Voenix Rising

Steve Golden

I first became aware of Steve's presence one night while my friend Kent and I were dancing at a bar called Maggie's (or Moon's Truck or His Co. Disco, depending upon what year it was and who you talked to) in Phoenix, one Friday or Saturday night in late 1978 or early 1979. I glanced up to the DJ booth and caught the eye of a handsome stranger, someone whom I'd never seen there before, and someone who elicited the strangest feelings from me. I seem to remember Steve smiling at me and thinking, "Do I know this man? He certainly looks familiar. It must be someone from Tucson." But it was more than that. There was a familiarity, an affection, a feeling that I knew this man on a level unlike any other I'd felt to that time that washed over me. That feeling, though having been mimicked in subsequent years by other men in my life, has never been equaled in intensity to that first time Steve Golden and I locked eyes.

While we were dancing, I asked Kent to check the guy out and tell me if it was indeed, someone from Tucson since he had lived in Tucson far longer than I had. Kent looked up to the booth and said he'd never seen him in Maggie's before, and most certainly never in Tucson.

And so began the saga.

It wasn't until March of 1979 that I actually met Steve. I think it was a Saturday, and for some reason the 10th comes to mind, but don't hold me to that.

It was a fairly lazy afternoon, and Kent and I decided to head to Metrocenter (one of the first mega-malls in Phoenix, now closed and scheduled for demolition). We were walking past an athletic shoe store (I believe it was called "Jox"), and we both saw Steve, who was hard at work helping customers. Needless to say, we walked into the store. Steve immediately recognized us—especially Kent—who'd spent much more time at the bar than I had. Kent introduced me and we shook hands. I don't remember any of the conversation, but I do remember that during the following week, I headed down to Maggie's Tuesday night because Steve had mentioned that he was working that evening.

Time has shrouded the facts surrounding our first evening together at the bar; eleven-some years (when I initially wrote this in my Journal) and now forty four (!) has done a lot to erase the details, but I remember arriving early and chatting at length with him before he started work. It's embarrassing to admit at this point in my life, but in my 20s I was basically living my life (or at least, living my relationships) by astrology and I asked Steve if he'd ever had his chart done. He was a little skeptical at first, but I explained that it was something I did, and that I'd be interested in doing it for him. He gave me his birth information which I quickly scribbled on a scrap of paper from my wallet.

By this point it was time for him to start work, so he said goodbye and headed up to the booth. Not really having any reason to remain at Maggie's further (I must have gone there with the sole intention of talking to Steve), I headed home to start work on his horoscope.

I remember that Mercury was retrograde at the time and Kent chided me no end for attempting to cast a chart under those conditions—never mind beginning a relationship, because that's what it was. I remember it took me at least two tries to get the calculations correct.

I returned to the bar a week later with the chart in hand.

Upon my arrival, I met Steve and gave him the typed reading. I remember being taken up into the booth (the first of what was to be many times over the following years), and the rush I felt when I was invited into the inner sanctum. He asked me what the chart said. (It's odd, but people generally do that, even when handing them a written printout.) I mentioned that among other things, that he was very uncomfortable in large crowds. He said that was true; that's why he enjoyed being up in the booth so much, above it all. A bit later when we'd gotten off the subject of astrology and onto the subject of music, I mentioned to Steve that I'd been having a very hard time finding the version of Let Them Dance by an artist called D.C. LaRue that I'd heard played in the bar. I must have told him I'd bought the album and the version it contained was decidedly different, because he immediately pulled out a 12" single and handed it to me, telling me I could have it in thanks for the work I'd done for him.

It was shortly thereafter that he said I'd have to leave the booth; Jack (the head DJ) was due in at any moment or some such, and he frowned upon people being in the booth. Considering the amount of drug use that routinely occurred in that—and subsequent booths where Steve and Jack were jointly employed—it is quite understandable.

