For Bush It's All Downhill

It's Friday morning and I'm flying out of Burbank to Oakland. Not glamorous, I know, but then it beats writing all day in a sweltering office with the dog snoring on the couch. And I'm trying to lift my carry-on bag into the overhead compartment. It is not going well, not at all, but the extremely cute guy in the aisle seat says, "Here let ME do that for you!" I'm tempted to look around and ask, "Who said that?" but instead I just let the cute guy hoist my luggage and thank him a little too profusely than is called for on a Friday morning. Because he's just so NICE.

Then another 40-something guy takes the middle seat. He's chatty and jolly and immediately turns to me and sticks out his hand. "Hi! I'm Tom. What's your name?" I feel like I'm in kindergarten all over again. Tom is a graphic designer who lives not three miles from me. Get out! And because he recently redid his bathroom and I'm doing mine we're soon engaged in a deep discussion about subway tile. "I have a whole lot left over. Why don't you come over and take some of mine?" he offers.

Tom also happens to know the cute guy, who's an ER pediatrics doc at UCLA. Who in turn happens to know some other guys sitting a few rows back with big grins. Get out! This is all getting a little too Six Degrees of Separation for me. What is this, a party? It turns out it IS a party! Underneath his cap the cute doc has a festive swatch of blue hair. "How does it look?" he asks.

Tom and the cute ER doc--whose name I regretfully didn't get--and their friends who are all having Bloody Marys are flying to Oakland and then heading over to San Francisco for the 5th annual AIDS ride. Officially known as the AIDS/LifeCycle and founded by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. The ride goes from the city winding down the coast through Santa Cruz and on through little towns off the 101. After 585 miles it rolls into LA.

Let's see today is Day 4, which means my new best friends are somewhere between King City and Paso Robles. Hi guys!

They tell me this year's event has 2200 riders and has raised $8 million. These guys not to mention the gay community in general could teach George Bush a thing or two about cutting the deficit. Not to mention actual bike riding. They could also teach Bush and the other bigots in Washington who tried--unsuccessfully, I'm pleased to say--to get a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage how to win friends. And how Americans really feel about gay people.

This is Tom's third year doing the ride. Part of the route goes straight through the center of California's conservative farm belt, home to lots of God-fearing Christians. You'd think that could be, well, dicey. I mean, we ARE talking hundreds of gay men on bikes suddenly appearing like a mirage out of the golden hills. Not to mention the roadies in Dolly Parton costumes cheering them on. (There are women on the ride, I feel compelled to point out. And straight men. Just not as many.)

Yet in the smallest of these isolated towns the ride is a spirited community event. Schools give the kids the day off. Children make signs and come out to greet the cyclists. They sell lemonade to raise money and flood the riders with warm fuzzy letters of hope. "It's incredibly moving," Tom said.

You think that's moving. One year they were stopped in the middle of nowhere when some farmworkers came out of the fields. And reached into their dusty pockets and pulled out change and a few dollar bills and put it into the riders' hands. Eleven dollars they gave.

This year marks the 25th anniversary since the first cases of AIDS were identified. I wrote one of those stories early on, when the stigma of HIV was so great that families disowned their dying sons. Or lied about the cause of death on their children's death certificates. Yet we're still fighting that battle. Still trying to get the bigotry out of public life. Still treating gay people like they're not fully human.

So I opened my wallet and handed Tom a check. "That is really nice!" he gushed. He said he'd give it to another cyclist who hadn't met his fundraising target. And then he looked at the name on the check. "Oh my GOD!" he said. "My name is Gable too! Only it's spelled differently!"

And then we hugged.

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