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So I had a dream about Roger. This was probably within a month after he passed away, and he was dressed in all white in an all white room, and he just sort of like appeared. He gave me a hug and he didn't talk, but I could hear his thoughts, and he said that everything was going to be okay.
And then and that we were just embraced with each other.
The moment in which he visited me, and it felt like it felt as real as possible, like it just felt like we had.
Touched but that he came to me and said that everything was going to be.
Okay, and I believed him.
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South, I thought being gay was the worst thing I could ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn that by seeking out our history, and what I've found are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love. In this episode, we'll meet Chris Pimentel, who lost his first love to AIDS in nineteen ninety one. We'll learn what it was like for him to live through the
AIDS crisis. And how thirty years later his story with that first love got a new chapter for my Heart podcast. I'm Jordan, go and solve this and this is what we loved. Sometimes when I think about the AIDS crisis and all of the queer people that were affected, I honestly get emotional. It's sobering to put myself in their shoes, because forty years ago I could have lost so many of my friends and loved ones like they did. I
could have been lost too. As a gay man, I've always had this deep fear of HIV, and it doesn't really have anything to do with the virus because it's totally treatable today, But it has everything to do with the shame. The little aid's history that I did learn in school taught me that people who have HIV died alone and unloved. But now, in my adulthood, realize that I was learning the wrong history. Making this show has helped me see just how many amazing love stories there
were at that time. My next guest, Chris P. Mantell, has one of them. He lost his first love, Roger, to AIDS in nineteen ninety one, but that love would stay with him for the rest of his life and that love would revisit him unexpectedly thirty years later. So tell me, now, how did you know you were gay in your adolescence and in your teen years.
I was still living in Los Angeles as a young early teen person and growing up in close proximity to West Hollywood, there was exposure to gay culture. I knew I was different as a young as a young boy, I didn't know what I was, but I knew that I liked boys also, So disco was big back then, and Donna Summer was my favorite artist and she still is. And Donna Summer had a big gay following. I mean also being raised in LA on the West Side, but
you know, being close to West Hollywood and whatnot. You know, you would go into a store and you would hear Donna Summer and you would there would be gay men.
And so that's how I was exposed.
I saw older gay people and they stood out because when I was around with my family, that wasn't an image that I saw.
So tell me a little bit about what your parents were like.
My parents were born here in the US, but we come from Mexican heritage, so it's a very Latino Chicano household, and you know, my dad was very strict about me portraying any sort of feminine characteristics.
And what was your mom like?
House mom?
Just very kind and very loving, caring, nurturing. I could tell that there was, you know, definitely a connection between my mom and I. I think my mom knew when I was at a young age.
Did you end up coming out to your mom?
No.
I was starting to discover you know, sexuality and sex at that point. I would go to just any you know, mom in pop liquor store and they would have different types of pornography magazines and I would take Time magazine and then put the porn magazine in it. I would even go into bookstores and still magazines gay porn magazines and just stick them in my jacket and leave. And I had them in just a stack under my bed. But you know, I think moms know where to find
anything and everything. She found these magazines while I was gone out of the house, and when I came home, they were just sitting on the bed.
Oh gosh.
My mom asked me.
If I was gay, and I said no, because I hadn't come out to myself yet. But I think she let me just develop on my own. My mom was important because she was on my side. I felt that, I felt the love, I felt the nurturing, I felt the care from her. But you know, living also with my dad, that was, you know, difficult to do.
Like you have your dad on one side, who is a little bit more strict, more machismo, and then you have your mom that's more accepting of the fact that you have this soft side to you.
Yes, I think she saw who I was for who I was, she just accepted, she accepted me.
It was about seventh eighth grade my mom was diagnosed with lupus. She became very sick, you know, and she had it for several years and it went into remission. She wasn't sick, very sick for all those years, more towards the beginning, and more and towards the end. I was twenty two when she passed away. When my mom passed away, I was there in the room. I felt like that her body was just the vessel she was in, and that her spirit was in all of us.
She was always. She never left, you know.
It sounds like she was sort of your advocate, even though you hadn't really come out yet. It sounds like, if you had come out to yourself, you would have come out to her and she would have protected you or embraced you. What were those years like coming into your own after your mom had passed.
