I suppose I started out talking to my memory of the nineteen year old Jim--the guy who I became closer to in the first three months that I knew him, 13 years ago at college, than I have ever been to anyone. With all the time and distance, and all the differences in our lives, I was afraid that closeness would be completely gone. But it isn't. I found I could talk to the real 31 year old friend before me just as easily as I could to the memory.

Jim lives with four housemates: Michael ("One of my first lovers after I came to California."), Gary, Ralph and Jeffrey--Jim's lover now for about four years. Actually they live in two houses. Both buildings were part of the shanty town that sprang up after the 1906 earthquake and someone bought them, dragged them up the hill, fit them onto one very tiny lot, and lived in them for thirty years. About three years ago, the five of them bought them as joint tenants and they have been fixing them up ever since. Ralph is a landscape architect and he is trying to establish a tropical plant sanctuary in a ten by fifteen foot stockade that is ninety percent of the "front yard." Apparently the first (and, according to Jim, the most important) thing they did was to build a deck with a hot tub in the twenty by twenty foot area that separates the two buildings. There was one naked person in the tub and another naked person sitting in a deck chair when we arrived. Jim said people were very serious about their tans in California. By the time I left I had met (around that hot tub): Gary's Matthew, Michael's George; and Bobby, Michael, Roger and Bill Rodgers (the photographer) and various spear carriers and atmospheric extras whose names I either never knew or don't remember. As I sit here thinking about it I realize just how wildly improbable the interrelations of that cast are. I don't think I have the stamina to write the Russian novel that would be needed to explain.

Late in my visit I asked Jim what he felt like, living in San Francisco.

"Like Peter Pan," he said.

I know what he means. San Francisco can be Never Never Land and Peter Pan is forever young, though maybe grown just a little bit gaunt. If staying young for a long time means that your life is a bit repetitious, it can still be fun.

Jim still has a personal integrity that I can respect, though I'm not sure his brand is or ever was exactly the same as mine. We were straightforward and honest with each other. I can still trust him. Time and circumstance have moved us far apart, but I still love him.

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