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

Ring… ring…

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.

Alain’s flat was on the top floor of an ornate yellow-and-white Edwardian building owned by Chinese immigrants who also ran a corner store a few doors down on 18th Street. After getting off the phone, 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 those heels on hardwood.

“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 moving, turning left toward Castro.

I pushed through the doors of Super Clean Laundry. Alain was standing by the machines, talking with a short man in his 50s with stark white hair. I stepped up to Alain and gave him a kiss right there in the open—something I never could have done 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, skipping a handshake or any of the usual Southern pleasantries.

“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, flatly stating it rather than asking.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

He chuckled, a dry sound. “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 first considering the move, I’d called the Metropolitan Community Church in San Francisco, and Jim Mitulski had answered the phone.

“This is Jim,” he said in a kind, soft voice.

I explained who I was, where I was calling from, and how I’d been running an AIDS Task Force in West Virginia but desperately wanted to be around more people like me—gay people.

“Don’t come out here. There aren’t enough jobs as it is for the people already here,” he said quickly. Then his tone shifted—deeper, darker. “There’s death everywhere.”

“Stay where you are,” he insisted, and hung up the phone.

I remembered sitting there feeling like Sally Field’s character, M’Lynn, in Steel Magnolias, ready to take a whack at Shirley MacLaine’s Ouiser.

Yet here was Dennis Peron, offering the exact warmth San Francisco was famous for. So where was that flower for my hair?

Later that afternoon, I walked up to the purple Victorian on 18th Street. It was eccentric—everything I loved about the city. A guy around my age answered the door.

“I’m here to see Dennis,” I said, my voice a little shaky.

“He’s in there,” he said, leading me inside.

We passed a small parlor on the left and stepped into an enormous central living space. How they fit a room that cavernous inside a modest Victorian was beyond me. Half a dozen gorgeous young men lounged across sofas and oversized love seats.

I crossed the hardwood and entered another large room facing the street. The heavy, resinous scent of marijuana wrapped around me like a warm blanket, layered with something distinctly human and sweet.

There was Dennis, propped up on his bed between two more young men, smoking joints and talking intently as if they were hammering out world peace.

“Hey there, Jim,” Dennis said. He didn’t bother introducing the other two guys.

People out here are a bit rude, I thought.

Dennis looked me up and down. “You smoke pot.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Sure do,” I said.

The blonde surfer-type on the bed passed me a joint. I took a drag and passed it across to Dennis.

“I’m opening a storefront up the street at the corner of Church and Market,” Dennis said, taking a hit. “We’re going to openly sell weed to people who need it medically. 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?”

“YES!” I blurted out.

The two guys on the bed snapped their heads toward me, their buzz instantly shattered.

Dennis chuckled. “Good. I want you to work the door. I need someone down there who 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,” Dennis continued. “If they have a note from a doctor, let them up—the girls will get them registered. If someone just wants to get high, politely send them on their way. If the police show up, don’t get in their way. Let them up, but send someone running ahead to warn me. Same goes for the media.”

“Yes, sir—I mean, sure thing, Dennis,” I said.

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

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 wasn't even a year out of West Virginia, and other than my clothes from back home, all I had was country-and-western apparel from Wild Wild West, where I’d worked last.

After settling on a black pullover polo from Huntington and a tight pair of 501s, I pulled on my cowboy boots. I reached for the cowboy hat, then hesitated.

Really, full drag on the first day?

I grabbed a black SF Giants baseball cap instead.

Heading for the door, I caught a sideways look in the mirror. I stopped, turned, and took a hard look at myself. Where was the guy who thought he’d one day be a congressman from Huntington—the one who dressed like Alex P. Keaton?

Here stood someone completely different: a goatee, super short hair, dressed like I was heading out to get laid instead of starting a new job.

When in Rome, I thought, and out the door I went.

A couple of blocks up was the five-way intersection of Market and Church. Dennis’s club was in the center of everything—right across from Safeway, an underground MUNI stop, and a web of bus lines. Crossing the street toward Church, I spotted two guys waiting out front. One was an aging hippie; the other looked like someone I might have run into in West Virginia, though I hoped not.

A real-life hippie—so cool, I thought.

As I approached, I introduced myself and stuck my hand out to shake theirs. The two of them looked at my hand, looked at each other, and burst out laughing.

“Relax, man, it’s all good,” the aging hippie said, grinning. “I’m John. Dennis said you’d be stopping by. Hang down here with Adam—I’ll go let Dennis know you're here.”

My first impression of Adam wasn't wrong. He looked so straight I figured he couldn’t bend over. But as soon as we started talking, a deep warmth and empathy came through in everything he said. I instantly liked him.

John came bounding back down the stairs. “Dennis says come on up.”

Like everything else in San Francisco, there were stairs—a lot of them—and climbing these felt like summiting Mount Tamalpais. Halfway up, the sweet smell of pot and the sound of easy laughter drifted down to greet me. Reaching the landing, I stepped inside. It was the most beautiful, alive space I had seen since moving west. For the first time in months, it felt like everything in the world might actually be okay.

