Observations

I was getting ready for the Queer Liberation March and searching for my glasses when the phone rang and I picked it up to find a doctor from NYU. I recognized his name because he has been taking care of my very sick client, J., for the last week. "Are you his proxy?" he asked, which is not a question you ever want to hear. "Yes," I confirmed, waiting for bad news, pushing away the memory of the day that I, as proxy, made the decision to take JC off life support. "He has really low blood pressure," he said. "That’s happened before," I told him, thinking of the time a hospital in the Bronx told me that J. was stuck in the ICU beause he had to stay there as long as he was getting pressors, powerful drugs to raise his blood pressure. They asked me to decide whether to risk taking him off the pressors, so he could leave the ICU. My staff joke through their pain that J has more lives than a cat because somehow he keeps pulling through. "There ar...

6/25/25 Today Ben and I faced an unusual dilemma. Two organizations that we have both done a lot of protesting with and are deeply committed to, both wound up having civil disobedience actions on Capitol Hill today. Popular Democracy was holding a press conference and a large civil disobedience to protest cuts to Medicaid and healthcare. That action had been planned well in advance, but then Russell Vought, the despicable head of the Office of Management and Budget and also one of the primary authors of project 2025, was scheduled to speak to the Senate Appropriations Committee. The group that has been doing actions about PEPFAR, the global HIV treatment and prevention program, which includes many people from Housing Works decided to interrupt his testimony. Ben and I were both torn, but I decided that the opportunity to directly confront Vought and challenge his lies was important. ACT UP and other organizations fought for decades for global HIV treatment, and the decision to stop ...

June 18 2025 I’m doing a lot of interviews these days about the impact of federal funding cuts. The agencies that actually get federal funding are afraid to talk so it falls to me. I tell the reporter about the indirect ways we’re being impacted, the flood of intakes, the increased competition for the foundation grants and dwindling individual donations that we rely on, the spiking anxiety among the clients. I can tell this reporter gets how bad this all is, I can hear it in his voice, in his questions. I start to tell him about the fear among our our trans clients and I tear up, the tears choking my voice. I fight it off, stroke Smokey who is on the table “helping”, continue with the interview. At the end he asks me how nonprofit workers on the front lines are keeping it together and I draw a blank. Smokey nudges me, "well, I have cats," I say. "They help when they’re not being maniacs." I can pretty much hear him nodding over the phone. "I have cats too,...

After protesting about PEPFAR cuts outside Tesla, I had to pick Connor up from the vet, where he'd been sine his biopsy yesterday. My vet has his own practice, and he accepts walk-in emergencies, so there is sometimes a long wait. On the bench across from me was a gray-haired woman in jeans, flip flops and starfish earrings. Neither she or I actually had an animal with us. "It’s so hard when they’re getting older," she said, telling me about her Bosston Terrier. "She can’t see and her liver enzymes are high so she has medication for that. At first it was a pill, but she doesn't have a snout so I couldn't really hold her closed, so instead I take chewable pills and I dissolve them with a little water and squirt them in." I told her abpout Yuki and his amazing ability to eat a whole meal and still somehow be holding the pill in his mouth so he can drop it somewhere. "We had put a deposit down on a Boston terrier with a woman in New England, she bre...

My facebook friend posted this old photo of a FIERCE protest from 2002. This protest was the day that Kate Spencer and I used bolt cutters to cut the chain link fence blocking access to the Christopher St pier while Bob Kohler held our stuff and the kids stood on the other side of West St chanting "two Kates cut the gate!" (the chant was not planned lol). Cutting the fence felt good, like a knife going through slightly softened butter. But we didnt get to do that much cutting before the police grabbed us. It was Kate Spencer's first arrest and she had some kind of ailment. It's my policy to never mention that kind of thing to the police, because it just complicates things, but Kate said too much about it and they carted her off to the hospital, separating us. I'm OK in a cell alone. My approach to jail is just to get as physically comfortable as possible and then zone out. But for Kate's first arrest, being separated was pretty scary. When I got to ...

3:30 AM It’s 3:30 AM and I am dozing lightly. The weather abruptly shot up from cold and rainy to almost 90° yesterday and I haven’t gotten around to installing the air conditioner yet, so the room is a little too warm to be really comfortable. The cats are agitated because I had to take away all of their food at midnight because Connor‘s biopsy is tomorrow. It hasn’t been long enough for them to be actually hungry, but rescue cats feel more secure just knowing that there is some food available and they don’t like the deviation from their routine. I’ve been having a lot of headaches lately and tonight is no exception. All that combined meant that I was not deeply asleep when a text message came into my phone. My clients generally know better than to contact me in the middle of the night unless something is really wrong so I grabbed the phone to see what was going on. "I’m heading to the hospital," JJ wrote. He had spent the week dealing with increasing stomach pain and naus...

I spend a lot of time at the foot doctor, and all this marching isn’t helping. By now I know her staff, especially a young woman from Guyana. As she was bustling around getting things ready, she told me to remove my shoes and socks and then started laughing when she realized I was wearing sandals and no socks. “I have to train myself to stop saying socks now” she said. “Last time you were here it was cold and now it’s beautiful.” “And it’s Pride month,” I said. “I was with some people at Rockefeller Center and it’s all decorated with Pride flags. My friends were visiting from Guyana and they were surprised about how open it is here. It’s getting a little better there, but slowly.” “It’s changing all over the place,” I said, “the Philippines has a Pride parade.” She smiled. “I was surprised by that, “ she said. “I think the whole world is coming together. There are things here and there, but I think overall the world is coming together.” That was the most optimistic statemen...

