gay rights – PIEFOLK

Starbucks, Part 2

February 20, 2013 by piefolk, posted in Uncategorized

Him: Ew. I can’t believe you took me to Starbucks.

Me: You’re welcome.

Him: Did it sound like I was thanking you?

Me: Oh, no – not by any means. But I did pay for your Chai tea.

Him: Wow. I guess you want a hand job now or something?

Me: Uh. No. That’s fine.

Him: I give good hand jobs.

Me: That’s great.

Him: Oh, sorry – maybe you want to go have procreative sex with a woman instead.

Me: I can assure you that I don’t want to do that. Well… Maybe…

Him: EWAREYOUSERIOUS?

Me: I mean, I don’t necessarily want to have sex with a woman. I’ve just been feeling a tug toward raising a kid lately. It’s not even a real thing. I don’t have the money I would need to raise a kiddo.

Him: Let me guess, you work with straight people too.

Me: I work with a mix of people, but yes, they’re mostly straight.

Him: Ew.

Me: Ew?

Him: Ew, I find that distasteful. Everyone I work with is gay, on purpose.

Me: What?

Him: We only hire gay people. Plus, one black lady we thought was a lesbian but just had a short haircut.

Me: You only hire gay people to work in your graphic design department?

Him: That’s right.

Me: That’s illegal.

(long pause)

Him: I suppose you work alongside straight people.

Me: I do.

Him: Shudder. Did you like that? I’m announcing my shudder.

Me: I…

Him: How can you do that? How can you work with them?

Me: I have to? I do comedy. I don’t know of many comedy venues that are solely LGBT.

Him: You could be a drag queen.

Me: With these shoulders? Hardly.

Him: Hahahahaha! You said something funny! I’m surprised.

(long pause)

Me: Thanks.

Him: I can’t do it. I can’t work alongside them. No. No, thanks. They’re so privileged and they don’t even know it. They’re awful.

Me: They’re wonderful.

Him: Don’t they say condescending things?

Me: No. They’re usually supportive.

Him: What about when you mention gay rights?

Me: I don’t think very many of them are connected to the issue.

Him: Right. And I suppose you don’t remind them of the reality? That most teen suicides are gay teen suicides? That, in most states, the family will take an inherited estate away from a long term gay partner? That there’s still no such thing as federal immigration equality when dealing with international gay marriage? That they still beat, intimidate, and lynch us all across the country?

Me: That’s not water cooler talk.

(pause)

Me: It’s worse in some countries.

Him: Yeah, it is. In Jamaica they’ll straight up kill you, and not go to jail, but is that something I should be thankful for? Should I thank the straight police officer for not lynching me on my way to work? And what about adoption rights? Statistically, it’s more difficult for gay men to adopt children than any other minority group – and that’s a world wide statistic. Never mind the countries where if you’re admittedly gay, adoption is simply out of the question.

Me: Isn’t it a little easier if you’re interested in adopting a non-white baby? Can’t you foster to adopt?

Him: Yes. You can take an AIDS baby from Africa, or a kleptomaniac ten year old from Appalachia if you want. You can have anything the straight people don’t want. You can cut their hair. You can cut their lawn. You can decorate their house. But then you have to get out.

Me: I…

Him: You have to get the fuck out! They don’t want you. They think you’re disgusting. Because your love isn’t good enough. Your love isn’t worth as much – or anything! You don’t get to have the same basic rights and protections they do because they think they’re better than you. No. No thanks. I won’t do it. I won’t work alongside them. Bad enough I have to look at them on the subway.

Me: Hey. I get it. I have anger too.

Him: Anger? Anger. Fuck your anger. That doesn’t even begin to cover my outrage. I’m livid. I’m crawling out of my skin I’m so disgusted with them.

Me: They don’t all believe those things you said.

Him: Most of them do.

Me: How do you know?

Him: LOOK AT THE LAWS THEY MAKE AGAINST US. Are you an idiot?

Me: Only professionally.

Him: Well, I don’t know what I can do to help you. If you can’t see what’s right in front of your face then ‘professional idiot’ might be the best move for you.

