Jack Lewis: 40 Memories of 25 Years of Knowing Steve

1. MEETING STEVE: Odessa, Texas, 1982, Sunday school class, a bottle of Dr. Pepper, embroidered white sweater, cowboy boots and a 14 year-old’s moustache.

2. A GAME OF DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: Probably the last for the both of us. I invited Steve at the suggestion of my mother, who read about Steve’s love for the game in our church paper. It turns out that his passion was mis-reported, it seems he had a passing interest at best. We played in Adam Huff’s garage. I remember Steve being very amused when the magic user in our group cast a “cone of cold spell”. Steve thought he heard “cum of cold” and laughed. He then mused how the wizard would go about casting such a spell.

3. MIDWINTER RETREAT IN RUIDOSO: Most vivid memory: Building the snow toilet with Kate Puckett. Had I not decided to go on that trip (I thought I was above going on church retreats. I’d had unsettling experiences on the more fundamentalist FCA retreats when I was in junior high.) Steve and I probably never would have become friends.

4. STEVE PLAYING THE RITE OF PASSAGE CONCEPT ALBUM HE HAD WRITTEN WITH BRAD MADDEN: He was very proud and I was very jealous of their creativity. I still remember the first verse and chorus.

5. REHEARSING “THE QUERY”: It usually went like this; I would want to run the piece over and over and Steve looked for every distraction such as playing a baby grand piano which had been left on stage in the PHS auditorium, or practicing “firing” Dana as his girlfriend before he moved to Stuttgart, or just class period long talks. Perhaps our most important rehearsal was a line through at the midwinter retreat in El Paso where we did a line-thru constantly making off-color ad libs.

6. SONORA SPEECH COMPETITION: Highlights: Impersonating the Beatles for a large group of high school girls. I think Steve was Paul, I’m pretty sure I was George—the quiet one.

Watching the Poseidon adventure late at night in the motel room and constantly referring to the special effects as being perpetrated by “trickers and foolers”. We did this in the voices of a couple of slow-witted moron characters from Nebraska we were developing. It was late at night and eventually Brad Beacham commanded us to “shut the fuck up”.

Attempting to serenade our voice coach from outside her motel window until her redneck next door neighbor burst out of his door yelling, “you kids shut the hell up! I got a little honey in here and she don’t like singing!...wanna meet her?” We graciously declined, though we immediately regretted missing out on the comedy that might have ensued had we met her as our Nebraska moron characters.

A beer swilling pickup driving lass pulling up to us out of nowhere in the motel parking lot and asking us if we wanted to party. Before we could answer she followed up by asking where we were from. We looked at each other and then answered very slowly, “Uh…Nebraska?” She told us to fuck off and then our Sonoran bacchanal sped away never to be seen again.

Winning the tournament and performing “The Query” for a packed auditorium.

7. TOILET PAPERING DANA’S HOUSE: I was honored to be included with several football player friends who filled two SUV’s. A ridiculous number of rolls of toilet paper were used. Steve wussed out and helped Dana take down the toilet paper the next day.

8. ATTEMPTING TO CLIMB THE FRANKLIN MOUNTAINS: After our finals round at a speech tournament in El Paso. Steve and I found ourselves with five hours to kill before the awards ceremony. Steve asked me if I had any suggestions for activities. I suggested we climb the mountain off in the distance. It looked nearby. Steve got on the bus to change. I suggested we climb in our suits. The visual would be funnier. Plus we were wearing Wayfarers. The mountain ended up being a lot further off so we only made it to the top of the foothills before we turned back and pigged out at McDonalds. My favorite moment was when we sat on the remains of an old stone house and shouted expletives and things that annoyed us about life and each other. We were in the middle of nowhere. This event marked a shift in our friendship. Up until then Steve was the one who suggested every absurd activity.

9. FIRST POINT OF COMEDY: Steve and Jack define the first point of comedy or “POC” for short: It is bad form to make fun of someone who has already made fun of themselves. An example of this would be if one were to say, “ I’m an idiot.” It would be an offense of POC to say, “Yeah, you sure are.” In response. The point still holds true if one were to clearly be characterizing themselves in an act of self-parody only to have an observer treat them as if their characterization was not in jest.

10. THE KIND WORD: A couple of days before Steve moved to Stuttgart we were driving in my car. Out of nowhere he said “I just wanted to let you know that out of all the people I know here, You, Alton and Dana were my closest friends.” This was a little out of character for Steve so it caught me off guard. I said, “Who?” Without missing a beat, Steve said “Alton and Dana.”

