S. Clay Wilson: "So Much of His Brain is Damaged"


Five days after two Good Samaritans discovered S. Clay Wilson lying face down and unconscious between two parked cars on Landers Street in San Francisco, the 67-year-old underground cartoonist remains in the intensive-care unit at San Francisco General with no significant improvements in his condition.

A Wilson self-portrait, 2006

"He didn't have a fever today," said Lorraine Chamberlain, Wilson's partner, "and his lungs are clear. But they are worried about taking him off the ventilator, because his brain may not tell him to breathe or clear his throat or swallow. So much of his brain is damaged. His fever spiked at 103 yesterday (Tuesday) not because of infection, but because his neurological thermostat isn't functioning.

"It's a minute-by-minute thing," Chamberlain added. "They took him off the sedative yesterday, and I told him not to be frightened. I told him not to worry, that we were all going to be real patient and take care of him, no matter how long it takes, and that we loved him. A tear rolled out of his eye. The neurologist said he thinks he (Wilson) could hear that, and that the tear was probably real."

Doctors remain concerned about any number of things, Chamberlain said, included Wilson's fractured neck and possible sinus infections from the feeding and breathing tubes that are inserted into his nasal passages.

Although we may never know whether Wilson was assaulted or passed out drunk on Landers Street, a clearer picture of what happened that night is beginning to come together. Wilson spent Saturday at the Alternative Press Expo at The Concourse in San Francisco, and was drinking, Chamberlain said, much of the day. He did not go to a bar afterward, Chamberlain said, instead stopping "at the bodega to get some wine," then going over to the home of a close friend who Chamberlain only knows as "Ben," (which is short, she said, for his last name, Benedetti).

While "Ben" was calling to get Wilson a taxi at 11 p.m., Wilson set out for home. "It only took him a few minutes to walk down to Landers Street," Chamberlain said, where Wilson's body was discovered between those parked cars at 12:10 a.m. "It was a horrible night. Soaking wet: 16th Street was like a river," Chamberlain added. "The doctors told me the first night that if he hadn't been found when he was found, he would be dead by now. They never would have been able to stabilize him because it was cold and raining and he was aspirating things into his lungs."

Chamberlain is still trying to locate the two people who found Wilson and called for an ambulance, if only to thank them.