The room was vast: layered bohemian rugs across the floor, kitsch and protest memorabilia covering the walls, and an enormous rainbow flag stretched across the ceiling just above the hanging fluorescent fixtures. Couches, recliners, and piles of oversized floor pillows divided the open floor into intimate communal circles.

On the wall beside the stairs hung huge whiteboards listing the menu: Afghani, Northern Lights, Kush, Maui Waui, Acapulco Gold, Panama Red.

Am I at the United Nations or a pot store? I muttered under my breath.

Dennis walked over with a strikingly pretty woman sporting big blonde hair and a smile that arrived before the rest of her.

“Jim, this is Beth,” Dennis said as her smile grew even wider. “You’ll need to get registered as a patient first—she’ll get you squared away.”

“Nice to meet you, Jim,” she said, drawing out my name into two slow, deliberate syllables with a thick Southern accent that time in California hadn't dulled one bit.

She led me back into the office. Beth was walking me through the daily routine when an older woman walked through the door. She reminded me immediately of my grandmother—not in looks, but in presence. Small in stature, but radiating pure love.

“Beth, I need to pick up some shake for tomorrow’s batch,” the woman said.

“Sure, Mary. I’ll be right back.”

Beth disappeared behind a locked door and returned holding a large, translucent trash bag stuffed with at least five pounds of cannabis shake.

“Here you go, Granny,” Beth said.

“Thanks, sweetie,” Mary replied, tucking the bag under her arm and heading back out into the main room.

“That’s Brownie Mary,” Beth said quietly.

“Wow,” I said. “I’ve read about her—how she’s been taking care of men dying of AIDS with pot brownies since the epidemic started.”

“Not just men, Jim. Women, too,” Beth said, giving me a knowing smile.

Once we finished the paperwork, she sent me back downstairs to join John and Adam. By the time I hit the street level, there wasn’t a speck of white left in either of their eyes. They were completely baked.

“I love this place,” I said. “People back in West Virginia would never believe this exists.”

“Is that where you’re from?” John asked, before checking his watch. “Hey, it’s three o'clock. Why don’t you take off for the day? We’ll see you tomorrow morning at eight.”

As I turned to leave, I bumped directly into a tall, imposing man who managed to project both muscular masculinity and effortless camp all at once. He looked at me with mischievous eyes, reached out, tapped me on the head, and deliberately yanked my polo shirt out of my jeans before sprinting up the stairs.

All three of us doubled over laughing.

“See you tomorrow, guys!” I called out, heading down Church Street toward the flat.

I was walking on air—and pretty high, too.

I am going to love this job, I thought, smiling so wide my cheeks hurt.

Alain woke me the next morning as he was leaving for work. The sun was warmer, the birds louder; I was floating. Looking out the window, I realized it wasn't just my mood—for the first time in weeks, the city fog had completely burned off, leaving brilliant blue skies.

I grabbed a quick bite, buzzing with energy.

Working in the community, I thought, thrilled.

As I reached for the doorknob, the phone rang in the living room. I ran back, snatched the receiver, and said, “Hello?”

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 bolted out the door and down the stairs. Before I even hit the landing, the door swung open.

“You walk too loud!” Mrs. Young called out from her doorway.

“Sorry, Mrs. Young—I’m off to my new job!” I called back, pushing through the front door.

I took a left on Hancock and hurried toward the laundromat. Alain was standing by the office, talking with the same tall guy who had yanked my polo out of my jeans the day before at Dennis’s club.

Gilbert Baker

Alain flashed a sly grin. “Jim, I’d like you to meet Gilbert Baker. He created—”

“THE RAINBOW FLAG!” I shouted.

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

I extended my hand, but he pulled me straight into a hug.

“Actually, we met—sort of—yesterday,” I said, explaining to Alain how Gilbert had untucked my shirt on the CBC stairs.

“You’re in San Francisco. Let it all hang out,” Gilbert grinned.

He was by far the most famous person I had ever met, but he carried none of the grandiosity I would have expected from a celebrity. He was just a guy in the neighborhood—a big, tall, beefy bear of warmth and love.

“I’m off to work,” I said, opening the glass door. “It really is an honor to meet you.”

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

I froze in the doorway and turned back around.

“Do you want to drive up to the Russian River?” Gilbert continued. “I’d like to go see Cleve Jones.”

“Let me check my schedule, but sure—I’d love to. Are you kidding?”

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

I stood there in disbelief. “Sure, I can’t wait. See you Friday.”

“You’ll see me later today,” he shot back with a grin.

Does this guy always assume people will drop everything to do his bidding? I asked myself. Then I caught myself: Boy, stop overthinking and have fun. It’s Gilbert freaking Baker.

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

That night, Alain and I started a ritual that would last thirty-two years: sitting down together to watch The X-Files. Life in the city was thrilling but chaotic, and that quiet time together quickly became my favorite part of the day.

The next morning, I crept down the stairs, trying not to wake the building. Still quiet—good. I didn't want to cause Alain any landlord trouble. I pushed open the street door and—BAM.

“You walk too loud!” Mrs. Young yelled, hanging halfway out of her front window.

“Have a good day, Mrs. Young!” I called back with a wave.

