Red wine and tears

      Yesterday was Mark Milano’s actual memorial at The Center, where so many activist milestones take place.  Entering the room, the first person I saw was Andy, who reached to hug me with a glass of red wine in his hand, spilling it on my sweatshirt sleeve and the floor.           Next I encountered a cluster of FUQ lesbians ,all of them mothers now, one with no longer baby daughters about to head to college.  The moment felt awkward, like running into colleagues you once saw daily but haven’t seen in a long time.  There have been times I wondered where these women were as we did action after action, trying to hold on to the things we won a long time ago. 

      Not Jennifer, but the others, who melted away and left just the two of us. Jenn has seen me in various states, showing up DC with my walker or barely able to get up after lying on the capitol’s marble floor, so she asked what was going on with my back.  I told her I’m having spine surgery again and she asked if that will fix the problem, so then I had to explain that this is a whole different thing.  “Text me,” she said and I nodded, but I know I won’t.

    Family was at the front, and most of the rest of the room was full of familiar activists as though an early 90s ACT UP meeting was zapped through a portal into 2026.  I sat between Ben, and Alex, a newer friend.  We chatted for a while but then it became a rather long time and it was clear they were struggling with the technical challenge of streaming it to people in America on zoom, and people in the Philippines, and maintaining sound and video in the room.  Twenty of Mark’s family had gathered, including his remaining four brothers, and one of them took the stage, introducing the eldest brother who sang us some songs that Mark, who insisted there was no good music after 1970, hadenjoyed.  The event was threaded through with music, since Mark love dto sing, especially cabaret.

    There were T-shirts with his photo and “23 arrests and no convictions,” which we were asked to put on.  Health Gap gave Mark a posthumous award, and then Jerry, Mark’s shyer husband, got up and gave a speech that left everyone in tears. I was dabbing at my eyes with the white t-shirt as they called all us activists to come forward.  The space at the front was no match for the size of the crowd so we filled the aisles too, with our fists in the air.  The ACT UP! Fight back! Fight AIDS! chant was so loud, I wondered if people in the other rooms could hear us in the middle of their AA meetings and board game clubs.

    At the end was the open mic.  People expect me to be funny, even at memorials- Jenn once told me, “you’re funny when you’re sad,” but I didn’t have it in me as I talked about how Mark decided to face his trauma with his usual dogged determination.  It was getting late and-even though the staff knew I was at a memorial- I had to get to work before we opened to clients, so I slipped out and showed up at work with my sweatshirt damp from Andy’s wine and my own tears.