11. LETTERS FROM STEVE IN STUTTGART: Because of the difficulty he had fitting into the social scene in Stuttgart, Ark. The reason being that he moved there just prior to his senior year in high school, Steve postscripts all his letters “S.S.S.T.B.C.”—Stuttgart still sucks the big cone.

12. MEETING AT 6 AM: The day before Steve left for his college time in Spain he felt it important to schedule personal time with all his friends. My scheduled time was 6am. The plan was to meet at his house and go to breakfast, but we were college students. I knocked on his backdoor. He opened it, we blearily stared at each other and without saying a word we walked back in the house and slept for an hour and a half. I then got up and went to class. Our goodbye was deadpan at best.

13. IT’S ALL IN MY REPORT: On a multiple, semi-blind date, while sitting around a table at Kip’s Big Boy, I was telling one of my meandering stories. When I realized I was losing the interest of the table, I sheepishly picked up the water pitcher and, while pouring some into my glass, I edited my story by saying, “It’s all in my report.” Steve was the only one who was amused.

14. STEVE AND JACK GO TO 7-ELEVEN: My usual was Dunkin’ Sticks. But I was feeling adventurous. So I told Steve as we stood in front of the packaged pastry shelves that I bet he couldn’t guess what I was going to get. He requested solitude while he contemplated so I stepped around to the next aisle. I could hear cellophane crinkling. About thirty seconds later I heard the voice of the clerk, a short, plump Mexican-American woman who never cracked a smile, “What are you doing?” As I crept back to see what was going on, I first saw the clerk with her arms folded staring in the direction of Steve. As I came around to stand beside her, I saw that Steve had physically expanded to a similar shape as the clerk. It seems he had taken one package of every cake on the shelves and stuffed them in his TCU sweats. His plan had been to demand that I state my choice and then he would magically produce said item from his person. With a nervous grin and tears in his eyes from trying to stifle laughter, he calmly explained his plan to the humorless clerk. It probably didn’t help that I was doubled over in hysterical laughter. He finished the explanation. She considered the story and, hopefully, the absurdity of anyone thinking they could get away with shoplifting looking the way he looked. Finally, she told him to return the products to the shelves and then she told us to never come back into the store. She did, however, allow me to buy my…CARROT CAKE!

15. BRATTLEBORO, VERMONT, SUMMER ‘90: In the waning months of my first serious co-dependent relationship with Leah, on the way to her parents summer place on Caspian Lake, we made a four hour stop in Brattleboro where Steve was spending his summer before heading back overseas. His lodgings reminded me of the room depicted in Van Gogh’s pre-cubist, cubist painting of his room in Arles. My first year in grad school had been incredibly difficult so when it came time to part company with Steve I broke down and wept. I remember thinking at the time how different this was from the early morning parting a couple of years before. Leah expressed a slight bit of jealousy in the car after the visit because there were moments of long serene silence, such as when we stood on a bridge which, I believe was on the state border, where it seemed like Steve and I knew what the other was thinking. Which leads to…

16. COUNTLESS TIMES OF HANGING OUT IN COLBY HALL WOMEN’S DORMITORY: A boldfaced attempt to meet girls. Steve’s idea. Steve would, most of the time, play the baby grand in the lobby and freshmen girls returning from sorority parties or dates or other events would come over and talk to us. The genius of it was that it provided a place for them to wind down from their evening and a place for us to go to meet girls without spending a cent. Steve got many dates out of it. I was never able to have the guts to do more than make friends. On one occasion, a young lady expressed her amazement at the way Steve and I could riff off each other like a comedy duo. She said it was like there were “invisible wires or antennae between us.”

17. GETTYSBURG: In 1996 I rode a Peter Pan bus down from NYC to see Steve and his parents and meet Maria Jose, his wife of three years. This was the first time Steve and I had seen each other since Brattleboro. The next day we drove to Gettysburg. Ironically it was the most peaceful day I’d had since grad school. Manhattan had wound me into a very tight ball. I think we spent over eight hours there. I have vivid memories of the sunlight, haze and leisurely pace. Highlights included reenacting Pickett’s charge with Maria and Steve, and walking up Little Round Top with Jim.