Me: Hey –

Him: No. Go hang out with your masters. Go lick the boot pressed firmly against your neck.

Me: That sounds pretty dramatic.

Him: What do you want from me?

Me: I just want to talk.

Him: Well are you happy? We talked. Thanks for the shitty Chai. I’m leaving now.

(pause)

Him: Jerk.

Kevin Allison, Adam Gardiner, Dale Cooper – Episode 3

January 23, 2013 by piefolk, posted in Uncategorized

adam gardiner

Dale Cooper: I don’t have a smart phone. I can’t {tweet back at my fans}.

Me: How do you run Grindr? I met you on Grindr.

Dale Cooper: I have an iPod touch. I don’t know my way around New York, but if I can find WiFi – I can route my way around. If I need to get fucked I can jump on Grindr. But I don’t have that constant… internet pressure… notification this and txt here and whatnot.

Kevin: Yeah. It changes your life.

Dale: It does and I’ve seen that. Going back to porn – I’ve been at a table full of performers and producers and we’ll be at a long table and there will be nine of us and everyone is on their smart phones…

Kevin: Yeah…

Dale: And they’re not txting each other they’re communicating with other people. I don’t know if they’re ‘checking in’ at the location or what…

Me: I had to start doing that with my improv students. I had to start saying, there’s no iPhone use. I’ll pick up my iPhone but just to check what time it is so we can go on break. I had to be very stern with a certain class I’m teaching right now because there’s a couple of ADHD students – they’re very talented, I like them a lot, but if I don’t – I have to be like an old school teacher with them. “No grooming yourself! Stop combing your hair! Don’t talk when I’m talking! Now these are my notes…”

Dale: Ruler smacking… That teacher-student kink thing?

(laughter)

Dale: Put on the dunce cap!

(laughter)

Me: “Now clean the classroom! NO ONE’S BLOWING ME!!!”

(laughter)

Kevin: “I couldn’t help but notice no one’s BLOWING ME!!”

(laughter)

Dale: It’s gotten to the point with smart phones where I want to get a watch, just so I can check the time without giving the appearance that I’m on my phone. That’s kind of silly. Who gives a fuck? I mean, we’re all social creatures, so I guess we all give a fuck in some way or another.

Me: I suppose so! Kevin, I want to talk about storytelling. You kind of self-actualized a couple of years ago and you took yourself from a point of… you were almost ready to give up comedy altogether.

Kevin: I actually DID. I did give up comedy – after The State broke up I had always been the black sheep, you know the middle child that was off in his own universe?

You know they say that when Mel Brooks was writing on Your Show of Shows with Woody Alan, and Neil Simon and Sid Ceasar – they would always laugh like hell at his sketches in the writer’s room and say, alright, well, we can’t use that! I was that guy in The State. Everyone loved my stuff – we could never put it on TV.

Me: Larry David had the same problem on SNL.

Kevin: Oh. Yeah! So when the group broke up, I was like, what do I do with myself now? There’s a part of me that’s super polite and submissive and Midwestern and – a Catholic boy from Ohio. And a part of me that’s raunchy and kinky and a madman and likes experimenting with drugs and all that… So finally after 12 years of starving trying to do [character based] comedy, I did give up. I went into publishing.

(pause)

Then I slowly realized, no. I have got to express myself somehow.

(pause)

There’s a part of me that needs to express myself not solely in terms of comedy… under no restrictions. I don’t have to be making people laugh every 8 seconds.

Me: No!

Kevin: So when I first got up onstage and told a true story Michael Black said, you’ve got to drop the act and start speaking from the heart as yourself. I said, it’s too risky. And he said, exactly. Risk is where the good stuff comes from.

Me: Right.

Kevin: So I tried a story onstage the next week, and it was all about how I tried to prostitute myself (when I was 20), and it didn’t go very well. But the story went GREAT!!

Colby Keller Interview: Part One

November 25, 2012November 25, 2012 by piefolk, posted in Uncategorized

photos by adam gardiner

Me: Do you see yourself as a role model?

