Steve Cannon

           
I came to New York at the Port in January of 1987 and made my way to RAPP Arts Center, where, thanks to Sheryl Branham, I would have a studio on the top floor of an old Catholic school on 4th between B and C for $300 a month. I opened the door to what was the old nun’s quarters, dropped the two cardboard boxes that contained my worldly possessions and Sheryl and Jane Millwee showed up and said we were going cross-town to a party at Kim Connell’s.

            Kim had been in the M.F.A. program at the University of Arkansas, where we all had attended, and he was an adjunct professor at Medgar Evers College. As soon as we walked into the 12th Street apartment, I saw Steve Cannon, a professor at Medgar Evers, dancing wildly with a young woman also dancing wildly. A stroke of the best luck I had had up to that point of my life happened when Steve and I ended up sitting on Kim’s bed talking.

            “So, when did you blow into town?” Steve said.

            “Like two hours ago,” I said. Steve seemed to think that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He wanted to know why I came (to be a writer, to finish graduate school), where I was from (Canton, Ohio) and what it was like there (rust belt depressed) and how I grew up (single mom with three kids). There was not one superficial word in our conversation. Not one word too much or too little. Then he wanted me to read something. I was embarrassed. Surely, he wanted to get back to the belly dancer, to the action of the party, but no, he wanted to hear some writing. Kim had one of my stories on his desk, so I read “Melanie Farkle.”

            “That’s hip,” he said. He laughed and laughed and wouldn’t let me stop reading. “That’s some funny shit,” he said. When Kim came in the room, he said, ”Have you read this, Kim? This girl can write her ass off.” We talked about writing, about Arkansas and New Orleans, where Steve was born, about what the Lower East Side was like when Steve moved there in the 1960’s. Jane and Sheryl came in to leave, but I did not want to leave. I never wanted to leave Steve’s side ever.

            The next day, Steve called and wanted me to go see Billy Bang performing on 4th Street.  After the show, I told Steve how I heard Pharaoh Sanders play in Cleveland at the Red Dog in 1972 and was never the same, and that I felt the same way about seeing Billy Bang.  The next day we went to an opening at Bullet Space. The next to St. Mark’s Poetry to see a play by Jessica Hagedorn, and the next to a book party for a collection of poetry at St. Mark’s. There I met Margo Howard-Howard and we all went to a bar where someone ran through the door, jumped up in the air, and grabbed the editor of the collection by the neck, threw him to the floor and, with chairs and tables falling all around, was strangling him.

            “Oh, please,” said Margo Howard-Howard, raising her glass off the table and holding it aloft with a disgusted and bored look on her face. Steve was laughing and laughing.

            “Would you believe that? That’s some funny ass shit,” Steve was bent over laughing.

“What is so funny?” I asked.

“The editors didn’t put his funny ass poem in the book.” Steve sat cross legged, smoking a cigarette, laughing and laughing.

            Next was a party at Kenkeleba Gallery where Steve had written the notes about Storyville, New Orleans for the catalog. There I met Joe Overstreet and William Melvin Kelly. Steve lived in the old Hamilton Fish residence on 3rd between C and D and, on the third floor, at all hours of the day and night there would be a constant flow of people. I met Gerald Jackson, Keith Gilyard, Shiela Alston, Jameel Moondoc, Pedro Pietri, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Diane Burns, Thom Corn, Susan Yung, John Ranard, John Farris and about a hundred others. While the party was going on in the living room, Steve sat in a wheelchair, which he rolled up to an old typewriter on a metal typewriter stand in the middle room. Beside the stand was a stack of typewriter paper almost waist high. In the adjacent room the conversation would be in full swing.

            “Get your sorry ass out of that chair and go get me some Ballentine,” someone would say.

            “What about that show at MOMA,” one would say, “Not one artist of color.”

            “And some smokes,” Steve would say.

            “They’re never going to include us.”

            “Get your sorry ass up and get that Ballentine,” another would say.

            “You’re so sorry, you’re not even sorry.”

            “We got to figure this out. I am telling you. We got to make our own.”