The morning of the trip arrived: Alain’s early kiss, waking up on the back balcony with a joint in one hand, an espresso in the other, and a Marlboro Red before pulling on my boots. I even tried tiptoeing down the steps, but like clockwork: “You walk too loud!”

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

“Hey, Gilbert, I need to stop and buy some tennis shoes…”

My voice trailed off as we rolled onto the Golden Gate Bridge. I tried to play it cool, but seeing Sausalito and Tiburon sparkling across the bay broke my composure completely.

“Wow. Fucking wow,” I breathed.

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

Further up, I spotted the sign for San Quentin and, without thinking, broke into song: “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. When I hear that whistle blowing, I just hang my head and cry…”

Gilbert looked over at me with a mix of shock and mock horror.

“It’s just Johnny Cash!” I laughed.

“I know it’s a song,” Gilbert said. “I’m just amazed by how truly country you are.”

Driving farther north through the rolling hills, I noticed endless rows of green vines carving through the landscape. “I didn’t know they grew grapes up here.”

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

Back in West Virginia, the mountains were steep, rugged, and covered in dense forest. The gentle, sun-drenched golden hills of Sonoma felt immediately soothing.

We turned off 101 onto Highway 116, where the vineyards gave way to sprawling apple orchards and roadside antique barns.

“It’s so beautiful,” I said, feeling my eyes well up.

“Are you crying?” Gilbert asked, looking at me with genuine surprise before smiling. “I like you, kid.”

He fell quiet after that, chiming in only to point out landmarks.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he grumbled.

Something was clearly eating at him. “What’s Cleve like?”

Gilbert didn't hesitate. “He’s an asshole.”

I blinked, not expecting that.

“He thinks he’s too good for us mere mortals,” Gilbert continued, looking out the passenger window. “He won’t return my calls, so I’m driving up to confront him—to make sure he’s still alive and okay.”

Oh shit, what have I gotten myself into? I thought.

As we drove deeper into west county, the open golden hills closed in, replaced by towering redwoods rising like massive sentinels along the tarmac. Sunlight vanished as we crossed the Bohemian Highway, greeted by the iconic white-and-green arch spanning the road: Welcome to Monte Rio Vacation Wonderland.

A bit farther up, we turned onto a narrow lane with five or six homes branching off like gates along an airport concourse. To the left stood a tall A-frame with huge glass windows, followed by a pair of cabins raised on high wooden pilings, like beach houses built for coastal tides.

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

“It floods up here every winter,” Gilbert replied. “You couldn’t pay me to live out here in the middle of nowhere.”

Just ahead sat a modest cottage. “Park in front of that house,” Gilbert said.

He stepped out and walked up the gravel path. A man roughly Gilbert’s age opened the front door, his expression flashing with shock before settling into a hard frown.

“Jim, wait in the car for a minute,” Gilbert said over his shoulder.

I climbed back into the driver's seat and cranked the heat—it was freezing in the deep shadow of those giant trees.

They stayed inside for a while. When they finally emerged, Gilbert waved me over.

“We’re going to take a short walk down to a special spot,” he said.

The man still hadn’t been introduced, so I dropped my voice into the deepest baritone I could muster: “Hi, Cleve. I’m Jim—nice to meet you.”

In a gentle, measured voice that immediately reminded me of teachers back home, he said, “I’m so sorry—nice to meet you, Jim. How’s your day with Gilbert going?”

The ice was broken, but the air between them was thick with decades of unsaid history. Not wanting to intrude, I hung back a few paces, letting their hushed conversation blend with the sound of the wind rushing through the canopy above.

A gentle rushing sound grew louder, leading us to the edge of a creek.

Tucked along the bank was a carefully tended memorial: hand-painted river stones, small tokens, and weathered mementos arranged with quiet devotion. A single shaft of bright sunlight pierced the dense redwood ceiling, illuminating the stones like a spotlight from the heavens. It was an unmistakable sanctuary for someone lost to AIDS.

I stepped away toward the water's edge, skipping flat stones across the surface while the creek gurgled past. Standing there under the whistling redwoods, I had an almost out-of-body experience. It was still, sacred, and deeply grounding.

I didn't want to break the spell, but the two icons had already turned to head back up the trail. They walked mostly in silence, carrying a shared past far too heavy for words.

Once we cleared Monte Rio and hit the open highway through the vineyards, the silence in the car became deafening. The late-afternoon light was fading, but Gilbert’s mood was darker still. This wasn't the boisterous man who had untucked my shirt at the CBC or hugged me in the laundromat. He was carrying the weight of the entire movement on his shoulders.

I looked over at him and broke the quiet. “Want to suck my dick?”

Gilbert turned his head, stunned for a fraction of a second, before the tension shattered and he answered, “Yes!”

We both roared with laughter.

The dam broke, and Gilbert began venting about his turbulent history with Cleve, going on about how infuriatingly stubborn Cleve could be.

As if you're not, I thought, smiling to myself. They were two sides of the very same coin.

As we reached the Golden Gate Bridge, traffic ground to a complete halt. We sat there in bumper-to-bumper gridlock, windows rolled all the way down, watching the thick summer fog drift across the suspension cables—above us, below us, everywhere.

