(no subject)
I know most New Yorkers are not familiar with Cheryl Spector, a DC activist and kinky dyke. She was not as well known outside of Washington, but was a major part of the city's queer life for more than 20 years. I knew her for almost that long, having met her when I was just out of college. She was one of the first totally out kinky dykes I ever met, but our friendship primarily blossomed around our activism, as she and I were among the original members of DC's ACT UP in the late 1980s.
It was easy to be friends with her and I saw her often. She knew how to sign fairly well. Her brother had been a sign language interpreter who committed suicide after he was diagnosed with AIDS, and it's probably for this reason that she spent the rest of her life trying to save every gay brother in our community. She was often the person who held their hands (literally) when they died. She was involved in just about every grassroots organization in DC at some point. She and my then-partner were instrumental in starting DC's first needle-exchange program. Many of us moved away or moved on at some point, but Cheryl never ceased her involvement.
Mostly I remember her as being full of contradictions. She was a soft-spoken yet vigorous activist. She had no interest in being a "star" but everyone knew her. She was a member of both MCC and Bet Mishpachah and didn't see any problem being a baptized Christian Jew. She had a larger social circle than anyone I knew, but was perpetually unlucky in love. (She referred to most of her relationships as "PTSD events" but fell in love easily nonetheless. Every woman was "the One" and there were quite a few Ones.) She even landed a job with the CIA, despite the fact that her name--of this I am sure--was probably in a lot of now-declassified security files. She took a particular delight in shocking prudish lesbians (there was never any shortage of them in the Beltway) and usually attended Dyke Marches and Pride Parades wearing nothing but a leather harness. When we made safe-sex kits to give out to lesbians at pride events--at a time when HIV was still the "gay disease"-- they often threw them back at us when they discovered condoms inside. Cheryl would just pick them up and hand them to someone else walking by.
She also had an enormous collection of historical material, far too much of which was lost in a fire in her home earlier this Summer. At some point she began filming many of the events she attended. When she came to NYC a few years ago to attend Dyke March, she marched behind me, and I was a bit peeved to discover that for several blocks she had been studiously filming my ass, panning from my behind to the crowd and back again. I have no idea what kind of video she was making but I'm sure it was good.
When she got sick, she called her cancer "a bump in the parade" which is fitting, as that's pretty much how she lived: proud and celebratory and always moving forward. I was very saddened to learn of her death earlier this week. She will be missed.
Edit: You can read her Washington Blade obit here