Over the next several weeks our friendship started to grow. I was taken up to  the booth on several more occasions and remember one time in particular I gave Steve a pair of earplugs. He asked if these were to wear at home so he wouldn't have to listen to his partner Tom's rantings. I told him no, that they were to protect his hearing while at work. (I'd discovered, quite by accident, that I could understand the lyrics to most of the songs while at the bar if I wore earplugs — not to mention saving myself from that awful ringing in my ears that would often last till the next morning!) He laughed it off but thanked me anyway.

As time went by, I became increasingly aware of the tensions between Steve and his lover. Being the naive twenty-year-old that I was (Steve was 21), I thought I would be able to whisk Steve away from all that and give him something more. What I didn't understand at the time was that Steve actually seemed to enjoy that kind of interaction with Tom. They'd been together three years at the point that I met him—and were together an additional four years before finally breaking up.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I started work at Hallcraft Homes during 1979. They had an older gentleman working there as a courier who would go to the various job sites and make pickups and deliveries. Something happened—I think he went into the hospital—and Hallcraft needed a new delivery person in a hurry. Steve had just been laid off from Jox (the store was closing), so I told him of the opening. He came down, interviewed, and was hired. That's when the chemistry really started between us—and apparently Tom started viewing me as a major threat to their relationship.

I was in love with Steve. There are no bones about it. I adored the man. There was a bond between us that seemed to transverse space and time. Many months earlier I had told him that I felt I had known him from another life. He admitted feeling a certain familiarity when we first met that he couldn't explain. Not a believer in metaphysical things, he wouldn't go so far as to agree to a past-life collaboration, but then again, he couldn't come up with any other explanation.

My record collection was steadily growing with the help of Mr. Golden. And I was responding by giving him paintings. During the one-and-only time he was in my house, he mentioned how much he liked the painting I had hanging over my bed ("Not Even Death Shall Part Us"). Remembering that, I did a variation of that theme and gave it to him sometime later. I gave him one other, but unfortunately, because of Tom's innate jealousy, Steve kept the paintings in the basement of the Hallcraft building where he worked and when he left their employ, he forgot they were there. By the time that I'd questioned him as to their whereabouts it was far too late to retrieve them. God only knows where they are now, and I can't help but wonder if they will eventually find their way to the bottom of a public landfill or into the hands of an esoteric art collector — and eventually onto the walls of some hallowed museum long after I've left this planet.

Anyway, by way of Steve's generosity, I now had dozens of "Not for Resale" 12-inch singles and albums (a good many of which were impossible to purchase commercially, and an equal number which would never make it commercially). There was one evening in particular I remember because he gave me an album that turned out to be quite a surprise.

I had been pestering Steve for weeks to get me a copy of Heaven Must Have Sent You by Bonnie Pointer. What he inadvertently gave me instead was a copy of Hott City, a record and group I'd never heard of (one of the very few records that survived my massive vinyl purge in 1988, a story for another time). I took it out to the car, slid it out of the jacket and discovered it was pressed on white vinyl. While it wasn't what I'd asked for, the fact that it was pressed on white vinyl more than made up for it. I went back inside and told Steve that it wasn't Bonnie Pointer that he'd given me and that apparently he'd gotten my request confused with someone else's. It was probably the only time I can honestly say that Steve was pissed off at me—and rightly so for being so ungrateful. Adding insult to injury, I mentioned that the album was white vinyl.  Since not even his copy was white, he wanted me to bring it back. Childishly I refused, saying something like, "No, I think I'll keep it."

It's amazing that he even spoke to me again after that incident, but at the same time it was really no surprise after I discovered the depth of Steve's compassion and forgiveness during a rather unpleasant incident at Hallcraft several months later. This particular incident came about because of my own insecurities, pure and simple. I loved the man, and though he may have felt the same way (at that time I didn't know for sure) he wasn't showing me in a way that registered and I felt it had to be put to the test.

What a dolt I was—the man was giving me at least 25% of the recordings he himself received from the record companies, and yet I couldn't see that was his way of telling me how much he cared for me. I suppose that's why they say hindsight is always 20/20.

