10:59 am - Mon 9.29.2008
In Passing

Mon 9/29/08 (2:15 a.m.)

A week or so ago, I learned that Steven M., someone I knew from Lansing theater, had died earlier in the month.

He was 41 years old.

We did at least two shows together that I can think of, but we weren�t friends; I had no reason to dislike him personally - he never did me or anyone I cared about any harm - but I didn�t respect him as a performer (I just didn�t think he was very good), and, being positive he was gay, I didn�t respect him for being in the closet.

He was married, and had two children (Two girls). And I don�t know this, so I could be totally wrong, but I�m assuming he died of AIDS or an AIDS-related illness (Once again, we�re talking about a guy I barely knew �back in the day� and hadn�t had contact with in years, so this is total speculation on my part).

His friend Tamara had posted the news on Facebook, along with a link to an online memorial site.

After reading the news, I clicked on the link, and watched a slide show of pictures from his life - shows he�d done, at his job (As a cook at Chilis), with family and friends, all accompanied by appropriately touching piano music.

And I was touched.

Whatever judgement I�d made about him, based on very little information and even less understanding, Steven lived and loved and was loved by a lot of people (And often working with kids, as a dancer/choreographer, he probably had a lot more lasting impact on Lansing theater than I did, however formidable my talent).

Under the circumstances, whether he lived up to my performance standards or not seems spectacularly unimportant. I think it�s pretty safe to say he entertained a lot of people, and positively affected a lot of lives.

As for his being �in the closet� - if he was - I should be able to find a little more charity in my heart for someone conflicted about who he is, when his society, his family (I�m guessing), and even his God, tells him he�s supposed to be something else; under those circumstances, I don't know that I'd be any more courageous about coming out of the closet myself.

(Any time I find myself thinking of someone as being �cowardly� in some aspect of their lives, I need to remind myself: It took me twenty years to come out to LA, to start following my heart�s desire. And that was without any pressure from anyone to ever be somebody else.)

For the casually disparaging, dismissive judgements I�d made about him when he was alive, I found myself wondering, looking at snapshots of his life, who managed to do more with their life, him or me?

I wrote a little about his passing in my other blog, and thought that was the end of it.

Then in the afternoon, I was reading an obituary in the �AV Club� section of The Onion.

As I finished the article, and was going through the hundreds of reader comments, I found myself, to my shock, tearing up a little - While I�d said I was �sad� at his passing, apparently I had no idea I was really sad at his passing.

(That reminds me of something I wrote down on an envelope some time ago - Someone writing an article about the show Dexter wrote, of the title character, �Like so many of us, he�s deeply introspective while managing to have absolutely no genuine self-knowledge�. I couldn�t have felt more like he was talking about me than if he�d written, �Hey, Jim Hoffmaster - I�m talking about you here!�. )

But when I think about it, it�s not very difficult to see why I�d have a strong attachment to someone like Paul Newman - In a nutshell, the man was pretty much every single thing I fantasize being, while living an exemplary life in the process.

I�ve never been very comfortable in my skin.

And in spite of whatever �gifts� I have, life's always been something of a struggle for me. And, more often than not, it's a struggle I've felt I was losing.

So I�m inherently, powerfully attracted to people who �make it look easy�, who seem as if they just "know how to do it" (When I was younger, I thought it simply was �easy� for some people; now I know that it�s not that simple - To one extent or another, I imagine life�s difficult for just about everyone. Which makes the people who �make it look easy� all the more impressive.)

I�ve said it before - it really doesn�t make that much sense to be sad when someone like Paul Newman dies, because the only �relationship� I had with him was through his movies, and that �relationship� remains unchanged - Paul Newman may have died, but "Butch Cassidy" lives forever.

But whether it makes sense or not, I am sad. Genuinely sad, as if I�d lost someone close to me.

 

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