Christopher Street Cover storY N|6\ ^ ^ Cleve Jones Rising By RANDY SHUTS The bright video lights flash on, bathing the comfortable living room in their shadowless, surreal glow. "We're here at the home'Tjf a San Francisco gay activist," explains the attractive blond newswoman. "After you're done seeing this documentary, stay tuned to our special edition of Nightline where we'll interview these leaders of the gay com¬ munity . some of whom were featured on this program . to get their reaction to the CBS report Gay Power, Gay Pol¬ itics in San Francisco." The lights flick off. Everyone congratulates the newscaster for her flawless delivery—everyone, that is, except the slim young man sitting next to her on the fashionable sofa. His face flushed, his knuckles white from gripping the couch's arm, he stares blankly at the television screen before him as the documentary on gay political clout in San Francisco con- ues. The young man's silent, frightened expression is hardly what one would expect from Cleve Jones, the gay activist who has been dubbed by his friends as "San Francisco's foremost media Above: Cleve Jones leading the procession queen," a young man so frequently featured on television newscasts that he commemorating the first anniversary of the long ago gave up keeping track of which stations had interviewed him the most. Milk/Moscone assassinations. On his left is But Jennifer Moscone, the daughter of the slain then, the documentary wasn't supposed to turn out this way. to mayor. Photo by John Gieske. "We're going make you a star," the CBS producers had assured him. At the Opposite: Portrait oj Cleve Jones by Rink. birthday pai ty thrown for Jones by the proiluccrs in New York City—a fete that CBS News paid for—the producers had even taken Jones aside to tell him: "Make sure your parents watch this. They'll be so |3roud ol you." During a commercial break, Cleve Jones is indeed on the phone to his parents in Tempe, Arizona, but he's not calling to soak up parentid pride; in fact, he looks as if he's about to cry. It isn't that Jones isn't emerging as tire star of the docu¬ mentary; that he clearly is. The problem is that iris co-stars i4 I Christopher Street are the motlicst assortment of characters themselves need new leaders who will ex¬ to have heen assembled on television cite instead of bore them. The radicals since the Watergate hearings:dragqueens, of the 1960s gay liberation movement public-sex aficionados in Ifuena Vista long ago fell beneath their own redun¬ Park, and a sadomasochistic "consultant" dant rhetoric, completely out of touch who plays show-and-tell with his leather with mainstream gay America. The lob¬ bag of S-M toys, cheerfully explaining byists of the 1970s gay rights movement suffer from terminal apap^mmU ~^~^\atj a. why a police night stick makes such a respectability. In the 1980s, it will be the new W chtui terrific dildo. Altogether, these are the gay media movement which will advance and elu¬ op^ihl'^c^s -<^kn jofi^ very people mom and dad always warned [c^ (tan current told us about. cidate the gay agenda, forwarding a new ^moltKn ' n/nU ^tone ~ Cleve Jones looks downright terrified breed of gay media stars like Cleve Jones. as the documentary continues. The tele¬ The story behind the making of this star ^uitci^^Jkanasco- o^a Ociif ^11 vision cameras zoom in for tight shots reads like a capsulized histdfy of what ^lyzpo'm of Cleve's face as he the last decade of viiA - y/^Ure^fft- tettpUd says all kinds of gay rights progress has wonderfully militant things that make meant to a new generation of gays who such good television. As he watches, are beginning to take leadership roles. FOR LOVERS ONLY Jones is not only worried about what his No Bars, Discos- parents will think. He is also con- concerned about how his new boss, the Atknewthe ageexactlyof fourteen,what heClevewantedJ onesto just a beautiful modem hotel on Speaker of the California Assembly, will be twhen he grew up. His classmates at a beautiful sec¬ feel about the strident statements he is Scottsdale High School near Phoenix luded beach on a making on national television. knew what they wanted to be, too: fire¬ quiet island in the There's Caribbean. certainly no dearth of stirring men, lawyers, and astronauts. But the rhetoric. When a CBS reporter asks J ones meek and, according to his own descrip¬ Write or call for how gays intend to make Mayor Diane tion, effeminate Jones had seen a tele¬ details: Feinstein keep her campaign pledges, vision story about'a strange and exotic King Frederik Jones new group in Greenwich Village