So I had moved out of the house.
My father and I never really had a strong relationship pretty much never Maybe he recognized that, you know, I might be gay and whatnot. And now that my mom's gone and I pushing my dad out of the picture, I just felt like, I think I was looking to be loved. I think the love my mom was so strong that it was it was missing. I was still healing.
It was just a few months. I was still trying to understand who I was as a person at that time, on top of my biggest cheerleader passing away, and so I was wondering where the love was going to come from.
In the months following his mom's death, Chris really came into his own as a gay man. He was making other gay friends and exploring his sexuality. He would go on dates and even had some flings here and there, but deep down, the loss of his mother left a
soft spot for love that he wanted to fill. One night, his friend Hector invited him to a big gay club in La Hector was like one of those friends who somehow knows everyone in the gay scene, and Chris had no idea that Hector would introduce him that night to someone who would change his life. Tell me about the night that you met Roger.
So this was back in nineteen eighty nine, and there's a club in Los Angeles that's still around called Catch One. So that night was a house party, house music party, and so we went dancing. My friend Hector and I are walking in the hallway, but there was someone in front of him that he knew, and the person kept turning around and looking at me. A slim guy, six foot, very groomed, you know, he looked like he just had
a fresh haircut, big smile, bright eyes. So we're walking through this hallway and Hector introduces me to Roger and I don't even remember seeing him the rest of the night.
So what happened next?
So I would say within a week, Hector, the mutual friend i'd introduced us, said oh, the guy you met at the club wants to ask you out or talk to you. And I said, okay, you know he was cute. Sure, you know, I didn't I didn't. I didn't pursue Roger, but Roger calls and our first date was back at
the club where we where we first met again. It was house music and we just I just remember dancing away, dancing the night away with him, and then when he dropped me off, and I'm I don't have an exact memory of it, but I'm pretty sure he came inside. I'm sure he dropped me off and he spent the night. We hit it off that night. We just started hanging out, and then the hanging out turned into being boyfriends.
So did you guys decide to move in together?
Yeah, we grabbed the U haul and we moved in pretty good, I would say, within maybe a month.
Oh wow.
Yeah, it was fast, and I think, you know, I was so young. I was twenty two at that point. I was sure why not. He found an apartment for us. It was a large apartment complex, but we were on the on the third floor, and and I mean he showed it to me and said, do you want to live here? And I agreed, and so we moved in and started building a home together.
What did you love about him, Chris? Those first couple months that you were dating.
Well, one that he was also from a Mexican family. There was a lot of things that were relatable between us without having to explain cultural differences. It's almost like he was just from the neighborhood and he understood things about food or culture or traditions. Once I discovered we you know, we shared our birthdays and we figured out that we were both Capricorns, it was just one more of those things that we, you know, found a commonplace together.
But he was also a warm person to me. He was very kind and very giving. I remember on.
Fridays, every Friday, he would bring me a gift a card. One of the ways he showed his love is that he was just a giving person and very kind, and there was just a peacefulness about him. Roger made me feel safe. I felt safe with him, and especially during that time. I mean it hadn't even been a year after my mom passed away, So I think, you know, that was something that made me feel comfortable around him, that I was being protected and someone was looking out after me.
He had kind of filled that space that you were looking for that you had mentioned earlier. Yes, yes, exactly, Chris and Roger were falling for each other fast but the backdrop of their love story was a growing crisis of thousands of young gay men getting sick because of a new virus called HIV. When left untreated, HIV would turn into AIDS, which was almost always deadly. And in those days, there was no effective treatment and there was no cure. Now, Chris, I wonder if you could tell
me a little bit about the time period. This is the early nineties, late eighties, and AIDS is ravaging the gay community. How had it affected you? And Roger?
AIDS was big news. It was pretty much a death sentence at that point. There was no cure, there was no treatment. It could look very scary to somebody, you know, with lesions and being very gaunt and thin and you know, almost like a shell of a person, and so it was very scary and nobody knew what to do. People sometimes didn't even want to touch you, you know. It
was like no kissing and sometimes no hugging. And you know, don't sit on that toilet seat because a gay man might have been on that you know, toilet seat, and not because you were someone was HIV, but because you were gay. So if you were gay, you probably did have HIV, you know, it was a lot of assumptions. They were just figuring out how to navigate HIV and how to care medically care for people. I didn't even
really understand how it might affect me. But one day Roger came home and he told me, I have got to tell you something, and it admitted that he had just tested positive told me and he was crying and was so worried that I would break up with him and that I would want nothing to do with him. Based on just the times that were occurring, there was a lot of shame just being positive or admitting that you were positive.
