Death Sentence
What kind of shit was I if I could not see him through to the end?
As we finished circle I was thinking about Steve. As soon as we closed, I announced, “I am going to perform the Visitation of the Sick. No reason the Christians should have that all to themselves. Steve is not far from here. Who’s with me?” Crickets.
Just as I was getting worried that no one would be interested and that I would need to ask who we were anyway I got the Nod from Lexie and Dare. I was secretly in love with Lexie but I was good friends with Dare, and Lexie was obviously stuck on him. Story of my life.
When we entered Steve’s hospital room he gave me a helpless look. I immediately realized that he’d shat himself.
Horrifying as this may seem, it represented massive improvement over the maze of tubes and wires he was connected to the first time I’d visited. At that time I’d asked a nurse what was wrong with him. “Oh, he has pneumocycstis carinii,” she replied, then seemed to catch herself. I was not immediate family. At the time I didn’t know what pneumocycstis carinii was, but by the time of this visit, I’d made the connection and researched AIDS extensively. In those days this meant going to the library, checking out paper books, and reading them. One thing my research made clear: AIDS was a death sentence. This was the 1980s.
He was off life support and in a private room. The smell was bad but I went right to work, grabbing towels. It was not like it was the first time. Wetting one, I helped him clean up — he was still very weak — and began changing his bedding. By this time I knew where everything was. I went to hand off some towels to L and D., but when I turned to them they were ashen. It was only then that I realized that this was their first time visiting him, or, for that matter, anyone with AIDS. What seemed to me substantial improvement struck them with horror. A nurse chose this moment to come in. As she was taking over for me I asked if I could be of any help. She thanked me and said no. Most of the nurses knew me by this time. Steve was quickly restored to visitability and we made small talk. L and D left shortly. Steve asked why the fuck I’d brought them.
“They don’t need to see this.”
“Actually, they are supposed to be your friends. They should be getting in here.” But I understood where he was coming from. “Hell, how was I supposed to know you’d be in such a state?” It was a lame-assed excuse and he knew that I knew it.
“Next time, Weed…”
“Yeah, sorry, Stevinski.”
We had our own nicknames for each other. I was The Weed or Weed and he was Stevinski. Weed did not mean what you probably think it meant. It was derived from my Wiccan name Agni Runningweed, which is now consigned to the past. Stevinski was just something I cooked up.
I met Steve through my BFF Audrey who was his SO at the time. Steve would call me at work almost like a needy girlfriend. At this time in my life I was trying to run my father’s machine shop. My brother would pick up, cover the receiver (this was the 80s, remember) and call to me, “It’s your buddy.”
Yes, we were buddies in a way I had not known since childhood. We’d spend hours on the phone just shooting the shit, talking philosophy, endlessly dissecting the local Pagan political scene. We were inseparable, especially at festivals, often greeting each other with exaggerated french kisses, giving rise to the kind of rumors that you might expect. It was a game. We liked goofing around and messing with people’s heads. He taught me some of the elaborate rituals of ceremonial magic. Before he came down with AIDS my ex and son returned from the west coast, along with a one year old from her now ex. We were all on an outing when, after I’d bent down to deliver to my son a quiet reprimand, Steve opined, “You know, I always figured that The Weed-as-parent would try to take this reasonable approach.” I’m not sure why I remember that. I remember a lot of odd things like that. Others more significant, like his handfasting to the BFF through whom I’d met him. Then there was the time when, along with our mutual friend Black Eagle, we decided one year that we were going to perform a full Passover Seder. We arranged to hold it in the home of the proprietors of Enchantments — at the time the only NYC alternative, as far as Wicca supplies were concerned, to the venerable and ostentatiously spelled Majickal Childe — and who, like Steve, were of Jewish extraction. We toked our way through the ceremony, insisting on reading every detail in the Haggadah, up to the meal, feasting for hours, then continuing to the closing, again reading every word, including the fine print, even attempting to sing all those songs, in spite of the inebriated exhaustion of all concerned.
The private room was a short lived reprieve. Before long he was back in intensive care. Of the people he knew and who supposedly cared about him, other than immediate family I alone persisted in visiting, which was becoming increasingly difficult emotionally. Often he wanted to make plans for when he recovered. This was hard for me because although we were both in denial, when I dared to think about it I knew that recovery was out of the question — it was only a matter of time. At length he accepted that he had HIV but wanted it kept secret. “I don’t want to have to think about people getting together and saying, ‘Let’s talk about Steve’s AIDS’”. Honestly I have no idea how many in our circle knew the truth of the situation, but no one sat around discussing it. What was there to say anyway?
It didn’t help that sometimes when I’d visit he’d start screaming at me, accusing me of not “really” caring. I knew it was the pain talking but still it was hard. My immediate reaction, always suppressed, was, “Well, fuck you then!” I had to require of myself that I not give up. He had the tough part to play, I reminded myself. What kind of shit was I if I could not see him through to the end?
One cold and rainy spring Saturday (It was a cold, rainy spring Saturday — another of those details that I inexplicably remember) I came in to learn that he had died during the night. I’d been in the day before and he had seemed even worse than usual. Worry drove me to this next day visit. It turned out that his mother had been with him. I regretted that I was not but glad he did not have to die alone. The nurse asked me if there was anything special for him about the year 1968. I replied that I was not aware of anything. “It’s just that, at one point, near the end, we asked him what year it was and he replied, ‘1968.’”
A few days later when I was visiting my child I told my ex — we were on friendly terms — that Steve had died.
“He gave you his death.” I must have looked at her quizzically because she clarified, “He had nothing left to give you, so he gave you his death.”
I covered my home altar in black and left it that way for seven months. I have not known his like again, nor do I expect to.
Except for some of the names, the preceding is all true. These events occurred north of 30 years ago. How long until I join him in death? Ten years, twenty years? An eye-blink in the scheme of things. I used to know where he is buried. I have never visited his grave. I don’t think I could bear it.
