When We Rise

by Cleve Jones

  We also understood that the scientific response—the logical approach promoted by epidemiologists, researchers, mental health officials, and physicians—was not in conflict with the activist response. Compassion, human rights, and solidarity were part of the answer to this tragedy. In city after city, the Quilt was unfolded as the centerpiece for locally organized education and fundraising efforts, and we witnessed the extraordinary ability of ordinary Americans to rise and meet the new challenge.

  As the next display of the Quilt approached, I began to work on a speech that might convey some of what we had learned from our travels across the country. Soon Reagan would be gone from the White House. The 1988 election would happen just weeks after the display, and it didn’t look good for the Democrats. Whoever won, we would be fighting not just for congressional or presidential action; we’d be fighting the corporate interests and an entwined bureaucracy.

  I labored over that speech for weeks, acutely conscious that it would be delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had told the nation of his dream.

  The number of panels in the Quilt had grown from 1,920 to almost 9,000. The grass of the National Mall was being reseeded, but the National Park Service forgave our brutalization of the lawn and gave us permission to use the White House Ellipse. The Quilt was unfolded and the reading of the names went on for hours. That night we marched with our candles and I gave my speech, the best I could do.

  We stand here tonight in the shadow of monuments, great structures of stone and metal created by the American people to honor our nation’s dead and to proclaim the principles of our democracy. Here we remember the soldiers of wars won and lost. Here we trace with our fingers the promises of justice and liberty etched deep by our ancestors in marble and bronze.

  Today we have borne in our arms and on our shoulders a new monument to our nation’s Capitol. It is not made of granite or steel and was not built by stonecutters and engineers. Our monument is sewn of fabric and thread, and was created in homes across America and wherever friends and families gathered to remember their loved ones lost to AIDS.

  We bring a Quilt. We bring it here today with shocked sorrow at its vastness and the speed with which its acreage redoubles. We bring it to this place at this time accompanied by our deepest hope: that the leaders of our country will see the evidence of our labor and our love and that they will be moved.

  We bring a Quilt. We have carried this Quilt to every part of our country and we have seen that the American people know how to defeat AIDS. We have seen that the answers exist and that tens of thousands of Americans have already stepped forward to accept their share and more of this painful struggle. We have seen the compassion and skill with which the American people fight AIDS and care for people with AIDS. We have witnessed the loving dedication of volunteers, families, and friends and the extraordinary bravery of people with AIDS, working beyond exhaustion. And everywhere, we have seen death.

  In the past fifteen months AIDS has killed over twenty thousand Americans. Fifteen months from now our country’s new president will deliver his second State of the Union address. On that day America will have lost more sons and daughters to AIDS than we lost fighting in Southeast Asia—those whose names we can read today from a polished black stone wall.

  We bring a Quilt. It grows day by day and night by night, and yet its expanse does not begin to cover our grief nor does its weight outweigh the heaviness within our hearts.

  For we carry with us a burdensome truth that must be simply spoken. History will record that in the last quarter of the twentieth century a new and deadly virus emerged, and that the one nation on earth with the resources, knowledge, and institutions necessary to respond to the new epidemic failed to do so. History will further record that our nation’s failure was the result of ignorance, prejudice, greed, and fear in the Oval Office and the halls of Congress.

  The American people are ready and able to defeat AIDS. We know how it can be done and we know the people who can do it. It will require a lot of money and hard work. It will require national leadership. And it will require us to understand as a nation that there is no conflict between the compassionate response and the scientific response, no conflict between love and logic. Some will question: how could that be? We answer: how could it not?

  We bring a Quilt. We hope it will help people to remember. We hope it will teach our leaders to act.

  CHAPTER 28

  Ricardo

  I HARDLY EVER SAW ATTICUS. IT HAD BEEN THAT WAY SINCE WE MOVED in together. Two years later, he was working south of San Francisco, in what is now called Silicon Valley. I was traveling with the Quilt, giving speeches at conferences and on campuses. One night driving home late on the 101 he almost fell asleep and nearly drove off the road. We agreed he should get an apartment closer to work. We never actually broke up. We just drifted apart. Landlady Mila would see me on the sidewalk and ask, “Where is Atty-koos?” with a sad smile. Part of me knew that he was one of the kindest, smartest, and most ethical men I had ever met and wanted to fight to keep him. But a greater part of me thought that I would soon be dead. Atticus represented a normal life, one that was probably not in the cards for me.

  I stayed on the road, visited every state, spoke to crowds large and small, hugged weeping parents, was embraced by thousands of strangers, watched the Quilt unfold in villages and big cities, kept vigil in hospices and intensive care units, crossed off entire pages of names in my address book, and again, each morning, examined every inch of my body for that first telltale spot.

  We had all learned the awful vocabulary by then. We knew the opportunistic infections that attacked once the immune system’s all-important “T-cells” had been destroyed by the virus. Candidiasis. Cryptoccosis. Pneumocystis carinii. Lymphoma. Toxoplasmosis. Cytomegalovirus. Cryptospiridiosis. Kaposi’s sarcoma. Mycobacterium avium complex.

