.”
He bugged his eyes on thing, a clear antagonism that Sarah absorbed. Sarah absorbed many antagonisms. Absorbing antagonisms allowed her to tolerate more annoyances than the average person — something she thought made her Zen and she liked thinking of herself as Zen. But she wasn’t good at releasing the absorptions. They tended to fester. So instead of slowly aging into a tranquil-faced Buddha princess, she felt herself slowly bloating into a puffer fish.
She slapped the hard marble kitchenette again.
“Shit.”
She sat in front of the computer. She hated her computer. It was the box-jawed cousin of the Cheshire cat, always grinning with its secrets, a cornucopia of modern fruit, floating in ether — shit — shit — shit.
THE RHINOCEROSES ANALLY IMPALED THE ELVES
Denied.
THE WILDEBEESTS SAT UPON THE DACHSHUNDS
Denied.
THE WILDEBEESTS SHAT UPON THE DACHSHUNDS
Denied.
FERAL EVERYONE WENT FERAL 12345
Denied.
“God! Shit!”
“Are you doing it?” came Kevin’s voice.
“No! Why violence?!”
Violence had never been in the picture. What influence had pushed her to choose violence? Had she seen something she didn’t know she saw? Was she angry? What was going on?
Kevin walked into the room:
“Did you do it?”
“What the hell did I just tell you Kevin? I said no.”
“Jesus.”
He slammed the door shut.
This was bad. If Sarah couldn’t remember this then she’d have to write a new password-story from scratch. She’d not only have to go through the mental barbwire of changing years’ worth of account information, plus countless frivolities of Kevin’s, but she’d also have to think of an entirely new story to contextualize everything so she’d remember it. She wasn’t ready for that. That meant deep shit. That meant change.
“Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”
She went to the balcony and got out her yoga mat. She entered the Lotus position. She tried to Zen — Gaga— Bad Romance was blaring from the living room.
“How are you into that?” she said, running in.
“Babe, it’s Gaga,” Kevin replied, “Who’s not into that?”
“No, the account! How’d you get back in to the Spotify account!?”
“I didn’t get back in. We were always in.”
“We never logged out?”
“We never log out. You know that.”
“So we’re already in,” she shouldered Kevin out of the chair, “That’s why nothing worked when I typed it in this morning. We were already logged in with this e-mail address. Oh my god — wait. So I can just…request a password change?”
MISCELLANEOUS LOVEMAKING
Done. The password was changed. She immediately moved on to Netflix:
THE MISCELLANEOUS LOVE CHILDREN
Other passwords dominoed out for future use:
IMPROVED SPECIES RELATIONS SUCH THAT
THE RHINOCEROSES, WILDEBEESTS AND DACHSHUNDS
BECAME ONE SUPER LOVE SPECIES
THAT SUPERSEDED THE ELVEN SUPREMECY
AND PEACE REIGNED WITH AN IRON FIST
They spent the rest of their Sunday domestically blissful. Sarah felt good. But once, back in the kitchen, she caught sight of the empty quesadilla plate and her stomach flinched: she hadn’t corrected her mistake. She’d only gotten lucky. And luck doesn’t change a person. It just changes a person’s direction. The violence of her drunken indiscretion was a result of something she still possessed. The only difference was now she knew it was there. Was this good or bad?
“Shit.”
She settled back on the couch and shivered.
“Cold, babe?”
Kevin grabbed a blanket and spread it over them. She pecked his cheek. They started in on a new series.
AND PEACE REIGNED WITH AN IRON FIST