So in that moment when he told you that he was positive, what was going through your mind?
I think my mom sort of kicked him my mom's behaviors of care and love. He seemed terrified that I would leave him, and I just leaned into him, telling him that I loved him and that I I wouldn't leave him because of that. Like to me, it wasn't even a thought. We were in love with each other, and so something like his HIV status wasn't enough to me. That wasn't a reason to leave him.
When we come back, Chris learns that when Roger dies he will leave behind a son. It's nineteen eighty nine. Still grieving his mother's death, Chris's relationship with Roger helped him heal, but just as their romance began to reach new heights, Roger tested positive for HIV. By this time, AIDS had been devastating the gay community for almost ten years.
Thousands were already dead. The CDC said, if you had AIDS, you would likely only have five years to live, and the images coming out we're jarring young men with sunken cheekbones from rapid weight loss and big purple blotches on their skin from cancer. At twenty three years old, Chris was processing that his first love might die. He knew he wasn't going to get any help in caring for Roger from his family or Rogers, and he was also
starting to think about his own HIV status too. How were you thinking about your own status?
I just assumed I was HIV positive. I was convinced, completely convinced that, well, we've been having sex and I have HIV too, and this is my fate as well.
Just his was showing up sooner.
Back then, I was just I was resigned to that I was HIV positive. And that I would get sick and pass away.
What was his personality like when he was sick? What was that like?
Well, one of the things I loved about Roger is his sense of humor, and he always maintained that even when he was feeling his worst, he found some way to bring humor.
Do you remember, like some of the funny things he would do.
He loved I Love Lucy, so he would often if we weren't watching I Love Lucy and reruns, then he was imitating Lucy or stealing her lines and delivering them in character. But you know, the TV show in general was something that he loved to watch.
How was your relationship at this time? Do you think it sort of brought you closer together?
I think it did bring us closer together because I knew that the clock was ticking, and I think that's what everybody was feeling once you were dealt, you know, in HIV's positive status, and we found ways to just spend more time with each other and cherish the those moments together because we didn't know what was ahead exactly.
You know, knowing that his time was limited. What kind of conversations were you guys having at this point as his condition worsened.
So I was not his first boyfriend. He had a boyfriend before we were together. But before the previous boyfriend, he was married to a woman. It was someone that he met in cosmetology school and they had a baby together.
Wow.
And I don't know too much about their relationship other than that her family is a Mormon. She comes from a Mormon family. So once Roger was he came out, that made things a lot different, you know, his his relationship with the wife and with the family. So Roger and the person he was married to had a baby, be a son named Jason, and I think Jason was between seven and nine when they had to divorce or they separated, and at that point that Roger had no
more contact with Jason. So it I can see, I can see, you know, because of their religion, because of their belief system. Why, you know, they wouldn't want to, you know, have someone that's an outsider.
And so when he came out, they excommunicated him.
Roger didn't go into the details of it, but at its core, yes, that's what happened, that he was excommunicated and no contact with Jason. Because Roger would talk about Jason and how much he missed him, and how much it really pained him that he was missing his son and missing out on Jason's childhood. He loved Jason, and that was quite clear to me, you know, especially with his with his status and you know, having HIV.
He was afraid that.
He wouldn't get to see Jason again. It was always painful for him to talk about Jason. I think Roger was hopeful that he would see Jason again at some point.
Roger didn't know how long he was going to live.
We felt that it would be short term, but he was hoping to see Jason before he died.
Do you mind taking me through the moment when Roger's illness worsened.
So Roger had been home for a few weeks from work, just bedridden, and I was taking care of him, and he was starting to I would, I want to say, babbel kind of talking things that didn't make sense to me, or it was not part of any conversation. I could hear exactly what he was saying, but to me it didn't make sense. But it made sense in the fact that my mom said the same things before she passed away. And I'm not sure if this is something that happens when people are closer to death. But it was a
very strange coincidence, and I knew. I think I called the hospital and they said, just get him here to the hospital. I had to carry him. He was not even strong enough to walk. I had to carry him down three flights of stairs to the car. And the neighbors were also too gay, guys, same age, and I don't know if they could hear through the.