  We knew the treatments too, though none of them seemed to work very well once the basic workings of the immune system were disrupted. AZT was the first drug approved to treat HIV. But it seemed to me that my friends who took it died faster than those who, like me, were waiting for something better.

  I got to Austin, Texas, the last week of April 1988. Mike Smith was already there, coordinating a large display of the Quilt in conjunction with the first statewide march for gay and lesbian rights. It was very hot and I was already exhausted from traveling and had not yet had time to write a speech.

  After the march I waited in the shade of the state capitol, listening to the speeches and music until it was my turn to speak. I was thirsty and went in search of a water fountain. There was only one functioning and I found a long line waiting to drink. I took my place in line, lost in thought. There was some jostling and I turned to see who had bumped into me. I saw a boy, just a bit shorter than me, with thick black hair swept back from his forehead. His big dark eyes. The eyelashes. His cheekbones. His smile. Oh man.

  “Do you live here in Austin?” he asked.

  “No, I’m from San Francisco.”

  “I’m from Houston but I’m going to school here, what’s your name?”

  In the distance I could hear the public address system: “Will Cleve Jones please report to the speaker’s platform.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  His name was Ricardo.

  I was staying at the Driscoll Hotel. We got sandwiches and took them to my room. Soon enough we were naked and in bed. The smooth strength of his body took my breath away and the way he looked so solemnly into my eyes as we kissed left me trembling. We made love for hours and I didn’t say a word.

  After we were done, we lay for a while in each other’s arms before he gently slipped out of bed and into the bathroom. I heard the shower start and my heart sank. Why hadn’t I told him? I told strangers every day that I had AIDS. I told CBS News. I’d told my family and all my friends. But I had not told him. We’d been safe; I wasn’t concerned that I had infected him. But I wanted mor
e of him, and how on earth could I tell him now? He would never forgive me.

  He spent a long time in the shower and I devised a plan. When he was done showering I would tell him that I was late for a meeting and get his address and phone number. When I got back to San Francisco I would write to him and try to explain how overwhelmed I was by our meeting and that I just couldn’t bring myself to say the words I knew I was obliged to say. I would ask him to forgive me and let me see him again. I would tell him I thought he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

  The shower stopped running. I felt sick with anxiety. More minutes dragged past. Then the door opened and he stood there, a white towel around his waist, drops of water still on his chest and arms, damp locks of black hair touching his eyebrows. I couldn’t breathe. Then I saw the tears flowing from his deep dark eyes. I just looked at him, my throat too clenched to speak.

  “You’re going to hate me when I tell you,” he said.

  It took me just a moment to understand.

  I said, “I don’t think so.”

  Ricardo finished his semester in Austin and moved in with me on Hancock Street in San Francisco.

  CHAPTER 29

  Loma Prieta

  GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH DEFEATED MICHAEL DUKAKIS THAT November. It was a rout; Bush took forty states. The Democrats held both the House and the Senate but few showed any real commitment to gay and lesbian rights or the fight against HIV and AIDS.

  I was often exhausted but had trouble sleeping. Ricardo and I both had occasional night sweats, sometimes drenching the sheets.

  I tried to travel less and Ricardo got an office job in a skyscraper in the financial district. Ricardo found a Spanish language TV station. We’d eat dinner together, then he’d watch Mexican soap operas and cartoons from the sofa, sometimes laughing or talking back to the TV, while I wrote my speeches and articles in the large closet that served as my office.

  One afternoon at Café Flore, we watched a very frail and emaciated man shuffle by on the sidewalk. When he got closer we saw the purple-grey lesions on his face. Ricardo looked down at his coffee cup. “I can’t do that,” he said. “When I get sick I’m going to kill myself.”

  I’d had this conversation with so many people over the past eight years. Marvin had thought about suicide but said no, he was afraid it might damage his soul.

  I told Ricardo to stay strong and believe in a cure. No one was allowed to give up. He smiled and nodded but his eyes were wet.

  Bush took office on January 29, 1989. The Quilt was on tour again but I had less and less to do with the running of the NAMES Project. I had little interest and even less ability in administration. Mike and the core group kept things running despite the terrible attrition rate of our volunteers. Many of those who had been there to help us with the first display were dead now. Their shoes were filled by another wave of volunteers. Then they died. That’s how we lived then. Our friends died; we made new friends; then they died. We found new friends yet again; then watched as they died. It went on and on and on.

  In Eastern Europe the Soviet Union was breaking apart. Democratic elections were held in several former Soviet states. In March the first contested elections in Russia delivered a defeat to the Communist Party. By May, millions of Chinese students were challenging the Chinese Communist Party.

  Ricardo was annoyed that I was going to Montreal for the International AIDS Conference in June but he eased up when he saw how nervous I was about trying to give a speech in French. There was a lot of news at the conference, but for me it was all overshadowed by the confrontation that took place in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square as the Chinese military attacked the thousands of students and workers who had occupied the square. Delegates to the International AIDS Conference left the assembly hall to march in Montreal’s Chinatown in protest of the massacre.

