Remembering Cheryl B.

I'm too sad to be coherent at the moment. Maybe it was naive or stupid or just wishful thinking but I was sure Cheryl would pull through. And I didn't let myself think too much about the fact that she might not, I just couldn't, though maybe part of being an adult is facing that. I didn't visit as often as I could have, but I thought of Cheryl often the past few months.

When I visited her a few months ago she showed me the honey badger video, which I hadn't seen, and then right after that I saw this t-shirt on my coworker's desk, and ordered one and gave it to Cheryl. When I got to the ICU, I was struck with this feeling of stupidity; maybe she would have to just wear a hospital gown and I shouldn't have gotten it. I realize now that I let my fear of not knowing what to say, of being nervous and uncertain, get in the way of telling my friend how much I cared about her. I hope to never be in that situation again but if I am, I'm gonna get over myself, and right now I'm trying to both take care of myself and not just wallow in sadness, reach out to my friends and loved ones, and live life as fully as Cheryl did.

But you know what this reinforces for me? "Everything happens for a reason" is total, complete bullshit. There is no reason for this to have happened and the only positive things I can say are that I'm glad Cheryl is no longer suffering, and sharing memories about her and just "I'm sad/mad too" sentiments is...something. Not heartening and not cheerful but comforting, I guess.

Anyway, I'm sitting in Starbucks at Grand Central, surrounded by bags of stuff that feel really useless, crying and blowing my nose and traversing the internets, after having fallen asleep so hard on the train a stranger had to wake me up to tell me we were here. I got some coffee and am trying to edit other people's stories but can't seem to get anywhere.

Speaking of my stuff, tomorrow my organizer is coming over for a session. I was supposed to have either bought a dresser or gotten rid of the 4 giant bags of clothes we gathered for giving away a few months ago. I haven't done either yet. But it reminds me of this one time Cheryl brought her cat over to help catch mice. The cat got lost in my two bedroom apartment and we were looking all over and it was crazy hot. We found dollar bills that had been eaten by mice and I think Cheryl was a little annoyed that her cat might have gotten lost in my home (we found the cat under my bed, caught in the netting). "This place looks like a crack house, and I would know," she said. It was funny but caustic, and, yes, true (well, I'm gonna assume it's true, never having been in a crack house). I think she'd like to know that I'm gonna part a little more freely with some of my stuff, at least, I hope I will. The stuff that matters is what's on the inside. I know that, much as I might surround myself with belongings, and I hope to be someone who privileges people over possessions. That's part of my goal in this year of transformation.

I wanted to share this beautiful tribute to Cheryl Kathleen Warnock of Drunken! Careening! Writers! wrote. DCW is a pioneering, amazing reading series and I'm posting details about Thursday's reading there. My favorite part of Kathleen's post:

She had a dayjob until a couple years ago, then got downsized along with a significant chunk of the American workforce. She pieced out a living from freelancing and editing (she was a very good editor), and while the unemployment was difficult, it was hardly a period of lying fallow. She got a lot of writing done, and her name appeared on a lot of articles and blogs, and when she came to DCW, she read pieces of her memoir, which she called “When I Knew Everyone on Avenue A.” There was a piece about when she decided not to drink anymore. A piece about her father throwing a plate at her across the dinner table. She performed in a multi-media piece downtown with some other poets at the Flea Theater, in an evening curated by Regie at full glamour. It was marvelous.

We saw each other often, at readings, panels, birthdays, the occasional “at home” at her apartment in Brooklyn, where a salon of queer divinity often reigned. While the accent was on queer, it was talent that got you in the door with Cheryl, and labels were the last thing she judged you by. As someone who had identified as bi, she occasionally took some pushback from people who demanded she pick one side or the other. She told me once a guy asked her what PERCENTAGE she was (which seems to me just the kind of question a lot of guys would ask) and she said answered: “75/25 women/men” and then commented that she answered so quickly, she knew it was true.

Is that not a brilliant memoir title? I hope we get to read it. From Cheryl's site:

When I Knew Everyone on Avenue A is Cheryl B.’s personal, irreverent take on New York City in the 1990s. In this humorous one-woman spoken word/storytelling presentation, Cheryl offers up bits of her twenty-something existence; logic-defying relationships, sexual bewilderment, artistic experimentation, fleeting friendships, the death of her father, high doses of self-medication and ultimately, sobriety. While in the background, some of her beloved NYC haunts fade into relics.

This is an amazing lineup - I'm looking forward to reading Bob Smith's novel Remembrance of Things I Forgot, which has been waiting for me in its beautiful hardcover, beckoning me.

Drunken! Careening! Writers!

