MORE MENTAL HOUSE CLEANING

After Jeff died my life changed in many ways; which of them have anything to do with his absence I don't know; I'm too close to tell.

(News flash to everyone because no one really knows this!)This last year has been tough in a lot of ways and I knew changes would have to be made. I might have to-get a job! A change was made, a chapter in life is over and a different one begun.

Jeff's death put a stopper in the verbal narrative of my life. I have wanted to resume writing on Studio Notes and felt that the first entry needed to be about his death. I felt a need to memorialize him, to honor him, but I couldn't, and so hadn't done anything beyond that point. It was seven months until I could say something. A lot happened in that time, and yet, not much as well.

A week or so after I got back from S.F., and really came out from myself into the world at large, I met, and soon went to work for, (unknown to me when I met him), a maniac, helping him remodel a house. Fortunate timing in the face of a long, lean summer filled with nothing regular in the way of modeling or shows. So I spent the summer building someone else's dream. The oddness of having my life take such a big turn for the worse and then the better, experiencing such loss, then getting work when people are losing their homes and jobs, making good money when the financial world is collapsing, I was humbled and weirded out.

One of the more challenging aspects of my brothers death was inheriting things: his car, a Toyota 4Runner and the nicest machine I've ever owned, the Mac I'm writing this on, several good books and more styling clothes than I have had in years. I hate it, feel nauseous thinking about it, and sometimes like it, and that too makes me feel sick.

The computer Robin let me have is an older Mac and I don't yet have administrator access (getting passwords when someone is on their death bed isn't something I anticipated) but it is a good enough learning curve to be on, and I hold out hope that his files will be a good piece of him to have.

I have been too tied down and busy, as well as dealing with the aforementioned technical challenges, to pay any attention to all but the most glaring outrages of this election. All I want to say is- we can change today, “Si se puede!” Now more than ever, we have to adapt or die, extreme, but true. The work has just begun.

My Brother Jeff

died April 15.

Today, November 2nd was his birthday. He would have been 51.

He was brilliant, stellar, and thus illuminating. Lest you think I am idealizing him too much- an easy thing to do from many perspectives- those closest to him could get too much infrared and U.V.s and be burned. Noble and generous when things were going well and not afraid to ask and expect the same from others on the rare occasions when he was in need. He could be toxic, dangerous, and loving and occasionally all at the same time. He saved me and hurt me and I will never be the same without him. I miss him more than I can say. In many ways, he was as powerful as a black hole and as influential on my life, and many, many, others, as can be. He was my hero and my antihero, the center of the universe in many ways to me; an example, guide, and cautionary tale all in one. He respected me in ways that I rarely got from others. If a cynic is an idealist whose ideals are so high they are never attained, and thus are forever let down Jeff wasn’t a cynic but he often demanded much more than this world could deliver.

He shared windows into his world that continue to color my life with the light of his passion and insights, introducing me to a host of transformational experiences and people in such a way as to change my life forever. He was hyperbolic. He was superlative. For me words don't work yet to convey his essence. He was my leader and example in more ways than I have been able to recount, something I have been trying to do for the last several months, been trying to put into words what his death has meant to me and even now I am challenged by the effort. To some degree the difficulties that this involves come from the similarities and childhood we shared and putting this into words requires a large measure of self-examination, some of which is pretty uncomfortable.

He was a challenge and a blessing from the start. He tormented my sister, Kristin, to the point of violence too many time to count and helped put food on the table with his paper route money after my parents’ divorce. He gave me my first Charlie horses because he wanted to watch my flesh bulge out when I could do nothing to stop him and stood up to my father when the fighting between my parents began in earnest. Victimizer and redeemer, tormenter and hero. These were roles he played throughout his life until the very end. All his family and lovers will attest to this.

He was a tech geek from the beginning: doing science fair projects with lasers (only invented twelve years earlier!) around the age of 12, dissecting a shark and gathering top honors from it.

I was as overjoyed as he was when he and a friend came home with their newspaper carrying bags overflowing with a couple of bull frogs and hundreds of baby frogs. My mother was horrified and made him take them back to the pond they came from. What he had planned for them I had no idea, but how cool.

He was an Angry Young Man when he was a boy and I clearly recall joining the anti-Nixon/anti-war protest rally he had organized the neighborhood kids around one summer night, irritating our Republican, and former Nixon campaign worker, father. In high school he was busted for streaking, after being identified when someone pulled off the paper bag he had over his head. One of the first, and almost last, times he was caught for his transgressive behaviors. He was a quick study to say the least.