“God, I love California,” I said softly.

Gilbert gave a quiet, tired smile. The grief was still there behind his eyes, but it wasn't my place to pry.

Working at the Cannabis Buyers Club was like nothing I’d ever imagined. To the outside world, we were just a ragtag bunch of potheads, but our daily reality was rooted in pure palliative care. We saw firsthand how cannabis brought back appetites, dulled intractable pain, and restored a sliver of dignity to people dying in agony. It would take another twenty years for the rest of the country to catch up to what Dennis had built on Market Street.

“We can’t pay the rent with weed, Jim!” Alain finally snapped one evening after I brought home another ounce as my compensation for volunteering.

I loved the club. It was the first place in San Francisco where I felt purposeful, useful, and fully accepted. But Alain was right.

“I’m going down there to talk to Dennis,” Alain insisted. “He cannot keep paying you in pot.”

The next day, Alain marched down to the club, and we went upstairs together to confront Dennis.

It wouldn’t be the last time we had that conversation, but every time money came up, Dennis did the same thing: he took care of it. Over time, that included cash for a car and eventually a deposit on a house. I wasn’t special—Dennis did that for dozens of people. That was just who he was: unconditional generosity.

And that was why, when Dennis asked for help securing medical supply after one of his main growers got busted, I didn't hesitate.

“Here’s three thousand dollars,” John said, sliding an envelope across the desk before turning to my partner: “Rich, here’s your three thousand.” He handed us two one-way airline tickets from SFO to Tucson.

Dennis pulled a stack of bills from his pocket. “Here’s cash for the motel, food, and gas. One of you put the rental car on a credit card with a drop-off back here, and I’ll reimburse you when you get home.”

“Check into the Motel 6 in Nogales, call Dennis, and give him the room number,” John added.

The routine became familiar: always a ground-floor room tucked in the back corner of the motel lot. Within minutes of placing the call, a car would pull into the space directly behind our rental.

“Did you ever notice how different all these guys look?” I whispered to Rich as we watched the blinds. “One time it’s a guy who looks like a suburban Little League coach, the next it’s someone straight out of central casting for an LA gang.”

This time it was two Latino men in an El Camino. The passenger stepped out holding a heavy duffel bag. Every visible inch of his skin was covered in ink, right up to the line of his jaw. He didn't look at us. He walked straight to the rental car, reached underneath the rear wheel well to grab the taped envelope of cash, tossed the duffel into our back seat, and was gone in seconds.

“You ready, Jim?” Rich asked, grabbing the keys. “I’ll drive through the night to the Nevada border, then you take the wheel.”

We pulled out of the Motel 6, took Interstate 19 north to Tucson, and then cut across the desert onto California Highway 395, skirting the eastern Sierras until we crossed back into the Bay.

It was pure direct action—civil disobedience with federal stakes.

“How can we put our lives on the line any more than this?” I asked into the dark cab.

“Man, I just want the money,” Rich muttered, staring straight ahead at the empty asphalt. I didn't entirely buy it; nobody risked ten years in federal prison just for three grand.

A few years later, California voters would pass Proposition 215, legalizing medical cannabis statewide. But by then, the pure, underground soul of the movement was already shifting.

“Listen up, everyone,” Dennis announced to the assembled staff one afternoon. “Tomorrow morning, I want everyone to meet at 1444 Market Street, right by the Van Ness station. It’s our new five-story building near City Hall.”

A low murmur rippled through the room.

“We aren't moving tomorrow, but I want you all to see it and bring your ideas for what we can build there,” Dennis continued.

Everyone looked around the room, caught between excitement and a quiet apprehension.

Rents were skyrocketing across the Castro; everything in the city was turning commercial. In my gut, I could feel the intimacy slipping away. I looked down at the layered bohemian rugs, then across to the couches where people gathered in heated political debates or broke down crying in small circles of healing. I looked up at the vibrant ceilings Gilbert had draped in color, turning a drafty second floor into a living sanctuary.

“Now it’s ending,” I said aloud without thinking.

Dennis paused. “What’s that, Jim?”

“I was just thinking about Gertrude Stein’s line: ‘There is no there there.’”

Dennis looked at me for a long beat, searching for my motive rather than my meaning. “Alright,” he said softly. “See everyone tomorrow.”

It wasn’t long after that Gilbert called me.

“Jim, a few of us are meeting up to start our own delivery service,” Gilbert said in a hushed voice. “We want you in on it.”

“I’ll listen,” I said, already exhausted by how the club had shifted. New staff, new attitudes, lines stretching around the block with every casual smoker in the Bay Area showing up at the door. It didn’t feel like a refuge anymore.

“Keep it completely between us,” Gilbert added before giving me the address.

I went to the meeting and agreed to help Gilbert launch the new delivery co-op. But the magic had broken.

Suddenly, nothing in my life felt the same.

Then came the grueling daily commute up and down Interstate 280 from our flat in the City to my job at Netscape in Mountain View. It was an exhausting new world where sleeping under one’s desk was completely normal—just as normal as the massive beer-can replica of the Golden Gate Bridge spanning the cubicles across “the pit.” The coders were treated like gods, and the rest of us were there to keep the machinery running day and night.

