Note: This is a story that I read at a World AIDS Day event at Tacoma Art Museum sponsored by Pierce County AIDS Foundation.
AIDS and the
Internet brought us a friendship that has lasted twenty years. It began when my
wife, Gabi, set up a one-page website in honor of our son Bill with a small
photo of Bill and three brief paragraphs:
Bill was openly bi-sexual. In April of 1995, he was assaulted
in a hate crime here in Olympia, WA (USA). On May 8, 1995 Bill committed
suicide, despite loving support from his family, friends and many wonderful
people in our community. Bill was 17 years old. He was a bright, warm and
creative young man. He is greatly missed.
Please remember him, and speak out to end discrimination,
hate speech and violence against people who are gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and
transgendered — and against anyone for any reason. This website focuses mostly
on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality and safety issues, but it is
all connected. We are all connected. And silence is where the hate grows.
Not long after she uploaded the website,
she got this email from Steve Schalchlin:
I just
found your home page and when I saw the picture of your son and story that went
with it, I wept right here in the living room. I can't tell you how much it
affected me, that someone so beautiful and obviously so loved by his mother
would still be crushed by the hatred in this world. If only these bigots truly
understood how much damage they cause.
I invite
you to view my web site. I am a gay man living with AIDS and as part of my own
struggle to survive I have created this site the centerpiece of which is my
online diary where I detail what I'm living with. For some reason, people all
over the world are being drawn to it and it has helped many people, especially
many Christians to stop and think about what they do.
I
appreciate your fight, dear lady, and I want you to know that I am in anguish
over your loss. That you took this pain and turned it into a fight against
hatred moves me and reminds me that there are great people out there. And you
are a shining example.
Your Friend,
Steve
Steve
We found out that Steve was a songwriter, and that he was
dying. He posted words about his journey toward death in the online diary. His
partner (now husband), actor and playwright Jim Brochu, encouraged him to set
the things he was writing to music. He said, “Take the pain and put it into
song.” Steve discovered that music had the power to heal. No, writing music did
not miraculously cure the disease that was destroying his body, but it gave him
the will to go on.
Steve built a musical around the songs he had been writing
with his partner, who wrote the book. They called the play The Last Session. Steve could barely get out of bed, but he wanted
to see, at the very least, a reading of his play before he died. He did get to
see a reading of the play and even got to play the lead role when it was
workshopped in Los Angeles in the spring of 1996 — singing, playing piano, and
acting (which he had never done before) despite living with full-blown AIDS.
Others saw it too and were impressed enough to raise money to produce it
Off-Off Broadway. It premiered at the Currican Theater in New York in 1997. It
got rave reviews. Peter Marks in the New York Times called it "Blessed... haunting... exquisite...
exuberant” and “from the heart."
Matthew Mirapaul, also with the Times, wrote, "There are large doses of humor... The Last Session... is as dramatically engrossing and warmly human as Angels in America and Rent."
Matthew Mirapaul, also with the Times, wrote, "There are large doses of humor... The Last Session... is as dramatically engrossing and warmly human as Angels in America and Rent."
And then through random sheer luck Steve’s name was drawn in
a lottery to choose patients living with AIDS who were to receive new drugs,
and these drugs have saved his life.
The Last Session later
played in Los Angeles and then back to New York for a celebrated Off-Broadway
run at the 47th Street Theater. It has been produced by both
professional and amateur companies all over the country, including Houston,
Dallas, Denver, Baltimore, Omaha, Rochester NY, Indianapolis, Boston, and most
recently a long run in London.
Steve, still alive and
in good health despite horrid side effects to drugs, continues to tour the
country telling his story of living with AIDS and playing in venues large and
small.
Our friendship has continued. He has traveled to Olympia four
times to do benefit concerts for the local PFLAG chapter and once to play the
piano that John Lennon composed “Imagine” on as part of the IMAGINE Piano Peace
Project. Steve played and sang “Imagine” and “Gabi’s Song,” which he wrote in
honor of our son. That experience inspired him to write his peace cantata “New
World Waking.” He explains: “I'm sitting there beneath a shade tree in the
front yard at the Clayton's home in Olympia, Washington about to put my hands
where John Lennon's hands once were, the instrument whose sound inspired the
song 'Imagine', and I knew in that moment what ‘New World Waking’ was meant to
be: A journey to find a simple song of peace.”
“New World Waking” debuted in San Francisco at the 30th
anniversary concert of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus at Davies Symphony
Hall and has sense been performed in music halls and cabarets in New York and
other cities, including South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia.
Steve and Jim now live in New York and continue to
collaborate on musicals including The Big
Voice: God or Merman and Jim’s one-man show about Zero Mostel, Zero Hour. Gabi and I continue to
advocate for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality. And we will
always the grateful that Steve Schalchlin read her one-page post on the
Internet.
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