Wall and what was going on.
But I propped Roger up on a rail so I could lock the door, and I picked him up again, and the guys opened the door like just enough to look out, and I could see their eyes and I'm looking at them and I'm like terrified, holding Roger in my arms, and they'd shut the door like it was the plague, you know, in retrospect, I think that's just how the times were. Even gay people could shun other gain people as well, you know. So I'm carrying Roger down to the car. I get him in the car.
I'm trying to keep him awake. He was very like weak and like ready to pass out. So we get Roger into the emergency room into a wheelchair, and someone went to go look at Roger and his lips were blue,
and so they're like, okay. They immediately put him in the back and they they intubated him and they had to strap him down, and it was it was kind of a horrible moment to seeing him, you know, in such a weak state and barely breathing and getting you know, not getting enough oxygen and and he pulled the tube out, so they that's why they tied him down, and they
induced coma at that point. And so that was basically the last time that we could look at each other, and and so where we were aware of each other, it hope, face to face. And uh so, you know, I don't remember how many days he was in the hospital, but it.
Wasn't more than a week.
And you know, they were, I think taking all the care they could that they knew all the steps they needed to take to keep him alive.
And he died of pneumonia.
And I remember just being in the room and just I mean I was almost at peace myself because he was at peace. So his mom and dad were there, and his mom asked me, she pulled me to the side and asked, you know, what did Roger want? Were his wishes, and I told her that he wanted to be created, and she just nodded her head and said, okay, you know, and.
We said goodbye.
And you know, I found out immediately they left the hospital and right to the mortuary, to the to the cemetery where his uncle worked. They weren't going to cremate him. They were going to bury him. So I got in touch with with Roger's ex wife and explained to her what Roger wanted, and she agreed to sign over a power of attorney to me for Roger's body. So I had now I have control over Roger's body or what
happens to his body at this point. And it just kept going on and on, and they were fighting me, and they were calling me, and they were, you know, like, I don't remember why, but I finally I just gave in.
I just I couldn't.
It was about two to three weeks later, and I just couldn't take it anymore. So he was buried and not cremated. It was just a difficult time, and I wasn't thinking clearly, and I just wasn't adult enough to know what to do. By that time, I was twenty four years old.
Wow. Well, you know it. It's funny that you mentioned the fact that you were twenty four when all of this was going on. That is such a young tender age to be navigating things like death and a state planning and funerals and power of attorney. I was wondering, I am wondering, how did you sort of manage all of that and grieve at the same time during that period at twenty four years old.
So I had a dream about Roger.
This was probably within a month after he passed away, and he was dressed in all white in an all white room, and he just sort of like appeared. He gave me a hug, and he didn't talk, but I could hear his thoughts, and he said that everything was
going to be okay. And then and that we were just embraced with each other the moment in which he visited me, and it felt like it felt as real as possible, like it just felt like we had touched but that he came to me and said that everything was going to be okay, and I believed him.
Again.
Another parallel was that I had the same dream with my mom when my mom passed away, that she told me that everything would be okay. It wasn't the same dream they were, you know, a few years apart, but it was the same type of dream where they each told me that it would be okay, and there was an embrace and that it just felt peaceful.
So while you're going through the grieving process, at this point, you haven't gotten tested. Were you wanting to get tested now?
I didn't feel it was so urgent. I assumed I'm HIV positive too, so I was just kind of waiting for myself to get sick. So after I must have been about two years, I decided to after Rogers passing away, to go get tested. And so when I went to get tested and I got my results, they were negative, but still I was not convinced that.
I was HIV negative.
Wow.
Yeah, I was like, this is maybe there's something wrong with the test or faulty test and whatnot. And then I got tested a second and third time within the next year, and they were again negative. I didn't understand how it sort of changed my perspective on life. I think I just felt like more like a second chance in a way, you know, to like, Okay, now I can really live my life.
