STEVE TIMES FOUR

October 14, 2000

Four Steve Schalchlin concerts in one day. How much can any person be expected to endure?

Today was the day Steve conquered Davis High School. A few months ago, I contacted someone on its health and human services committee to mention that he’d be in town and ask if they’d be interested in his doing a presentation to the kids. She jumped at the chance, even though she hadn’t a clue what it was all about. Over the months there have been all sorts of things that have come up, including the fact that it was Homecoming Day, and so there were abbreviated class periods. I also contacted a high school in a neighboring community, which passed on having Steve come because “it would just be like the kids seeing a gay guy, and we don’t need that.”

Ultimately, it was decided to have Steve do three half-hour presentations to different classes (his show is ordinarily an hour) at Davis High.

I’d now seen him give his show to a regular audience, to college kids, and to medical professionals, but this was the first time I’d seen him bring the message to high school kids. His philosophy is that kids don’t want to be preached to. So he does an AIDS education without talking about sex. He tells the kids there are places to learn about the disease. What he does is to talk about what it feels like to be living with AIDS, to nearly die of AIDS. He talks about how the greatest percentage of new cases of HIV are in kids under the age of 25. And he presents his message with such passion and with such love that the kids are mesmerized.

Each show was different, even though the shtick was the same, the jokes were the same. And in each one the connection was something you could feel. At the end kids were lined up to shake his hand or give him a hug. The teacher in charge was so enthralled that I invited her and her husband to join us for dinner. People from Woodland High School, who had turned him down, came to check him out. They want him to come back so he can talk with their students.

So the day was pretty much a fantastic success. And hopefully a lot of kids got the message. That’s what it’s all about. It’s not about the songs. It’s not about The Last Session, it’s not about Steve, it’s about showing people the reality of HIV in the hopes that they will realize that it’s not a little thing and will take precautions to prevent becoming infected.

We kind of collapsed in the afternoon. We actually went up to Steve’s room, lolled around on the bed and watched Wallace and Gromit. At least until I had to get ready for our dinner party.

I had invited Steve Peithman, who wrote a review of The Last Session for the magazine Stage Directions, his partner Larry, Ned & Marta, and now the teacher and her husband (who are also friends of Steve and Larry’s). I fixed an apple pie without sugar, since Steve loves apple pie and can’t have sugar. (For anybody who wonders--it was great! You don’t need sugar in an apple pie.) We had a lovely evening and Steve was asked to sing, so he went through several songs of the performance for a fourth time (good thing I had the piano tuned several months ago).

It was an early evening, since Steve was tired and Ned had to get back to the radio station to see about some computer glitch that had occurred during the day. Today Ned and Steve are going to the Bay Area to do some recording and I’ll have the day to catch up on all the things I haven’t been doing while running around following the Shack Man.

<- previous | Journal home | bio | cast | archive | Bev's Home Page | next ->