Observations

While New Alt staff and volunteers dished out a thanksgiving meal to any clients who stopped by, I stayed home where we marked the holiday with four cans of Friskies’ turkey and giblets. Jackson was particularly enthusiastic, literally racing across the room when I filled her bowl. There were places I could have gone, but since I am off on Wednesdays and Saturdays, two days in a row to myself was too tempting to pass up. It’s also awkward being the guest who was invited because they have no family, showing up with my assortment of ghosts like a bunch of balloons bobbing along at the end of their strings, trying to keep them out of sight. Snuggling the cat crew while listening to more and more cars pull up to the house across the street, parking every which way on the street and in the driveway, people arriving to celebrate with my neighbors in their newly purchased home, my mind went wandering back in time. The first thanksgivings I can remember were in Yonkers, at the home of my D...

The day starts early. Skimming my friends' posts, while I fill water bowls and uselessly search for my wallet, I come across one from Dubbs, a trans man I know. Dubbs is very active in the community, and this morning he has posted a video in which he talks about the emotional impact of the ongoing attacks on the trans population. "It's like being on the gravitron, where it feels like everything is out of control, the floor is dropping out from under you,but there is some semblance of safety and security until one screw comes loose and all hell breaks loose." He goes on to describe the various ways the trans communiy is under attack and then he says, "it's too much to bear." He goes on to talk about his passive suicidal ideation, and then he puts it in a way I've never heard before. "I've thought about making it easier for myself, because its really hard right now." His post is loaded with trigger warnings and reassurances, "I...

Ben and I were sitting next to each other when an email came in on my old, rarely used yahoo account. It was from our activist friend, Mark Milano, who I have known for 35 years, summoning us to an "extremely important" zoom call, topic unspecified. I showed my phone to Ben, and he and I both had the same immediate reaction - whatever this was, it was not going to be good news. The call was scheduled for 4pm on sunday, wedged in between a Board meeting and our sunday dinner program, but when Mark facebooked me early on sunday to confirm I would be there, I told him I planned to step away from work to do it. I think it was 1999 when we decided to target the US Trade Representative about US policies preventing countries like South Africa from producing their own affordable HIV medications. We went to DC and I dressed in my most femme, non-activist outfit and signed in to use the library on the ground floor of this federal building. I went to the bathroom and pulled a ...

Last night, trying to feed and medicate Connor with one hand and message with a former staff member who is going through a hard time with the other, I somehow switched the background she had chosen to an orange one with the word "Addison" - I have no idea what this refers to in the online world, but in my world, Addison is the name of my Dad. Not my father, who never gave me anything but a tiny delicately embroidered dress when I was first born. My Dad was a friend of my mother's, 20 years older than her, who decided to help out after my father vanished like a genie before I was born. It's ironic that Dad's name would pop up now, like a message from the universe telling me to stop avoiding it and tackle the overwhelming task of packing up his apartment, where he lived for decades. I am having trouble both with the logistics of packing and moving all this stuff from his 4th fl. walk up, but also with letting go of this apartment. This is the apartment I came...

Today as I was passing through the church vestibule, I looked through the glass part of the door and saw a young person standing on steps looking uncertain, so I opened the door and invited them in. "What's your name?" I asked. The client responded with a common arabic male name and then hesitated. "What do you prefer to be called?" "L." "Welcome Ms. L," said Dilo coming into the office, and the client lit up like firefly. "I'm from Iraq," she said. "I got here two weeks ago. I miss my home and my mother," she said, starting to cry. "But I had to come. My father forced me to be injected with testosterone so I would grow a beard. "A year ago, I posted a picture on Tik Tok," she sayws, holding out her phone so I could see the photo of her in make up and a long wig." "You look beautiful" I tell her. "Someone sent that picture to my father and he put a gun to my head." "I...

I woke up feeling fragile today, like the marrow had been sucked out of my bones while I slept leaving them hollow and echoing. The day in and day out sadness of caring for a cat with cancer is getting to me, and so is getting ready to give back Odie. I have fostered many cats for homeless people, some clients and some not, and there is always a bittersweetness to it. There's joy, of course, in seeing someone get housed after the prolonged war of surviving the shelters and the streets, but there's also the loss of a furry soul I have come to know. Usually the loss is just a twinge, but Odie is an especially soft, sweet guy and I am really going to miss him in my increasingly empty house. I want to be swept away by the palpaple wave of relief that swept the City as the election results came in and it became clear that people power had prevailed over big money. It was great to see that grassroots mobilization can be effective, because it frequently doesn't feel like i...

A., a long ago client, stopped by to visit. “Do you have a picture of C.?” she asked me. “I want to get a tattoo for my friend.” C. died of AIDS at 29 in 2018. While I looked for pictures in my computer, A. told me stories about the things she and C. used to do, hanging out on the pier and having fun. Then she told me a story C. had never shared. “I knew that guy was no good,” she said, “but C. thought it was OK. He knew he had HIV, but he didn’t tell her. That’s how she got it.” I thought about C.’s last year, the long stretch she spent on the ventilator at Jacobi Hospital with nobody but our staff, one of our social work interns, and her homeless friends for support. How her family swooped in at the last minute. I remembered our intern, still new to the work, telling me with confusion that it seemed like all her family cared about while she lay dying was her property, her TV and her benefit card. Then the funeral they held for her out of state, none of her friends invited,...