When We Rise

by Cleve Jones

  I don’t remember when we figured it out, but I think it was many years later. Joanne’s father was a ruthless gangster and right-hand man to the legendary Jewish mob boss Meyer Lansky. He helped Lansky organize the conference that brought the Jewish mob and Italian Mafia together, creating an international crime syndicate. He ran gambling operations for Lansky in California and Cuba and would oversee gambling at the Sands and Fremont casinos in Las Vegas until 1964, when he was arrested by federal agents but allowed to immigrate to Israel. His death in his Munich hotel room in February of 1977 had occurred under mysterious circumstances.

  After a few days of eating and drinking in Rome with Joanne, Scott and I headed off to Greece for a week on Mykonos. The crowd at Pierros was huge and the boys displayed on the sands of Super Paradise beach were better looking than ever. We wandered up and down the beach and danced each night until dawn with beautiful young men from all over the world. Like before, there were many conversations about music and fashion and new clubs, but there was something new in the air, too. Many were eager to hear of the riot in Barcelona, the marches in San Francisco, and the gay scene in Amsterdam, where the government seemed to embrace the gay community with little controversy.

  Scott wanted to stay longer, but he had to get back to work and I was increasingly homesick for San Francisco, so we headed back to Munich and the house on Barer Strasse. Klaus was there to welcome us, just back from another trip to Afghanistan in his custom-built Volkswagen with the false panels and hidden compartments. I marveled at the bricks of hashish he’d smuggled across the 6,300 kilometers from Kabul to Munich. Some of the bricks were stamped with gold leaf. “Yeah, man, I drove straight through, no problem. Took me four days.” I was impressed.

  Klaus was pleased. “So we make a party next weekend? Someplace beautiful in the country, yes?”

  Somewhere beautiful in the country turned out to be the hills above the castle Neuschwanstein, about ninety minutes south of Munich. We packed water, bread, cheese, and some fruit and drove there in great spirits in the van, smoking black Afghani hash and listening to Andy Gibb, Fleetwood Mac, and James Taylor on the American military radio station. We sang along to Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Just a Song Before I Go” and laughed at Klaus’s voice. He was handsome and sweet but couldn’t carry a tune to save his life.

  As we got close to the famous castle, Klaus abruptly exited the autobahn and drove us up into the forested hills overlooking mad King Ludwig’s fairytale creation. We pulled off the road and Klaus announced that he had something special for us this afternoon. Scott and I had to pee, and when we returned to the van Klaus was grinning and held out his hand, palm up. In it was a tiny vial of dark brown glass. “You have no idea how hard it is to find this. I had to go to Switzerland.”

  Scott and I looked at each other. Klaus always had a surprise.

  “It’s pure, man, absolutely pure. You’ve never had anything like this in America, I bet.”

  I was about to ask what it was, but then I saw the little box of sugar cubes on the dashboard and knew the answer.

  Klaus produced an eyedropper and carefully drew one drop of the clear liquid for each cube, placing one on Scott’s tongue and one on mine, then popping the last in his mouth with a grin. “LSD-25, man, like only the Swiss can make. Get ready.”

  Klaus moved the van farther off the side of the road and under some shady trees. We put the food in the cooler and passed a canteen of water between us. We knew we probably wouldn’t think to eat or drink for some time. I felt my passport in my back pocket and some deutschmarks wadded up in another. I gave them to Klaus, and he hid our IDs and cash in one of the secret compartments.

  I felt the sensation of tiny electric bubbles moving up my spine from the tailbone to the back of my neck. All the hairs on my head and arms stood on end. I arched my back, inhaled deeply, and nodded as Scott flung open the van door and we tumbled out. Klaus had the presence of mind to lock the van and tie the keys to his braided leather necklace. We stood by the van, on the crest of a small hill, looking down into the lush green valley below.

