Asphalt Field of Dreams

On a recent Saturday night, less than a week after he was cut, Al got sick to his stomach -- diarrhea and vomiting -- after he and Jeffrey ate roast turkey sandwiches at a greasy spoon near the RV park.

"It didn't bother me much, but you know my system is a lot stronger than his," Jeffrey says.

Al resists seeing doctors anymore. The last time he did, a couple of years ago, he was put on AZT, which Al says made him impatient, cranky -- not his regular self.

"When they put him on that stuff, it turned him into a fucking monster. AZT made this guy crazy," Jeffrey recalls.

"I was forgetting things, my temper was real short, and I'm not that way. So I discontinued taking it. I haven't taken anything since," adds Al. "But I've had no opportunistic infections at all. The only thing I've been bothered with was a little fatigue, a little diarrhea, and a little weight loss. My weight kind of comes and goes."

It mostly goes.
And by Jeffrey's private reckoning, his partner will go at around the time the park will.

When the Mission Bay development begins and the San Francisco Recreational Vehicle Park comes to an end, Jeffrey's neighbor to the east, Helen Robbins, wants to look for an apartment. Or maybe she and her husband will find an RV park in the East Bay.

"It just depends on what's available when the crunch comes," she says.
Rickey Schaller and Alyson McKellar are already thinking about driving their Gillig school bus to an RV park in Castro Valley. The rent's a lot cheaper there, and it will be just as close to Telegraph Avenue, Rickey says.

Jeffrey doesn't have plans of that sort. He was never one for thinking about the future, and he'd just as soon they keep the park where it is.

"Do you remember the other week when it was raining, pouring out? It was so comfy and warm in that trailer," Jeffrey says.

"There was rain beating on the roof," adds Al.
"And you could just cuddle up in bed, turn on the TV," Jeffrey says. "It was like a cave in there.