Agitata or archetypo?: Missing Sydney

Every time I try to take the MCAT...somebody dies.

I have attempted to take the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) three times in three years. In 2006, three days before my test appointment, my aunt died two weeks to the day after being diagnosed with end stage ovarian cancer.[1] In 2007, two weeks before I was to take it, my father died after a four and half year long struggle with vascular dementia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and depression.

This time, I thought I was out of the woods. I was taking the test Friday September 5. No one was ill, I had been studying for 3 months, and finally felt like I was ready to take it on and make it my slave.

Then Anthony Kibort emailed me that Monday that Sydney had died the night before.

I managed to take the test, and then promptly let all the emotions I had managed to dam up for 4 days flow freely over the wall.

What. The. F*ck. Sydney?

We had met in the summer of 1989 -- G-d, it's hard to think that was 19 years ago.

She had just graduated from Vassar and was living in a sublet on the Upper West Side. I was working at A Different Light Bookstore on Hudson Street as well as becoming active in ACT UP. That was where we met -- her in her lipstick, black glasses and a single streak of caramel in her otherwise chestnut hair, me in my AIDS Activist Ken(tm) uniform.

I was smitten. She was aloof.  If I had known then what I know now, I would have changed nothing except wishing I had known more, so that in the end, I could have been a better person to her. Otherwise, Non, je ne regrette rien.

I am a week behind in processing all this, so hopefully others will help fill this site while I get our old clips and photos together. At the moment, it still feels unreal, especially since I'm no longer in NYC, which is so inextricably linked with my memories of her. But I'll be back. Please join us.

Drag queens and pie 12/23/2008

Gabriel Rotello has put up a PDF archive of the entire run of Outweek and on his site you can browse through and find all of the Out on the Town columns. I'm hoping to create a collection of PDFs on this site or a related site of just the material OOTT columns and other pieces Sydney wrote. But on Sydney's birthday, I just wanted to offer up an article she wrote about her obsession with drag queens. I remember walking down Hudson Street with Sydney and seeing a tall beautiful woman with raven-dark hair and piercing eyes, and she just sort of hazed over when the woman passed by and said "beautiful" and after the woman had passed she said "and so many people wouldn't realize they were looking at a man." I didn't. Sydney loved drag culture and I was excited to find this article because it really brings her back for me with its enthusiasm and its wit, just showing how great a cultural interpreter she was. Anyway, you can click either thumbnail below to take you to the PDF:

     

     

I also wanted to post this picture. In 2005, Anthology was showing three nights of free film... this was the same year of the east village show Sydney had posted about and she had been happy at that show to see a few minutes of Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures. Anthology was showing a definitive print (which didn't seem entirely definitive) for free, along with Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's Pull My Daisy. I think we both ended up having a lot more fun seeing Pull My Daisy for the first time, but on the way there we stopped at Sugar Sweet Sunshine and has strawberry rhubarb pie to celebrate Sydney's birthday since I wouldn't be in town later in the month. I think we even exchanged gifts. I can't remember. But I do remember it as a rare ocassion that she let me take her picture, discombobulated, blowing out a candle while still thumbing through the magazine she picked up. I always hate that I don't have many pictures of Sydney, and in this one her eyes are hidden by her bucket hat. And I've had this picture hanging on my wall for years, but lately it's made me feel upset. Today, looking at and posting it on some other sites, I keep seeing the smile. It's a good picture, I think. It's her.

Happy birthday.