  Scott moved his arms like a crane, whooped loudly, and flung himself out and down the slope, shedding scarves and feathers and beads, grinning from ear to ear, hair streaming behind, whooping and bobbing as Klaus and I launched ourselves into the air behind him.

  The hill was soft with grasses and loam and the bright green of summer. We flew noisily down it, sometimes falling, somersaulting, laughing, shouting, and losing our clothes along the way, to land, finally, breathless, on our backs beneath a canopy of beech trees.

  The quiet of the little valley silenced us and we wandered apart, naked, into the forest.

  I found a small depression in the ground, dense with soft dark green moss and ferns. The sensation of my bare skin touching the earth was overwhelming, and I felt tears on my face as I settled deep into the warm moist ground. I smelled the dirt and the sharp scent of spruce and fir trees. I heard the whirring insects and calling birds. I lay very still and felt the clean good air enter my lungs with each breath.

  And then I opened my eyes and looked up through the beech leaves at the enormous blue sky and the white clouds rolling around and turning inside out, and I gasped with wonder as I felt myself lifted up and out of the ground and into the sky, all the while looking down and back at my poor skinny strong beautiful fragile pale tan body splayed out in the dirt below.

  I held my breath, there in the sky, for the longest time, and watched from above and listened as the forest took my body into itself. I watched the tiny black ants, spiders, and caterpillars crawl over my legs. I saw the big red ants arrive in long columns and heard the crunch of their mandibles and felt their tug on my skin. Then the mice came, and the larger rodents and the crows, nibbling away as I watched my flesh be taken. The warm sky held me up, and my body felt the teeth of the creatures swarming over me, and beneath me the sharp spears of new fern tendrils rising from the earth to uncoil and pierce my chest, and it felt good, like the kisses and caresses of a rough lover. Soon I was almost gone; only the outline of my limbs remained, covered with moss, and the ribs poking out from the soil like branches fallen from a tree in last year’s storm.

  I was dead and it was perfect.

  I hovered silently in the wind just above the treetops.

  Scott giggled.

  I lifted my head up from the dirt and saw him, a bit off to my left, gathering the scarves and necklaces he had flung off on the way down, hanging the multicolored lengths of silk, leather, and silver around his neck. With his skinny naked legs and the auburn hair piled up all over his head, covered with twigs and mud, he whooped at me and raised his arms, a mad and messy molting crane.

  Behind him I saw big ferns rustle and Klaus emerged, looking angry, his face burnt tomato red by the sun. He’d found some clay and striped his face and chest. His round little belly was red as well, and the head of his cock looked like a strawberry. Scott giggled again, I laughed hard, and finally Klaus gave in and we all leaned on each other, embracing and laughing until we could barely breathe.

  Eventually we began the long climb up to the van, but Scott, suddenly very serious, stopped us after a few minutes. “I don’t know what happened to you guys today, but I saw myself die and I felt no pain or fear. It was kind of beautiful.”

  I tried to describe what I had experienced for a few sentences before giving up. Klaus attempted a similar story at greater length to similar result. Words failed us completely. Then Scott started giggling again. “I need a bath, let’s go home.”

  Klaus objected, “No way, guys; we have to see the castle.”

  We retrieved our clothes, dressed, cleaned ourselves up as best we could, ate some cheese and fruit, and drove down to Neuschwanstein to wander with the tourists around King Ludwig II of Bavaria’s retreat and tribute to composer Richard Wagner. Scott was impressed by the over-the-top architecture but would have preferred his bath and whispered to me when Klaus could not hear, “I don’t even
like Wagner; wasn’t he like Hitler’s favorite? Fucking Nazis, can we please go home now?”

  Later, as we went to bed in our room on Barer Strasse after washing up and brushing our teeth, and setting the carafe of drinking water on the table between us, and carefully winding the alarm clock so Scott would not be late for work, he said good night to me and turned out the little lamp by his bed. We stretched our toes and feet gratefully between the cool, clean sheets, nestled into the pillows, and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 15

  Supervisor Harvey Bernard Milk

  CLEVE, I LOVED YOUR ARTICLE IN THE Sentinel ABOUT THE RIOT IN Barcelona. That must have been very cool, especially for you.” Marvin looked at me over his latte and smiled. I was confused.