            “Marlboro,” Steve yelled.

            “Quit complaining and get busy. It’s our job. As artists.”

            Steve was typing. I looked over his shoulder.

            “Get your sorry ass out of that chair and go get me some Ballentine,” he typed. Every word that was said, he would type, click clacking the typewriter, zarooming the metal bar and then peeling out the paper, putting it face down on the stack of paper and carefully putting in another sheet of paper.  I asked why Steve had a wheelchair.

            “I broke my heels,” he said, “I jumped out of the window here and landed on my heels.”

            “Why did you jump out of the window?”

            “Somebody was coming in the door I thought it best not to see so I went out the window.”

“What did you do after you fell?”

“I crawled across the street to the pay phone and called for an ambulance. When they came, would you believe it? They kicked my heels and told me to get up on my feet.”

            “No.”

            “So I explained to them how I jumped out of the window and broke my heels and needed to go to the hospital.” Steve said, “And they kept telling me to get up on my feet and kept kicking me.”

            “No.”

            “Can you believe that?” Steve was laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world. “Finally, they get me in the ambulance and they’re filling out their funny ass papers and find out I am a professor at Medgar Evers and have insurance and suddenly, it is Mr. Cannon this and Mr. Cannon that.”

            “No.”

            “Some crazy shit.”

            One day Steve walked right by me. I thought he was telling me to bug off, that he had moved on to others more interesting. It hurt my feelings, but the next time I saw him we were best of friends again.

            After a while Steve walked right by me again. At this time, he was riding the bike across the bridge over to Medgar Evers to teach. I saw him again and he was friendly as could be, wondered why I hadn’t been around. Finally, Steve admitted he was losing his eyesight. I took him to the Ear, Eye and Nose clinic on 14th Street to find out what was wrong. We waited forever before doctor came out.

            “Hi, Steve,” he said, “Are you taking those drops?”

            “What?” I said. Why didn’t he tell me that he had been there and had treatment before we left for the clinic?  It was then that Steve admitted he had glaucoma. He was supposed to be taking drops and I feared, was not doing so. He still had a pinhole of eyesight left and was making the best of it, but now I knew why he had walked right by me. He was not at all surprised. His father had glaucoma and he was expecting it to hit him.

            “Oh, Steve,” I said. “Oh, Steve.”

            I proceeded to facilitate getting New York State and Lighthouse for the Blind to give Steve assistance, including, eventually, a talking computer, a machine that would read books and assistants who would come to help him. I bought him a state-of-the-art cane for the blind, titanium that could fold up and fit in a pocket. I do not believe Steve ever used it. 

            Over the next thirty-three years, Steve and I loved each other from near and far, mostly near. When I found out Steve had broken his hip, thanks to Bob Holman posting it on Facebook, I visited Steve at the Rehabilitation Center, which was new and seemed efficient. Steve Dalinchinsky and Yuko Otomo were there when I arrived and a young woman who worked at Cave Canem, who was running some errands for Steve. As soon as I arrived, he wanted me to get out my phone, open up Tribes email, and email David Hammons, his wife and daughter, Chavisa, Mary Chen and conduct other Tribes business. He told me he was going to be there for a month and do everything the doctors told him because he wanted to get better. A nurse came in who seemed genuinely concerned for Steve. His vitals were good. We talked for a while and held hands.  We said we loved each other madly when I left.

 To my great, great sorrow, that was the last I would see my friend, Steve Cannon. I never wanted to leave Steve’s side ever. The Sunday after he died, I felt him come to me. “I would never leave you,” I heard him tell me, “I would never have left you.” 

Katherine Arnoldi, Ph. D. has received a Fulbright Award (2008-9 Paraguay), two New York Foundation of the Arts Award (Fiction, Drawing), the DeJur Award, the Henfield Transatlantic Award, the Newhouse and a Juniper Prize. Her graphic novel The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom was named one of the Top Books of the Year by Entertainment Weekly and was nominated for the Eisner Award in the Graphic Novel. It also won a top ten Quick Pick from YALSA and an ALA Award.