A Memorial for Cheryl B (is for Beautiful)

One thing that has helped me this week is having so many conversations about Cheryl with friends, with strangers I met at the funeral home, with people I only see once in a while, like Blaise Allysen Kearsley, who told me that How I Learned The Hard Way, which Cheryl read at, was one of her favorite of her series How I Learned (which was awesome and is one you should totally attend) and Goddess Perlman, with whom I discussed over the top Catholic flower arrangements (something I'd been previously unaware of). So many people loved, cared about, and were moved by Cheryl. I met super funny lady Andrea Alton. I'm looking forward to seeing her friend Tim Wells while I'm in London; I know she would've liked that. I believe the people you surround yourself with are just as much a statement about who you are as anything you yourself do, and Cheryl knew a lot of amazing, beautiful, talented people. My instinct in some ways is to be alone, but I've realized this week that obviously nobody can bring her back or stop the awfulness that was her illness, but we can celebrate her life and her spirit and her talent and creativity and generosity.

I reread Cheryl's poem "Lizzie" in a book I was so grateful happened to be next to my bed (along with, okay, probably 30 others), The World in Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave, before I went to Staten Island and I heard her voice in my head, in that accent, with all that it held. I remembered that her story "Break" appears in my anthology Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 2. I am hoping I will have the opportunity to publish another of her short stories in an upcoming erotica book. I hope that more video of her reading surfaces because of course the words live on on the page, but with Cheryl, that were most vibrant when summoned by her, in her voice.

So here are the memorial details; read more at WTF Cancer Diaries and Facebook, and please spread the word. I hope to see Dixon Place, where I was in the audience with Kelli and Cheryl and a bunch of other queers, on their first date, packed extra full.

If you’d like to remember Cheryl with a donation, we are in the process of negotiating with an LGBT arts organization to provide a writers’ scholarship in Cheryl’s name. The details of this should be settled in the next few weeks, so please keep checking back. If you’d like to financially help out Cheryl’s partner Kelli, who lived at the hospital and rehab 24/7 from April 5 until the time of Cheryl’s death, you can do so here.

A Memorial for Cheryl B (is for Beautiful)

July 23, 3-6 pm

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street
New York, New York

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.