  “What article?”

  Marvin laughed, “Your first-person report from the frontlines of the new gay Spanish revolution, of course. It was very dramatic, so you.”

  We were sitting in Café Flore on Market at Noe Street on a warm afternoon in late August 1977. I’d just returned from Munich, and Marvin was now working at the café part-time as a cashier, after Dennis Peron’s Island closed. They’d built the café a few years before; it looked to me like some sort of prefab greenhouse, but it soon became one of our favorite places to drink coffee, cruise, and get all the 411, especially on a sunny day like this one.

  “But I didn’t send a report to the Sentinel, I sent a letter to Howard.”

  “Well, Howard gave it to Harvey Milk and he got it published in the Sentinel and everyone read it. Relax, it was good. I saved you a copy.”

  What the hell? I hugged Marvin, waved to Mahmoud and Ahmad, the café’s owners, and walked over to Howard Wallace’s apartment. Sure enough, he had passed my letter on for publication and it had been printed. That was an important moment for me. In Barcelona I witnessed confirmation that our new movement was going global. I was profoundly moved by this and inspired, and I’d written about it and people had read my account and themselves been inspired. I had been useful. It felt very good.

  And I had been published! Yes, it was a small gay newspaper, printed every other week and distributed free through the gay and lesbian bars of San Francisco, but it was a first for me.

  Howard had other news and called Claude Wynne, who joined us a few minutes later, and we went for a walk around Duboce Park.

  “Cleve, you’ve been traveling—have you heard anything about the Coors beer boycott?” asked Howard.

  “No,” I responded, “other than it tastes like cat piss.” If I had learned nothing else during my time in Bavaria, it was contempt for American beer, especially Coors.

  Earlier that year, in April, the Teamsters struck the Coors Brewery plant in Golden, Colorado. The AFL-CIO called for a boycott and enlisted support for the striking workers in new and unusual ways. Directed by David Sickler, the AFL-CIO’s national boycott director, the campaign pushed well beyond organized labor’s usual reach to involve racial and ethnic minorities, feminists, and—especially—the gay and lesbian community in the boycott.

  Howard Wallace and Claude Wynne saw a unique opportunity to link the gay cause with labor. Fear of job discrimination was pervasive in the community. We wanted unions to defend us and we wanted gay people to support unions as well. The Coors boycott was an unexpected gift.

  “Harvey Milk has agreed to help, and so has Morris Kight in LA.” Howard was grinning like he always did when we were about to have fun. Morris Kight was one of the original gay liberation guys in LA, quite a character and kind of a pain in the ass, but still able to organize, grab media attention, and shake things up.

  People we didn’t know, all over the country, also heard about the boycott and figured out for themselves what this new coalition of labor, women, minorities, and gays could mean. The word spread rapidly through the expanding network of national, regional, and local gay newspapers as well as by word of mouth, leafleting, and demonstrations (usually involving cases of Coors beer gurgling theatrically down a gutter or toilet).

  In San Francisco, a Teamsters organizer named Allan Baird was assigned to the Coors boycott. Baird was born in the Castro neighborhood; his wife grew up in the building next door to the one rented by Harvey Milk and Scott Smith when they opened their Castro Camera shop in 1973. Allan was around Harvey and Howard’s age, but like them had a great ability to charm and encourage the young. Harvey and Allan became close friends, each seeing clearly that an alliance between the gay movement and organized labor could be a powerful force.

