Observations

I was standing in the laundromat when the NYU ICU called. “His heart is doing better,” said the PA, “we have lowered the dobutamine a lot. But his white blood cell count is still high, and his blood cultures are still positive, so we want your consent to do a bronchoscopy, do you know what that is?” “Yes,” I said, remembering the early 90s and friends coughing and gasping for breath, “they were done a lot when people were being diagnosed with AIDS by getting PCP.” “Yes,” said the PA sounding relieved that I didn’t need an explanation, “we want to one to see if he has a third kind of infection in his lungs.” “I assume he’s still sedated,” I say – bronchoscopy is very uncomfortable If someone is awake – “yes,” she assures me, “and we can give more medication if necessary.” “OK,” I say, “go ahead.” I was still at the laundromat, but had moved on to the dryer, when his mother texted me. “Just wanted to know if you saw him today and how is he doing?” “I’m in Brooklyn today,” ...

The first message of the day was from R., a client who lives with HIV, Crohn’s disease, and addiction. “I want to make a will,” he said. I reached out to a friend at Legal Aid’s HIV Unit, who told me they can refer people to a private law firm for wills, so I sent R. to him. I had to get an early start to see my psychiatrist before work. Just as I reached her building, the NYU ICU called and I started to panic, but they were just asking me for permission to share info with his father. The client himself is the same. They decided against trying to extubate him today. My psychiatrist is interesting. She’s fairly young, in her second year of residency, and dresses kind of professional/goth, often in black with chunky black shoes. Today her black dress was printed with some kind of creature, but I couldn’t figure it out. “Sting rays?” I asked. “Butterflies,” she said. “I just gave myself a mini Rorschach,” I said and we both laughed. In grad school we spent two s...

I was doing some banking for a client when a man leaning unsteadily on a cane with a half dozen hospital bracelets flopping loosely on his thin wrist came in. He got within two feet of the tellers and shouted “I need money!” The staff clearly knew him and a banker got up from her desk, came over and asked him how much he wanted. “$500!” he shouted and a teller started assisting him. “I need more money!” he shouted. “this is a bank!” “I told you to bring me your address,” the teller said calmly. “The Travel Inn,” he said. I know that’s a shelter, but the bank staff didn’t, it’s not the world they inhabit, and there was some confusion. The staff treated him respectfully, but the security guard was hovering way too close. While I was at the bank, I missed a call from the ICU. I called them back as soon as I got to the office. “He was being intermittently non-compliant on the floor,” said the ICU doc of my Very Sick client, “then his blood pressure dropped and his me...

Hanging out with a few cats on my day off, I pick up the phone. “I need a passport,” my Very Anxious client blurts out. “I’m thinking about leaving the country. Trans people are being put on a watch list. FBI agents are showing up at trans activists’ doors.” “I know a lot of trans activists and I haven’t heard that,” I told him. “But I’m sure they’re putting lots of people on lists.” “You’re on a list for sure,” he says, referring to my activism. “I have been for a long time,” I tell him, thinking of how during the most active days of Fed Up Queers we were told by a sympathetic insider that our names were on the wall at the Manhattan DA’s office. “I could go to Mexico with my aunt,” he says. “Not all of Mexico is gay friendly,” I tell him. I had a gay migrant client from Mexico who had been gay bashed and then refused treatment because of his HIV status. “I would want to be in Mexico City,” he says. “I really want to go to the Netherlands - Rotterdam not Amsterdam....

I woke up today with a sadness hangover, brain full of fog, and forced my reluctant body through the motions of a morning while impatient cats swirled around my ankles. Yesterday’s double dose of grief – the loss of Mark on what would have been my mother’s 83rd birthday – and the horror of the attack on Venezuela are weighing me down. I made my way to the office, but instead of working my way through the endless to-do list on my desk, memories of Mark – so many actions, meetings, long bus rides, memorials – were playing like movies in my mind. Mo, our senior security staff who is a father figure to many of the clients, showed up early and came into the office looking for a blank timesheet. He has worked for me for a long time and he could tell I wasn’t fully there. He sat down, and I told him about Mark. “I had a friend,” he said “back in the day. He got AIDS. I went to see him and I was shocked because his face was shrunken like a skeleton. He said ‘are you afraid...

The thing about a Trump presidency is that you never know what you will wake up to. Today we woke to the news that in violation of international law, the US military kidnapped Venezuelan President Maduro and his wife. As if that wasn’t crazy enough, Trump then gave a speech stating that the US will be “running” Venezuela, a problematic proposition on many levels but especially considering the mess he has made of running the US. Despite the pretense that this is about drugs, it is clearly about oil. As soon as I woke up and heard the news, I thought “No blood for oil,” an echo of long ago activism from the gulf war. It was 1990, I was in high school, and a bunch of students from various public and private schools around NYC had created an organization called Students Against War. Perching in the tiny plastic chairs in the nursery school of the Washington Square Church, we planned marches, and student walk outs, and anti ROTC actions. After the war, SAW became STAND and b...

T., one of our trans alums, stopped by today. She was on a mission. “Today makes two years since we lost Sasha,” she said, “and I want to make a video.” She gingerly lifted the frame with Sasha’s photo in it off the wall and held it in her lap. I handed her the office phone to record it on since she doesn’t have a phone. With the camera running, she poured out her sadness and loss and anger at the unfairness of Sasha being gone so young. She was sobbing by the end and, dabbing her eyes, she asked me for a picture of Sasha to take home. I pulled up Sasha’s facebook on my phone, and handed it to her to choose one, then printed the one she picked out. Sasha loved the camera and loved to perform, so there were plenty to choose from. Once she left I thought about the years I knew Sasha, and how I struggled to help her contain her outsize personality and extreme impulsivity enough that she could keep attending the program. I thought about the many times I had to come to the re...

Today, while my friends were welcoming the new mayor and the potential of hope’s return in the subfreezing air, I spent the day de-peopling. Instead of bundling up and heading into the city, I spent the day in my nightgown, soaking in the languid purring warmth of my pile of sleeping cats. Without the constant reaching need of human voices, I can open my rusty gates and let the tranquiilty of feline dreams flow in and fill the deep canyons and spidery cracks like the golden kintsukuroi seams in Japanese porcelain. Like the map of a teenage cutter’s scars faded to silver on middle aged skin, the repair is solid but the mark of the pain still remains.

For years I have told my vet that when a cat gets sick, I do too. He tell me there’s no scientific evidence of a shared cat/human pathogen, each species has their own version of things, their FIV to our HIV etc. But with the perspective of 50 years of veterinary practice, he tells me “there’s a lot we don’t know yet.” Poor Sapphire is sick, all sniffly with her eyes watering and I have a sinus headache, had my New Year’s call w Lucy in a raspy voice, and coughed myself awake at 3am. Earlier in the day while my radical lesbian doc inspected my ankle and decided against another injection right now, thank goodness, I told her about the never ending cough, followed by the nasty stomach virus and now this. “I thought the immunoglobulins were supposed to protect me from stuff,” I said. “They are,” she said and we fell silent for a moment, considering that. “But I haven’t had shingles or thrush”- I used to get both repeatedly. “That’s something,” she says, carefully ...