Steven was born into a family of Russian and Poland-Jewish descent, in Long Island College Hospital, Brooklyn in 1955. When he was just a few years old, the family moved from Widener Avenue in Brooklyn to Oceanside, Long Island, where he grew up. He was a very beautiful, blond child who attracted much adoration at a young age.
He felt his mother was frequently annoyed or dismissive. When he was home sick from school he'd wander into the kitchen, wanting attention and comfort from his Mom. She would be playing cards with her friends and was irritated that Steven was interrupting the game. His father was a real estate lawyer. He was also very detached and ungiving.
Steven's early passion was theater, especailly muscial theater. In high school he took acting lessons at the Neighborhood Playhouse and auditioned for every play. He had chorus roles in My Fair Lady.
1974 marked the beginning of Steven's most formative years. A major part of these years was his first lover, Bruce Philip Cooper, who died of AIDS in 1987.
Bruce was a brilliant, difficult, self-centered person, but, like Steven, he cared about other people. He gave Steven some happiness, companionship, and much heartache. As a hardcore academic philosopher, he stimulated Steven's intellectual pursuits, although he was very competitive and superior-acting. He was a major part of Steven's life and therefore a part of Steven.
They met when Steven was a freshman at NYU and Bruce was a freshman at Columbia. They were determined to prove society wrong by committing themselves to a permanent, long-lasting relationship, or "marriage" as Steven called it. They moved into their own apartment.
Steven usually put safety first. Telling the wrong person that you lived with your same-sex lover could result in violence, loss of housing, loss of one's job, trouble at school, and harrassment from neighbors. Although they lived in the upper West Side (which was considered a gay neighborhood back then), Steven was aware of discrimination. Bruce was more open.
But for Steven, one's lover was always one's "roommate" in public. Physical and verbal affection was always curbed when not at home. And one's "roommate" was never discussed at work or in Steven's case around family. It took a lot of work, and Steven always retained this intense sense of privacy and initial distrust of most people.
His father asked him to be a partner in his law firm in 1981. Later, his father would forge Steven's signature on important bank documents, steal money from clients, be sent to jail (for a much longer period this time), and stick Steven with a litany of lawsuits.
By the early-eighties Steven was a dedicated gay activist and a high-income real estate lawyer. Still in his twenties, he'd bought his own two-bedroom co-op apartment. He was also paying Bruce a weekly allowance and subsidizing his education. Their relationship was experiencing more trouble than usual.
Bruce was demanding and ungiving and had developed an uncontrollable sexual compulsion that kept him out at night at various sex venues. They socailized together rarely, had separate friends, and took separate vacations. Steven held onto the relationship out of sense of loyalty and determination. But he was not happy.
Everything fell apart in 1983 when Bruce was diagnosed with AIDS. Doctors were judgmental and uncaring. Hospital workers left food outside Bruce's room, refusing to go inside. Their cleaning lady was told by another client that she would be fired if she continued to work for a person with AIDS. Steven would come home from work to find "AIDS" scrawled in large letters across his mailbox.
He took care of Bruce for four years until he died in 1987. During these four caregiving years, Steven became a very dedicated gay activist. His family offered no support around Bruce's ordeal and even scorned Steven when Bruce died because Steven included his name in Bruce's New York Times obituary.
After Bruce died Steven donated to Columbia University a large endowment, with which they established the Bruce Cooper Memorial Fellowship for graduate studies in Philosophy.
Steven met Ben Munisteri 1987 at the the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center. Ben was 22 years old, just out of college, and a modern dancer. They had their first official date on July 2, 1988 in the Fire Island Pines. They fell in love and Ben moved in with him in March 1990.
Unlike most of the men Ben had dated until that point, Steven took his dance career very seriously. He went to all performances and many rehearsals; he found music for Ben and designed his costumes. He learned about dance composition, specific steps, terms, and styles so that he was fluent in the art form.
Steven wanted to be a fiction writer. He wrote two novels and several short stories. He got very good responses from a few agents and publishers. None took his work, however, and he stopped writing altogether in early 1994. He said he just couldn't bear the rejection any longer. One year later, Steven died of AIDS-related complications.
A few months before he died he won the Center's Heart of the Center award, something he had always wanted. After he died, the Center created the Annual Steven J. Powsner Volunteer Recognition Award.
