subjective report on Heather MacAllister's Wake at El Rio

Something is Lost, Something is Found

S. Naomi Finkelstein

It was freezing at El Rio yesterday but it was not for lack of warmth. 150 queers crowded into a back room and spilled onto a patio to send Heather MacAllister off in style. We dared not do it in any other way. To be clear Heather was, please do not misunderstand me, a woman of substance, not merely style. But she did appreciate style in an rather acute way. So we were all dressed for the occasion: trannies, butches and femmes dressed in suits and ties and leather regalia and marvelous hats for a final farwell.

In addition to being the artistic director of Big Burlesque- a dancer’s troop of fat performer’s as well as being dancer herself whose stage name was Reva Lucian, Heather was an activist whose work tied the struggle of communities of people who live in unruly bodies. A fat activist, an advocate and lover of transgendered people and someone who understood that these battles belong along side with those of the radical crip movement Heather was a women who sought to make connections between communities. She served on both the Board of Nolose-a fat lesbian and trans activist organization and on the board of directors of Al-Fatiha, the only national organization for sexual minority Muslims in the United States. The Mayor of San Francisco issued a proclamation extolling Heather’s work in the world, not the least of which was helping to pass the anti-fat discrimination bill in San Francisco. It was read in that little room in the back of El Rio but it was not, by far the most important words spoken that day.

We speak often about community in leftist circles however I often watch horrible break ups and listen to stories of women walking out on lovers leaving partners with children with no health insurance. How about those queers who out and out steal houses out from underneath working class partners who did not know enough to go and get legal agreements or make sure their names were on the deed. I sometimes despair that we know nothing about love or community. In its place, we think “gay marriage” will save us. We think that the state will do for us what we cannot or will not do for each other. I am not talking about insisting on universal health insurance- but rather thinking that the “state” will protect us from each other or teach us to care for one another or be responsible. The state cannot teach us to be community to one another. In fact, it often, with its policies, interferes. I am adopted and my birth mother and I were torn asunder by the power of the state and it took years to “unlock” the records. My lover and I would stand to loose substantial disability benefits if we gayily married. I could go on and on. I do not want the state in relationships. I do however want community to grow and think often about the power of social contract between ourselves. I wrote a thesis about it. I was a queer kid who survived with other queer kids and older lesbians helped , well, tame me when I came in from the cold. I in turn, give back, to repay debts that can never be repaid. The power of compassion and responsibility to each other and ourselves moves me to my core.

So I was much more interested in the words of Heather’s chosen sister, Tina, who spoke first than any Mayors proclamation. She talked about the love of one femme sister theorist to another femme sister theorist. Shivers went up and down my spine. She spoke of the long three years about what it meant to care for someone who was not your lover and who you did not support financially but who you cared for and loved and sometimes shared a bed with and were bonded with in deep bonds of agape love and whose medical power of attorney you were. Kelly, who said simply that he was Heather’s boi spoke in the most loving of ways of his love for Heather and of Heather’s love and care for him. He came on the scene late he said- he did not know Heather as long as many of the people in the room did but the butches and femmes, old lovers, deep friends all, had taken him in and together they all formed an extended family. Queer family that hospital employees sometimes did not know how to handle. Nor did they know how to handle the “immense” love troopers as they called themselves who were Heather’s extended family. Max Airborne stood to say- that zi hoped that this kind of support would be available to each of us, if we were so sick.

These Troopers apparently helped Heather through thick and thin (forgive the pun) as the girl fought like hell to live, pay outrageous sums for healthcare that given the fact that she had ovarian cancer might have given her a chance to stay alive. She went from fat to thin as she fought. Another cancer survivor, V, came to the mike to read a poem about all that one might loose when one fights for one’s life or learns to live with a disability in a society where death is so feared and healthcare in commodified. V lost half her body- going from a size 28 to a size 12, lost her lover, lost her job. She had on a kick ass hat and a brilliant smile. I sat there thinking- I wish Heather had lived so that she could tell the tale that so many disabled people come to tell- the tale of so many working class people- not of triumph alone, obstacles overcome and won but of what was lost in getting from there to here. If she told it from stage and she told it well enough and often enough and audaciously enough…we might all learn something very essential and laugh along the way while doing it.

We would go on from here from grief and into organizing because there is organizing to be done. Organizing for universal healthcare access NOW regardless of partnership (domestic partnership benefits for not enough people, not nearly, not hardly so let’s stop organizing for the privileged few shall we?) Shall we organize about the corporation’s over (and stupid) production and rampant consumption is doing to toxify our planet? Shall we organize about the kinds of research being done about oppression and how they affect our bodies instead of assuming fat simply causes disease?

I was shaking by the end of the wake, but only in part because I was cold. I did not know Heather well, I went because I cared about some of the people who knew her well and in my culture it is the job of those not so close to help take care of those who are closest to the loss. I am incredibly grateful to some of those wommin and femmes and bois and butches and transmen. I am a fat butch and you know- I pass in world without T, without trying. But because I inhabit spaces in-between and because I am way fat I catch an enormous amount of crap and it is- well – wearing, trying, irritating. My reality is simply not reflected back to me very often. I wear leather and black and great ties and I try to be cute and except when I am tired or sad, I think I mostly succeed. However, it takes work. I would be lying if I didn’t say there are many days I didn’t feel like a freak on one end or the other. There are people who just make it so I can go on. Crip activists, fat activists, anti- racist activists, economic justice activists, poets…lol- yes- and yes- the sex workers. I am a former street butch and a pornographer and were the fuck would I be without the sex workers? Heather was one of those people who lived in complexities and loved outrageousness. The women and bois who did Fatgirl are another. The wommin who did fat activism before that _Elana Dykewomen, Jud Freespirt, Mary Frances Platt… the list goes on-

Well- you know- I just appreciate the fuck out of it- out of audacity, out of brilliance, out of chutzpah. And Heather – well Heather had chutzpah.


It makes it so I can breathe a little easier. So I can have even just a little room. I stood to sing a song by the Pretenders- “She will always carry on, something is lost, something is found and we’ll keep on speaking her name. Some things change. Some stay the same.”

Exactly what will stay the same, well, that is up to us.

A femme on one side of me gave me her boa because I was shaking. My boi was sitting on my lap and I still could not stop shaking. There are so many who are dead who needn’t have died. And I am one tough son of a bitch but I swear, I needed that femme’s boa for some comfort that day. We snuggled, my boi, and I , and I disappeared into the femme’s boa looking around into the crowd looking at all of us- trans, crip, fat, unruly- and I said to Marilyn Wann later- “We are a damn good looking crowd, each of us- beautiful and creative. Each of us- full of love.”

Viva La Reva Lucian. Viva.

Keep on Speaking Her Name. Yes. And wear your leathers and your ties and hats and boas or nothing at all when the mood strikes.

But while you’re wearing it all- fucking organize so not another femme has to die at the age of 38 of ovarian cancer. Enough is fucking enough- eh?

For the Troopers and for Kelly and Tina