The AIDS Love Story You Never Heard Part 2

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I think on the certificate it said where he was buried, and so we went to it, and I remember going down having to search on this cliff. It was very steep, so if you kind of slipped, would fall down the hill. And I had found his name plate and it said his name, Roger Vasquez, and it said beloved son, beloved uncle, and beloved father. Remember being like, wow, that was they put father on there. That one really hit me because

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 learn that by seeking out our history, and what I've found are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love. In this continuation of last week's episode, we'll meet Jason Prefontaine, who lost his father when he was nine years old

I was probably about three the last time I saw my dad. It wasn't a great memory, but I feel like it's burned in my head. I remember there was a bunch of cop cars on their lawn and he ran out the front door and there are cops are running after him, and he grabbed me and picked me up and hugged me, and I just remember them pulling us apart. Who pulled you aboard the cops?

Wow?

Yeah, So to find out later that he was getting arrested because he hadn't paid his parking tickets, so he had a lot of them.

That's the last memory I have of him at that moment.

So do you know why your dad left?

I don't think he had a choice. I think my mom made him leap.

Tell me about that.

I think he was always fighting with himself to either be straight or be gay. I think he was trying really hard to stay straight for me and be in this relationship to be a dad. But I think that the struggle was too hard for him. From what I know bits and pieces that she caught him with a guy in our home and I was in the other room. She got very angry. I think, when my mom gets angry, cuts you off. You're done. So she wanted nothing to do with him. She didn't want me around him. He

And so you said he didn't come to the court hearing.

Yeah, he never shut.

Up, and so he lost all visitation rights at that point.

Yeah, they were gone.

Did you ever wonder why he didn't sort of fight for those visitation rights or for that custody.

I still wonder that in my whole life. I wonder why he never showed up. I don't think I'll ever get the answer I want to hear. I mean, that's kind of haunted me my whole life.

Your mom had began to date someone else around the same time when you were pretty young. Did you ever miss Roger even though you had this new father figure in your life. Did you feel like something was missing?

Yeah?

Always, I never thought of my stepdad as my dad.

I just remember.

Him being mean and he would just get in your brain and make you think things like you were the bad person, and treated my mom horribly, and I remember one time he smacked me in the back of the head so hard I could see stars. He wasn't a great person, so I just always thought, Gosh, one day I'm going to find him and he's going to take

Up on him.

Even though I didn't have Roger in my life. In the back of my head, I knew he was going to be in my life at some point. I just thought Okay, once I'm eighteen, I can go find him.

So in your mind, Roger was not just your dad, but kind of like a savior that would come and take you away from all of this chaos. Yeah, what were the kinds of things that your mom and family members told you about Roger, Because at this point, not only was Roger cut off, but his entire family was cut off too.

Yeah.

I had no information about his side of the family. I knew nothing about them, but I was told he would disappear for days going on vendors and he would just leave no money for my mom for groceries or diapers. So it was just always drilled into me that he was horrible, and I don't know why. I just never believed it, but that's all I ever heard was negative things my whole life. I had one picture of him.

So you mentioned earlier that you had heard certain things about him, but you didn't really ask a lot of questions. How come you didn't want to ask more about him?

I think the couple times I did ask, I was shut down pretty quickly, So I was always scared to ask anymore about him, so I would even if I would ask other family members, they quickly shut down, and I don't I didn't know why. I didn't understand why they were shutting me down. Well, I think the big secret was was that he was gay and he had AIDS, And I don't know if that was their way of protecting me or if they were protecting my mom. If I would ever bring up his name, I would get

So I just learned to keep my.

Mouth shut for a long time there was just it was me and her, and I always just wanted her to be happy. After Roger left, my mom started dating the drummer for Rick Nelson. He was a singer from like the sixties and seventies. His name was Ricky, and I remember at the time I loved Ricky. He was very similar to my dad.

It was kind.

He died on the plane crash with Rick Nelson. She had another loss some of that she loved. So I remember being a little kid being like, I just want to make her happy. So I just went along with anything she wanted to do. I was quiet where we went. I was always the good little child that didn't say anything. So to bring up Roger it made her angry, and I didn't want her to be angry all the time, so I was very careful.

