I first met Jack Nichols in 1978, around the time that he moved to Florida’s space coast after living in Washington, D.C. and New York City. We were both in a bar in Hollywood (Florida) and were introduced by our mutual friend Mark Silber. The first thing I noticed about Nichols was that he was very tall (compared to me) and very friendly. We exchanged a few words and then we moved on. Little did I know that it was to be the start of a friendship that lasted till death took him away from us in the early morning of May 2.

At the time we met, Jack Nichols did not know who I was. On the other hand, I certainly knew who he was. In fact, Jack was one of my personal idols: gay and lesbian pioneers who paved the way and who inspired me when I came out in 1973. I Have More Fun With You Than Anybody, which Jack wrote with his partner Lige Clarke (1972), was one of the books that informed my coming out process. By 1978, Nichols was already a legend: co-founder (with Franklin Kameny) of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C. (1961) and co-founder (with Richard Inman) of the Mattachine Society of Florida (1963). In 1965, Nichols (along with Kameny and Barbara Gittings) organized the first “homophile” protests in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. During Jack’s last weekend on earth, Philadelphia’s Equality Forum held a National Celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the first GLBT civil rights demonstration. Though Nichols was obviously unable to attend, he was on the minds of Kameny and Gittings and everyone else who was there.

During the years that followed our first meeting, Jack and I established a rapport, helped by the fact that both of us were contributing to South Florida’s gay community newspaper, The Weekly News (TWN). He repeatedly invited me to visit him at his condo in Cocoa Beach, which I finally did in 1984. Jack was the perfect host, even though at the time he had with him a young man who was obviously taking much of his time. He helped me to his collection of GLBT memorabilia, his book collection, his Prairie Home Companion tapes and his stack of Utne Readers, which at the time I never heard of. I have since become a subscriber to the Utne Reader; and I will never again be able to read this fine magazine without thinking of Jack. When we had the time we talked about every subject under the sun. I was impressed by Jack’s encyclopedic knowledge and his capacity to extensively quote poets and philosophers. (But Jack himself was a poet and a philosopher.) Since then I managed to visit Jack in Cocoa Beach once every few years, accompanied by my life partner Michael Greenspan. The last time we visited Jack was a few months ago; and though Jack was obviously sick he kept us entertained with his wit and wisdom.

Jack Nichols’s career in journalism is as notable as his achievements in activism. In the late 1960's Jack and Lige wrote a “Homosexual Citizen” column for Al Goldstein’s SCREW magazine. From 1969 to 1973 the two activists also edited GAY, America’s first gay weekly news (The Advocate was and is a biweekly). In 1997 Jack became Senior Editor for GayToday.com, an online magazine published by Badpuppy. Always loyal to his friends, Jack invited me to contribute to GayToday. Writing for GayToday was a personal pleasure, not the least because I got to communicate with Jack (by phone and e-mail) on a regular basis. I also got to be in the same Web page as the likes of Paul Cain, Bob Kunst, James Sears, Rodger Streitmatter, George Weinberg, Randy Wicker . . . a disparate group of individuals who had nothing in common but our writing ability, our commitment to the cause, and our love for Jack Nichols.

Through it all, Jack Nichols continued to write. Both I Have More Fun With You Than Anybody and Roommates Can’t Always Be Lovers (1974; also co-authored with Clarke) are sadly and undeservedly out of print; though a dog-eared copy of Men’s Liberation (1975) may still be found in used bookstores. On the other hand, today’s readers can still get “Nichols in a nutshell” in his 1996 classic The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the Fundamentalists. Last year Jack published The Tomcat Chronicles: Erotic Adventures of a Gay Liberation Pioneer, which was recently nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. In the year of assimilation and “gay marriage” Jack was celebrating his adventurous youth and the pleasures of unbridled sex. But he was always ahead of his time.

To know Jack Nichols, as the song goes, is to love him. Those of us who were blessed with his friendship will remember his kindness, his loyalty, his bright wit and humor and his commitment to the cause of freedom - for all GLBT people and for all humanity. In his life, Jack enjoyed two great partnerships: with Lige Clarke and with entertainer Logan Carter (better known as the female impersonator Roxanne Russell). Lige was murdered in Mexico in 1975 and Logan died of AIDS-complications in the late 1980's. For the rest of his life, Jack kept the memory of those two great individuals. Now he has joined them. It is up to us who remain behind to preserve his contributions and continue his cause.

Jesse Monteagudo is a freelance writer and activist who lives in South Florida with his life partner. Write him at jessemonteagudo@aol.com.