Anyway, one afternoon Steve came into my office with a whole box of new records that he'd received and wanted me to have. I'd reached the end of my rope with him for never uttering a single "I love you Mark" and decided the only way I could show him that I was upset was to return the entire box to him and not speak to him for a while. It was difficult, to say the least, to maintain this silence, and looking back on it now, it was probably a stupid thing to do, but for better or worse, it elicited the kind of response I wanted. After a week of not speaking, I delivered a letter to him down in the basement of the building. We agreed to meet for lunch later that week to discuss things.

Our lunch was at Café Casino, a small French chain restaurant near to work. My stomach was doing somersaults all morning, so it came as a great relief when lunchtime finally arrived and we walked over to the restaurant.

In the letter I'd told Steve that I loved him. He told me over lunch that he loved me as well, but that Tom was number one in his life. And while their relationship wasn't ideal, Tom was helping him with so many things he needed to work on, that there was no way he was going to leave him.

Just to hear Steve say that yes, he did love me, was enough. We both shed a few tears at our new found understanding. And, smiling, I asked if I could still have that box of records.

The winds of change hit Hallcraft. My dad (who hired me) and I both found ourselves out of work. I took a couple weeks to lay out in the sun and relax before hitting the pavement again. It was during this time I decided I was going to try and find something else to do besides architecture (since architectural drafting jobs were few and far between at the time). I eventually started working as a legal messenger for Lewis & Roca, Attorneys at Law.

To sum up, it was shortly after I started working there that the other messenger I worked with was promoted to some other position in the company, and again, a firm I worked for was in dire need of a messenger. At some point between the time I started to work for L&R and the time this need arose, Steve was fired from Hallcraft. (Supposedly he was caught with his pants down at a public toilet in Papago Park. Oops.)

Anyway, I called him and told him another job was available if he wanted it. And so our relationship continued, albeit much different than at Hallcraft. For starters, our supervisor, Bette Jones, was a lesbian—and she had us clocked from the beginning. Let's just say we all had a wonderful "understanding." (It was 1980 after all.) My relationship with Steve deepened, and while Steve still wasn't getting along well with Tom, I had pretty much abandoned all hope of snatching him away.

By August of that year, I was headed back to Tucson. I'd met a boy there at the end of June, and while it ultimately didn't last more than a couple months, it was the impetus that finally got me moved out of my parents' house and on my own. Steve stayed on at L&R for three more years.

My relocation to Tucson did nothing to lessen my feelings for Mr. Golden, but being a hundred miles away and becoming involved in my own newfound adventures, it was impractical to do anything save write an occasional letter. At first I didn't get many responses from Steve, save for an occasional list of his "Top 10" songs from the bar and a hastily scribbled "everything's great" note. But it was sometime in 1981 or 1982, long after I'd met Dennis (my first partner) and we'd moved in together that the letters from Steve started arriving.

I tried to track down those cards and letters when I originally wrote this in 1990, but was unsuccessful. I'd hoped to be able to quote extended passages here instead of trying to pluck them from memory. I'd removed them from their repository several months prior, and remember putting them somewhere when I'd finished with them, certainly not to their normal place among my others cards and letters—knowing full well that I'd never remember where I put them. True to form, I couldn't seem to lay my hands on them. I know eventually I did find them and put them somewhere safe, but god only knows where they are now after the fire. (Reasonably sure they're in our storage unit, but I'm not going to go to the effort of trying to find them.)

To sum up the thrust of those cards and letters in one sentence as Steve so aptly did, was to say, "I love you. You're special in my life and no one can ever change that."

Dennis and I drove up to Phoenix several Friday or Saturday nights during our time together. We both were in dire need of new music, and I wanted to see Steve, so the four-hour round trip seemed justified. Even now some of my fondest memories of Dennis surround our late night/early morning trips back to Tucson in driving rain or bitter cold.

Dennis and I had discussed at length the subject of soulmates, and Dennis had felt that Steve and I—not he and I—shared that dubious distinction. How would I know? Dennis wasn't sure, other than to say that sooner or later I'd get a sign.