The year is two thousand and Jason is a senior in high school. By this point, he knew he was gay, but he had no idea that his dad was gay too. He wouldn't find that out until much later. It was this year when he came out to his very conservative, very religious Mormon family. Tell me about the first time you knew you were gay.

I had known I was gay since I was five. I remember being in school and I was in love with the boy next door mm hmm. And I didn't understand at the time, but I knew that you weren't supposed to be in love with a boy, but I didn't care, so I just knew. Always I was into musical theater, dancing around the house and I'd put a shirt on my head thinking it was long hair and in front of everybody.

So I mean, I.

Feel like everybody knew I used to do that too.

I just remember watching those old romantic movies and I loved it, just movies where everybody was in love, and I just like, I want to be in love like that. And I think nobody in the family understood that. They didn't understand my love for old movies.

The other piece to this is that your family is Mormon, right, Yeah, it's hardcore marks. So tell me all about that.

The big time.

The time I came out, it was an accident, my best friend at the time had said she confessed her love for me, and I was like, ooh, yikes, I need to tell her, but I couldn't say it to her. So I wrote her this letter and she wrote me a letter back and she had said I understand, I'm going to be there for you. I love you, and I put it on the counter in the bathroom and I left it and then I left and I went to my grandparents' house and they were gone, so I

Wow.

This is all in the matter of like a couple hours since they found the note. Yeah. Wow.

So that weekend they made an appoyment for me to see this pastor, a Christian pastor. We showed up there, we sat on the couch and he asked them to leave, and he wanted to talk to me, and he said, are you gay? And I said yes, and he said he said, do you want to be gay? And I said yea yes, And he says, then you don't need to be here. And I only went back once, but she assumed I kept going.

And so you and the pastor sort of had like a deal or a pact that you both wouldn't tell your mom the truth.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was a traumatic moment in my life.

Going back to Roger. Did you ever try to find him?

I didn't know how, and I was too afraid to ask for help. So I remember being in the garage, I think when I was in high school, maybe early on, and I was pulling out drawers on a bunch of these file cases, probably because I was nosy because my mom had kept like old art pieces in there, and I came across this certificate looking thing, and I remember it saying Roger on it Roger Vasquez, and I remember or for a very short period, I went by Vasquez

You didn't even know that that was his full name?

No, I just knew Roger.

Wow, that was the level of you not knowing anything about this man that existed.

Yeah. Nothing.

I really went through the whole certificate and read the whole thing and knew that he was gone.

Yeah.

So I found his death certificate inside the drawer. For a long time, I just kept going back to it. I just stared at it because I had nothing else of him. I just had the picture.

What did it feel like when you realized that this was actually a piece of paper telling you that your dad was dead.

I didn't want to believe that.

Even though it said that he had passed away, I still didn't believe he was dead.

I didn't want to believe that.

Because I to not know him, and then to hope he was going to be there, and then he was dead, so I was never going to know him.

That hurt and.

It took me a while to understand what everything said, and I think it even had an address.

Jason had just found his father's death certificate. He didn't know anything about his dad other than the fact that he was dead. Jason also knew that talking about Roger was taboo, so he didn't tell anyone that he found the death certificate. But on that certificate there was a clue as to where Jason might find more information about his dad. It was an address, so he got in his car and drove to it. What did you do after you found the death certificate?

I think on the certificate it said where he was buried. So I went there and when I asked them, I go, here's his name, and they said it's going to be just a stone with a number. And I remember being like, that's sounds like no one cared about this person. So I said, okay. So it took a while to find it. It was like on this kind of cliff looking thing, and I finally found his number, and I remember just being sad that he was just here with a number, there was no name, nothing.

He was just gone, Wow, that hurt.

So I remember being like, at some point I need to get him a headstone something with his name on it. And so I don't know how long I had been, but I came back again. I just wanted to be with him. I mean, it just felt so lonely, him just being on this hill with a bunch of other people that are just numbers. So when I went back again, I go, I just need to find that spot again.

