Source: Adult Industry News
By: Tiki Pavelle
Everyone has those days where they feel like going off, especially in this current climate of Industry tribulation, financial stress suffered by so many, and a work climate where person is product and yet image can be so distant from reality. It can be very easy indeed to lose one’s bearings and act out. What causes the irrevocable shift, from feeling to doing? Why did Steve Driver make that shift the beginning of June?
Having known Steve for a few months as a housemate, a perplexed Dick Tracy has some insight into the situation.
Tracy, Industry veteran of eleven years, met Driver and shared an apartment with him after connecting through a Craig’s List posting for a roommate. Steve ”seemed harmless enough” according to Dick. Driver was a steadfast, if volatile acquaintance according to Tracy, who cites numerous times he’d call in the wee hours of the morning and Steve would come and give Tracy a ride home (including a trip to Anaheim from the San Fernando Valley.) ”Who else would do that for you?” Steve seemed to Tracy someone he’d trust around his family or who’d happily be welcome over for Thanksgiving dinner.
Steve Driver was ”a really good guy, just misdirected” according to Tracy. Steve was from a very religious family and yet ”very unloved.” He spent roughly a year living out of his car, lacking support from family who rejected his career choice. At the same time Steve never considered leaving the Industry in which he had limited success. Driver was ”very addicted to porn” per Dick, who observed that it ”seemed like an obsession.”
Driver was also hampered by his very limited social skills, leaving him quite alienated in a world largely reliant on image and social graces. Likewise, he was almost completely without intuition as to how he was coming off to others and unaware of causing irritation or offense in others. Prone to outbursts as well, Dick recalls occasions Steve would call and warn him to stay out of an area because he was likely to become violent. He had a tendency toward embellishment though, says Tracy – ”you never could tell what was true or not.”
When asked if he had any premonition of the recent events, Tracy said ”unfortunately yes…not only was it something he would do, but something he had done prior” although with Steve’s predilection for fish stories, it was, like so much about him, impossible to tell. Tracy mentions a recent occasion (and the last time he saw Driver) wherein Steve turned on him in the car, held a knife to his throat and demanded money. Dick was fortunately able to handle Steve’s volatility and attests that he was in possession of a recently purchased firearm he used to defend himself.
Why Ultimate Studios, why Tom Dong became the victims of Steve Driver’s complete unravelling seems arbitrary to most – Driver and Dong were friends. Nonetheless Steve had become ”really pissed off” with the studio and Dong in particular over disagreements about compensation. His firing and the combined loss of housing was, apparently, the last straw. ”Motherfuckers got me for the last time” said Driver when he called Dick Tracy after the mayhem he perpetrated at Ultimate.
Shortly before his death, Steve called Dick for the last time. ”This is it” Steve said, to which Tracy responded ”yeah, looks like it.” Dick had been scheduled to be on the Ultimate set on the day of the violence, but was fortunately unable to make it. [If I’d been there it] ”woulda been me” Dick indicated regarding the assault, and Steve agreed. Then Steve Driver told Tracy it would be the last time they would talk. His last words toast flummoxed Dick Tracy were ”farewell, my friend.” He was dead shorty thereafter.
