The Stories Of Stephan And I

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As a parent I was again frustrated. Over the years, Stephan would alternately confide in and withdraw from me. In the good times he told hilarious anecdotes and proudly, willingly, shared many of his writings. He boasted about his work as a housecleaner for the wealthy in the French Quarter and Uptown sections of New Orleans, playfully calling himself "God's little dustbin boy." He spoke of facing down fagbashers in City Park and gossiped freely about family and friends--but seldom about lovers. We knew that he had many, but he never found a partner who could furnish the emotional security he craved. It's doubtful that anyone could have, given the enormity of his need and his low threshold of tolerance for fools.

We talked about religion, or more accurately, spirituality. We had long since left the doctrinal misallocation of his childhood and moved toward a strong sense of the need for both reason and moral intuition in Omega Replica shaping belief. Not surprisingly, Stephan turned up the amperage, and organized religion didn't fare well in his catalogue ...
... of rude-isms. He wrote of "bible fag-bashing" and "preaching the scripture of spite." Also from his list:
1. Those falsehoods dripping from the face of your faith
2. I seriously doubt that Jesus is going to judge me any more harshly than my human contemporaries
3. You accuse me of not believing, but you never tell the truth
4. The real crime is that God gave you an opinion
5. You're jumping rope with your halo again

Even so, it's clear that Stephan's struggle was intensely spiritual, and he denied being an atheist, saying that his idea of God was love, pure and simple. Further codification didn't seem to interest him. Stated rudely, "I don't want to fall in love with another idea."

Stephan never reentered the education system, but toward the end of his life he asked for critiques of some of his short stories from me and my sister Mary Lou, a lifelong career journalist. He was also on the threshold of a major life change. He planned to move his housecleaning business to Orlando where his sisters could be a support system and he could escape numerous New Orleans entanglements. An abusive love affair with a gay doctor had just ended, and he wanted to end a longtime friendship with a former client, a wealthy alcoholic widow. The relationship had deteriorated into a degrading tradeoff. Stephan provided good company and was her cushion when she keeled over, often in public. She provided money, trips to New Breitling Replica Watches York, use of her car, and other niceties. Stephan, bitter about her unwillingness to seek treatment and about his role as friend-turned-enabler, said to me, "What kind of a person am I if my friendship is for sale?"

On June 21, 1999, Stephan walked angrily from his apartment to her house to protest a series of harassing phone calls. Exactly what happened next is not clear, but Stephan's life ended on her living room floor with a single pistol shot in his chest. Homicide? Suicide? The coroner wasn't sure, and the widow died a year later. While driving in the French Quarter, she had a heart attack and ran her car into a post.