18. QUACKMAN DUCKATHLON: This event included meeting three of Steve’s friends from Wichita Falls: Glenn Brookshier, Eric Dibble, and Terry Rudd. The Duckathlon was a series of events in and around Stuttgart. The most memorable event was the “Eat down at Don’s” all you can eat catfish restaurant. I ended up being the designated driver, not because anyone drank--they didn’t—but because I only ate two plates and then retired from the event. Having been fat in my early teens I hated overeating even in competition. All other competitors vomited at some point during the night. During the drive back the four who would not quit eating began a chorus of moans which I found uniquely disturbing. The memory of it haunts me to this day. I can’t remember if Steve was the one who demanded the car be stopped so he could regurgitate by the side of the road or if he was the one who barfed in the bathtub at the end of the night.

19. AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS THEME DATE: Steve devised it for the main purpose of sweeping Melanie off her feet. She backed out of the date at the last minute. Steve almost didn’t go but brought in a backup—I believe she was a childhood friend named Lori. There were four couples. Highlights included a gondola ride across the Trinity, lunch at Dos Amigos, An early morning train ride into downtown Fort Worth and a late afternoon train ride at the zoo as well as other dining and various events which transformed Cowtown into various countries and continents. The final stage was a viewing of the movie in Steve and Terry’s dorm room but we all passed out about fifteen minutes in.

20. STEVE AT THE 1984 STATE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME AT TEXAS STADIUM: He later told me he had mixed feelings about going to see his old team play for state. Had he stayed at Permian he might have been an all-state cornerback. He certainly would have been all-district. I was glad he was there but he wasn’t the only one who felt a little empty about it.

21. REALIZING REAGAN WAS A TOOL: Steve was one of only two people I knew in high school who supported Mondale in the 1984 presidential election. The other was Patricia Jaramillo. Support for Reagan in Odessa was so universal that I didn’t even question it. One evening I mocked his support of Mondale. He then drowned me in evidence against Reagan’s ability. The closer was a quote in which Reagan said trees cause air pollution.

22. REALIZING MY GIRLFRIEND WAS A TOOL: While Steve had been away I had dated a sorority girl whose name sounded like something out of English Restoration comedy, *** *******. We had parted ways once and at the time were attempting another go of it. I was ambivalent about it though I thought she was a nice person. One afternoon Steve and Dave Hedgepeth, my roommate, were with me in my dorm room. Steve looked out the window and saw a few hundred girls milling about in front of the student center. He asked what was going on. I told him that the sororities were holding an event where they got together with all the girls who had gone through rush but didn’t get in. It was a reunion. For obvious reasons Steve found this laughable and began mocking it by pretending to be a sorority girl telling a rejectee how close they had been during those two beautiful days of Rush. Dave turned red and started laughing with tears in his eyes which spurred Steve on. I sat quietly. Which made Dave turn redder and laugh which spurred Steve on. Finally a moment of silence came when Steve noticed I wasn’t laughing. I looked at Dave and said, “I have to break up with her.” Steve asked if *** was involved. I said it was her idea, which made Steve turn red with tears in his eyes and the seven-eleven grin came to his face, which made Dave laugh. *** and I broke up amicably a couple of days later.

23. STEVE LOSES HIS TEMPER WITH JACK: For some reason, one night, Steve needed a ride somewhere. This was after he had moved into the house off campus. I could tell something was bothering him. To this day, I’m not sure what it was, but I tried to kid him out of it. Wrong move. Quite uncharacteristically he blew up at me and told me to get out and stormed back to his bedroom. Quite uncharacteristically, I remained calm and sat in his living room reading. Eventually he walked out, passed me and went straight to my car. I drove him where he needed to go. Within an hour we were back to normal. This always struck me as a turning point in our friendship. We could be mad at each other but that didn’t mean we weren’t still friends.

24. STEVE AND MELANIE GET STRANDED AND CALL JACK: One night during my sophomore year I get a call around one in the morning. Steve’s car has broken down in the middle of nowhere and he needs me to come get him and Melanie. During the drive back Steve says to me, in all seriousness, “This is a testament to our friendship that I called you first to come get us.” I’m still not sure how I feel about that one.

25. STEVE HAS JACK READ WITKIEWICZ, GOMBROVITZ, AND HIS PERSONAL WORKS OUT LOUD: During our senior year, Steve and I socialized in separate circles. His group was more internationally minded professors and students and mine was the self absorbed world of Theatre. Our friendship was maintained by late night sojourns over to his place after rehearsals or performances. I compare Steve’s insistence of my reading his assignments out loud to Nolan Ryan’s riding the exercise bike after each of his starts. I was reluctant at first to read but, in time, I became hopeful that he would have something for me to read. The two times I remember most were when I read “The Madman and The Nun” and a long monologue Steve wrote about a delusional man tending his own garden. I have often wished I could perform both pieces on stage someday…I would play the nun and the garden, of course.

