Dreams and Nightmares 3: Kenny

Kenny

One of the first people I met when moved to San Francisco in 1981 was Ken Stevenson. He and I were both in our 20s. He came from Maine and talked about harvesting potatoes. When we were pigging out with some delicious food he’d cackle, “As my grandmother used to say, ‘Slow down! Food was meant to save a life, not take it!”’ I was from Ohio and both sides of my family were farmers, so I understood his potato references. And we both loved our grandmothers dearly. Actually, Kenny and I were similar in several ways. He and I had both been part of Catholic religious communities, had unaccepting families, and had moved to San Francisco to begin constructing our new lives. We met in church, at a Dignity mass for gay Catholics, and became fast friends. We would spend a lot of time together because we lived very close to each other. And because we genuinely liked each other. We laughed at each other’s stories, hung out at bars together, and talked about dating the various man available at the time.
            On the news one day I heard that there had been a mass shooting in the Embarcadero Center downtown. I made a mental note to call Kenny when I got home to see if he knew anything about the situation. It was worse than I thought. Kenny had been in the insurance office when the mass shooter entered and started firing. People dove for cover under their desks to avoid getting hit, but several were injured and several died. Understandably Kenny was in shock and couldn’t talk about it for a while. When he did begin to talk, he said he couldn’t keep the scenes out of his mind—the blood, the screaming, the panic. We had no idea that mass shootings, with their now understood patterns and responses, would become so common. This was an extremely unusual situation and none of us knew how to handle it. Still, we did our best to support Kenny, to help him feel loved and cared for, and assure him that such a thing would never happen again.
            A few years later, after AIDS had claimed its first victims, we were both living in Noe Valley. I lived on Elizabeth Street and Kenny lived around the corner on Castro just beyond the corner of 24th. You had to go through a tunnel of sorts underneath the storefront in order to get to his apartment in the rear.
            Kenny had been sick for a couple of days and I decided to pay him a visit. I knocked on his door and there was no answer, but I went inside because I knew he was there. Some scattered dishes on the table confirmed his presence, because Kenny would never go out leaving a messy kitchen. One never knew when one might meet someone to bring home!

“Kenny?” I called, knowing that he was in the darkened loft bed. There was no answer.

“Kenny, are you OK?” I asked loudly. He rolled over and mumbled something. “I can’t understand you. I’m coming up there.” And I climbed the ladder to his bed. His pajamas (Yes, Kenny was one of the few guys I know who actually wore pajamas!) were rumpled and his black hair was a mess. He looked very tired and sick, like he was fighting a dreadful flu.

“This is terrible,” he said. “I’ve been sleeping for three days. I feel so weak.”

“Do you need anything? Do you not want me to get you anything?”

“No,” he replied. “I just need to rest. I’ll be OK.”

“Ok. Let me know if you need anything. I’m just around the corner.”

I left him snuggled in his loft bed, I made my way back through the tunnel to the street, thinking that it didn’t seem like just a regular flu. He was really out of it.

A couple of weeks later Kenny and I were driving on a Saturday errand, and he pulled over the second or third time to blow his nose.

“I’m constantly blowing my nose!” he said. “Look at me! I don’t know when the doctor’s going to tell me what’s going on. I just want to know what this is,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I honestly didn’t understand. I thought he was still blowing his nose from his flu.

“This isn’t a regular flu, Mellie,” he confided, using his pet name for me. “This is something worse. I think I might have it.” He couldn’t bring himself to look me in the eye.

I remember staring at him as the sunlight came through the windshield. Cala Foods was across the street. Pedestrians were walking around our car. It was a freeze-frame moment. I didn’t want to believe what he was saying, but somehow, I knew the depth of what he was getting at. He was very sick. One of the first I would know. And I was going to lose my best friend.