Jayson, I can’t believe it’s been 25 years. I still think of you regularly. I’ve never met anyone who seems to understand me the way you did in all these years. I miss how the wildest shit just seemed to fly out of your mouth constantly and your ability not only to turn anything into a ritual, but your insistence that practically everything was ritual. You didn’t own a car, and never made fun of me for not having one either. You taught me I could walk anywhere at all hours. You took me to my first Pride weekend and that hotel room full of tweaking boys. You ate raw cookie dough with me, and went with me when I bought my first sex toy. I still have the concrete, red-headed Virgin Mary statue you stole from that yard in Santa Cruz on the summer solstice after she got cracked in the quake because you felt she needed repair and attention. I still play U2’s New Years Day right after midnight if I’m up on New Years because that’s what you did. Every Cure and Depeche Mode song still sounds like you. I love you and miss you, Jay. What is remembered lives.