Starting with his irritation at my changing the station on the clock radio (we shared a bedroom growing up) from KDKB to KUPiD, his musical tastes fundamentally formed mine and turned me on to the depth and breadth of experiences that music has to offer.

All of the musical highlights of my life, the most amazing experiences, the most spectacular performances, and the most memorable events involved him: a free ticket to my first concert-Al Stewart when I was 14, Fela in Los Angeles, Bowie, my first Dead show and all that entails, The Talking Heads and The Tom-Tom Club, many Meat Puppets shows, The Phillip Glass Ensemble at The Scottsdale Center for the Arts (he almost cried when I gave him the tickets for his birthday, and was pretty much speechless when we met Glass back stage.), a champagne brunch he made the morning of a Stones concert (his enjoyment of food expressed itself in his excellent cooking). He taught me the opening chords to Brown Sugar and gave me my first Led Zeppelin album, Houses of the Holy.

Just as in Scottsdale and Tempe, then Seattle and lastly in San Francisco, a number of remarkable personalities coalesced around him. I will venture a guess about places he lived but I didn't visit him at- Bozeman, Montana and Denver, and include them as well- Jeff was always just left of the center of, if not spot on, the most exciting scenes around-the heart of the budding punk/alt/whatever music scene in Phoenix in the eighties and the Meat Puppets, then Seattle and Nirvana. Finally, San Francisco and the dot com thang. Lots of dots. Usually content to be shining the light on others, sometimes chagrined to be, in his own words to me “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride”.

He was admitted to San Francisco County Hospital in late March with his most serious bout of ulcerative colitis, a disease he developed several years ago but kept this from most everyone for a few years and many people, even very close ones, until immediately before his death. He died from an unstoppable M.R.S.A. infection contracted the day he was scheduled to leave the hospital.

The last couple of times that he was hospitalized because of it, my efforts at understanding and support were met with a degree of irritation and diffidence that he could express quite well; if it wasn't of value to him it shouldn't be to anyone else either. He was never one to complain about what ever difficulties turned up in his life, and by and large, was fiercely independent and powerful. His was a power that was expressed as intensely passionate anger, and overwhelming act of love.

Now a bit about Ulcerative colitis (U.C.) M.R.S.A. or, Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aurus and his end, no pun intended. U.C. is an immune system disease where-in your body doesn't distinguish between food and your own intestines and, if left untreated, will result in your body literally digesting itself. This is first expressed as pits and eventually holes in your colon, or as he said to me, “I’m ripping myself new assholes.” The consequent massive infections are treated by assaulting your body with antibiotics. One of the many results is the destruction of your immune system, leaving it open to the smallest infections.

M.R.S.A. is a relatively new version of a virus, a “superbug” that is on 90% of all humans, most commonly found in the nose, which is why you are more likely to contract it when you have a tube up it for extended periods. There are four major strains, his was the toughest of them. It is survival of the fittest which means you or it. I would love to hear Darwin hold forth on it. I have a friend who is a doctor and, in his words, if he were in the hospital, as soon as he was physically able, would crawl from the hospital to avoid this. When MRSA started to be an issue, Sweden got on the ball and now has a .10% infection rate. In the richest nation in the world, where we let the "free market" make the decisions, because "greed is good", if you are in ICU for over two weeks, you have a 50% chance of becoming infected; you have a 27% chance of dying from it. But at least we have low taxes, right?! He was diagnosed with it on the day before he was scheduled for release.

I had had several late night talks with him over the course of his previous stays in the hospital. Colitis treatment involves steroids; one of the side effects was being wired and, knowing I am a night person, he would call me in the middle of the night. He had told me a couple of times when it was particularly bad, that, while, yes, he wanted to stay around, he had lived a full life and was as ok as one could be with leaving. His biggest regret was leaving Zoe, his stepdaughter of 13.

The infection was in his blood and thus was spread throughout his body. The body’s response is to produce clots that are themselves infected. In the doctors’ words, "they (the clots) have spread throughout his body and set up shop." Blood thinners are the standard treatment for clots, but because they were infected, dissolving them simply spread them throughout his body which caused at least three strokes.

San Francisco County Hospital was described to me as "the Harvard of the West coast" by a couple of his doctors. A pause to praise his docs and nurses; they were all amazing. A couple of them went to his wake and several told me and my family that he was their favorite patient; he was so on the ball, so knowledgeable and engaged about everything that was going on. He signed consent forms to the last.