When we come back. Chris hears from Roger's son, Jason, thirty years after Roger's death. After Roger's death, Chris was be getting to move forward. Learning that his HIV status was negative gave him a renewed outlook on life, but there was still some unfinished business. Roger had a child, Jason, and he wanted to leave him several things, photos that he had framed, his ring mementos. Chris had no idea, but Jason didn't know much about his dad at all.
Roger had died when Jason was just nine years old, but Jason didn't find that out until he was in high school, when he just so happened to stumble upon his father's death certificate at home. Later on, he found out through a family member that Roger had died of AIDS related complications. He had always hoped to meet his dad one day, so the discovery was a shock. He did manage to get in contact with Roger's mother, but she didn't give him very much information about Chris, only
that Roger had a partner when he died. Jason's search for his dad was also a source subject at home. His mom's family would shut him down anytime he asked about his father. He was told that Roger wasn't a great person. Chris didn't know any of this, but he knew that one day he wanted to give Jason the things his father had left for him.
So, you know, I put everything that meant something to Roger and Jason.
I put them in a box.
Roger had different things that were Jason's and they didn't mean too much to me, but they meant something because they meant something to Roger. I kept the box for thirty years because I knew that I had to get those things to Jason, and I knew that I wouldn't be able to get those to Jason as a child. How come, Well, if I remember correctly, the time that I did talk to his ex wife, she wanted to distance herself from the whole situation.
So you weren't able to get to Jason.
Basically, yeah, I knew that I would somehow meet him as an adult.
I was.
I had faith in that that I wouldn't meet up with Jason. I didn't know how, I didn't know where and when, but I'm like, you know, I'm just gonna do that. I never give up hope. I just I knew it would happen. That's why I didn't feel urgent. I just moved ahead, knowing that at some point I I would meet Jason.
As the Internet became popular, Chris would sometimes search for Jason, but he didn't have very much information to go off of. He just had to trust the feeling that one day they'd eventually meet. So did you ever find Jason?
So in December twenty twenty, it was just a regular day of you know, pandemic life. I was on Instagram and there's an account that I followed called the AIDS Memorial. Folks will submit a photo, photos of a loved one, someone they cared about that passed away from AIDS, and they write a story, a brief story, and there's thousands of posts. So I'm scrolling and I see Roger's photo and I was like, oh cool, somebody posted about Roger and I was like wow, And I thought immediately that
it was one of his friends. And I start reading it, and then I realized that it's Jason because he starts talking about his dad.
Can you read the post, Chris of you don't mind?
Yes, I want to honor my dad who lost his life to AIDS. Sadly, I don't know a lot of information about him. He passed away when I was just a kid. His name was Roger Vasquez. My father passed away when I was about seven years old. He had a rough life up until then. He was trying to discover who he was as a closeted gay man. Before he died, he found a man who loved him for who he was. That man took care of him until
he passed away in nineteen ninety. This picture is one of the only pictures I have left of my father, and I will cherish it. Dad, you are loved and you are missed, Signed Jason, And so it's just one photo of him, and Jason is a toddler and Roger's holding him.
How did you feel when you saw that post?
Well, when he started talking about me, I was in shock. I was like, oh, immediately a lot of emotions came back. It just it was this flood of emotion and thoughts and memories and feelings and anything that had to do with us over the years, all the things that I missed about Roger and all the moments I wished Roger was still alive. And so it took me about four or five days after seeing the post for me to process everything. It was a little difficult those few days
because it brought everything back to life. And so so I pulled myself together. And you know, four or five days later and I DM Jason and say, hi, Jason, I saw your beautiful post about your dad Roger. I have some information about him. Shoot me a text so we can figure out a time to chat. Looking forward to hearing from you, Chris, and I gave my phone number.
Oh so you you didn't say anything about you being the lover that he was.
To No, No, I didn't want I didn't want to like, just like casually just put it in a DM. Wow, and uh.
Probably that same night, he says, hello, did you know him? I said yes, I did.
Wow.
Were you close to him? And I said yes, you can say that. And then I sent a photo of Roger and Jason replied, Wow, that's incredible. I've always seen the same three photos I have of him. He had not seen that photo I sent to him. And then I told him we were boyfriends for the last two years of his life. I'm the one you've been looking
for and vice versa. And then I sent him a photo of the two of us when we were when we were pretty young, and he says, oh my gosh, I've been trying to find info about you for a long time. His mother would never give me your name, and I'm not surprised. She was never nice to me.
