THINK TANK | Stewart Scofield Remembered

13May08

Scofield: A Man Greater Than the Sum of His Parts
by Christopher de la Torre

I didn’t Stewart for long, but by our second email exchange I found him to be exquisitely open-minded and creative to the bone. Stewart was a man who hadn’t tolerated stupidity very well, nor superficiality, nor popular culture, nor hypocrisy. He felt life was too short to hang around with jerks. He appreciated those who were clean and sober, admitting he was not. He loved the odd and offbeat. He mulled things over before speaking. He believed organized religion is the bane of the planet, yet recognized that “connecting with something other than one’s self is essential to become a fully realized human being.”

Stewart Scofield had his way with words.

We were first brought together by Flickr, the online photo community. I had taken these shots on Weehawken Street – the shortest street in Manhattan – of big dilapidated wooden signs that warned truck drivers not to piss on the sidewalk. They seemed to be of an era past, a gritty and less censored time. One read, “Please respect our neighbors and our neighborhood. Do not urinate on this block!” Quietly tucked just beyond the West Side Highway, within ear shot of the screaming queens of Christopher Pier and the grunts and catcalls of the drunks outside the popular and seedy bar appropriately named The Dugout, one could see exactly how this tiny street got its fair share of action. History lived in those boards, I thought, so I took a few keepsakes and off I went. Little did I know that another soul in a city 5,000 miles away would soon share the aesthetic, drawn to the history behind the photographs.

A few weeks later I noticed several of my Weehawken Street pics tagged as “favorites” by a mysterious Flickr user named “Urinalia.” Intrigued, I emailed him with an introduction. I hoped he might add some flare to the cult section of my new online art journal (still nameless at the time).

He eventually returned the email, explaining his “total unfamiliarity” with online literary magazines, and described his concept – an obsession of several years – for a book on Men and urination; a book that would emerge from about 4,000 online survey results, what amounted to about three years of research. When asked about his interest in my photos, he answered:

As for Weehawken St, I am such a west coast fag (industrial NW Indiana home for the first 18 years until I escaped), that I rarely venture east of the Continental Divide and start getting nervous east of the Mississippi, though crossing the Hudson has tremendous appeal. I haven’t been there since Derby Day 1989 and long to spend rummaging through the archives at NYPL.

And when I asked him to tell me more about himself, in preparation for an interview I planned to run in the journal from which you are reading, he gave me a short yet informative glimpse into what I later found was a fascinating man, with many unique sides.

The following was taken from the second email in our second conversation concerning where his book might intersect with my journal:

Born 26 March 1948 / NW Indiana / Republican parents who left me alone requiring me only to join the Cub Scouts and the band in junior high. I was a ‘good boy’ and from an early age couldn’t wait to get out of Hobart, Indiana. Nothing unusual there.

BA, Grinnell College 1970. Psychology with minor in art history. Radical times as the cultural revolution rolled over America. First smoked pot, had sex, met people who didn’t look like me.

Moved to SF Bay area, had love affair with Prince Charming, moved back to a hippie commune outside Grinnell. There, started a magazine for gay men who lived in the country, RFD, in 1974. The first issues of RFD and Christopher Street appeared the same year. It was a passing of consciousnesses.

RFD was a reader-participatory journal steeped in the politics of Gay Liberation, following the earlier footsteps of Fag Rag in Boston and The Body Politic in Toronto. Never was the intention to make money (and it never did) but to break down the sense of isolation that gay men living rurally felt (it did). Decisions were reached through the consensus model; each quarterly issue composed by a differing collection of gay men across the country (Iowa, Oregon, Massachusetts, North Carolina). It was crazy. I was the first burn out of the originators (good story there).

Meanwhile in NYC, Christopher Street was the first of the new generation of gay slick mags. Heavily capitalized, ‘real’ advertisements, paid staff, color photos and glossy paper. RFD is still being published quarterly making it the second longest running queer publication after The Advocate, although it has shifted from rural to being the journal of record of the Radical Faerie movement.

Returned to Bay area, got a Masters in Library Science at Berkeley in 1979, met The Most Wonderful man in the World. It was a very good life. We worked together as landscape gardeners (no, I never worked in a library), loved each other a lot, had dogs, fucked, laughed and ate well.

AIDS happened, SF got very, very dark. Friends died. Strangers died. Everyone died. Gay men and lesbians started talking with each other. My lover died in 1990 at home in the very room I am sitting in at the cabin we were remodeling in Bodega Bay. I expected to die within a couple of years as well, and decided to spend the rest of my life helping other people with AIDS.

Stewart was on the payroll of the new food bank for people with AIDS (now Sonoma County’s Food for Thought). Originally a volunteer, he’d been there for 15 years. He wrote how his 11-year relationship with a psychotherapist and electric bassist taught him “a lot about fucked up people and a little bit about jazz,” describing how it had become less about being lovers and more about good friendship and support. He wrote about how he began his research for what was to be an expansive history of urine “with its economic/magical/medical aspects as well as the psychology of urination, rites and rituals, the history of public restrooms, and yes, watersports and public restroom sex.”

Stewart contracted HepC and subsequently underwent 48 weeks of a type of chemotherapy, a process he called “confusing, debilitating and dreary with heavy emotional and mental side effects.” He wrote how he came out of chemo a changed person, explaining how his interests had shifted. Although fundamentally happy, he now learned to cherish each day even more than before, admitting that his interests were “shifting further away from queer and HIV affairs.”

Stewart Scofield lived big and loved even bigger. He experienced to the fullest and touched many lives with his work. The big lesson?

Make sure you have no loose ends with people in your life so that if you die today, everything that needs to be said has been said, and the last thing one should say, every time you leave a buddy for however long or short a time, is an expression of love and caring.

As I recently told a good friend of Stewart’s, what I find so moving and inspiring about his life is that in the wake of personal devastation (the loss of his beloved partner and contracting a life-altering disease), he stood back up and fought back, fought for the community, and remained a positive force, selfless and true. Stewart Scofield was a man who didn’t need permission from nature or society to do good, to fulfill his dreams and help others fulfill their dreams. He was a man greater than the sum of his parts.

There’s no doubt about it; we need more people like him.

Find out more about Stewart Scofield:

• “A Tribute to Stewart” | Sonoma County’s Food For Thought website
• Obituary | The Neptune Society of Northern California
• Obituary | The Bay Area Reporter
• Memorial Celebration Notice
• February 2008 Think Tank interview

Photos of Stewart reading in his loft, courtesy Stewart Scofield.

Filed under: art, community, contributor news, literary, think tank interviews   |  6 Comments
Tags: christopher street, cultural anthropologist, flickr, food for thought, interview, neptune society of northern california, New York, obituary, RFD, san francisco, sonoma county, stewart scofield, think tank, Urban Molecule, urinal, urinalia, weehawken street