To See You

...a Danish prince, a nightclub singer, a clown and a mermaid

Mar 26, 2024

For my high school graduation my friend, Amanda, gave me a worn copy of Hamlet and wrote inside, “I see you.” She didn’t actually write that. I don’t remember what the message was, I only remember that I felt seen by the gift and by the message. At that point in my short life I had only performed in musicals. I tap danced on pianos and sang with a nasally belt. And yet, Amanda somehow saw me as someone who might take on Hamlet, the greatest acting role there was. What a gift to be seen as something that you don’t quite see in yourself ... yet.

And what a gift to be able to see others for not only what they are, but for the beauty they can't see in themselves. Jesus does this all throughout the gospels. When Jesus says, “Follow me” to the poor, the sick, the unwanted, he’s not just inviting them to hang out. He’s saying, “I see you and you are worthy. I want to be with you. I affirm who you are and love you.”

***

I was walking through the black box theater the day after we closed our big show of the year. A level of relaxation was taking hold of me. The kind of relaxation you get after a big project is finished. I was feeling good. I was breathing. I was going home while it was still light out. But then my phone buzzed at me. It was my former student, Alex, whom I hadn’t heard from in a few years. I wasn’t surprised. I had been hearing from lots of alumni since I was retiring. I anticipated a “congratulations on your retirement” text, but instead I got something else.

Hi Kelley, sorry to only reach out now, but I wanted you to know that Stevie passed away this weekend.

I stopped in my tracks and caught my breath. My first thought was, “No, too soon. Too young.” My second thought was, “It must’ve been drugs.” Stevie had been living in Portland, Oregon, since graduating from Reed College and had been an active member of the punk music scene there. I thought I had heard at one point that Stevie was struggling. My mind filled in the gaps.

I sent back a text to Alex saying how sorry I was and offering to be there in any way I could.

Stevie during rehearsal. One of the first pictures I took on my iPhone.

Stevie and Alex had been best friends in high school. There was an ongoing contest as to who was taller and lankier than the other. They were both part of the play, And Carl Laughed, that my friend, Nick, and I wrote in 2006, based on the life of Fr. Carl Kabat, an Oblate who was in prison for breaking into nuclear missile silos dressed as a clown. Carl was part of the Catholic Worker community in St. Louis and an Oblate and was recently put in prison again. He had already served several sentences for anti-nuclear protests, totaling 16 years.

The kids were skeptical. Why did this man dress up as a clown, break into nuclear missile silos and wait to get arrested? So all of us together began a year-long adventure to try to uncover the answer to that question. We wrote to Carl in prison, interviewed members of the Catholic Worker community, interviewed friends and activists that Carl had worked with in the past. We talked to his family that still lived on the farm in Southern Illinois where Carl had grown up.

The answer we came to was that while serving in missions in Recife, Brazil, and the Philippines, Carl had witnessed governments that let their people fall into poverty and their children starve, so they could build up their military capabilities supplied by the United States government. When Carl got home to Illinois, he couldn’t live with the disconnect. He joined the Plowshares Eight and the Berrigan brothers and began his life as an anti-nuclear activist.

***

Our annual fundraiser was scheduled for the week after I learned about Stevie’s death. This year they dedicated the evening to my retirement, filling it with numbers from shows I’ve directed over the course of my tenure. Alumni came back, too. Former students who are living close by got to revive their roles for an evening, and alumni that live far away actually flew home to surprise me. I was overwhelmed. I sobbed like a baby when the young woman who played Sally Bowles, the broken down nightclub singer from Cabaret, appeared under the lights to sing “Maybe This Time.” I hugged her after the show and told her how shocked I was and what unbelievable joy she gave me to see her sing that song again. She told me she had to come back to tell me that she was grateful to me for seeing her, believing in her at the baby-age of 15, to play such a difficult role. In hindsight, seeing a 15-year-old, however talented, playing that role is absurd. But what I saw in this young woman wasn’t only seeing who she was at 15 but who she would be at 25.

Through the joy of that night, I thought about Stevie and Alex and all the kids from And Carl Laughed who had to be grieving. My favorite scene from that play was between Alex, the perpetual puppy dog in high school, who played Carl the Clown, and Stevie, the emo kid, who played a hitchhiker. I can’t remember if the scene was based on a story that Carl had told us from jail or if it was our imaginations that conjured it. Whatever it was, I’d been thinking of it often since hearing of Stevie’s passing.

(FATHER CARL puts down his glass, everyone goes quiet again. Something unidentifiable is happening.)

CARL THE PRIEST:

You know, one time I picked up a hitch-hiker, long time ago, out on a highway in the middle of nowhere — and he looked a mess. I could see the track marks on his arms.

(FATHER CARL and the rest of the company freeze.

Lights up on CARL THE CLOWN and HITCH-HIKER on opposite side of the stage.)

CARL THE CLOWN:

Need a lift?

(Hitch-hiker gets in the car.)

CARL:

Where you goin’, son?

HITCH-HIKER:

North.

CARL:

What’s up there?

(Hitch-hiker doesn’t reply. CARL looks at him.)

CARL:

You look tired. Been on the road long?

(Hitch-hiker gives him cold look. Turns to look out the window.)

HITCH-HIKER:

Yeah, I been on the road a long time.

CARL:

Got any family?

HITCH-HIKER:

Look, man, I just need a ride.

CARL:

Gotcha.

BEAT.

CARL:

Hey, you hungry, I got half a candy bar in the glove compartment?

HITCH-HIKER:

Naw.

BEAT.

