I just saw a message from Mark Milano.
“I've just been told by Nanette Kazaoka that another hero has fallen:
my fierce fellow activist, Mel Stevens. He was there when we confronted
Al Gore on blocking AIDS Drugs For Africa back in 1999, and in countless other
actions. A huge loss for those of us who knew him and for activism in general.
No word on a memorial service yet.”
I knew of Mel in three phases, from afar into ACT UP and the Matthew Shepard political funeral days in the late 1990’s, reconnecting with Rise and Resist against Trump, and Tim’s slow goodbye.
I will never forget turning on the TV and seeing someone in ACT UP screaming at the president of the United States that people were still dying of AIDS. Mr President, people are dying of AIDS, said Mel repeatedly confronting the president during Bill Clinton’s speech at the Human Rights Campaign dinner in the fall of 1997. I had just moved to New York. Like many I knew from afar, I was intimidated by him. Meeting him in ACT UP and the endless meetings after we were arrested at the Matthew Shepard Political Funeral, I found him to be so sweet and kind. Mel and Tim went to every action, even when it was just the two of them zapping the NYPD, racist, sexist, anti gay, NYPD, go away, carrying their back back against the bashers in blue banner, even as the coalition crumbled.
On the way back to NYC after paying our fine for a civil disobedience, Mel told me about joining the group after his lover of three decades died in the late 1980s, spending nearly a decade working with them, taking part in office takeovers and arrests with the group. On one occasion going through the central booking system, he watched a fight between members of a gang, a man getting beaten up, sitting holding his head, still regretting doing more for the man. On another occasion, he was with the ever well dressed Bob Kohler, a veteran of the Stonewall Riots.
“Why are you in here?” one man asked Bob.
“Murder,” Kohler hissed back.”
Mel loved puppets, dressing as one often.
Kate Barnhart recalls:
“Mel had gotten inspired by the activist puppet groups and he decided to build an octopus puppet where each leg represented a form of oppression. He got 6 legs done but he could ‘t figure out how to do two more, so it was a sextopus.”
The group went through its ups and downs, Mel and Tim a part of it from the glory days to five people showing up at a meeting. He went to meetings for years after it ceased being cool. He was there to confront Al Gore over his intransigence, blocking AIDS drugs in Africa. Mel was there, ready to push back, to do whatever he could do, ready to laugh at the brash new activists who assumed leadership, as a vanguard. He just kept going, having seen it all. And he had little to lose. He lost his lover to HIV/AIDS a decade prior, meeting Timothy, who’d also lost a lover, in an AIDS bereavement group. And the two became inseparable, for the next three and a half decades. They always sat together at meetings.
December 2016, the first person I greeted at my first Rise and Resist meeting was Mel, sitting with him. Mel and Tim would be at every action, rallying for the Affordable Care Act fighting for the Deferred Children of Childhood Arrivals program, zapping conservativre politicians, over family separation and immigration policy.
“Send them home,” he screamed, standing in the cold in Harlem with Tim, when immigrant kids were separated from their parents at the border, only to be sent into our foster care system.
I was amazed at the breadth of issues that moved the two of them.
I loved seeing the two of them at Rise and Resist Picnics in the park, or at my house for new years movies or at my book readings. The three of us gossiped for some dozen hours on our way to DC to pay a fine for an act of civil disobedience for queer civil rights. There was always plenty to chat about, within the often farcical world of New York activism. We’d been friends for literally a quarter century.
Yet, nothing goes on forever.
Mel was a nurse. And that would come in hand.
That trip to DC in the fall of 2019 was the peak of our friendship.
After that things got more and more complicated. Tim started getting sicker and sicker, stumbling in the subway, his arm not quite healing. He’s held together with bandaids said one friend. It became apparent Tim was not going to last. And then the diagnosis of ALS.
And Mel became a caregiver, holding Tim, as the sword of Damocles hanging, walking him in his wheelchair during two pride events, and world AIDS day last December, comforting Tim as the reality of his fate dawned on him, even when it became hard.