  Within a few months gay and lesbian activists got Coors beer out of almost every gay bar in North America. Emboldened and intrigued by the notion of using gay buying power to push political issues, Harvey and others announced a boycott of Florida orange juice to retaliate for juice queen Anita Bryant’s Save Our Children campaign in Dade County. I’ve never seen figures relating to the economic impact of the orange juice boycott, and it may have been negligible, but it certainly spooked Bryant’s industry employers. The Coors boycott, however, was demonstrably effective, costing the company tens of millions of dollars in sales. In 1977 Coors enjoyed a 40 percent share of the giant California market. By 1984, that share had dipped to 14 percent. In gratitude, Allan Baird presented Harvey with a battered old red and white Teamsters bullhorn; the dents and scratches had been acquired over the years on various picket lines and marches at the receiving end of police batons.

  Harvey was on a roll. As the November elections approached he was everywhere, and I began to run into him with greater frequency. He told me how much he had enjoyed my letter from Spain, told me it was well written, and asked many questions about what I had seen in Barcelona. I thanked him for getting it published. He looked very different, and very much the candidate. I’d never really been impressed by Harvey before, but there was a quality to him now that made me feel almost shy. Harvey was one of the architects of the new progressive coalition that brought together labor unions, feminists, racial and ethnic minorities, gay and lesbian people, environmentalists, and neighborhood activists. But Harvey’s greatest love was for young people, and I would be one of many—gay and straight, boys and girls—who would benefit from his mentorship.

  I was still barely speaking to my father and I found myself really looking forward to those moments when I was alone with Harvey. He could be impatient sometimes, but he had a remarkable ability to meet anyone—young people in particular—find some common ground, and connect. The more I saw him, the more I respected this attribute that was both a commitment and a source of strength. Harvey genuinely liked people, all different kinds of people. We’re all so accustomed to the politicians shaking hands, making eye contact for the cameras and all the other bullshit. But Harvey really loved people. He could find common interest, humor, and respect talking with just about any type of person one could imagine. From wealthy white ladies in Pacific Heights to refugees from Central America, from gay bartenders to rank-and-file firefighters, if you met Harvey, you wanted to tell him your story.

  He pushed me to enroll in school again, this time at SF State, and bought me a sandwich when I showed him my class schedule. It wasn’t just me. He was always encouraging the young ones who’d run away and been on the street to go to school. A great many of the students at State lived in the 5th Supervisorial District, and I maintained a steady flow of “Milk for Supervisor” posters and leaflets onto campus.

  One day I jumped on the 8-Market bus heading up to Castro from a trip downtown and saw Harvey sitting by himself halfway back. He smiled and waved me over. He was obviously taking the day off; he was alone, wearing faded jeans and a maroon wool pullover with a couple of small rips and errant threads. He looked tired but happy.

  “Hi, Harvey, what’s going on?”

  “I just saw proof I’m going to win the election.” He nodded. “Look, you can see for yourself over there.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about because from what I was hearing Harvey’s campaign was in big trouble. All the “respectable g
ays,” like Advocate publisher David Goodstein, were lining up behind a guy named Rick Stokes—Harvey’s principal opponent. Many straight liberals and progressives were backing Terence Hallinan, from the famous lefty family. There were candidates from the Duboce Triangle, Haight-Ashbury, Noe Valley, Castro, and Diamond Heights, all the neighborhoods of District 5 in this new, first round of district elections.

  “Look there.” Harvey pointed through the bus window at a large apartment building across the street.

  The first thing I saw was the garish and outsized STOKES FOR SUPERVISOR sign that had been erected, obviously by the owner of the building, on the rooftop, visible for miles in stark black and red letters on a bright white background. I couldn’t imagine what part of this view Harvey found comforting.

  “Look more closely,” he said. “At the windows.”

  My eyes flicked up and down the floors of the apartment building and then I saw it: the glaring STOKES sign on the roof may have dominated the view, but when one looked closer, when one looked at the windows into the homes of the actual tenants who lived within that building, then one saw the small blue and white squares in almost every window of every apartment. Small, but defiant: “Harvey Milk for Supervisor.”