At this point, Jason, did you know that your dad had died of AIDS related complications.

When I was in college. I think it was my freshman year. I was like, I need to come out to my aunt and I just wanted to tell someone in my family, and she was the only one I felt safe with that I could tell her that. My aunt is three years older than me, so we're pretty close in age. And I remember going to her home. I sat on the couch and I said to her, I just want to tell you that I'm gay. She like looked at me and says, I know. She was like duh, and I'm like, you knew. She's like, yes.

Wow.

And I smember being blown away by that. And she's and I said, well, how do you know this? And she had said she overheard a conversation my grandma and my mom had and my mom was telling my grandma that Roger had called her and said I need you to get tested because I tested positive. My aunt had overheard everything.

Wow.

And for years I think she waited for me to tell her that I was gay, but finding out he was gay died of AIDS. That was so overwhelming, but I felt closer to him.

It seems like you guys have a lot of parallels in the sense that you were both affected by homophobia. Oh yeah, how did it make you feel to know that your dad was also gay? Like you guys shared this part of your life that, in a lot of ways, seems like it defined both of you.

I felt validated that he was gay, and like it came from him, That's why I'm But then it was like, God, I wish he was here to help me go through being gay. I would have felt safer. I wasn't safe for a long time. I was always scared to tell anybody I was gay, But it would have been nice to have a parent support me.

In two thousand and five, Jason was twenty three years old. He was still living at home to take care of his two younger siblings. At this point, Jason did come out to his mom, telling her he was definitely gay, and she responded by kicking him out. While he was on his own, The spark to learn more about Roger lit up again. It had been several years since he found his father's death certificate and his grave, but he still didn't know much about him other than the fact

I remember driving by and it was like this metal rod gate and there was like this awning over the door and it said Veasquez and I was like, wow, that's that's the home where he grew up. And we showed up to the house. The door opened and she had this bleach blonde flat top hair and like this super tailored suit on. And we walked into this house and it was like just packed with stuff, like majorly hoarded house. What's interesting though, is throughout all the things

And I kept asking.

I go, well, I want to know more about the person that was taking care of my dad at the end, and she would use that as bait to get me back. She goes, well, next time, i'll talk to you about that, and then she would never give that to me, and I didn't understand why. And then it got strange. They thought I was like out to get their money because at one point they had mentioned Roger had put aside money for me, and I remember I asked once and

So things had gotten really awkward with the family and weird.

Yeah, So my partner and I got married in two thousand and eight. So I called my grandmother left a message and she called me back and left a message and said that she doesn't support the idea of me getting married to my partner, and that was the last time we always spoke.

Wow.

So I guess that says so much about maybe how she treated Roger and how he was treated by his family. Yeah, did you ever give up on finding Chris?

I mean there were moments where it was like, there's nothing, I have no information, So I kind of gave up for a while. There was moments where I was like, I guess I'm just never going to know anything about them.

When we come back, Jason finally finds what he's been searching for his whole life. It's twenty twenty. Jason is thirty eight years old. He's in a loving relationship with his husband. By this point, he had also made up with his mom, but she wasn't willing to talk about Roger yet. It had been twelve years since Jason had any contact with Roger's family, and twelve years since he learned anything new about Roger. He did know that Chris existed, but he didn't know where to find him or what

So twenty twenty, I had noticed on Instagram that it was World Aid's Day, and like, oh, I want to post a picture, the only picture I have of my dad and me, and I kind of put a little story behind it. I had mentioned like I always thought I was going to meet him one day, and I wish I knew what his voice sounded like. And the World Aid's memorial page reached out and said, oh, we love that picture of your dad and your story.

Can we posted on our page?

And I want to say, either that same day or the next day, I got a message from someone named Chris saying that I know your dad. So we talked a little more, and then I think he had sent me a couple of pictures he had of my dad, but because I only had the one picture of my dad, he didn't look familiar anymore in these pictures, and I'm like, oh, I don't know about this. So by this time, my mom had been a little more open about talking to

Well, walk me through that first phone call that you had with Chris. What was that like? This is the same man that you've been searching for for years.