One of my long ago clients, a trans man who went on to work for me for years, called me yesterday to catch up. He told me he had recently been arrested due to false allegations. He was at home with his young son when the police came to the door. He opened the door a little to see who was there, and then police grabbed him and started attacking him in the hallway, in front of the child who had wandered out into the hall since the door was open. He was telling the police to bring the child back inside, and a neighbor heard and took the child into their apartment. At one point, they were pinning him in a way that was making it hard for him to breathe, so he yelled “I can’t breathe!” Another neighbor heard that, so close to the anniversary of George Floyd’s death, and ran into the hall and tried to pull the police off. They both were arrested, but when they got to the precinct he was only there for 45 min. because when they finally asked questions and looked at his phone they realized...

I live in a part of Brooklyn where it is relatively safe for packages to be left when nobody is home, especially if they take a minute to leave them in a less visible spot. Despite this, I came home the other day to a missed package slip. I didn’t give it much thought other than being a little annoyed because we were running out of those cat probiotics. I expected it to be redelivered, so I waited a few days. Then, frustrated, I looked up the tracking number and discovered they had left the package at Staples, about ten blocks away. Today, when I showed up at Staples, the jovial middle-aged man at the counter found the package pretty easily, but when he tried to scan it he ran into trouble. He called over a younger co-worker who gave him a tablet to try it on instead of the handheld scanner. He tried again, and it informed him that the package did not exist. He was stumped. “Do they give you a tech support number for this?” I asked, thinking that maybe he could call someone. “They d...

“I need food,” said my chronically ill client, J, on the phone. For him I pick up on my day off because it could be literally life or death. “All I’ve had today is a slice of chocolate cake and I’m getting dizzy. And I overslept and I missed dialysis.“ Knowing he had food stamps, I tried reaching first a staff member who lives nearby and then a volunteer to see if somebody could go shopping for him. Nobody was available so I wound up ordering on Instacart. Concerned he might pass out, I stayed on the phone with him while we waited for the food to arrive. He managed to open the door and the delivery guy immediately saw how ill he is. “You got it?” He asked, handing over the bag. “Yeah,” said my client, “I’m on dialysis and I didn’t eat”. “ I was on dialysis, too" said the delivery guy, "I used to get it in my neck.” "They did it in my neck before” said J. "I got shot and my kidneys failed," said the delivery guy. "I got this by using drugs," said J....

Despite the expect-anything native New Yorker attitude baked into me, I was somewhat surprised to spot a monk in TD bank on 42nd St. I think it was the incongruity of my associations of chanting and ancient monastaries vs the neon glare ad hypercapitalism of the bank. "But," I told myself, "even clergy have to do the mundane tasks of life." Waiting there in line, my mind went back years to a fundraiser for VOCAL-NY that was held at the Frying Pan, a boat turned venue space moored off the west side of Manhattan. Jenn was still in charge at VOCAL then, and the Church Ladies had been asked to perform. I don't usually wear a nun costume in the Church Ladies, but for a reason I can't remember, Sister Mary Cunnilingus and I were both in full fake habits. It was a pretty hot day, and we were melting under the layers. After the show, we found our way to a nearby park and began taking off pieces of costume. I noticed a man watching us closely and tensed up, e...

When New Alt was new and small I personally knew most of the donors, but that was years ago. These days most of the donors I interact with personally are on the Angel List, a special list of donors who have signed up to receive emails when one of our clients has a specific need. This runs the gamut from textbooks to work uniforms to housewares for a new apartment. Even most of the Angel donors I don’t get to know beyond a sense of what type of request tends to appeal to them. And then there’s Susan. I first noticed Susan in 2012, back in the days when donations came in the form of checks. Not only did she often respond to requests, she also signed up as a Gay Santa and I was struck by how pretty and thoughtful her gift was, not just the requested item tossed in a box, but the candy and extras and careful wrapping we tend to use with people we care about. And unlike any other Santa,she asked for the recipient's birthday, and sent her gifts then, too. Even her donations had a th...

It’s 4am. The cats are agitated, walking on me. I’m usually up an hour or two before this. I don’t actually wake up to feed the cats. I wake up because of my mind, thinking what the hell is going to be next? And there’s always something, it’s not unrealistic, I’m not just going crazy. My oldest cat is 17 and hyperthyroid. Medication, which I got by scamming an online doctor into prescribing it for me and then calculating the cat dose and cutting it up, only controls it partly. His metabolism is fast, so it’s good for him to eat often, and I got in the habit of feeding him since I’m up anyway. And then Connor started having trouble with his digestion and was losing weight so he joined the late night feeding. And then the others are just waiting for leftovers, to lick out an empty can, etc. The middle of the night is lonely, even surrounded by cats. I remember when I was not the only human in this bed, in this house. I turn on podcasts to try to drown it out, NPR. Yuki won’t eat....