Pride is the glorious time each year when Torontos LGBTQ+ community reflects on where its been, dreams of where its going and tries its damnedest to avoid controlled substances laced with fentanyl.
For LGBTQ+ comedians, its also the one time of year when our voices are actually welcome on comedy shows, instead of just tolerated. For gay male comics specifically, its our annual opportunity for more than two of us to be on the same show and not have it be considered redundant.
If you want to see a master class in not wasting a second onstage, watch a show of gay male comics.
Thats what makes me so personally proud every Pride that yearly treat of getting to work with other gay comics I never get to otherwise and appreciate how much higher a bar we need to clear in the world of stand-up comedy than anyone else.
And yet, where is our household name?
I can rattle off a bunch of gay comedians who should be as household as Nabisco: Scott Thompson, James Adomian, Guy Branum, the list goes on. These are world-class talents who could have easily stepped into any of Louis CKs vacated thousand-seat theatre dates, but gay comics still dont have our Ellen. (And by the way, Ellen is not our Ellen.)
For whatever reason, this doesnt apply to lesbian and queer non-male identifying comedians for whom you can watch local followings balloon into international followings at warp speed (and, ahem, its not always for an overabundance of talent *sips tea*).
But gay male comedians have never had a dedicated audience of their own. Ask absolutely any gay male comic, and we all have the same story.
I remember the first time I performed in front of a mostly gay male audience. I was a sprightly young thing: picture boy-Aquaria from this season of Drag Race with a cocktail of affectations one part Kathy Griffin, one part Sarah Silverman, served over a bottle of Rev.
About a year and half into my stand-up comedy career I got tapped to perform at the queer comedy event of the year (literally the there werent others). After slogging through Torontos woeful open mic scene as the lone gay comic, I was finally going to be in front of my people!
As it turns out, I was not gotten by a crowd that I thought would get me.
I bounded onto the stage with my tried-and-tested tight seven minutes that had killed everywhere from an open mic at Yuk Yuks to an open mic at Hooters. And I was met by a sea of gay male eyes staring back at me in what Ive come to call angry silence.
It was perplexing. Particularly when theyd just howled like coked-out ghosts at an amateur female comic who literally spent 10 minutes, including many ummms and anyways, talking about how she was wearing a dress for the first time.
Why would this audience of gay men range from aggressively indifferent to unambiguously disdainful of me, one of their own, and one of very few gay male stand-up comics theyd ever seen? And what does it have to do with the bigger issue of there still not being a breakthrough gay male comic?
I have my theories. They stem from the fact that gay men turn the male gaze in on itself. What straight men thought was their sacrament to objectify anything and everything, whenever, wherever, Shakira reference notwithstanding gay men reflect back onto themselves through a rainbow prism.
Because of this, gay men have been socialized through adolescent bullying and non-Ryan Murphy-produced media to hate themselves and others like them.
Beyond that, so many gay men come into their own as the anomaly in their family or community, which means that, for better or far often worse, theyre the centre of attention.
Its also worth noting that gay men have all the same garbage that straight men have about women when qualifying another gay mans appearance yet also the same embedded insecurities about our own appearance as women are groomed to have about themselves.
As Hannah Montanas less popular cousin Mildred Michigan might say, Its the worst of both worlds!
So an imperfect storm of these things makes it pretty impossible for gay men to grasp the concept of another gay guy getting more attention than them for reasons that arent about being physically superior (porn stars) or otherworldly (drag queens).
It always amuses me when I hear of a gay man criticizing a gay male comic for not being hot before any actual comedy that came out of his mouth, but its been my experience that no gay man below an 8 can really delve into the pathos that fuels and sustains a career in stand-up comedy.
All too often, the highest praise I get from a gay man in a comedy audience is a sharp, stifled laugh followed by him nodding his head almost in spite of himself.
So this Pride, instead of lining up to see an eighth-place Drag Race queen step-touching through her own Auto-Tuned single, go see one of Torontos formidable gay comics like Ted Morris, Richard Ryder, Brandon Ash-Mohammed or Kyle Brownrigg, stand-ups who should be household names but are instead just known in straight circles as the gay guy who stole the fucking show.
And please dont just sit there in angry silence.
Andrew Johnston hosts his final Bitch Salad at Buddies In Bad Times (12 Alexander), Friday (June 22). buddiesinbadtimes.com.
stage@nowtoronto.com | @_andrewjohnston
