Look who I ran into in the farmer's market.
Timothy Lunceford-Stevens, ACTUPNY member and Rise and Resist member premiers in this review in a Enhanced Reading at Stonewall Bar on Sunday 3:30pm to 5:00pm. Learn what inspired me to attend my first ACTUPNY meeting TIMOTHY: I was sad and attended the “We are fighting for our lives” candlelight march on June 20, 1987, from Stonewall to the Hudson River. I met David, an East Village Man that evening. I told him about Paul’s death. I said, I was angry someone as smart as Paul could die so young. David said there is a new group, they are angry too! They are ACTUPNY and meeting on Monday’s, at the LGBT Center...Hope to see you Sunday at Stonewall Bar Upstairs!I tell what inspired me before ACTUPNY and all the other events joining Pink Panthers, and other organizations inspired by ACTUPNY. And I tell what organizations I joined after like Gays Against Guns, Rise and Resist. I hope you can attend. Timothy.
Sincerely,
Timothy Lunceford-Stevens
Tim and Mel in the philosophers club.
Bronwyn Rucker’s Julius’ Philosophers. — at The Stonewall Inn.
All week we took part in the
Philosophers Club,
Asking what to do.
What’s the right thing?
Best way forward unclear.
Two thirds through a life.
“All my life I’ve been waiting,”
writes Harold Norse.
“expecting a grand finale, an
awakening,
Love erupting from the
streets,
In the bars, in classrooms,
Everyone dropping their guard.
Their pants, their skirts,
Cops weeping tenderly
As they snap off your cuffs,
Bankers giving away their money,
Politicians telling the truth…”
It wasn’t happening.
Brooklyn would have to suffice.
Bike to House of Yes for Amateur
Burlesque and Drag Night.
Everyone grand.
Eating a taco riding
home.
Wondering what is the best way to
vote for the Union Contract
Ad Hominem and Invective flying
from here to there,
Sitting in the Union Hall in Times Square.
Solidarity was our solution.
More powerful than a strike.
Off to DC in a few hours.
Remove the president.
Restore democracy before it
crumbles,
We hoped on the way to DC.
“All my life I’ve been waiting,”
expecting a grand finale, an
awakening,
something that
didn’t come on Friday.
Taking a cheap bus back.
Reading about Susan Sontag’s last
year on the way home.
“I feel my body has let me down,” she wrote towards the end.
“And my mind, too.
For, somewhere, I believe the
Reichian verdict. I’m responsible
for my cancer. I lived as a coward, repressing my desire, my rage.”
Aren’t we all?
Have we repressed too much?
Forgotten to use our power?
Back in town by 930.
Chatting away, glad to be back.
Saturday morning,
Farmers Market and bike rides.
Meeting John and Joe and Margo.
Bike riding and cooking.
Book club reading poems.
One after another.
“Not enough people are thinking of
trees,”
Muses Gladys at Joan E’s.
Lets read our poems.
Emily opens with
Louise Landes’ Levi Guru Punk.
A funky bohemian woman who hung
out in the East Village.
“Will you meet me at the door of
death?” she reads.
“Fascist state motivated by hate,
Families split apart.”
Just like our policy today.
“She gave
it to me on the 10th of November 2001,” says
Emily.
“Sweeter than crickets on a
summer night,” she reads.
“Fast flow of punk and the endless
flow of Bhudda.”
Gladys is next.
“So many songs are actually
poetry,” she says.
Reading “Tale of the Oyster” by Cole
Porter.
Wants to go up:
“Down by the sea lived a lonesome oyster
Every day getting sadder and moister
He found his home life awf'lly wet
And longed to travel with the upper set…”
Every day getting sadder and moister
He found his home life awf'lly wet
And longed to travel with the upper set…”
Vicki reads Prufrock:
“Lets us go there you and I.
Streets that follow like an
insidious argument…
There will be time …
for you and me….
Do I dare?”
Do any of us?
There will be time.
Ecclesiastes.
“There
is a time for everything…
: a time to be
born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot…’
I read Harold again, waiting for
something.