Him: A role model? I don’t see myself as a role model, no.

Me: Really? Why not? You came out when you were 15. You have the guts to have sex with boys for a living while everyone watches… I think that does a lot more for gay rights than some sort of Victorian…

Him: I’m not going to pretend like it was something that it wasn’t. I came out because my parents discovered a big stash of porn that I had. I may have wanted them to find it but I wasn’t about to be mister responsible at 15 and say ‘Mom and Dad…’

Me: Right, but that’s the thing about life – it’s not about what happens, or circumstances, it’s how we deal with it. And you dealt with it in a very interesting way. I’ve done some research and I’ve seen the way you present yourself in the media, and I think you could consider yourself a role model. The idea of a porn star even-handedly guiding someone through a threesome is an important thing, because to ignore –

Him: Right. I think everyone has that responsibility to do that. To teach other people to make ourselves better human beings. People have that responsibility.

Me: No. We don’t. A lot of us don’t try. A lot of us are so selfish – you see that, right?

Him: A lot of us fail at that – I don’t think it should be considered special. It should be considered the norm.

Me: I like that. There’s a Victorian tenseness in the gay community about painting ourselves just like straight people. Can you speak to that? I think we’re different and better than straight people.

Him: It’s been a good strategy to make us more palatable to society at large. I don’t think we’re better [than straight people] because I think we should be more radical and we’re not. I don’t think [that gay marriage] is what our political struggle should be about. I think it’s about re-framing it in terms of queerness. I think it’s a ‘queer’ identity which anyone can have. You can be straight and be queer. The idea of conformity – the gays that say ‘I won’t be happy until I’m treated like every other straight person, and that includes marriage…’ not that that’s not something that doesn’t have value, or isn’t a good thing…

Me: It’s a civil rights issue.

Him: Right. But I don’t think that’s what our political struggle should be about. It’s about re-framing it in terms of queerness rather than something specific to our sexuality. Because there are a lot of really horrible gay men – let’s face it.

Me: Why are there so many horrible gay men, do you think?

Him: People want to be accepted. They struggle to give value to their lives. They’re afraid of being different and what that means, so they desperately struggle for conformity. That process (which isn’t unique to gay people by any means) – but I think that it’s something that’s very common. Because first of all, you are different. You’re not having sex like most people on the planet have sex – and instead of embracing that, and seeing where there’s value in that in a radical kind of way, they think of ways to make themselves normal again.

Me: And then they project that onto each other.

His boyfriend: That’s the big thing. The reinforcement and also control over everyone around you. You take your shame and you project it onto people who don’t want it.

Me: They don’t want your fucking shame! You don’t want your shame. Your shame was given to you by your family, and your church, and…

His boyfriend: Keep your shame. Keep it to yourself. Don’t force the rest of us to deal with it…

Me: Or find a good outlet? Like S&M. That’s a good outlet – because then we’ll all have an orgasm in then we’ll all go home and get our work done. I bar tended for a long time in the gay community and I can’t tell you how many times I heard phrases like ‘Ew, you went home with him? You know he’s a drag queen?!’ That’s so much shame… Self hatred.

Him: I think we’re taught to hate ourselves, but we’re also taught to like a certain thing. That’s what the market wants us to do. We need to be attracted to a certain type of body, you know?

His Boyfriend: Look at Ryan Murphy and all the mega-media shit that he’s putting out there right now. Where all gay men are supposed to live in Los Angeles, live in Mc Mansions, and be adopting Asian babies.

Me: Wait a minute. I want an Asian baby.

His Boyfriend: Okay, you can have an Asian baby, but where’s our media that’s cross class, like Roseanne?

Him: I think the thing that’s interesting to me is polygamy – most cultures in the world – that is the ideal relationship.

His Boyfriend: Look at Bill Clinton. When he had that affair, the world laughed at us. We almost shut our government down because he had sex with a younger woman. All the other cultures in the world were like, he should be fucking everything that moves.

Me: Because he needs to do that in order to maintain the ego it takes to run a fucking country!

His Boyfriend: Exactly!