The moment that sign appeared obviously stands out in my memory. Dennis and I had driven to Phoenix one Friday night, arriving at Steve's new venue, Hotbods. It was the "replacement" for Maggie's, opened several months after the neighbors surrounding Maggie's succeeded in having it shut down. Anyway, that night, I'd given Steve several blank cassettes so he could tape for me during the evening. It was my first exposure to the music of Patrick Cowley, and I was in heaven. Later on that evening, Steve came over the P.A. and said, "Mark, this is for you." He then proceeded to play We are One by Paradise Express. I looked up at him and the tears started streaming from my eyes. It was the sign. He just stood there with that inscrutable smile on his face, looking down at me. It was shortly thereafter that Dennis and I decided to drive back to Tucson. We caught Steve's attention and after putting another song on, came down to wish us goodbye. He handed me the tapes he'd made, kissed me, and said that he loved me.

Needless to say, I was flying all the way home and for several weeks afterward.

It was sometime after this that Dennis and I went through our trial separation, with him heading off to Texas to find himself, and me remaining in Tucson to get back in touch with my own self. It was during this time that my relationship with Steve reached a level of intensity and sharing that I would have found unbelievable even two years earlier.

We started a regular correspondence, and I made that trip to Phoenix more and more frequently, staying overnight with my grandparents in Sun City. Steve made many more tapes of new music for me, but none meant as much to me as the one containing the Paradise Express song (even though his dedication did not show up on the tape). Funny thing is, I no longer have any of those tapes he made, and have no idea what happened to them. Anyway, things between Steve and Tom had reached a new level of disharmony, and we both expected divorce to be imminent. It was during the spring of 1983 that Steve and I actually started discussing the possibility of becoming lovers after he made the split with Tom. It made my heart go pitter-patter, and I convinced myself of the inevitability of this course of action. Unfortunately, I was proven wrong. (And looking back over the course of events in my life since that time, I can only say, "Thank God!") The following summer Steve and Tom resolved their differences, Dennis came back from Dallas (at my urging), and he and I relocated from Tucson back to Phoenix so he could attend ASU.

It seemed that upon my return to Phoenix, however, that Steve became…distant. His first love (who was not Tom as I'd always assumed) had re-entered his life, breezing in from San Francisco one day and as they say, sucked all the oxygen out of the room. I suppose I'll never know the details of what happened, but in November of 1983, only three short months after my return to Phoenix, Steve told me that he'd broken up with Tom, had gotten back together with his ex, and was moving to San Francisco.

I was devistated. Had I been led along the primrose path all those years? I don't think so. What I think happened was that Steve was feeling too much pressure—from Tom, from work, from his situation at Hotbods, and not least of all, from me—and his ex represented an escape; a return to simpler times. I really can't blame him. Faced with the same situation, I would have undoubtedly   done the same.

It was that telephone conversation in November that I last heard from Mr. Golden. I managed to track him down in San Francisco shortly after he'd arrived (he was listed in the phone book), and sent a few letters, but never received a reply. In 1985 I sent him a birthday card with "Address Correction Requested" imprinted on the envelope. It returned to me several weeks later with an address in Thousand Oaks. Again, I sent several letters, and still received only silence.

It was rather ironic learning that during his brief tenure in The City, Steve had lived just up the street from where I lived at the time, in the 800-block of 14th Street. It was an absolute wonder we never ran into each other.

Despite that prolonged silence, he still crept into my dreams now and then, and without fail I'd see his face, feel the love radiating and awake with a smile. I was finally able to get in touch with Tom (his last partner in Phoenix) sometime in the late 90s and learned that Steve had died from AIDS-related complications in January of '91.

Do I regret the fact that Steve and I never became lovers? I can unequivocally say no, I don't. Because the Steve saga—along with everything else that happened in my life prior to 2008—all happened to bring me to Ben. And I wouldn't change that for anything.