The Silicon Valley boom began driving Bay Area real estate into the stratosphere just as Alain and I were finally in a position to buy a home. We found ourselves getting outbid at every turn, even when we tried pooling resources with his legal green-card wife and her girlfriend.

We weren’t the only ones getting squeezed out. A steady stream of our friends was already relocating south to Palm Springs, describing it as a blank canvas ready for a little San Francisco flavor. We booked a trip to scout the desert the following month.

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

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

Our relationship gradually opened up. We loved each other deeply, and on some level we knew that affection would always be there, but the dynamic had fundamentally changed.

“They can’t spend the night,” was Alain’s only rule.

I started spending my evenings at the Pilsner on Church Street, shooting pool and drinking draft beers with other guys.

I love my life, I caught myself thinking often.

Not long after, everything shifted.

Matt came into my life while Alain was already on his way out. We met at the Pilsner—one of those electric nights where everything feels decided before you even finish your first beer. When Alain and I finally parted ways, Matt and I packed up and headed south to the desert.

For a while, it worked. More than worked. In Palm Springs, we were everywhere: fundraisers, local campaigns, organizing in the desert heat like it really meant something. And it did.

Underneath all that momentum, though, something toxic was taking root.

It started with Matt telling me I wasn’t enough—not sexually, not for what he wanted. He wanted more men, bigger risks, harder edges. Needles, not just partying. I should have walked, but for the first time in my life, I felt completely disposable. Instead of leaving, I adapted. When he walked out on me while I was stuck in a wheelchair with bilateral foot surgeries, I told myself his cruelty was about him. It wasn’t. It hooked straight into an older fear of being left behind.

Portland was supposed to be my clean exit. But nothing about us was clean by then.

I caught him off to the side of the Fruit Loop in Washington Park. If the cops weren’t there to arrest the guys having sex in the bushes, they sure as hell weren't going to bust me for smoking weed while I sat at my favorite bench overlooking downtown.

He wasn't hidden behind dense brush; it was an open clearing right off the dirt trail, as if everyone knew the rules except me. Men circled in total silence, waiting their turn—

And in the center of it was Matt.

He was gone.

Not just physically lost in the crowd—gone from me. Gone from whatever "us" was left. His face had flattened into a hollow, mechanical focus that wasn't directed at anything human, and certainly wasn't directed at me.

I didn't move. I don't think I even breathed. I just stood there frozen on the path, waiting for the image in front of me to rearrange itself into something that made sense. It didn't.

A man brushed past my shoulder without looking at me, just another body stepping up into the rotation. I was completely invisible. To all of them, I was just a ghost who didn’t know the choreography.

That’s when the shock turned to ice. This wasn’t a bad trip, a slip-up, or a terrible night we could argue through over coffee tomorrow. This was who he was now. And there was no version of my life that could survive inside of it.

I turned on my heel and walked back down the dirt path. Behind me, the muffled rustle of the woods followed me all the way down the hill, but I didn't look back. By the time my hand hit the car door, it was already over.

I sat in the driver's seat, pulled out my phone, and dialed Gilbert.

“Come back,” Gilbert said into the phone. “Go down to Palm Springs. Look up Cleve. Just get the hell out of there, and we’ll figure the rest out later.”

That was it. No interrogation. No long preamble.

Just clear direction from someone who loved me.

I packed up what was left of my life and pointed the car south toward California—quieter this time, stripped down to something closer to the bone. I didn’t know what I was walking into with Cleve, but I knew I had to go.

The last time I had seen Cleve was four years earlier, in 1997. My HIV had progressed to full-blown AIDS, and I was flat on my back at UCSF with the deadly pneumonia that was taking everyone down. I was wasting away, watching my body consume its own muscle.

“Jim, you look horrible,” Cleve said, walking straight into my hospital room.

I told him how bad it was.

“Just hold on, Jim,” Cleve said, leaning in. “There’s a new medication coming out—it’s an absolute game-changer.”

“What do you mean?” I rasped.

“It’s a new class of drugs that stops the virus from replicating. I’ve been on it for about a year now, and it’s given me my life back.”

Three months after that hospital visit, my doctor started me on the new protease inhibitor cocktail—and like it did for so many of us, it changed everything.

Now, in the late summer of 2001, I was rolling back into California.

I drove for hours down the interstate, scream-singing along to Destiny’s Child’s Survivor, Britney Spears, and J.Lo until my voice was completely hoarse. Cutting west past Vallejo, I picked up Highway 101 and crossed the bridge into San Francisco.

I stopped to see Alain, and then met up with Gilbert for a quick bite, a joint, and a chance to just breathe—the kind of deep, unguarded breathing you can only do around people who know your entire history.

Gilbert has turned out to be one of the best friends I’ve ever had, I thought.

We passed the joint back and forth. Gilbert stood up and, like he always did, began working his thumbs into my shoulders. It wasn’t a casual massage; it was firm, grounding, and full of quiet reassurance.

“I gave him everything, Gilbert,” I confessed, staring at the floor. “I let him control me, and he took my pride and my self-worth away.”