Tim and I kept up a correspondence, meeting on zoom as COVID raged. At one point, Tim broke down, knowing what was ahead. Mel held him, offering comfort.
And then COVID.
Isolation set in.
Spring 2021, Mel said it was ok to drop by. And a weekly ritual ensued. Tim was not able to leave the apartment, or get out of his bed. He felt like he was in a prison. All we could do was visit. So I did a lot. Mel served as a gatekeeper for visits, monitoring our COVID status, always vigilant. We’d gossip, read poems, talk about movies, activism, the crumbling USA, talk about sex, run over old gags about who gave away their old copies of STEAM, a quarterly journal for men, of public sex, that had been hot during the late 1990s. Tim blamed Mel for giving it to a fellow ACT UP member. Mel loved the ACT UP stories, sharing with me.
We all had them.
Kate Barnhart recalled, “painting a banner w mel and someone else at the old center. We hung it up to dry by stapling it to the wall and my hand got staple to it by accident and Mel removed the staple.”
Tim started drafting requests for what to do with his body after he died, hopefully close to Oscar Wilde, one foot in the gutter, another in the stars.
Activists from all over the queer world dropped by to visit.
We’d cross paths on the steps up to Mel’s.
Over time, Tim’s capacity to speak slowed, and then his capacity to write. He lashed out at caregivers. And Mel stood by his side, till the bitter end. That was torture. But he did it. Most days he’d tear up when I saw him. Tim’s status was literally killing him. Tim moved into a nursing home, where I visited. And watched as Mel patiently fed Tim.
The end was near.
Traveling in Sweden, Mel called me to say they were putting Tim into palliative care. He was gone within a day. That was last spring. I wasn’t sure what was to become of Mel.
Caregivers are often the last time to get support and that was certainly the case with Mel. He took care of Tim, refusing to go to ALS support groups. He hated the idea he was supposed to talk about feelings, instead of act up, to fight ALS. Part of all of all the visits was to support Mel, whose life was turned upside down, as Tim got sick. Years younger than him, Tim was supposed to go first. They say every death opens all the old graves. I can only imagine what it was like to watch another lover depart, before their time.
Every time I saw Mel he seemed more upset, never sugarcoating the pain he was going through. It was all too much.
The last time, I saw him, we sat in Sheridan Square, chatting about everything that had happened, and how quickly it all changed.
It certainly had.
We talked about Tim and Stonewall and grief.
And promised to see each other again.
But we kept missing each other.
Mel had plans to see his sister in Florida, but i wasn’t sure when.
Plans were always changing.
A few weeks ago, Mel called me to tell me he was planning a gathering for Tim’s birthday.
I called Mel last week, but no one answered.
I guess he was at the beach, facing the big unknown.
All I know is the good feeling of a Sunday bike ride to visit Tim and Mel, and the warm greeting, like few else, two of my iconic West Village, New York heroes. In a city of kibitzers and critics, Mel and Tim smiled when they saw me. Mel offered compliments. And he screamed at political opponents, engaging in civil disobedience for years and years. When others dropped out, he was still there. Despite the pain, the laughs were many, the fellowship during those visits. They were for me too.
Mel was there for Tim and me.
“Mel always showed up. Commitment," said Sharonann Lynch, of ACT UP.
“When I saw him being carried out of Trump Tower at 80ish, it made me more determined to push through my limitations and keep doing activism,” said Kate Barnhart, a longtime friend.
I think about the love affair between Mel and Tim, what a love.
Toward the end, Tim asked that Mel take his ashes to Paris, to be distributed at Père Lachaise Cemetery and take a trip see friends, and enjoy Paris they did on their many trips there.
I guess a different trip is happening, between the gutter and stars
I loved laughing and acting up and laughing with you two.
Thanks for sharing your stories and lives with me.
Rip Tim.
RIP Mel.
Mel and Tim.
Mel and Bill.
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