called P.O. Box 1908 replies that gays can "frighten the Frederiksted her." If that's not enough to send shivers Gay Liberation Front. U.S.V.I. 00840 down the polyester suits of mass Ameri¬ "From that moment on, I wanted Dial: (809) 772-1205 can TV audiences, Jones adds that the nothing more than to be a gay activist," gay riots in San Francisco made him recalls Jones. "I wanted to go to San want to "celebrate," while he feels a Francisco and be in a Gay Freedom Day "certain amount of satisfaction" when Parade." \NeAREEO.UAL he hears that San Francisco's police are By his early adolescence, Cleve Jones afraid to venture into the city's gay was able to consider his sexual proclivi¬ WEAR THE ONLY neighborhood?. ties as part of a broader civil rights cause, EQUALITY Seldom have more militant words and this is perhaps the most significant been spoken on national television. Over¬ factor to consider in assessing this new TEE SHIRT night, 25-year-old Cleve Jones will breed of gay activists. The current reign- emerge as one of the gay movemeniifcs^g elders of the gay movement emerged major media stars. Yet tonight, as he from a generation which generally did EQUALITY IN makes his national debut, Jones's head not fathom the notion of sex-as-civil- is swarming with contradictions. The rights until they were in their twenties media, which he had so gainfuLvi manip¬ —and often thirties. Jones and other gay 9P 8© ulated locally, has manipulated him into activists were pre-teens at the time of SHIRT AVAILABLE IN a starring role in one of the most start- the Stonewall riot, and they escaped the tortuous 8, M, L, or XL. lingly anti-gay treatises of the latter years of concealment and self- third of the twentieth century. More¬ doubt that the late bloomers suffered. in your choice of over, within hours, he will have to re¬ In Kinsey terminology, Jones grew up black or red w/white turn to the state capitol in Sacramento, as a perfect 6. 50/50 Cotton/Polyester where Jones-the-militant-iconoclast will Jones cites one outstanding aspect of $7.50 EACH have to be reconciled with Jones-the-leg- his earh' personality that played a major plus $1.00 Trans. Fee islative-aide who holds one of the most role in motivating his gay activism: he NYS Res. add 7% tax important establishment jobs of any ho¬ was a sissy. For two years he faked a MATCHING BUMPER mosexual in California. lung ailment to avoid gym class and the STICKER $2.00 ppd. Few figures demonstrate the hazards beatings routinely delivered to the less or $1.50 with shirt of being among the new breed of gay ac¬ macho in the shower room. The spectre tivists more clearly than Cleve Jones. of having to deliver an oral book report FOXCROFT New times are descending on the ga\' often made him throw up before English 164 Lake Street Box 744 movement. The establishment needs ho- class. He had few friends as a youth, and mophile anti-establishmentarians. News he spent most of his time alone in his Rouses Point, gatherers need gays who will startle bedroom, escaping, as he puts it, "into a N.Y: 12979 rather than soothe audiences. Gavs drug-induced world which was much 16 / Christopher Street safer." On the cover of his high school gav community." These were the gay in the downtown financial district, then notebook, however, he was courageous burghermcisters, who were among those as a phone solicitor for Time-Life Books. enough to who display his slogan of revolu¬ negotiated the transfomtation of the F.mployment as a houseboy finally shift¬ tion: "Jesus Christ had limp wrists —nails gay liberation movement into tbe gay ed his home from the Tenderloin to the do that to you." rights movement, a toned-down, non- Haight-Ashbury, an advantageous move "While this was happening, 1 didn't threatening cause with a civil-rights vo¬ because over the hill from the Haight, in think I was capable of fighting back," cabulary that was much more plausible a run-down neighborhood around Castro says Jones, who now considers his mild- to the establishment. Street, profound changes were occurring. mannered But these leaders had little to persona as something of a do Gays were buying up businesses, with the lives and badge of courage. "When I learned that struggles of young opening bars, creating a neighborhood I could fight back, I had an awful lot of refugees like Cleve Jones. Jones worked that wasn't just some nighttime cruising time to make up for." on getting himself out of the Tenderloin. strip but a ghetto that gays owned lock, Jones met his first bona fide He took a gay ac¬ job as a bicycle delivery boy stock, and popper.