As is only fitting of Jeff, the way that this disease progressed was so rare that only one similar case could be found from around the world, a man in Australia had a similar set of conditions (technically termed-Cavernous sinus thrombosis, or doctor speak for a blood clot between his eyes, in the front of his brain) and he made a full recovery. By the time I got there (a Thursday morn) he was blind in one eye and had bruises and sores covering his body.

Two weeks after he was diagnosed, he was dead.

The first week was a series of ups and downs, on the path downhill. Robin, his girlfriend of the last several years had been staying with him during his U.C. treatment as much as she could while keeping home and hearth (and job) (and motherhood) intact. She was an unsung hero for the whole of his dealing (or not, as the case was so often) with his disease.

Through the time I spent with him he was a fighter, dealing with it stoically and with eyes wide, so to speak. A quintessentially Jeff moment went like this- He told me how wonderful his team of nurses and doctors were, then praised them in front of me with all the sincerity that was in him (a lot). He then asked me to brush his teeth for him (Robin had been shaving him during his stay as well), which I happily agreed to. Soon after I started he became irritated at my ineptness (I’ll cop to that-I’ve never done it for someone else before.) yelling at me as best he could in his weakened state “Figure it out Steve! It’s not fucking rocket science!” Quintessential Jeff, to the last.

The morning of the second Friday I was there (all the while, all of us playing tag-team staying with him) the hospital called and suggested we come to discuss with him as best he was able to what he wanted to do. We went down to tell him we would support him in whatever he wanted to do, fight or not… the tests on his blood had come back positive for MRSA for eleven days and they were doing everything they could think of but it kept getting worse. That evening he let us know he wanted to keep fighting but by Saturday morn the doctors called just before we were all heading down there. He had told the attending doctor that he knew he was dying and he wanted to quit. Focus shifted to comfort and he was given triple the amount of morphine had been on for the previous two weeks, all tubes were pulled and tests stopped. He had been given his own drip button to control the morphine several days before. He was as comfortable as could be.

As word got around to his friends the ICU became so full, ten or twelve of us rotated in and out of his room and were told that we had to stay in his room and out of the halls of ICU. "Only two people are allowed in a room at a time." They saw more life and energy in that unit that they had had in God only knows how long and I think they liked it. He took his time and was aware for most of what came and went till Tues morning.

Tues night I left at 10:00 P.M. to take my mother back to Robins. At 10:35PM his heart stopped. Kris, my older sister was holding his hand and Allen, my younger brother was standing by his side. MY brain completely seized up when I got back from Robins and I turned right around, unthinkingly and went back to get my Mom, thinking for some reason she would want to come down. No, she had to stay with Zoe. I turned back around and went to the hospital, all this time not crying, and for the tenth time, got lost. When I got there most everybody had left. I went in and joined Robin, Allen, and Kris.

He had had an oxygen mask and tube up his nose the entire time I had been there, right eye swollen shut and in crippling pain, a grip in his hand and a corresponding fight in his face the entire time I was there. And now, I saw no pain and a calm. And one last glimmer of his beauty. I was the last one out.

We had a mini-wake Thursday afternoon in Golden Gate Park for my sister, father, and his wife before they had to leave. The weather was gorgeous until 5-ish, when the fog rolled in, which is when it was to end.

My mother left that evening.

Friday night Robin, Zoe, Allen, and I went to the wake his friends had hurriedly put together at "The ranch", a collection of studios in the east end of SF and listened to stories, looked at pictures in a slideshow and assorted activities that people do at a wake. I was struck time and again by the people who shared stories of his compassion and generosity to, in some cases, complete strangers. Those closest to him got burned the most and everyone near him got fire and warmth. One of the most honest, truthful, and thus loving things I heard all night, and I heard many expressions of love that evening, came from someone whose name I regretfully don’t remember, when she said “Just because Jeff is dead doesn’t mean we can’t say he wasn’t an asshole!” He would have loved it.

I was all grins when, when throughout the evening, and indeed, throughout the time I was in S.F., his friends were shocked at how much he and I looked and sounded alike. One friend had to have me turn sideways so she could be reminded of his nose in my profile, which she proceeded to kiss.

Haikus about him and flowers for him were placed throughout the place and music we all recalled him loving was played.

Somewhere out there he is rearranging the ions till they’re as right as he knows they need to be.

I'll have more thoughts to share here, but for now it's time to let this be and go on.