Wondering if something
extraordinary might happen,
Here or there?
Winding through a wondrous Saturday.
Back to
Bushwick.
Gotham Girls Roller Derby
Rocks.
Skating against Atlanta.
The teenager leaping.
Cruising,
Crashing,
And jamming.
Taking in the murals.
Friends over.
Sunday to Princeton for lunch with
mom.
“I always feel bad when I can’t
finish a book,” says she.
“I absolve you on your sins
mother.”
Chatting about the end of days.
Back to the philosophers club.
A reading at the Stonewall Inn.
Boys sitting at Julius wondering
what it all meant.
A writer,
A social worker,
A young person,
A bartender.
A Chaplin.
A reading at the Stonewall,
Recalling a Friday happy hour at
Julius,
April 20, 2019.
Sitting chatting,
Mel and Tim.
Color is motion,
Light time,
Tempering
Oil, paint, marble, dust.
Deuteronomy.
Multiple voices.
The heart breaks in joy and
sorrow.
There are two kinds of artists.
I am a young person,
I still have hope.
Intersecting conversations.
I just hate getting arrested, says
Mel.
I really like to have older men in
my life,
Says the young person.
I usually go to the Cubby Hole.
My mother died when I was young,
I have learned to make my own
family
I feel you are my family.
Elder man follows:
A lot of people come here.
Its about gay life.
What is beauty,
What is the good life?
Look see,
I am a social worker.
Circle of life.
Fire Island
I hate Trump.
He says at the bar.
I love bourbon.
And Liza.
I’m writing about Fire Island from
the Lesbian Perspective,
Says the Young Person.
Last time I saw him he told me he
still has hope.
I’m so sorry I didn’t ask him
more.
The second he died, I knew it was
fatal.
I retired from the hospital the
other day.
I’m so glad I don’t have to talk
about the end of life every day.
Says the social worker.
I’ve always been an activist
I wanna save kids like me says
Tim.
Disabled kids.
I met a boy in 1963.
He moved in.
We lived together for thirty
years.
In 1993, he died of AIDS.
Tim and Mel trading lines.
And stories.
Tim’s friend Paul Popham, founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis, its
president from 1981 until 1985, died in 1989.
“I was sad and
attended the “We are fighting for our lives” candlelight march on June 20,
1987, from Stonewall to the Hudson River. I met David, an East Village Man that
evening.
I told him about
Paul’s death. I said, I was angry someone as smart as Paul could die so young.
David said there is a new group, they are angry too! They are ACTUPNY and
meeting on Monday’s, at the LGBT Center...I went to my first ACT UP meeting in June and have been going ever since, 32 years.
Once an ACT Upper, always an ACT
Upper.
We’ve had many role models.
Jane Jacobs.
We’ve got to nibble at them like ducks.”
It’s immoral not to act.
I’m now involved with Rise and
Resist and Gays Against Guns.
Whether you are ten or 62, you can
still be an activist,”
Tim concludes.
“Art, that is my political act,” says Mel.
“My heart and my hands tremble…”
“Lou Cheng gets killed.”
“I need another drink.”
“You can look anywhere in this bar
and find someone on their way out.”
“That’s the chair where the sailors used to sit.”
“Death is real enough at Julius.”
“I need to get out of here.
This is a depressing place.
You wanna see a list of people I
used to see here.
You never know who you’d see.
Now I walk in and all I know is the bar tender.
I’ve seen actual dead people come in
here.
I went to her grave in Brooklyn.
Where in the world would you find a person like
David?
Some of the people I met in this
place.
We always said Katrina washer her
away.
I’ll see you guys tomorrow.
What is beauty?
What is a good life?
What is pleasure?
The circle of life.
Spinoza says see the genius
in yourself in others.
Search for joy.
Faith in self and others.
That is art.
I’ll see you tomorrow.
Ken drops by as we applaud.
Standing ovation.
Walking to Wooster Street.
Back to the gallery on the way
back to Brooklyn.
All my life I expected something extraordinary
to happen.
Sometimes it happens,
Just being home.
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