So he didn't have any information about his dad, right.
They didn't really talk well about Roger after he died. They really didn't want anything to do with Roger.
And they never.
Really spoke about Roger as far as I know. They didn't speak well about him, and it was farm view between so Jason had little information.
Despite being kept away from each other for thirty years by both Roger's parent and Jason's parent. Fate had other plans. Chris and Jason were both excited to finally meet. They didn't see each other right away, though this felt like it was going to be monumental and they didn't want to rush anything. But on a trip back to La Chris felt like this was the right time. So now tell me about what it was like the first time meeting Jason.
It took it about two years for us to meet in person, and we had planned it. I was taking a trip down to LA and I said, you know, I ping Jason and said let's meet. Let's find a time in a day. And he came to my friend's house and he's like, I'm here. So I went downstairs and I saw Jason. You could tell that that he was Roger's.
Son, you know, no doubt.
And then when I hugged Jason, it felt like I was hugging Roger. I think he's maybe even a little taller, but it just felt like like Roger. I don't know, maybe Roger was just there, just like you know, a group hug. And we went down the street to go have lunch, to just kind of like ease into what we were about to get into. In Los Angeles, there's a park and in the park there's an AIDS memorial
called Lost Memorias. The official title is Last Memorials the Wall, So it's this wall of folks that have died of AIDS. So I submitted Roger's name and he was part of the first cohort of names being added to the wall. The plan was also to go to the memorial at the park so I could show Jason. And before we went to the park, I went back to my friend's house to grab the box of things to take them, and so when we got to the park, I took the box and we found a place to go sit down.
We looked at the memorial, found his name, and I brought the box out and was pulling things out one at a time.
And giving them to him.
And this is the first time him seeing things that were his dad, or something that his dad touched. Even there was one of them was a photo of the two of them that it was a photo that Roger put in the frame, and that photo had stayed in there all those years, so it was exactly how Roger left it. I explained to Jason once I gave him the items, how much pain his dad was in that he couldn't visit his son or have contact with his
son knowing that he was going to die. Like, your dad missed you, he loved you, and it was painful.
What was it like for you to give him the box that you'd been holding onto for thirty years.
I felt emotional about it because I had been holding on to this thing, this box for me, it was a duty, it was responsibility to do that for the two of them. Giving Jason the box and holding onto the box of items for that long was just one of the last things that I could do for Roger too, because Roger wasn't able to have contact with Jason.
I just felt like I had to do that. I had to do that for Roger.
And you know, also reading Jason's story on Instagram, he only had three photos, the same three photos over all these years, and you know, I've got a box full of pictures, you know, having fun and you know, pictures of Roger with his family.
And what was it like for Jason to receive all of your words and the memories and the photos.
Jason was grateful, he was he was happy to have those things again. He was, you know, gracious that that I held onto everything and that I, you know, brought them to him and that we found each other, and you know that I was filling in a lot of the story that he didn't know about his dad.
How do you feel about Roger now, thirty plus years later, after having this amazing experience and sort of being able to turn the page on that chapter.
Rogers, He's just always been a constant in my life. Even you know, I've had long term partners and they've always known about Roger. Because I just feel like Roger's a Guardian Angel. You know, along with my mom, I always feel that they're with me. And you know, when I'm doing something happier, when I'm dancing to house music, a lot of times I think about him. You know, He'll pop in my mind in different moments, like making my mom's recipe of chicken enchiladas and and uh, you know,
I remember making them for Roger too. So it's just all these things are sort of strung together. And I still make those inciladas today, and so I think about the two of them.
I always think about them.
But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves, new episodes every Wednesday. If you want to write in to tell your story, email us at Buttweloved at gmail dot com, or send us a message on Instagram or TikTok at butt we Loved. We are a production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcast. But We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Studios. Our producers are Shehina Zaki, Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our Executive producers or me,
Maya Howard and Katrina Norville. Fact checking by Marisa Brown. Original music by Steve Boone Special thanks to Jay Brunson and Markel Willis. If you loved this episode, leave us a and follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.