“Jim, he didn’t take a damn thing from you,” Gilbert said firmly, his hands still working the knots in my back. “You’re still you. A new chapter is unfolding right now. Embrace the change.”

He gave my shoulder one last squeeze.

“Now take your boots off and lie down for an hour before you hit the road to the desert.”

When I woke up that evening, we ordered takeout from the No Name Sushi restaurant on Church Street, across from the Pilsner. Over dinner, we mapped out our next moves.

“I’m going to rent a house down in the desert,” I told him. “Why don’t I look for a two-bedroom, two-bath for us?”

Gilbert flashed a broad Cheshire grin.

“Don’t tell Cleve right off the bat,” Gilbert warned. “We’re not talking again.”

“What happened this time?”

“Same old shit. He’s being a prima donna and an asshole,” Gilbert grumbled. Then his face lit back up. “The new director at SFO is going to let me install a gigantic rainbow flag along with sections of the AIDS Quilt for Pride next year. I need Cleve on board, but…” His voice trailed off into the steam rising from our miso soup.

Cleve Jones

The next morning, I pointed the car east toward Interstate 5, tracing California’s agricultural spine through endless flat farmland. As the Central Valley gave way to the arid expanse of the Coachella Valley, I watched the stark desert floor transform into the lush, palm-laden streets of Palm Springs.

It didn’t take long to find a place: a Spanish-style home with a private pool tucked right against the Warm Sands neighborhood, where gay men and clothing-optional resorts were rapidly relocating from West Hollywood and the Castro.

Driving down Indian Canyon Road with the warm desert wind pouring through the open windows, a quiet thought settled in: Is this home?

The dry desert heat brought immediate relief to the chronic inflammation of HIV. My body actually felt alive again.

I handed the realtor first, last, and deposit, and she dropped the keys into my hand. The next morning, before unpacking a single box, I brewed a pot of coffee, walked out to the pool, and sat in the morning sun, smiling.

Gilbert is going to love this place.

The side gate creaked open.

Ooooh, what do we have here?

A tanned, nearly naked man walked into the yard carrying a pool net. I opened my mouth to say something neighborly, but the heavy outline pressed against his skimpy, cutoff 501s pulled all the oxygen straight out of my lungs.

He was sun-drenched and carved, with muscle rippling in all the right places. For a second, I forgot how to form words.

“Damn, you’re hot,” I finally managed.

He set the pool pole against the stucco wall, unbuttoned his cutoff shorts, and stepped out of them as he walked over. He was thick—exceptionally thick.

After a while, he caught me by the elbow, pulled me up from the lounger, and led me into the air-conditioned bedroom. I ducked into the bathroom for a minute, and when I stepped back out, two long lines of crystal meth were laid out across the glass nightstand.

“Oh hell yeah,” I said, dropping to my knees.

He came up behind me as I snorted the second line, sliding into me without a pause. A sharp gasp gave way to pure, blinding escape. I don't know what he told his other clients on his route, but neither of us left that bedroom until the desert sun was long below the mountains.

After a few days of recuperating, I tried calling Gilbert, but he was stuck in New York packing up his life. Needing some human contact, I drove over to Warm Sands to find Cleve.

I navigated the quiet streets until I hit the row of towering fan palms dividing South Indian Trail. Sure enough, there he was in the front yard, holding a green garden hose and watering his flowers.

His house was a classic Spanish ranch-style, just a short walk from the cruising spots on Warm Sands Road. I stepped out of the car and watched him for a second: oversized t-shirt, baggy shorts, his broad torso balanced on impossibly long, skinny legs that looked like they belonged on an ostrich.

We should both be dead, I thought. Yet here we are.

Cleve caught my movement out of the corner of his eye, dropped the hose straight into the grass, and threw his arms wide open.

“Jim!” he yelled, wrapping me in a massive bear hug. “Where on earth did you come from?”

“I moved back down,” I said, grinning. “And Gilbert is moving in with me. We’re getting a place together.”

Cleve pulled back, his eyebrows knitting together. “I thought Gilbert was back in New York.”

“He is, but we’ve been talking. I just saw him in the City a few days ago.”

“Come inside. I have to hear this whole story,” Cleve said, ushering me through the front door.

We sat in the living room catching up on Dennis and the new multi-story club on Market Street.

“Alain and I split up a while back, right before I bought my place down here,” I mentioned.

“I didn't know you owned a house here,” Cleve said.

“Yeah, up in the north end.”

“Oh, up in the Movie Colony?”

I just nodded, letting it slide without correcting him about the neighborhood boundaries.

Brrrrng. Brrrrng. The landline on the kitchen wall rang loudly.

“Excuse me, Jim. I’ve been waiting on this call. I’ll take it in the back office—make yourself at home,” Cleve said, disappearing down the hall.

I wandered into the kitchen to pour a glass of cold water. Even with his office door shut, raised voices filtered through the thin drywall. A few minutes later, Cleve stormed back into the kitchen, his face flushed.

“Stupid cunt,” he muttered.

I had never seen that side of him before. “Everything okay?”

“I don’t understand why people in that industry are so incompetent,” he snapped, grabbing a towel. “Some production assistant in Hollywood.”

“Hollywood?”