26. STANDING AROUND A FIRE AT EL PASO MIDWINTER: Sprinkled throughout our friendship were moments of eccentric self torture. They were usually Steve’s idea. A good example is the night we and a few other retreaters stood on stones around a campfire until we lost our balance and fell off our rocks, or the heat which seemed to burn our thighs and faces forced us away from the fire. I think dessert finally drove the final three of us away. We had not foreseen how badly we would smell of smoke afterward.

27. TURNING ON THE HEATER IN ODESSA: Another example of self torture for adolescent comedy’s sake. Steve, David Gayler and I were riding in my car when Steve began complaining how cold it was. I never cleaned out my car so even though it was a summer day around 100 degrees, I had several, sweatshirts and towels piled up in the backseat. Steve reached back and put one on. I turned on the heater and pulled a towel over me. Steve added another garment. I blasted the heat. And so it continued until David begged us to stop.

28. COMING BACK FROM THE SPRINGSTEEN CONCERT: A concert I didn’t attend because I didn’t want to spend the money. Instead, knowing what a drag it was to park at the Cotton Bowl I drove Steve, David, Brad Beacham and, I believe, Rob Justice. I dropped them off and went out with my friend, Jennifer, then returned to pick them up. Somewhere on I20, a semi almost ran us off the road. It was a very rainy night and the truck came out of nowhere. Steve began to muse about what would have happened to each of us had we wrecked. Using all the accounts we had read and heard about regarding such accidents we decided that Steve, David, and Rob would have died. Steve by decapitation (his decision). Brad would have been a vegetable, and I, the driver would have survived with minor injuries, but I would live with the crippling guilt for the rest of my life. Man! We were fun!

29. JACK GETS A NOSEBLEED: This is actually part of the Duckathlon but since it wasn’t part of an event, I’ll count it separate. I was taking the maximum dosage of Acutane at the time. One of the side effects is sudden profuse nosebleeds. One of these occurred soon after all contestants had arrived in Stuttgart as we were driving from the Little Rock airport. We stopped at a convenience store so that I could clean up. As I headed toward the bathroom I heard Steve, Terry, Glenn, and Eric ranting about the asshole who sucker punched me. By the time I came out of the bathroom the clerk was as pissed off as they were pretending to be. As we left, he yelled, “I hope you catch those guys…kick their ass!” What could have been very embarrassing for me having just met these guys ended up being a very fond memory.

30. BETH WETMORE YELLS AT ME: At the close of a speech tournament, as Steve, Brad and I were boarding the bus, Beth Wetmore began yelling at us about an unintended transgression (She had been talking on a payphone to her boyfriend who was in jail back in Odessa and we had been too loud when we walked by. She angrily shushed us and we responded mockingly). For some reason, she singled me out and started viciously attacking. I started to retort. Steve, who was blocked from her view because he was scrunched behind a bus seat, quietly cut me off and shook his head. I took the advice and remained quiet. The tirade continued and I felt mortified. However, when it was over I found that the sympathies of most in the bus rested with me. It was a valuable lesson that I have not always followed since though I wish I had. It was also an insight into Steve’s self-control.

31. MY 19TH BIRTHDAY: In celebration of my 19th birthday, I entered my dorm room after a rehearsal or an evening class to find a list of activities I had to perform. Highlights included driving around the loop at the student center 19 times and going into the infamous 7-eleven and loudly asking how much a Playboy was. After the clerk told me the price I was to consider and then yell, Naaah! I performed each task faithfully and got through the first five before I realized I was supposed to use my car to perform them. The epiphany hit me as I made my way from the southern end of the campus toward Kip’s on foot—about a two mile walk.

32. STEVE AND JACK GO TO FRANK BEACHAM’S TO WATCH MICHAEL DUKAKIS AND ARE COMPLETELY UNDERWHELMED: In a last ditch effort to save his campaign on the eve of election, Michael Dukakis agreed to go on Nightline to fight the vicious attacks spearheaded by Lee Atwater. Neither Steve nor I had a T.V. at the time and we couldn’t go to the T.V. room at my dorm since we were well in the minority and wouldn’t have been allowed to change the channel. As the interview began Steve and I were so giddy we self parodied our giddiness for Frank’s indifferent amusement. By the end of the interview we realized that Dukakis was the first of many liberal politicians who would come to disappoint us with their inability to stand up and fight for themselves.