Isa Coffey

Joel Derfner

Jenifer Levin

Bob Smith

"Glitter and Be Gay"

Thursday, June 23, 7pm

KGB Bar

85 E. 4th St.

FREE

Kathleen posted this video of Cheryl reading and it's so quintessential Cheryl. She had this tough girl voice and style of reading, even though she was wiry and didn't "look" tough. She was one of the first slam poets I saw read. When I first met her, she wasn't sober, and I don't know how much to say about that, plus that was a looooong time ago so some details are fuzzy, but we always laughed about one particularly crazy encounter with a boy who is long forgotten. Anyway, enjoy this video:



And I found the photo below at Sugarbutch Chronicles, taken by Syd London, of Cheryl looking as fierce and glam and gorgeous as she could.

"New York Girl" by Cheryl B.

I'm sad and stunned that my friend Cheryl B. is no longer with us. I hate that I can link to her website but can't give her a hug. She was full of spark and passion and is an example to me of someone who saw how she wanted to change her life, and did it. Here is her poem "New York Girl." If you want to read about the last part of her life, her cancer blog WTF Cancer Diaries is something. She was one of the first people I met in the queer writing scene and we had some crazy times and some fun times and I don't have anything else to say except that I will miss her and her death is so unfair.



She's got the click of fierce heel hitting blacktop

She's got sarcasm dripping from the tip of her tongue

She's got a bra made out of steel and panties made out of licorice

She's got a vibrator in her pocket and she's very elusive to see you

She's got that tri-state area glow and a laugh that comes out of nowhere

She's got a voice like a cannon and lips that unravel like spools of silk

She's got a body that curves like the beauty of the open road

She's got Polaroids of herself floating about this city, wearing

nothing but her pet snake

She's got no problem with that

She's got that edge, you know that edge, she's got that leather cuffs

in the top drawer of her dresser, hot wax dripping onto warm flesh

kind of edge

She's a New York girl with a flask full of courage and determination

cocktail strapped to her left hip bone

She's got important aspects of your psyche drowning in the milky

ocean of her complexion

She's got various parts of your anatomy tied up and quivering

in her fist and you're going to have to play a little game to get them

back.

New essays up at Modern Love Rejects and Thought Catalog

I have two new essays that, coincidentally, both went up today.

One is at the new site Modern Love Rejects. It's called "The Unlikely Other Woman." It feels dated to me, because it's from a while ago, but as part of my new try, try, try again attitude, I thought it fitting to send a piece that's in part about rejection to a site about rejection.

I thought I was too smart to get hurt, which was my ultimate downfall. There’s no such thing as “too smart” when it comes to love; it’s the great intelligence equalizer. Why else would Nikki Giovanni have a poem addressing precisely this scenario called “I Would Not Be Different.” I grabbed it off the shelf at my local bookstore, one where we’d even had a date, where he’d kissed me between the stacks. I was desperate for a sense of community of fellow women who were not smart enough to evade the charm of the married man. “You sort of see someone/And you don’t want to notice/That ring on his finger/Nor really that sort of happy/Look in his eyes,” she writes. I thought he could be happy with her—and me—and that I could be too.

And that local bookstore is that fantabulous WORD, where I got some amazing books and ogled cute items last night. More on that later. But since it's still National Poetry Month, I'll recommend you check out that stunning Nikki Giovanni book, Bicycles: Love Poems. I kept that book in my bag for a long time and would read it almost daily. Yes, it helped.



The other essay has a crazy long title, and I'm really happy with it. Some of it is about the fact that social media is, well, social, and is a counterpoint to some of the people who think it's not. I described it on Twitter as being about "art appreciation, theater, iPhones, Flickr, 4square, Nirvana, David Carr, technology & more." That pretty much sums it up, I think. Please read it and, if you're so inclined, pass it along. I'm honored to have my work published their because I love what they're doing. Do make sure to check out their Love & Sex section. I have my eye on some pieces for Best Sex Writing 2012 (no decisions have been made on that book yet, as I'm wrapping up Best Bondage Erotica 2012 and madly reading reading reading).

"Why I Had My iPhone In My Hand While Viewing The Nirvana Exhibit At Experience Music Project"

I can contrast my visit to EMP with the other Seattle Center cultural offering I took in, a matinee of the play This at Seattle Rep, a few minutes’ walk away. There were plenty of moments in the play I found noteworthy, from the married man who tells the woman with whom he had a one-night stand, “You invade my psyche,” to the game the other characters play with Jane, whereby she leaves the room and has to guess the story they’ve made up, using only yes and no questions. Only there is no story, save for the one she spins, and she is the last one in on the not-so-funny (to her) joke. Unlike the museum, except for perhaps the video interview sections, the play moved too quickly to capture except by memory.

Both ways of processing and responding to art with simply our eyes and ears, or with the aid of technology, or perhaps pen and pencilæare, I believe are necessary. Any time I walk into a museum, a theater, or even a park, or open a book or visit a website, I am hoping that something I find there will leave me changed and different than I was before I ventured into that space. My photos (which you can see here) don’t tell a whole story, mine or the museum’s, so much as offer a tease, a glimpse into what stood out for me during my two hours in EMP. They aren’t meant to replace or stand in for the exhibit.

Read the whole thing