Cleve’s irritation immediately flipped into animated excitement. “Gus Van Sant and Lance Black are talking with the studios about making a movie about Harvey Milk and my life.”

“Wow, Cleve. That’s incredible.”

“We’re trying to coordinate schedules so they can come out to the desert and meet with me,” he said, leaning against the counter. “Now—tell me about this grand plan with you and Gilbert.”

“He actually wants to patch things up with you,” I said.

Cleve scoffed. “Right.”

“I’m serious. He’s trying to put together a massive joint installation for next year’s Pride—a giant rainbow flag and sections of the Quilt suspended inside SFO. He said San Francisco is bidding for WorldPride in 2002.”

Cleve’s eyes softened. “Oh… I love that idea.”

Just like that, the ice thawed. Within days, Cleve and Gilbert were back on the phone daily. I would sit on Cleve’s couch watching him hold the receiver, listening to the two movement legends bicker, scheme, and gossip like two excited teenagers.

A month later, my body completely crashed.

Angry, purple-red lesions erupted across my arms and legs. I went to see my physician, Dr. Bill Grimm, who ran extensive blood panels.

When the results came back, Dr. Grimm walked into the exam room with a furrowed brow. “Mr. Buresch, it appears you’ve picked up a severe systemic infection. Let’s get you started on heavy antibiotics immediately.”

The pills didn’t touch it. Within days, my fever spiked past 102 degrees. The lesions spread, and my body began burning through its own reserves from the endless night sweats.

Cleve took one look at me and rushed me straight to the emergency room.

Sitting beside each other in the harsh fluorescent glare of the ER waiting room, we exchanged the quiet look that only two men who had lived through the plague years understood. It was an unspoken, familiar language—a silent acknowledgment we had shared with dozens of friends right before they slipped away. We both knew the cliff was approaching fast.

“Do you have a pen and paper?” I whispered, shivering despite the desert heat.

Cleve walked up to the triage desk, returned with a notepad and a ballpoint pen, and handed them to me. With trembling hands, I wrote down my father’s name and phone number and handed it back to him.

He folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket without a single word. He didn't need to say anything; we both knew what it was for.

For the rest of that scorching summer, I bounced in and out of the hospital. Cleve stepped in completely. He consulted directly with Dr. Grimm, gave daily updates to my father and stepmother back in West Virginia, and took over my kitchen, cooking strict vegetarian meals to rebuild my immune system.

“Gilbert is en route with all of his belongings,” Cleve announced one afternoon, checking his calendar. “He’ll be pulling up to the house on Monday.”

Cleve was packing his own bags. His memoir, Stitching a Revolution: The Making of an Activist, had just hit bookstores, and he was preparing for a national promotional tour.

“Are you excited about the tour?” I asked from the sofa.

“It’s not the tour,” Cleve said, his voice dropping into a register of profound exhaustion. The skin around his eyes pulled tight. “I’m looking forward to that part.”

A heavy, suffocating silence dropped over the room.

“They’re moving the Quilt to Atlanta,” Cleve said, the words hitting the floor like a lead weight.

“How can they do that?” I asked, stunned. “It’s yours.”

“I have to stay focused,” Cleve said, shaking his head to cut off the grief. “Gilbert gets here Monday. I fly out Friday. Can you manage on your own for a couple of days until he arrives?”

“I’m not a helpless baby,” I smiled, secretly grateful for every ounce of care he had poured into me.

I drove Cleve to the Palm Springs airport, hugged him goodbye at the terminal, and headed back to the rental house to clean up and get the guest room ready for Gilbert’s arrival.

I pulled into the driveway and walked around to the backyard. Standing by the edge of the pool was the pool cleaner, wearing cutoff denim shorts that somehow looked even shorter than before.

A familiar grin crept across my face.

Later that night, still jacked up and restless, I drove out to cruise Warm Sands Road. A loud, boisterous guy was strutting down the pavement, practically demanding an audience.

I pulled alongside the curb and rolled down the window. “You sure look like you know how to have fun.”

“I sure do,” he grinned, leaning in. “Feel like having some fun together? I’m Tony. I'm staying at one of the resorts—let's go back there.”

A sudden wave of paranoia washed over me. “Can you drive?”

“Sure. Move over.”

Tony climbed into the driver’s seat of my Thunderbird. As we idled at the curb, he pulled out a glass pipe and a lighter, passing it across the console. I took a hit, feeling that sharp, chemical rush hit the back of my throat, and reached across to slide my hand down the front of his shorts.

I glanced up—and froze.

Idling right beside us at the stop sign was Matt in his pickup truck, looking straight down into my car. He saw everything: my hand down Tony’s shorts, the pipe in my other hand, the complete wreckage of my life.

My world cracked wide open. Years of accumulated betrayal, anger, humiliation, and worthlessness came tearing to the surface all at once.

I turned to Tony. “Take me to your room. I want you to tear me apart.”

When we got there, another guy was waiting. I recognized him immediately—I'd been with him once before, and his appetite for violence had terrified me. Tonight, I welcomed it. I wanted to be obliterated.

They were relentless with my body. Tony rigged a sling out of bedsheets, and whatever was left of me simply checked out. They poured GHB down my throat on top of the meth, and the lights went out completely.