33. STEVE CALLS FROM SPAIN IN 1993: During what was an otherwise dismal time for me during eight months in Houston, Steve calls to tell me that he and Maria will be getting married and they both would be moving to China. It was odd that this would make me happy considering the bad luck I’d had with women during that year. But the fact that Steve had remembered to call me from overseas and the fact that things were going well for him did make me very happy.

34. STEVE CALLS ME IN CLARKSVILLE IN 2005: Better luck with women by this time. While I’m in Tennessee playing Antonio in Merchant of Venice and Oedipus in Oedipus Rex Steve informs me that Maria is pregnant. Just as happy.

35. I CALL STEVE FROM NEW YORK IN 1999: Knowing that it will be impossible to completely keep the secret that we will be getting married in six weeks Julie and I agree to tell our respective siblings and one friend. I choose Steve.

36. JACK MEETS EMILIO: On a November afternoon while I am riding my elliptical, I notice that my cell phone has a message. A tired Steve leaves a message that Emilio Ruiz Benton has been born he makes sure to include time, size, weight, and how long the labor lasted. I walk to the hospital from home before an evening performance as Vronsky in Anna Karenina. Julie meets me there and we have the distinct honor of being the first non-medical personnel to hold Emilio besides his parents.

37. STEVE MEETS NATHANIEL: Within fifteen minutes of the birth of Nathaniel Weldon Lewis I call Steve from the delivery room to let him know. He immediately asks how soon they can come to the hospital. I ask Julie how she’s feeling. She’s says she’s fine. I mention that the Bentons want to come and meet the new guy, the doctor scolds me, Julie assures the doctor that there is a precedent for my question and that any other visitors would be a problem but not the Bentons. By the time Steve, Maria, and Emilio got to the hospital, Nathaniel was in the NICU. Due to the facts that I hadn’t slept for 48 hours, my new son was lying on a table with various tubes and wires attached to him, and that I am who I am I was unable to maintain my attention span long enough to formulate all the questions that needed to be asked. Steve took over and talked to the nurse then would turn to me and explain as if I was a foreign diplomat.

38. STEVE AND JACK TALK RELIGION AND POLITICS IN WINNEMAC PARK AND BESIDE LAKE MICHIGAN: On a warm enough spring day in 2005, when there was still time for such things, we spent about two hours walking and basically learning how our beliefs had been affected by our travels and training in the intervening years since the last time we had lived in the same town.

39. STEVE AND JACK FIGHT OVER TOM CRUISE: On a red line El. Returning from a movie with Maria. Steve and I suffered the greatest threat to our, then, 23 year-old friendship. I made the statement that I didn’t believe Tom Cruise was a very good actor. I’m not sure but I believe Steve’s argument was that due to the fact that he had starred in so many great movies, he was the greatest actor of his generation. It seemed to break down this way: I maintained that the inherent quality of the work was the important thing. Steve maintained that while quality was important mass appeal and that certain quality Cruise had was the tie-breaker. I’m sure that I have oversimplified Steve’s Tolstoyan argument just as he seemed to have concluded that my argument was based too much on Tom Cruise’s personal behavior. Regardless, this remains the great unresolved issue in our friendship.

I am ultimately Pirandellian when it comes to my religious or spiritual and political or social beliefs and I would never end a relationship because of differences of opinion in these matters. But it is and empirical truth that TOM CRUISE IS NOT A GREAT ACTOR!

40. STEVE AND JACK SEE THE MISSION: Who knows every detail of why it happened. My guess is that it was a perfect storm of events in my life that led to a complete emotional breakdown on my part as Steve and I sat in my Bronco II, in the Hulen Mall cinema parking lot after seeing that movie. I’m sure it had something to do with the cliché’ of a college student realizing there is a world outside himself, and I remember feeling confused as to whether my life should follow the path to the ministry or to acting, which I have since learned is also a cliché’. And I also remember being haunted by De Niro’s reaction to being forgiven in the film. Steve sat quietly beside me in the car. I was sure he was uncomfortable with my outward show and was sure he wanted to get out of there.

On Christmas, 2004 Steve gave us a calendar. Among other things, such as birthdays and anniversaries, he included the date of this event.

There are many memories left in my notebook. Some I’m sure might be more appropriate or interesting but these are the ones that made it. I’m sure those will be added when I write the second edition: 50 memories of 35 years with Steve.