I am a little embarrassed by how hard Cecilia’s death has hit me. It feels like stealing valor, you know? Based on her memorial last night the number of people whose lives she transformed for the better — and I mean hand to hand, person to person, on a retail basis — is beyond count. That’s even before you get to whatever exponent of that number benefitted from the work she did or the example she set.
I’m one of the latter. I worked with Cecilia in organizing the New York Times trans letter campaign, which I can say without fear of contradiction would not have been what it was without her. It’s not just the doors her name opened, the connections she worked, the people impressed enough by seeing “Cecilia Gentili” listed at the top to sign beneath. It was the sense that she would not be wasting her time with this if it weren’t important, or wasting her time with the rest of us if we were doing a rotten job. If Cecilia was on board, then we were on the right track.
I never got to meet Cecilia in person. We arranged everything over the internet, so she was a face and voice on Zoom to me more than anything else. But that was enough. That’s how she thanked me one time for helping to get the project off the ground, and I remember she just seemed so happy that people from outside the community were doing things like that. I mean, what can you even say when Cecilia Gentili tells you “good job”? “You’re very welcome, important figure in New York City queer history, I appreciate it”? I think I just blushed and grinned.
Cecilia was a part of the best thing I’ve ever done in my life and now she’s gone. That’s hard. That’s fucking hard. Thank you, Cecilia. Thank you so much.
Tags: cecilia gentili, new york times, real life