When my eyes fluttered open, it was daylight. I was naked, bloody, bruised, and tangled in a blur of unfamiliar bodies.

Ring… ring… ring…

“What?” I barked into the receiver, completely disoriented.

“Jim? That you?” It was my dad.

“Hey, Dad. Sorry… I was asleep,” I mumbled, rubbing my face and trying to map where I was.

“They’ve done it, Jim. They’ve gone and done it,” my dad said, his voice shaking with a panic I’d never heard from him before. “Turn on your TV, boy.”

I reached across the mattress to find the remote and bumped into warm skin. There was Tony, dead asleep in my bed.

I clicked on the television. Breaking news banners flashed red across the screen—smoke billowing from the North Tower. Then, live on the broadcast, the second plane sliced into the South Tower.

A sharp knock rattled the bedroom door.

“Dad, can I call you right back?” I said into the receiver, dropping the phone onto the nightstand.

The bedroom door swung open.

Cleve stood in the frame, his face stone cold, looking right past me at the wreckage in the bed.

“Just to let you know, we’ve moved Gilbert out,” Cleve said.

“Where’s Gilbert?” I stammered. My brain was drowning in a toxic fog—still half-asleep, vibrating from the GHB, stunned by my dad’s voice, the burning skyline on TV, and the searing memory of Matt staring into my car the night before. I was losing my mind, and my body felt like death.

“Gilbert got into town early,” Cleve snarled. “He’s been here all morning while you’ve been out partying. He lost friends today, Jim. People are dying in New York, and you’re in here doing crystal meth. Fuck you!”

He slammed the door with enough force to shake the walls.

Tony stirred in the tangled sheets, squinting toward the hallway. “Who was that?”

“Cleve Jones,” I muttered.

“Oh, I know Cleve! Tell him to come back in!”

I stumbled out of bed, made my way into the front room, and pulled back the blinds just in time to see the yellow U-Haul turn the corner and disappear down the street.

It was a year later, fresh out of rehab, when I spoke with Cleve for the last time.

“If you didn’t have regrets, Jim, you wouldn’t have lived a life,” were the final words he ever said to me.

Over a decade later, Gilbert sent me a friend request on Facebook. But we never spoke. A few months later, he died quietly in his sleep. I miss him terribly, and the silence between us remains the deepest regret of my life—perhaps the only one that still truly aches.

Cleve took a colder route. Over the years, mutual acquaintances reported that he denied ever knowing me at all. “Jim who?” he’d say. Others told me he said, “Don’t waste your breath on that piece of trash.”

That project with Gus Van Sant eventually aired as the television miniseries When We Rise. Alain and I sat down to watch it with genuine excitement—until the final episode, in the final hour, when Cleve finally spoke to me again through an actor on the screen. I would have traded every minute of that broadcast for a single phone call with an ounce of humanity.

I watched that final stretch of When We Rise knowing exactly where the story was headed before the scene even played out—not because I’d read the script, but because I had lived the shape of it. The younger man Cleve pulls into his orbit, the one already deep in meth, already slipping in and out of his own skin—that wasn’t just a dramatic device to me.

It was a mirror I never asked to look into.

What hit me wasn’t what he did on screen; it was what he couldn’t do.

It's the moment where the narrative makes it clear he recognizes the pattern—he sees another casualty from another crisis, another ghost from the plague years, and realizes he cannot change the outcome. When he steps back and draws that hard line, the series frames it as a quiet act of survival, the only reasonable choice left to an exhausted elder.

Maybe it was.

Sitting in my living room watching it, though, I wasn’t thinking about his survival. I was watching my own life being translated into something clean, tidy, and contained. A version of me that existed purely to justify the boundary, where all the toxicity and blame belonged entirely to the addict on the floor.

That isn’t how it felt from the inside.

From where I stood, there was no gentle, cinematic realization. There was no elder statesman calmly choosing self-preservation. It was a violent collision of meth, sex, shame, historic grief, and national trauma crashing down on one bedroom at the exact same moment.

And it broke me.

It was me not even understanding the fire I was trapped in while the ceiling caved in. It was him seeing it—really seeing it—and deciding, in a split second, exactly what I was.

And what I wasn’t worth saving for.

Watching the series, I could understand his exhaustion. I could understand the bottomless reservoir of grief that made him walk away from one more drowning man. I don’t dispute that, and I don't resent his limits.

What hurts is everything the camera cut around: the speed of the blade, the brutality of the moment, and the way a chosen family can vaporize in five minutes on a Tuesday morning. On screen, it becomes a noble lesson about knowing when to let go.

In my life, it was the morning I was discarded.

The strangest part of surviving it is being able to see both truths at once. I can understand why he stepped back. And I can still feel the cold mark of what it did to my soul when he did.

I have lived long enough now to make peace with the wreckage. I know the weight of the ghosts he was carrying, and I understand why an exhausted man might choose his own survival over another drowning boy.

But survival doesn’t require erasure. It doesn't require turning a friend into a punchline or pretending they never existed just to keep a legacy clean.

Still—

“Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable.”

— Blanche DuBois, Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire