Emilio Ildefonso Velasquez Ruiz

The weather is much nicer than we had been lead to believe it would be for the holiday.

The town of San Luis Obispo was caught up in "Black Friday" frenzy; so I only took a brief walk downtown today.

There is still a kind of disconnect I feel between my consciousness and the world around me.

I found out online a only few hours ago that Emilio Velasquez Ruiz passed away on September 29, in Mexico. I had read somewhere that he had late stage cancer, but I couldn't get ahold of him or get any sort of confirmation from anyone who knew him as to how he was doing. There as yet has been no obituary in any American publication; I found only a few mentions online from Mexican websites.

Emilio swept me off to Mexico when I was but 23 years old, and had been a significant part of my life from that point on. I was with Emilio when I saw the newspaper headline that Harvey Milk and George Moscone had been assassinated. The City was still reeling from Jonestown, then that shocking event was followed by another...

When I get home, I'll dig through my boxes in storage for a suitable photograph that I can try to post. I have one of him marching in CSW from around twenty years ago, as handsome as ever; others from the San Diego AIDS Walk sometime in the 90s; and somewhere, two albums full of photographs of Cafe Emilio's along with a broken cassette tape of his incredible voice that I had refused to throw away.

Emilio was responsible for translating "Hair" into Spanish. As he showed me his notes for the translation, he recalled dryly how the government had shut them down by their third performance. This was not long after the police massacres in Tlatelolco.

He was the reluctant lawyer who wanted to perform, never thinking that one day his skill as a lawyer would come in handy when he became an activist. In 1986, he came to LA as a presenter at the International People of Color conference at the Ambassador Hotel.

There are more organizations that he founded or helped to start than I could possibly name; I hope the link at the top of the post is still working. What comes to mind is that there are countless people who had no one else to turn to but Emilio; that there is an enormous empty space unfilled with his passing.

That summer, there was an ice cream truck that would play the introduction to "Souvenirs" on an endless loop as it wound its way through the dusty streets far below us as we sunbathed on the roof. I can hear his voice in my mind as if it were but yesterday, sitting on a stool with a guitar in the darkened cafe after closing, singing to me when everyone had left for the evening. When he sang Billy Joel's "I Love You Just The Way You Are" in Spanish it sent a tingle down my spine.

If you get one or two great loves in your life that lift you above the clouds and suspend time and make everything magical it's a wonderful thing.

I think I'm going to lose it and I want to concentrate on all the good memories I will take with me for the rest of my life --and that's all I have of him. Precious moments, far less than I would have liked, that are too big to be filed away and forgotten... I want to play with my nieces and nephews and embrace the life and laughter in them here in the present and that's all I can write now because I'm already sniffing away the tears... and when the it's the right time I will be able to let them just flow when they will, but not now...