RFD Issue 1 Autumn 1974

STEVENS McCLAVE 1945-1974

The two violins filled the air. A delightfully playful tune made me laugh, conjuring up a time when Stevens and I walked down a city street. Construction workers nearby started jeering at us, as we walked nand in hand. His genius, his pride turned their catcalls into astonishment as he wiggled his ass, fluffed his hair, and pulled me closer to him.

But he is dead now. In June, he hooked a hose to the exhaust pipe of his father's Buick, and gassed himself dead in the back seat. And twenty of us, five days later, sat listening to the violin duets, trying to cope with that gruesome fact.

Earlier that afternoon I had had some doubts. Jim had wondered whether this gathering would have any meaning. He had come up from San Francisco to be with me, to share our loss. But how to share anything with twenty people, some of whom he did not know, some of whom did not know Stevens. I admitted to myself the same doubts, but I wanted it to work. I needed some social recognition, a collective grief. And perhaps some climax, some way to call an end to the gloom that enveloped us.

We gathered slowly, under the maple tree on the front lawn. The late afternoon light had replaced the hot glare of midday. The women from Cabbage Lane had arrived, and with only one exception, all the women sat together. I remember wondering idly, in the first moments of silence, what that signified. At first I was disturbed, but felt better as I realized they were together. And they had come for some­what different reasons from me and many of the men: they were not his close friends. Perhaps they wanted to make some reckoning with death or suicide; perhaps to support those who had been his brothers.

Jean broke the long silence, the content of her words less meaningful than the commitment to verbalized sharing.

A half dozen short recollections of good happy moments with Stevens followed. Mitzi recalled times when he sang old rock and show tunes, half in humor and wholly in identification; and the Christmas party where Stevens braved the straight-hippie crowd with glitter on his eyelids and cheeks.

I was glad people were talking. I felt worried that Jim and Tommy, Steven’s closest friends from the city, were so quiet--are they offended with the lightness, the superficiality? Am I? How can I say anything at all? How can I begin to share ? For three years, Steven' presence, or absence, was the overwhelming fact of my life. But somehow the words started to come. I can't remember now what I said then, but I must have dominated the talk for a while. Tears cam e, memories, some laughter. Jim, who had shared so many difficult, or happy, times when we three had lived together--Jim was involved, too. And Tommy began to recollect.

The flow of words ebbed slowly, leaving another silence I looked to Allan. He had been so central to the formation of this event. He had dissuaded me from flying to Michigan for what probably would have been a sterile funeral experience. Fritz, Steven's bereft lover, would have been there, and probably wouldn't have been able to be open with me. His mother, whose pain Stevens carried around with him as a heavy stone. His father, whose patriarchy is to me most directly responsible for Steven's despair. No, it was a good decision not to go to the funeral.

Allan, too, had shown me, in those first few hours after the news, that any meaning for me or for xis lay here in Wolf Creek. Whether there is a soul or not, I don't know. But the impact of his life, and his death, is surely here among us.

My eyes asked, across the circle, if the time was right for him and Richard to make music. Allan's eyes said yes, and added that, he had been partaking of the circle, albeit in silence. They played together as the sun dropped beneath the hills, opening up a calm. The various pieces conjured up moods and memories of Stevens. I looked to each person in the circle, and felt buoyed by what had transpired.