I remember him telling stories about their love and positive things. I'd never heard positive things about Roger. He had told me he loved old movies. Yeah, when he said he loved old movies, I'm like, Oh, someone that's just like me in the family m like because I never understood why I liked that stuff. And when he said that, I was like, oh my gosh.

What Jason didn't realize yet was that Chris had been searching for him. They both couldn't get to each other because of Jason's parent and Roger's parent, and they didn't have enough information for the Internet to be helpful either. But as fate would have it, they found each other. Before Roger died, he kept a box of things that he wanted Jason to have. Chris held onto that box for thirty years, hoping one day to give it to Jason, and that day had finally come. So now tell me

He came down to LA and I was coming up there to meet him. I was so nervous. I just remember my heart was racing the whole time. And when he finally came out, he was so warm and he hugged me, and I remember him taking a moment and staring at me. He kind of went, oh, I need to take a second. I'm like, do I look like him? And I remember him saying, yeah, you do look like him. I think the whole day became this blur because I

It was a lot.

What was it like when and Chris gave you the box? Tell me that story?

So it was at that same park. We went and sat at a table. He would just kind of slowly pull things out and we started with the pictures and it was like pictures I'd never seen. It was pictures of me and him, and he had these two little picture frames and he says, your dad picked those picture frames specifically for those pictures, so he had touched them and put them together, and that that was pretty amazing, Like.

The last time that those items were touched were.

By your father. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean that was amazing.

He had said that he wished he could have been a father to me. He talked about me all the time.

That really hurt. That one hurt.

And then he like started pulling out little things. He pulled out his watch, He pulled out this ring. I don't know if you can see, but this ring that I'm wearing is still wear at every day. This is a really beautiful ring. And I immediately put it on and I wore the rest of the day. I didn't want to take it off.

Wow. I mean he it was on his fingers.

So that's as close as I'm going to get to him.

What was it like kind of processing all of that? I mean, from my perspective, it's like you've gone your whole life not knowing anything about this man.

There was this picture he showed me my dad sitting in a graveyard, and I remember he was He's very frail in this picture, and he was just looking off at the at the gravestones, and Chris had said, yeah, that was getting to the point where he was starting to get really sick. It's such a sad photo. And I the next morning after I met Chris, I was going through the photos again and I saw that picture.

And I lost it. That was such a sad.

Picture and he just looked so tiny, and I wish I could have been there.

That one really hurt.

Like for you in that moment, that's when it all became real how he was the victim of this really horrendous disease, but also the victim of homophobia as well.

Yeah, I mean that moment affected me. It changed me that whole, just that one photo. I mean, he didn't deserve that. From what Chris tells me, he was so full of life, and that horrible disease just took that away from him.

How do you feel when you look at the ring every day?

This is the closest I feel to him. I mean, I'm wearing he's a part of me now every day. I think I never stop loving him ever, even when I heard bad stories about him, But to know that he wanted me.

Makes me love him even more.

This is a show about history, but it's really a show where we talk about a lot of love. And I wonder what you think the love story is here?

Gosh, I feel like there's so many love stories in this moment. I mean, the big one for me is learning about the love my dad have for me and the love I'll always have for him. And the fact that Chris and I found each other is the other one. And even though it took so many years to find him, it felt so quick after I posted that picture, so it was like it was meant to be.

And it's a complicated story. I think. On this show, we've talked about AIDS and how it was defined by loss and shame and homophobia, and you were sort of a victim of that intersection of all those things kind of coming together at once your dad being excommunicated and then dying because of AIDS. But then you have this other amazing story with Chris, him keeping the box of memories and love for you for thirty years. And in your mind, is this a sad story or does this have a happy ending?

I mean, I'll never get all the answers, but at least I got to know the person he was. I mean, the sad part is I'll never hear my dad's voice, I'll never get to touch him. But the happy part is that Chris brought my dad back to me.

But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolvus. 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 but We Loved. We are a production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Studios. Our producers are Shein O Zaki, Michael June, Emily Meronof and Joey patt Our. Executive producers