Jaime Gill
The first time I climbed these steps, Jason led the way. It was the day we moved in together, right into the heart of the Castro, and he wouldn’t let me rest even after hours of hauling boxes up two flights of stairs. He’d heard about the view from Corona Heights and wanted to climb to catch the sunset. I suspected the real draw was the name of the pathway up: the Vulcan Stairway. “Let’s boldly go,” he joked that first day, and too often after. He’d told me he was a Trekkie on our second date, so I knew what I was getting into.
I remember trying to hide how overwhelmed I felt when we got to the summit. It wasn’t just the panoramic view, it was the people. All those gay men, so many couples just like us. I’d only been in San Francisco for five months—fresh off the bus was how Jason introduced me to friends—and still wasn’t used to men holding hands and kissing in public. Impossible freedom. Frightening freedom. I knew there must have been gay men back in my home state of Kansas, just like I knew there was a small mountain somewhere in its flat expanse—I’d just never seen any of them.
Jason surprised me with a bottle of champagne and two plastic glasses he’d hidden at the bottom of his bag, pulling them out like a magician revealing a white rabbit at a kids’ party. We toasted our future as the sun splattered over the distant Pacific, painting the city in purples and oranges. Jason apologized that the champagne was warm—our new apartment’s electricity still wasn’t connected. I said it didn’t matter, I already felt light-headed. I was starting a life I’d thought for years was an impossible dream. I’d never lived with a man before. Hell, I’d never lived in any place my parents didn’t own.
We kissed, of course, and made wild plans to decorate our new place that we never got round to. I spent so long staring into his blue eyes—trying to carve the moment into my memory—that he got embarrassed and told me to knock it off.
Sad math: Jason died 15 months ago but couldn’t walk for his final five. That makes this my first return visit in 20 months. That’s almost two years, though they feel like a hundred.
Before he got so sick that even his terrier spirit couldn’t bully his ruined lungs up these steps, we came for the sunsets at least once a week. Given San Francisco’s mercurial weather, we could never be sure if we’d get fireworks or a damp squib. “That’s what makes it fun,” Jason said. God, he was relentless.
This morning, the 220 steps exhaust me. I can’t even blame pneumonia—it’s been months since my last bout. I take a break, lean against some wooden fencing, and peer across the Victorian houses the stairway zig-zags through. I think there used to be more people in their gardens, sitting in deckchairs or fussing over geraniums. Well. There used to be more people.
I take a deep jasmine-laced breath and realize even as I do that it doesn’t make me cough. Small miracles are still miracles. Then I force myself onward until the trees grow sparse and the birdsong thins. I’m alone when I finally reach the scrubby, red-rock summit—it’s still early.
I sit on an east-facing bench and look across the neat grid of the Castro, rainbow flags fluttering. Beyond that a gauzy strip of bay and—in between—the squat red shape of San Francisco General, where Jason died. He wanted to spend his last days at home, but the end came too fast to make the necessary arrangements. Even that most paltry of happy endings was denied him.
I unfold today’s Bay Area Reporter and read the headline for the third time today. NO OBITS, it still declares. The article explains that no new AIDS deaths were reported to the paper over the last week, for the first time since 1981.
Some are calling the new miracle meds a ‘drug cocktail.’ “Long Island Iced T-Cells,” Jason joked when the first reports of the breakthrough emerged. But by the time the drugs were available, it was too late for Jason. For thirteen million people, or so I’ve read. That adds up to fifteen San Franciscos, a number my brain can’t wrap itself around.
I hear scuffed steps behind me. A wheezing old man shuffles over and settles himself on the other end of the bench. Actually, he isn’t old—just whittled away, prematurely grey and hollow-cheeked. And yet… he climbed those steps too.
The stranger catches his breath, then eyes the newspaper in my hands and nods at that stark headline. “Do you think it’ll last?” His voice is surprisingly deep and rich.
There have been so many false hopes that my answer surprises me. “You know, I think it might. I can tell my doctor has a good feeling about the new meds, though he always adds a hundred caveats.”
“My doctor’s the same,” the stranger says. He has the residue of a southern accent. So many accents in San Francisco, this sanctuary that turned into a cemetery. “It’s funny. I haven’t made any plans in years. What will we all do?”
New math: in two years it will be the year 2000. If I live the average male American lifespan of 78 years, as my doctor says is perfectly possible, I’ll see 26 years of the coming millennium. 2026. The idea makes me dizzy—a vertigo of time.
“I suppose we’ll just have to live,” I say.
The not-old man laughs, chest rattling. We each smile as we look across our wounded city, its streets teeming with survivors and ghosts.
#
Jaime Gill is a queer, British-born writer happily exiled in Cambodia, where he works and volunteers for nonprofits. He reads, runs, boxes, travels, writes, and occasionally socialises. His stories have appeared in Missouri Review, The Forge, Fractured Lit, Trampset, f(r)iction, and more. He’s won awards including a Bridport Prize, the Luminaire Prose Award and New Millennium Writers Award, and been a finalist for the Bath Short Story Award, Smokelong Grand Micro and Oxford Flash Fiction Award. He’s a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. He’s currently writing a novel, script, and yet more short stories. Website and newsletter at: www.jaimegill.com.