I'm Here For Your Entertainment/Liberation/Education/Consternation/Revelation

I'm at my parents' house for Thanksgiving and, ostensibly, for my 10-year high school reunion.  And so I'm thinking a lot about the past decade - what has changed and what hasn't. 


Last night my dad and I watched my friend Jeffery on The Joy Behar Show for a segment on gay issues.  He sat between Kevin Meaney and Judy Gold and the three exchanged coming out stories.  This felt significant not just because Jeffery is decades younger than Kevin and Judy, and came out in high school (The others came out much later.), but because Kevin Meaney, now in his 50s, has been closeted, to himself and to the public, until relatively recently. 


For the record, I was mildly obsessed with Kevin Meaney as a kid.  (Am I the only person in the world who can say that?)  Though I no longer remember his routines, he was one of the comics (along with Bill Hicks, Sandra Bernhard, Margaret Cho, Brett Butler...) who captivated me in the early 90s, back when Comedy Central was the MTV of stand-up comedy, running 3-minute blurbs of comedy specials in rotation like music videos.  Those people were rock-stars to me just as much as Kurt Cobain or Tori Amos.  They were dangerous, violent and direct.  Someone gave them microphones, and they were allowed to talk.  Just talk.  To me.  The really transcendent ones, like Bill Hicks, seemed to realize that their occupation was sacred.  He realized he was a preacher.  He realized that talking in front of large groups of people is a holy, erotic act.


I am not a stand-up comedian, but, 10 years after high school, I do talk in front of groups of people for a living.  "Performance artist," in my case, just means that not everything I say on stage is meant to make people laugh.  It's odd - the labels we use to describe what we do, the existing structures through which we act out this simple, basic impulse: to talk in front of people.  That's what I find inspiring about Jeffery and Cole - that they have funneled that impulse into the medium that, in 2009, reaches people in the most direct way:


In the early 90s, during the stand-up boom (I can't believe there was one.), people with this impulse went to clubs specifically designed for them to talk.  Now, there's no middle-man.  You just sit at home.  Like this beautiful creature:


I am thinking about these things in a house in suburban Maryland, where I was raised by my parents and my television, where I first fantasized about writing and performing, where I first imagined that queerness in America could change through art.  Since I was a teenager, all of my performance fantasies were highly politicized.  I wanted to perform in front of people so that I could do so As A Queer Person.  My queerness, and the way I articulated that queerness, was, I imagined, my contribution to society.  It was what I had to offer.  It stood to reason that if Scott Thompson could make me feel that my life was worth living, then I could do the same thing for the next generation.


That felt like a pipe dream until I started getting emails from younger gay men, thanking me for the solace they took in my work.  That kind of activism could succeed, where my other efforts failed.  And that's all I can think about when people in my community catapult to a bigger pulpits and louder megaphones, when I realize how many young queer kids can watch Jeffery & Cole Casserole and feel empowered to be just as deranged as the people they see on TV.

This is all a very roundabout way to say: Adam Lambert!  Now that I'm in a house with cable, I can hear a thousand people's opinions on his recent award show performance, in which he kissed a male member of his band - a kiss which has been blacked-out in subsequent airings.  Watch this interview and notice that they DON'T black out a similar same-sex kiss between Madonna and Britney Spears:


Like it or not, we now live in a world where Adam Lambert is the Most Famous Queer Performance Artist In The World.  Unlike other famous artists who are queer (Michael Stipe comes to mind), Adam Lambert's queerness is an integral part of his performances.  This "controversial" production number is, arguably, all about his sexuality - and not just because he kisses a man.  Every time he touches one of his female dancers (AND IT HAPPENS A LOT), he is messing with his audience - an audience that is well aware of his actual sexuality.  It's a burlesque of sorts - eroticizing something by concealing it, accentuating his queerness by reminding us how dangerous and forbidden it is.

Maybe this all sounds like bullshit, but I am duly intrigued, and feel like it's my responsibility as a queer artist (and, often, a queer pop singer) to acknowledge that the game has changed.  We finally have a viable gay male mass-market pop star who is, no doubt, seriously changing the way young queer people feel about themselves and their voices.

And so, since it's Thanksgiving, I'm feeling thankful for all the queer performers who have been turning it out over the past 10 years, making life easier for the current versions of the kids we once were... 

Actually, screw it - the kids we still are.  Time makes no sense at all.  You never stop being the people you were. 

I think the reason I get so emotional watching these performances is because part of me is still 13, still, petrified, still convinced that the whole world is out to get me.  Maybe that's the same reason any of us watch or make art - to comfort the sad faggots who survived to become the magnificent warriors we are today.

Love
Dan