CARL:

My radio’s broken, otherwise I’d tell you to turn on some music. You like music?

HITCH-HIKER:

No, man. I don’t like music. I like silence.

CARL:

Right. Fantastic.

Long Silence.

CARL:

Knock, knock?

HITCH-HIKER:

What?

CARL:

Knock, knock?

Pause.

CARL:

C’mon. Knock, knock?

HITCH-HIKER:

Man –

CARL:

C’mon, it won’t kill ya — knock, knock?

BEAT.

HITCH-HIKER:

Who’s there?

CARL:

Banana.

HITCH-HIKER:

Banana who?

CARL:

Knock, knock?

HITCH-HIKER:

(Annoyed) Who’s there?

CARL:

Banana.

HITCH-HIKER:

Banana who?

CARL:

Knock, knock?

HITCH-HIKER:

(Really angry now) Who the hell is there?!

CARL:

Orange.

HITCH-HIKER:

Orange who?

CARL:

Orange you glad I didn’t say ‘banana’?

(Hitch-hiker snorts sarcastically at the punchline.)

Carl loved to tell jokes; he saw laughing as a sacrament. Through the protests and the imprisonments, Carl kept laughing. One of the Catholic workers told us that, when Carl would call from prison, they would panic, thinking something had happened, but he’d just laugh and reply, “No, I’m fine, I heard this joke I gotta tell ya.”

Perhaps it was this scene that made me think Stevie’s death was drug-related. Maybe I conflated Stevie, the serious emo kid, and the character of the hitch-hiker with track marks on their arms. But this past weekend my friend, John, Stevie’s English teacher, sent me and my writing partner, Nick, a post that Stevie’s dad had written for Facebook along with an article about Stevie’s music:

“I'm not going to be talking about this tragedy for our family here except for this piece about our trans daughter, Stevie Pohlman, who took her life by jumping off the Burnside Bridge.

Our hearts are forever broken - we'll never be the same. We miss you, my sweet daughter, I hope you have finally found peace.. I think of you as my sweet, genius, beautiful mermaid, in the body you've always wanted, happily swimming out to sea. It's dumb and hokey and she'd hate it, but I can't bear this ending any other way.

Please take care of the trans people in your life and know that so many are navigating what often feels like an unbearable journey. Vocally and materially, affirm their gender, love them, protect them. Most of all, be as kind and helpful as you can.”

Why had I so quickly assigned Stevie’s death to a drug overdose? I understood then that I can’t see my students in the entirety of their human complexity in high school. I didn’t know that Stevie was transgender and that she had died, as too many trans people do, by suicide. As I’ve gotten more information and read more about Stevie and her band, I realize that she had suffered a great deal from depression over the years. I’m ashamed that my first thought when I got Alex’s text was that Stevie’s death might be due to drugs, and I’m devastated to know that Stevie suffered so much.

After John sent the post, I looked up the hitch-hiker scene again, and then I remembered why it was my favorite:

CARL:

Orange you glad I didn’t say ‘banana’?

(Hitch-hiker snorts sarcastically at the punchline.)

HITCH-HIKER:

Man, that is the dumbest freakin’ —

(He looks out the window, but he can’t help laughing. Then he begins to weep.)

CARL:

Hey, kid, we all need more than a ride.

HITCH-HIKER:

(Barely audible) I’m not worth a shit.

CARL:

What’d you say?

HITCH-HIKER:

(A clear declaration) ‘I’m not worth a shit.’

(Carl squares around to face hitch-hiker.)

CARL:

(Simple and strong) Nobody’s not worth a shit. You are a child of God.

(Carl turns back to the steering wheel. Hitchhiker crumples into Carl’s shoulder. Carl awkwardly embraces hitch-hiker with only his right arm.)

Stevie’s dad said, “... vocally and materially affirm their gender, love them, protect them.” He encourages us to say it and live it. Jesus was someone who said it and lived it. So was Carl.

I know that, along with the hitch-hiker, Stevie herself heard Carl when he told her that she was a child of God.

In an interview I found from 2016, Stevie talked about her depression and working on her album, Joy. Stevie had tried checking into a program, and when she had been left waiting for a bed for too long, she tried psychedelic therapies. While it helped, it didn’t last, and the depression returned. "To escape my head, I need to work. I need to be really busy all the time." And this, this sounded like Stevie. “I only want to justify the creation of these platters that go into people's rooms if they come with some kind of meaning behind them that can be used as a tool in everyday life. I only want to run this operation if it's something that can give to the community." The proceeds from the album were given to a mental health clinic in Mexico. "Having all these wonderful people in my life gives me something to grab onto when I'm sliding away," Stevie said. "If you have all these things to do with other people—people who care about things, people who take inclusive communities seriously and are concerned about what's going on in the world—it can be a lot less scary."

Jesus knew inclusive communities made things less scary. And so did Stevie.

***

Carl got out of prison right before we headed to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival. We performed the play for him and his family alone in our black box theater. We weren’t sure what kind of reaction he might have to seeing his life performed before him as a clown play. But at the end of the play, with tears in his eyes, he got up out of his seat and bear-hugged each of the kids in turn. Later that night we performed for Carl again and for the people who lived at the downtown shelter that bore his name.

Carl’s death preceded Stevie’s by less than two years. I imagine Carl greeting Stevie, the beautiful mermaid, across the veil with the same tearful bear hug and a joke. Two souls who didn’t know how to fit into a world at odds with their tender hearts. This past weekend, Nick texted me, “Rest in peace, Stevie. You are still a child of God. ‘You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.’”

Yes, Stevie, we see you now.

If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide there is help available.