  We unfolded the Quilt again in Washington on October 11. President Bush had campaigned as the face of what he called “compassionate conservatism.” He spoke of the American people as a “thousand points of light” capable of self-sacrifice and charity to address the nation’s challenges. He called for a “kinder, gentler nation.” But he ignored our invitation to view the Quilt and speak with us about his plans to address the pandemic.

  One week later we were back in San Francisco, I was on the telephone at the NAMES Project headquarters, and Ricardo was at work downtown. It was just a few minutes past five o’clock; I knew I had time to pick up some groceries before Ricardo got home.

  Suddenly, it felt like a big rig truck smashed into the building. I was knocked to my knees. The floor and walls buckled and I heard the sound of breaking glass, screams, and car alarms.

  As the aftershocks continued, we tried to sleep in Dolores Park that night, too afraid to go indoors. To the north we could see the glow of fires in the Marina District. It had taken Ricardo two hours to get out of his office building and back home, where I met him on the sidewalk. It was his first earthquake and he was still shaking as the sun began to rise over the Bay. “I don’t think I like it here, Cleve.”

  He was angry when I left town a few weeks later to attend the annual conference of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, PFLAG, held that year in Detroit. He was still freaked out from the earthquake but I think PFLAG pushed his buttons a bit due to the fact that his own parents were anti-gay.

  He was cold when I returned and didn’t want to hear my story about meeting Rosa Parks and going to church with her and having lunch together after the service. She had sewn panels for the Quilt and been so amazing and gracious and kind but he didn’t want to hear about it. I tried to stay home and spend more time with him. It wasn’t enough.

  “I feel like I have to share you with everybody,” he said one night as we walked home from a restaurant on Castro Street. “Everybody around here knows you and they all want to talk to you about AIDS and politics all the time.”

  “I’m sorry,” was all I could say.

  “It’s what you have to do.” He smiled.

  We walked into our dark apartment, with the bay windows and lights of the city splayed out below. Ricardo smiled again and said, “Let’s dance.” He turned up the volume and we danced in the living room to our favorite song of the year, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” We danced and he played the CD again and we danced some more and kissed and held on to each other as hard as we could.

  CHAPTER 30

  Counting the Days

  BUSH TOOK THE NATION INTO WAR IN AUGUST 1990. WE MARCHED IN the giant protests against the Gulf War with our signs, “Money for AIDS, Not for War.”

  The death rate soared. Every Thursday morning we would pick up the Bay Area Reporter at any of the local gay bars and businesses. The obituary section grew to fill two, sometimes three full pages. Every week, almost everyone in the neighborhood would read that someone they knew had died. We lost over a thousand people a year, just in San Francisco, every year for over a decade.

  Within the ranks of the activists and throughout the community, people were bitter, exhausted by a decade of misery and death. Every day I thought about dying. I wondered how much more time I had. I wondered how much it would hurt. If I wasn’t going to have a long life, how could I make what time remained worth living?

  Bush, in our view, was perhaps less evil than Reagan, but he was still a disaster.

  William Jefferson Clinton won the Democratic nomination in July of 1992. His campaign reached out to gay and lesbian voters. Elizabeth Glaser and Bob Hattoy, both living with AIDS, addressed the Democratic National Convention.

  AIDS activists protesting the Republican National Convention in Houston were arrested and roughed up by the police.

  We unfolded the Quilt again in October 1992, this time on the grounds of the Washington Monument with panels from all fifty states and twenty-eight countries, and I spoke again to the president from the Lincoln Memorial:

  We have written letters and signed petitions. We have lobbied and we have testified. We have cared for
the ill and we have buried our dead. We have marched and we have prayed. We have been arrested, jailed, and beaten by the police. We have worn red ribbons and sewn our quilts and raised our candles to an ever-darker sky. And still we have failed.

  I began the Quilt in my backyard with the name of one man, a man I loved. The Quilt has grown and is now a monstrous thing—a terrible burden of truth and beauty and love.

  But truth and beauty and love—they hold no power here.

  The vastness of the Quilt and the speed with which it grows provides America with the greatest evidence of our failure as a people and as a nation. Three years ago, on these steps, we called upon the president of the United States to join us and stand with us upon the Quilt. Today we know better.

  Mr. President, we grow weary of counting your lies, we will not count them anymore. We will not count the Quilts, no longer count the names of loved ones lost. Now we will count the days.

  And we will go home from this place—to Alaska and New Hampshire, to Iowa and Oregon and Ohio; to small towns and big cities, to schools and farms and factories. And we will do what is required to save our lives. We will count the days.

  On November 3rd we will say yes to truth, yes to beauty, yes to love. And we still say no to your deceits, no to your cruelty, no to your hatred.

  You will not continue, we will not permit it. We know that it is our lives that are at stake. We know that you are our enemy.