When we Rise.., and Fall: three men who changed the world — and me.

One created the first medical cannabis dispensary in the world — the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club. Another created the LGBT rainbow pride flag. A third created the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

They housed me. Fed me. Nurtured me. Guided me. One of them betrayed me.

Dennis Peron

BRRING… BRRING… Alain’s phone rang. We had been living together for a few months when I got that call.

“Hello,” I said, picking up the receiver. “Jim, come here, I want to introduce you to someone,” Alain said.

“I’m busy—who is it?” I asked. “Just come here now,” he replied before hanging up the phone.

Alain’s flat was on the top floor of a yellow and white ornate Edwardian building owned by Chinese immigrants who also owned a corner store a few doors down on 18th Street. After getting the call from Alain, I put on a t-shirt, my cowboy boots, and went stomping down the steps, not on purpose, but I did love the sound of these boots on wood.

“You walk too heavy,” Mr. Young said, waiting in his doorway. “You need better shoes.”

“Sorry about that, Alain called me to the laundry, it’s an emergency,” I shot back and kept walking, turning left toward Castro. I walked into Super Clean Laundry and Alain was there talking with a short man in his 50s with stark white hair.

I walked in and up to Alain and gave him a kiss. I couldn’t have done that back in West Virginia.

“Jim,” Alain said, “this is Dennis Peron.”

The name landed before the man did.

“Alain here tells me you moved out here because of Harvey,” Dennis said to me, not shaking hands or any of the other mannerisms I learned in the South. “Yeah, I was reading the Mayor of Castro Street, and when I got to the boy from Altoona speech, I knew I had to move west,” I answered.

“Happy you did. Stop by my house later on today, and we’ll talk. Alain says you’re looking for work,” Dennis told me, not asking me. “Thank you, sir,” I said.

He chuckled more than laughed before he said, “I’m not back in Vietnam. Don’t call me sir. Dennis will do.”

Now, that’s why I wanted to move here, I thought. When I was back in Huntington and considering the move out, I called Metropolitan Community Church in San Francisco, and Jim Mitulski answered the phone.

“This is Jim,” he said with a kind and soft voice. I went on to explain to him who I was, where I was calling from, and how I had been running an AIDS Task Force but wanted to be around more people like me—gay.

“Don’t come out here. There aren’t enough jobs as it is for the people already here,” he said quickly, adding, “there’s death everywhere,” his soft voice shifting—deeper now, darker.

“Stay where you are,” he exclaimed as he hung up the phone. I felt like M’Lynn in Steel Magnolias wanting to take a “whack” at Shirley McClain’s character, Ouiser.

But here was Dennis showing me the warmth that The City was known for—so where was that flower for my hair?

Later that afternoon, I stopped by the purple Victorian on 18th Street. It was… eccentric. Everything I loved about San Francisco. A young guy like me answered the door. “I’m here to see Dennis,” I said, a little shaky.

We walked in, past a small room on the left, and into a great room. How did they fit this great big room into this little Victorian? There were half a dozen young, hot guys lounging around the room on couches and love seats that filled the room.

“He’s in there,” the man who answered the door said.

I walked across the room and into another large room facing the street. The smell of marijuana wrapped around me like a warm blanket as I entered, but there was something else too—slightly sweet and human.

There was Dennis on his bed with two more young men, smoking joints and talking intently like they were figuring out world peace.

“Hey there, Jim,” Dennis said, not introducing the two other guys. People out here are a bit rude, I thought. He continued, “You smoke pot.” More of a declaration than a question. “Sure do,” I said as the blonde surfer-looking dude handed me a joint.

“I’m opening a store up the street on the corner of Church and Market. We’re going to openly sell weed to people who medically need it,” Dennis said, taking a toke from the joint I’d handed him. “You’re a big guy. Alain speaks highly of you. Says you ran an AIDS group back in West Virginia—I like that. You want to work for me at my new club?” he asked.

“YES,” I screamed, the two young guys on the bed snapped their eyes toward me, their buzzkill. Dennis chuckled then said, “Good, I want you to work the door for me. I need someone there that can turn the heat down on a situation without making it worse, can you do that?”

“I don’t want to turn anyone away who really needs it. If they have a note from a doctor, let them up—the girls will get them registered.

If someone just wants to get high, I need you to politely get rid of them. If the police show up, don’t get in their way. Let them up—but send someone ahead to warn me. Same with the media.”

“Yes, Sir, I mean sure thing, Dennis,” I replied.

“If you have any questions, have someone run up and get me. You’ll be working with John and Adam—two of my good friends. See you tomorrow at nine a.m.,” he said.

He gave me the address of the just-opened San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club.

The next morning, I couldn’t figure out what to wear. I’m not even a year out of West Virginia, and other than my clothes from back home, all I have are country and western apparel from Wild Wild West, where I was working last.

After deciding on a black pullover polo from Huntington and a tight-fitting pair of 501’s, I put on my cowboy boots. I reached for the cowboy hat and said to myself, “ Really, full drag on the first day?” so I reached for a black SF Giants baseball cap instead.

I headed for the door and took a quick sideways look at myself in the mirror, and I stopped, turned to face the mirror, and looked at myself. Where was the guy who’d been an uptight leader back in Huntington—the one who dressed and believed like he had growing up in Gilbert? But here stood someone different.

I had grown a goatee, cut my hair super short, and dressed like I was heading out to get laid instead of to a new job. But hey—when in Rome, I thought. Off I went.

A couple of blocks up was the five-way intersection of Market and Church. Dennis’s club was perfectly located—across from Safeway, an underground MUNI stop, and a tangle of bus lines. As I crossed the street, continuing up Church, I saw two guys—one an aging hippie and the other looked like a guy I might have known in West Virginia, but I hoped not.

I thought to myself, “ A real-life hippie—so cool.” As I approached, I introduced myself and extended my hand to shake theirs. The two of them stood there looking at me, then looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Relax, man, it’s all good,” the aging hippie said, introducing himself. “I’m John, nice to meet you. Dennis said you’d be stopping by. Hang down here with Adam—I’ll go get Dennis.”

I wasn’t wrong about my assumption with Adam. He looked so straight I bet he couldn’t bend over, I thought. After I started to talk with him there was such a depth of empathy and compassion for people in the words he said and how he said them. I was already enjoying getting to know him. John came back down the stairs and said, “Dennis said come on up.”

Like everything else in San Francisco, there were stairs—a lot of them—and these felt like climbing Mount Tam. It didn’t take long before the smell of pot and the sound of laughter drifted down the stairs, meeting me halfway. When I got to the top and turned toward the door, it was the most beautiful human-made thing I’d seen so far—but this one was alive, and for the first time I felt like everything might be okay in the world.

The room was enormous with layers of bohemian rugs on the floor, kitsch and memorabilia hung on the walls, and a giant rainbow flag stretched across the ceiling above the hanging fluorescent lights. The space had been sectioned off by using couches, recliners, love seats, and a ton of pillows to create big and small communal areas.

On the wall beside the stairs I’d come up were big whiteboards listing the strains for sale. I started reading their names—Afghani, Northern Lights, Kush, Maui Waui, Acapulco Gold, Panama Red… “Am I at the UN or a pot store?” I muttered to no one.

Dennis walked up to me with a really pretty woman—big blonde hair and a smile that met you before anything else. Dennis introduced us. “Jim, this is Beth.” Beth’s smile somehow got larger. “You’ll need to get registered as a patient first—she’ll fill you in on everything,” Dennis added.

Still smiling, she stuck her hand out to shake mine and, with a Southern accent that had been softened over time, said, “Nice to meet you, Jim,” and took me into the back office.

Beth was filling me in on how things were run, and who did what, when an older lady came walking into the office. She looked like my grandmother—not so much physically, but in her energy. They were both small in stature but big on love.

“Beth, I need to pick up some shake for tomorrow’s batch,” said the woman.“Sure, Mary, I’ll be right back,” Beth replied.

When she came back out from behind the locked door, she was holding a translucent trash bag filled with at least five pounds of shake.

“Here you go, Granny,” Beth said.“Thanks, sweetie,” the older woman said, taking the bag from Beth as she headed back out of the office.

“That’s Brownie Mary,” Beth informed me.

“Wow, I’ve read about her and how she has been taking care of men dying of AIDS with her pot-laced brownies since it started,” I said. “Not just men, Jim, women too,” Beth said with a smile that was less ‘nice to meet you’ and more ‘know what I mean’.  We finished up, and she sent me down the stairs to John and Adam.

I got downstairs, and there wasn’t any white to be seen in their eyes. They were blazing high. “I love this place,” I said, before going on, “people back in West Virginia would never believe it.”

“That’s where you’re from,” John asked. I told him where I was from, and he told me about Adam being a Southern California surfer and that he was a native of The City.  We stayed there talking, greeting people walking up to the dispensary. There were so many people and not just gay men, but all sorts of folks.

It’s 3:00, Jim. Why don’t you take off for the day, and we’ll see you in the morning at 8:00 a.m.,” John said to me.

As I was turning to leave, I bumped into a tall man who somehow screamed both masculine and effeminate. He looked at me with a big smile in his eyes, tapped me on the head, then pulled my polo out of my jeans and ran up the stairs.

All three of us burst out laughing.

See you tomorrow, guys,” I said, and with that I started walking down Church Street back to the flat I shared with Alain, and I felt like I was walking on clouds. I was also high as a cloud. “I’m going to love this job,” I said to myself, with a smile that rivaled Beth’s.

Alain woke me up as he was leaving for work the next morning, and what a beautiful morning it was, I thought to myself. The sun seemed warmer, the birds were chirping happier—I was on cloud nine. Then I realized it wasn’t just my rose-colored glasses. I looked out the window and, for the first time in what felt like weeks, there was no fog—the sun was out in her full glory.

After getting ready and grabbing a bite to eat, I was excited to get to my new job. IN THE COMMUNITY, I screamed internally. Heading for the door, the phone rang in the other room. I ran in and picked it up. “Hello?”

Gilbert Baker

In that thick French accent that buckled my knees, Alain said, “Hey Jim, come to the laundry—I want you to meet someone.”

The laundry was only a two-block detour, but I didn’t want to be late for my new job. I ran out the door, down the stairs, and before I could see anyone, I heard, “You walk too loud,” as Mrs. Young came out of her flat.

“Sorry, Mrs. Young—I’m off to my new job,” I exclaimed as the door closed behind me. I took a left on Hancock and headed toward the laundry.

Alain was there, talking with the same guy who had pulled my polo out of my pants the day before as I was leaving Dennis’s club. I went inside to the office where they were.

Alain had a sly grin on his face as he said, “Jim, I’d like you to meet Gilbert Baker. He created—”

“THE RAINBOW FLAG!” I screamed.

Gilbert gave a cute look of shock before laughing. “I’m the Betsy Ross of the queers,” he said.

I stuck my hand out to shake his, and he hugged me.

Actually, we met—sort of—yesterday,” I said, explaining to Alain how he had untucked my shirt. “You’re in San Francisco, let it all hang out,” Gilbert said with a grin.

He was by far the most famous person I had ever met—not that I had met that many in my life in West Virginia—and he didn’t act like I would have expected a celebrity to act. He was just a guy in the neighborhood.

I didn’t see any grandiosity, nor did I feel like he thought he was better than anyone. On the contrary, he was this big, tall, beefy man of love, and it seemed to me that anyone he might encounter would feel like I did right then.

“I’m off to work,” I said, pulling the glass door open, adding, “it really is an honor to meet you.”

“Alain tells me you have a car,” Gilbert said.

I stopped in the doorframe, turned around, and he continued, “Do you want to drive up to the Russian River? I’d like to go and see Cleve Jones.”

“Let me find out my schedule—and sure, I’d love to. Are you kidding?” I said.

“Let’s go this Friday,” he said, adding, “I’ll talk to Dennis. It’s not a problem—just pick me up at Dennis’s house at 10:00 a.m.”

I was in complete shock—disbelief that that had just happened.

“Sure, I can’t wait. See you Friday,” I said.

“You’ll see me later today,” he retorted.

Did this guy always expect people to be so enamored that he just assumed they’d do his bidding? I asked myself. Then I answered myself: Boy, you better have fun—stop thinking so much—it’s Gilbert freaking Baker.

And with that, I headed up the street to my new job, in a new city, with a new boyfriend, and a new friend. Life in California really is golden, I thought.

That night, Alain and I started a routine that would last thirty-two years as we sat down to watch The X-Files. Life in The City was wonderful, but chaotic too, and I found this time with him—alone and quiet—to be my favorite part of any day.

The next morning I was off to work, heading down the stairs and anticipating one of the Youngs to pop their head out into the hallway any minute. As I reached the bottom, still quiet—good, I thought. I didn’t want to cause Alain any problems with his landlord. I went outside and—BAM—“You walk too loud!” Mrs. Young was hanging out of her front window, yelling at me.

“

“Have a good day,” I smiled and said to Mrs. Young.

The next few mornings were the same: Alain’s way-too-early morning kiss, waking up with a joint in one hand and an espresso in the other while I sat on the back balcony, smoking a Marlboro Red before putting on my boots and heading down the stairs—and even if I tiptoed, it was always the same—“you walk too loud.”

After picking up Gilbert at Dennis’s house the next morning, we headed up the 101 toward Santa Rosa.

“Hey, Gilbert, I need to stop and buy some tennis shoes…” I said, as my mouth and mind went numb for a second as we started crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. I acted nonchalant, but on the inside I was bursting with happiness.

“Wow, fucking wow,” I exclaimed, unable to contain my exuberance as I saw Sausalito and Tiburon on the water.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Gilbert said.

I saw the sign for San Quentin Prison and mistakenly started singing, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. When I hear that whistle blowing, I just hang my head and cry…” I noticed Gilbert looking at me with pure shock and horror.

“It’s just a Johnny Cash song,” I said. “I KNOW it’s a song—I’m just surprised how country you really are,” Gilbert said.

As we drove farther north through the rolling hills, I noticed they were all covered with rows and rows of grapes. “I didn’t know grapes were grown here,” I said.

Gilbert chuckled. “Ever since Robert Mondavi, the vineyards have taken over up here.”

I’d never seen anything like it back home, where the hills were much bigger, steeper, and covered in green trees. The golden-colored ground was immediately soothing.

As we turned off the 101 and onto Highway 116, the golden vineyards gave way to rolling hills of apple orchards and antique shops dotting the landscape.

“It’s so beautiful,” I said as my eyes teared up. “Are you crying?” Gilbert asked in amazement before adding, “I like you, kid.”

He’s not much one for talking, I thought. He’d been quiet most of the trip except to tell me when we passed places of interest.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, snarly.

Clearly something was bothering him, I thought, and then asked, “What’s Cleve like?”

I didn’t expect Gilbert’s response.

“He’s an asshole.”

“He thinks he’s too good for us mere mortals—but I need to talk to him, and he won’t return my phone calls. So I’m going up to confront him—to make sure he’s okay.”

Oh shit, what have I gotten myself involved in, I thought.

As we got closer, the bare golden hills started to give way to patches at first, and then suddenly towering redwoods stood over the road like the most giant of giant sentinels standing guard along the road.

The sun disappeared completely as we crossed the Bohemian Highway, before being greeted by a big white and green sign hanging over the road that read, “Welcome to Monte Rio Vacation Wonderland.”

A bit further up the road, we turned onto a smaller road with maybe five homes branching off it like airport gates off a concourse. To the left there was a tall A-frame house with big windows, then I saw a couple of homes on stilts, like at the beach—raised high above the highest tides.

“Why are those houses raised up like that?” I asked Gilbert.

“It floods up here every year. You couldn’t pay me to live up here in the middle of nowhere,” he answered.

Just ahead was a small cottage. “Park in front of that house,” Gilbert directed me.

He got out of the car and walked up to the front door, and a man near Gilbert’s age opened it with a look of shock at first, quickly followed by a snarly frown.

“Jim, why don’t you go and wait in the car,” Gilbert instructed me. I returned to the car and turned the heat on—it was cold in the shade of those giant trees.

They went in and talked for a while, then after coming back out, Gilbert motioned with his arm for me to come with them.

“We’re going to take a small walk down to a special spot,” Gilbert informed me.

The man Gilbert was meeting still hadn’t been introduced to me, so I said, in the deepest baritone voice I could muster, “Hi, Cleve. I’m Jim—it’s nice to meet you.”

With a gentle voice that reminded me of teachers back home, the man said, “I’m so sorry—nice to meet you, Jim. How is your day with Gilbert going?”

We had at least broken the ice, but it was clear a lot of unsaid things were going on, and I didn’t feel like inserting myself. So I stood back, followed behind, and listened to them talk as much as I listened to the wind high above, whistling through the trees—and then I heard the sound of a creek, or a brook.

There was a patch of ground that had been manicured as a memorial, with hand-printed rocks and other mementos left behind. It felt like a place where you might expect to see a fairy or a nymph fluttering about. The sun’s bright rays had cut a path that fell on the very spot, like a blessing from Mother Nature.

I could see the love behind the memorial—and I could see it was for someone who had died of AIDS.

I walked a bit further ahead to the bank of the creek and skipped rocks while listening to the gurgle of the water and the whistling of the wind high above, and I had an almost leaving-my-body experience. The feeling was magical, spiritual—it felt like nirvana. I didn’t want to leave that spot or that moment, but the two icons had begun to walk back toward the cottage.

I noticed they said little to each other out loud, but I imagined these two longtime friends knew more about each other than mere words could capture. Once we were out of Monte Rio and driving back into the vineyards, I decided to break the silence.

The drive out felt darker—not just because the sun was sitting lower and completely blocked by the towering redwoods. Gilbert’s mood was darker. I didn’t know him at all, but this wasn’t the guy who had untucked my shirt on my first day at the Cannabis Buyers Club (CBC) or the guy I’d met with Alain at the laundry. This guy had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“Want to suck my dick?” I asked loudly.

Gilbert turned to me, and I watched the tension leave his face as he said, “Yes,” and we both burst out laughing.

He told me about his turbulent relationship with Cleve, saying how stubborn Cleve was, but I thought, “You’re not.” I could already see how used he was to getting his way. I’m sure he and Cleve were more alike than they would care to admit.

As we approached the Golden Gate Bridge back into the city, we were caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic. We sat there on the bridge in silence, the windows rolled down, the fog passing through us—above us, below us.

“God, I love California,” I said.

Gilbert smiled. I could see he was still bothered, and it wasn’t my place to push.

The days at the Cannabis Buyers Club were like nothing I’d ever believed possible. To outsiders, we were just a bunch of potheads, but our loss and pain had already taught us that cannabis did work as a form of relief from medical issues. It would only take another 20 years before it caught fire, and the smoke of medical marijuana drifted from sea to shining sea.

“We can’t pay the rent with pot, Jim,” Alain yelled at me when I would bring home my reward for volunteering. I didn’t want to quit my job that had proven to be a place where I could succeed, but Alain was right, too.

“I want to talk to him; he can’t pay you in pot,” Alain insisted.

The next day, Alain showed up at the club, and we went up to talk to Dennis. It wouldn’t be the last time we did so, but each and every time we had to discuss our finances with Dennis, one thing always happened: he took care of it, including money for a car—and a deposit on a house.

I wasn’t special; Dennis did that for a lot of people, I imagine. That’s just who he was—complete compassion. And that’s why, when Dennis asked me to help secure medical cannabis after one of his suppliers was busted, I wholeheartedly agreed to help in any way.

“Here’s three thousand dollars,” John said, adding, “Rich, here’s your three thousand.” Then he handed us airline tickets from SFO to Tucson.

“Here’s cash for the motel, food, and gas,” Dennis said as he handed us each five hundred dollars, then added, “one of you use your credit card to rent the car with a drop-off back here, and I’ll reimburse you.”

John added, “Check into the Motel 6 in Nogales and give Dennis a call and let us know your room number.”

This routine played out a few times. It was always a room in the back. Once we called, a car would pull up within minutes and park behind the rental car out front of the ground-floor room.

“Did you ever notice how different they are?” I asked Rich. He looked at me quizzically, so I added, “sometimes the guy looked like a suburban baseball coach, and sometimes they looked like a Crip from LA.”

This time it was two Latinos—one getting out of the passenger seat of the Camino Real. He was holding a piece of luggage and was covered in tattoos on every bit of skin I could see except his ears. He got out, walked over to the rental car, pulled the money from the right-side wheel well, then left the luggage.

“You ready, Jim? I’ll drive from tonight to the Nevada border, and then you can drive the rest of the way,” Rich said as we headed out the door to the rental car.

We put the luggage in the trunk. Rich got in the driver’s seat, and we headed up Interstate 19 toward Tucson and then took the back roads up California Highway 395 north until we crossed over into The City.

It was direct action activism at its best. “How can we put our lives on the line any more than we’re doing?” I asked Rich rhetorically.

“Man, I just want the money,” he said, but I suspected it was more than just about money.

A few years later, voters would pass Proposition 215, making medical cannabis legal in California.

“Everyone listen. Tomorrow morning, I want everyone to meet up at 1444 Market Street. It’s by the Van Ness station. It’s our new five-story building right off of City Hall,” Dennis said to the assembled staff.

“It won’t be immediately, but I wanted you all to have a good look and let me have your ideas about what we can do with the space,” he continued. Everyone was looking around at each other with a bit of excitement and remorse.

“Everything was changing in the neighborhood—skyrocketing rents,” I thought to myself. In my gut, I knew the dream was over as Dennis’s voice faded.

I started looking at the layers of rugs on the floor of our little club and then at the spots where we mingled on couches—sometimes in large circles where heated debate took place—sometimes in smaller circles where bonding and healing took place.

I was looking at the way Gilbert had decorated the ceilings—alive—and how he made the whole place come to life when I said, aloud, “Now, it’s ending.”

“What’s that, Jim?” Dennis asked.

“I was just thinking about Gertrude Stein’s quote, “there is no there there,” I said. Dennis looked at me trying to understand my motive, not my words, before saying, “Alright, see everyone tomorrow.”

It wasn’t long before Gilbert called me. “Jim, there’s a group of us meeting up to talk about forming our own club, just a delivery service for now. We’d like you to be a part of it.”

I said, ‘Sure, I’ll listen,’ already thinking about how much the club had changed. New staff, new attitudes, and it seemed every resident of the Bay Area was showing up at our door. It didn’t feel safe or like our club anymore.

“Please don’t say a word to anyone else,” Gilbert added before giving me the time and place to meet.

After the meeting, I was on board to help Gilbert open the world’s first medical marijuana service—but something about it wasn’t the same.

“Are you ready, the realtor is meeting us in an hour and a half and it’ll take us that long to get to Vallejo,” I said to Alain as I headed down the steps toward our pickup truck. As we drove over the Bay Bridge, Alain said, “I’m so excited. Thank you again for taking that temp job at the Gap last year—I can’t believe you’re making so much money at Netscape”.

“I know, but these 16-hour days are killing me,” I replied. Under my breath, I said, “17.”

Alain said, “What was that?” I replied, “I said 17—lately it’s been 17 hours a day: 4 hours commuting and 13 hours working. I like the money, don’t get me wrong. But I miss my friends too,” I said, before adding, “I never see Gilbert anymore.”

We drove north out of Oakland, through Berkeley, into Richmond, and over to Vallejo. As we turned onto a street high on the mountain overlooking the sugar factory, a majestic white Victorian home came into view.

“Oh my God, Jim, I want it,” Alain exclaimed louder than I had ever heard before.

I replied, “Calm down, Betty Lou, we’re not even out of the car yet.”

But I was thinking to myself, “Wow—$225,000 for this house! In the City, it would be closer to $500,000.” I was excited too—until we looked in the basement—and the backyard.

The hillside was sliding downward. The house was off its foundation too.

As we got back in the car, Alain’s mood was somber and I said, “Don’t worry, we’ll own a house soon.”

But the bidding wars in San Francisco were just starting and a young couple with a service job and a new job in Silicon Valley—we weren’t ideal candidates for a mortgage in the City.

We weren’t the only ones, and like them, we started looking outside of the City. A lot of our friends were moving to Palm Springs. They said it was a blank canvas, ready for a little San Francisco flavor. We planned our trip the following month to the desert.

“I’m just not sure he’s the man I want to spend my life with,” I said to a friend, Monica, adding, “he just doesn’t have any ambition like I do.”

Monica said, “That’s important, Jim.  You need to be on the same page, but don’t do anything rash.”

About that time, I had started to see other men for sex. “They can’t spend the night,” was Alain’s only rule. I was hanging out at the Pilsner, playing pool over beers with other gay men.

“I love my life,” I thought often.  But not too long after, everything shifted.

Matt came into my life while Alain was already on his way out. We met at the Pilsner on Church Street—one of those nights where everything feels like it’s already decided before you even know it.

For a while, it worked. More than worked. We were everywhere. Palm Springs politics, fundraisers, campaigns—I was moving fast, getting noticed. Vice President of the Democrats clubs, working on the mayor’s run for Congress, organizing in the desert heat like it meant something.

And it did. It really did.

But underneath all of that, something else was building.

It started with Matt telling me I wasn’t enough. Not sexually. Not for what he wanted. He wanted more men, bigger cocks, more risk, more perversion—more everything.

Drugs too—needles, not just partying.

I should have walked then, but for the first time in my life, I felt worthless.

Instead, I stayed. Worse—I adapted. I told myself it was love, or freedom disguised as control. The truth was simpler: I didn’t want to be left again.

When he walked out on me while I was in casts—both feet operated on, stuck in a wheelchair—I told myself that was about him.

It wasn’t. Not really.

It hit something older, something I hadn’t dealt with. Being left wasn’t new—it just had a new face.

So when I got him back, it wasn’t about fixing anything. It was about control. About not being the one left behind.

Portland was my exit plan, even if I didn’t admit it out loud. New job, closer to his family—it all sounded reasonable. Clean. But nothing about us was clean by then.

I caught him in a public park where I’d gone to smoke a lunchtime joint.

It wasn’t hidden the way I expected things like this to be. No shadows, no secrecy—just a clearing off a dirt path like it had been there forever, like everyone knew except me.

There were men everywhere. Not talking. Not laughing. Just… moving. Circling. Watching. Waiting their turn like it was something understood without needing to be said.

And there was Matt.

In the middle of the circle of men.

Gone.

Not just physically there—gone from me. Gone from us. His face was different, empty in a way I hadn’t seen before. Focused, but not on anything human. Not on me.

For a second I didn’t move. I don’t even think I breathed. I just stood there, trying to make sense of what I was looking at, like if I stared long enough it would rearrange itself into something familiar.

It didn’t.

Someone brushed past me like I didn’t exist. Another guy glanced at me, then away, like I was the only one who didn’t understand the rules.

And that’s when it hit me.

This wasn’t a mistake. This wasn’t a slip. This wasn’t something I could fix or talk through or drag back into something resembling normal.

This was where he was now. And I was nowhere in it.

I turned and walked out the same way I came in, the sounds of it still behind me, following me longer than they should have.

That was the moment it ended. Not when I left him. Not when we fought.

Right there—I called Gilbert.

Cleve Jones

“Come back,” he said. “Go to Palm Springs. Look up Cleve. Just get out of there and we’ll figure it out later,” Gilbert said.

That was it. No long conversation. No questions.

Just direction.

So I packed up what was left of my life and headed back to the desert—quieter this time, stripped down to something closer to the truth.

I didn’t know what I was walking into with Cleve.

But I knew I needed to go.

The last time I had seen or spoken to Cleve was a few years earlier in 1997, when my HIV had progressed to AIDS and I was admitted to UCSF with a type of deadly pneumonia that people like me got. I was losing weight—more importantly, I was losing muscle.

“Jim, you look horrible,” Cleve said when he entered the room. I told him what was going on and he said, “Just hold on, Jim. There’s a new medication coming out soon—it’s a game-changer.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s a new type of medication that stops the reproduction of the virus. I’ve been on it for about a year now and it’s giving me a new lease on life,” he said.  About three months later, my doctor put me on the first protease inhibitor—and it changed everything.

It was the late summer of 2001 when I returned to California from Portland.  I stopped in San Francisco to see Alain, and then I headed down to Palm Springs.

I was looking forward to reconnecting with Cleve.

After driving long enough to listen to the albums Survivor by Destiny’s Child, Britney, and the self-titled Jennifer Lopez and getting a horse voice as I drove down Interstate 5 outside of Vallejo, I turned to take a side road west where I could pick up Highway 101 and head into San Francisco.

I met Gilbert for a quick bite to eat, to smoke a joint, and to just breathe, the kind of breathing and relaxing we can only do around people who know us inside and out. I thought to myself, ‘Gilbert has turned out to be one of the best friends I’ve ever had.’

As I toked on the joint, Gilbert got up and like he always did, he rubbed my shoulders—not so much in a way that a massage feels, it was something deeper, affirming, and assuring.

“I gave him everything Gilbert, I let him control me and he took my pride and my self-worth away,” I said to Gilbert.

“Jim, he didn’t take anything from you. You’re still you and now a new chapter in your life is unfolding. Embrace the change,” Gilbert said as he continued to rub my sore and stiff shoulders.

“Now take your shoes off and go lie down before you hit the road,” Gilbert said.

When I woke up that evening, we had taken out dinner from the No Name Sushi restaurant on Church Street across from the Pilsner. As we ate dinner, we talked about my plans and his plans.

“Well, I’m going to rent a house down there. Why don’t I look for a two-bedroom with two baths?” I declared to Gilbert as he smiled a Cheshire grin.

“Don’t tell Cleve right off the top. We’re not talking again,” Gilbert informed me.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Same old shit with him. He’s a prima donna and an asshole,” Gilbert said before adding, “The new administrator of SFO is going to let me install a gigantic rainbow flag along with some sections of the AIDS Quilt for Pride next year.” Gilbert said, adding, “And I need Cleve on board, but…” his voice trailed off.

The next morning, I headed east to Interstate 5, then south to Palm Springs to find Gilbert and me a house.

I loved the way I felt in the dry springtime of the desert. It made my body feel alive. I had rented a house just up the road off Ramon by Warms Sands Rd., with split masters and a pool. “Gilbert is going to love this,” as I made my morning cup of coffee and looked out of the window and over the pool.

“Ooooh, what is that?” I thought as I looked at the man with tight and skimpy cut-off jeans that showed off the “V” of his torso with no fat. I went out to introduce myself.

There he stood by the sparkling blue pool with the six-foot wall behind him highlighting his toned and tanned body with just a dusting of sweat—just enough that the contours of his ribs and muscles gleamed in the sun as he moved about.

“Damn, you’re hot,” I said to him.

“Back at you, buddy,” he said, as I licked my lips.

He sat the pool pole down, unzipped his cut-off blue jeans, and stepped out of them as he approached me. His member was thick—maybe too thick—and just long enough to slide past my gag reflex.

After a while, he put his hand under my arm, pulled me to my feet, and led me into the bedroom as he grabbed his pants.

I went into the bathroom to get ready for that thick, heavy manhood, and when I came out, I saw the lines of meth on the nightstand.

“Oh hell yeah,” I said as I got on my knees to sniff the line off the nightstand.

He got behind me as I started to snort the second line—then he entered me without lube. I screamed with pleasure as I reached a new level of ecstasy—and escape.

I’m not sure what he told his clients, but we didn’t finish until the sun was long gone.

After a few days of recuperating, I called Gilbert, but he was in New York packing up his apartment there.

I headed over to the gayborhood to say hello to Cleve.

“Where is it?” I was mumbling as I drove through Warm Sands, then remembered how his street had palm trees in the middle as I pulled onto South Indian Trail. There he was, standing in his yard, watering flowers.

His house was a better version of the Spanish ranch-style homes just a few blocks away from the cruising area of Warm Sands Road. I got out of the car and looked at him standing there in his old man short pants and T-shirt, his full body supported by legs that looked more at home on an ostrich than on a man built like him.

I looked at him, thinking, we should both be dead—but here we are.

He turned and saw me out of the corner of his eye. He dropped the hose and put his arms up, welcoming me and showing me love all at once.

“Jim!” Cleve yelled as he gave me a bear hug. “Where did you come from?”

“I’m moving back down,” I told him, adding, “Gilbert is moving in with me—as roommates.”

Cleve looked at me and said, “I heard he’s back in New York City.”

“He is, we’ve been talking. I actually just saw him the other day—in The City,” I replied.

“Come on in, I’ve got to hear how this came to be,” Cleve said as he walked towards his front door, opening it, and motioning me to go inside.

We talked about Dennis, his new club by City Hall, and I said, “Alain and I broke up a few years ago just before I bought my house down here.”

“I didn’t know you owned a home down here,” Cleve said.

“I bought a home in the north part of the city,” I said.

“Oh, you mean in the Movie Colony,” Cleve said, and I just nodded without correcting him.

The phone on the wall rang—Brrnnng, brrnng. “Excuse me, Jim. I’m expecting that call. I’ll take it in my office. Make yourself at home,” Cleve said.

I went into the kitchen and got a glass of water. The house wasn’t big, and even with the door to his office closed, I could hear raised voices through the door.

He walked through the living room and into the kitchen where I was and said, “Stupid cunt.”

I’d never seen this side of him. “Everything’s not okay. I take it?” I said.

“I don’t understand why some people are just so stupid,” he said, adding, “she’s a production assistant over in Hollywood.”

I looked at him, even more confused now, and said, “Hollywood?”

“I’m so excited—Gus Van Sant, who did Milk, is talking with the studios about making a movie about my life,” he said.

“Wow,” I replied, speechless.

“We’re trying to line up some time for him and Lance to come over here to the desert to meet us,” he said.

“So, tell me about yours and Gilbert’s big plans,” Cleve said.

“Well, actually, he wants to be closer to you,” I said.

Cleve scoffed, “Right.”

“No, really, he wants to do a joint installation. He’s trying to get a big rainbow flag and AIDS Quilt installation into the SFO for next year’s Pride,” I said, adding, “Gilbert said San Francisco is up for World Pride in 2002.”

“Oh, I love that,” Cleve said.

Cleve and Gilbert started talking on the phone again. I’d sit in Cleve’s living room taking notes while they squawked like two teenage girls full of excitement about some boy.

A month later, I started getting ill. Huge lesions were sprouting on my arms and legs. I went to see my doctor, Bill Grimm.

After examining me and ordering some blood work, we made a follow-up appointment.

Dr. Grimm said, “Nice to see you again, Mr. Buresch,” then adding, “We’ve got some lab results back, and it appears you have a nasty bug. Let’s start you on some antibiotics.”

A few days later, Cleve rushed me to the emergency room. I had fevers over 102 degrees, and the lesions were growing—not going away.

From all the sleeping and sweating, I was losing weight fast. As we sat there in the ER waiting room, we looked at each other with the look only two terminally ill people can share.

There was only silence, but it was a conversation we’d both had with too many dead friends, and we both knew my time was approaching.

“Can you get something to write with?” I asked. After retrieving some paper and a pen, he handed them to me. I wrote down my father’s name and number and handed it to him. He took it without speaking a word—he didn’t need to.

I was in and out of the hospital that summer. Cleve had stepped in like no one else before. He was consulting with my doctor, communicating with my father and stepmother, and he was feeding me—turning me into a vegetarian.

“Gilbert is on his way here with his belongings. Jim, he’ll be here on Monday,” Cleve snapped as he planned his trip. His memoir had come out, and he was going on book tour for, Stitching a Revolution: The Making of an Activist.

“Aren’t you excited about the tour?” I asked.

He replied, “It’s not the tour. I’m looking forward to that.” There was a heaviness in the air now, and I could see his face contorting—“He is in real anguish,” I thought.

“They’re moving the Quilt to Atlanta,” he said with a thump that matched the heaviness in the room.

“How can they? It’s yours,” I said.

“I need to stay focused,” Cleve said, adding, “Gilbert will be here on Monday. I’ll be leaving on Friday. Can you take care of yourself for the weekend?”

“I’m not a baby,” I said, loving the attention from him.

I dropped him off at the airport in Palm Springs and was driving back to the house I was renting to prepare for Gilbert’s arrival.  When I got back to the house, the pool guy was there in his cut-off jeans that seemed shorter this time as my smile widened.

Later that night, I was still jacked up, so I decided to go and cruise for more sex on Warm Sands Road. As I was cursing around, this really loud guy was walking the perp walk, gathering attention along the way.

I pulled next to him and said, “You sure like to have fun.”

“I sure do. Feel like having some fun together?” He asked, adding, “My name’s Tony.”

“Hell yeah, Tony. Get it,” I directed.

“I’m staying at one of the resorts. Let’s go back there,” Tony said.

A wave of anxiety and paranoia overcame me, and I asked Tony, “Can you drive?”

“Sure,” he said, “Move over,” as he opened the driver’s side door and climbed into my Thunderbird. “Mind if we drive around for a few minutes?” He asked.

As I sat in the passenger’s side, Tony handed me a meth pipe and a lighter. I took it, and after its education settled in, I said, “Why not?” as I slid my hand underneath his short pants and grabbed his cock in my hand.

As I looked up, I saw Matt in his pickup truck looking down into my car with my hand around Tony’s cock and the other hand sporting the meth pipe.

My world cracked open, and the years of pain, anger, resentment, and worthlessness all came flooding out at once. “Let’s go back to your place. I want you to fuck me harder than you’ve ever fucked anyone before,” I said to him.

We went back to his room, and there was another man there. I knew him. I had picked him once before, and his level of violence scared me then, but tonight, I welcomed it. The two of them were relentless with my body.

Tony made a swing out of a bedsheet and fucked me like I’d ever been fucked before. I was gone. Completely gone.

They gave me GHB on top of the meth I’d been smoking, and I lost consciousness.  When I woke up, I was lying on a bed, naked, bloody, bruised, and in the middle of an orgy.

Brrnng brrnng, brrnng, brrnng, “What?” I screamed into the receiver of the phone.

“Jim, that’s you,” my dad asked.

“Hey dad, sorry about that, I was asleep,” I said, as I turned to look and understood I was in my bedroom.

“They’ve done it, they’ve gone and done it,” my dad was saying, adding, “Turn on your TV, boy.”

I turned to the bed to find the remote, and there was Tony. Sleeping in my bed.

As I turned on the television, there was breaking news, something about a terrorist attack in New York City. Then I saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

Then there was a knock at my bedroom door.

“Can I call you back, dad?” I said.

Then the bedroom door opened. “Just to let you know, we’ve moved Gilbert out,” Cleve said as he looked over my shoulder.

“Where’s Gilbert?” I asked. Still in a drug hangover fog, still asleep, still in shock at my dad’s phone call—Matt. I was losing my mind, and I felt like death.

“Gilbert got into town early, and he’s been here while you’ve been partying. He lost friends today, Jim, and you’re on drugs, you’re on meth. Fuck you!” He said as he slammed my door shut.

“Who was that?” The guy in my bed asked.

“Cleve Jones,” I said.

“Oh, I know Cleve, ask him to stay,” said the guy in my bed.

As I walked out of the bedroom and into the living room, I saw the U-Haul pull away.

It would be a year later, when I got out of rehab, that I talked with Cleve for the last time.

“If you didn’t have regrets, you wouldn’t have lived a life,” were the last words he spoke to me.

Over a decade later, Gilbert would reach out with a Friendship request on Facebook, but never did he speak to me again. He did in his sleep a few months later. I miss him, and it’s the greatest of all my regrets—perhaps the only one I truly care about.

Cleve—he would go on to deny he even met me. ‘Jim who,” is what they’ve told me he said—And others report his saying, “Don’t waste your time on that piece of trash.”

That movie with Gus Van Sant—it turned out to be a television mini-series, When We Rise. Alain and I watched it together with such excitement—Until on the final day, in the final scene, Cleve finally spoke to me again. I’d have preferred a phone call with some humanity.

I watched that final stretch of When We Rise knowing exactly where it was going before it got there—not because I’d seen the show, but because I had lived the shape of it. The younger man he pulls into his orbit, the one already deep in meth, already slipping in and out of himself—that wasn’t a character to me.

That was a mirror I didn’t ask for.

What hit me wasn’t what he did—it was what he couldn’t do.

The moment where it becomes clear that he sees some pattern, that he recognizes it from another time, another person, another crisis, and still can’t change the outcome. And when he steps back, when he draws that line, the show lets it sit there like it’s about survival, like it’s the only choice left. Maybe it was.

But sitting there watching it, I wasn’t thinking about his survival—I was watching myself being translated into something cleaner, something more contained. A version of me that fits into a narrative where the boundary makes sense, where the chaos belongs entirely to the other person.

But that’s not how it felt from inside it.

From where I stood, there was no clean line. No moment where someone calmly chose distance. It was collision. It was meth and sex and shame and history all crashing into each other at the exact same time—And it broke me.

It was me not even understanding what was happening to me while it was happening. It was him seeing it—really seeing it—and deciding, in that instant, what I was. And what I wasn’t worth.

Watching it on screen, I could see the exhaustion in him, the grief, the recognition that he couldn’t save someone who wasn’t reachable. I don’t dispute that. I don’t even resent that part.

What I saw, though, was everything that got left out—the speed of it, the brutality of the moment, the way a life can turn in a single day and not in a slow, understandable arc.

On screen, it becomes a story about limits, about letting go. In my life, it was the moment I was let go of. Disposed of.

And the strangest part is, I can see both things at once. I can see why he stepped back. And I can see exactly what it did to me when he did.