Me: Did you ever go through a Vally of the Shadow of Death with RISK?
Kevin: I was terribly paranoid during the first few months. But then when I stopped [relying on the safe distance of my childhood stories] and started talking about my kinky stories.
Me: “When I was a kid I shit on a Frisbee!!!”
Kevin: Yeah, yeah. But the first time I sort of sat down in front of the mic and told a story about something I was wrecked about right then, right now and when I pressed send I was terrified. I was like, what is the comedy community going to think of me? What might my parents eventually think of me? What might anyone in the entertainment industry think of me?
(pause)
Kevin: My show… is kind of a philosophical “Fuck You,” to that way of thinking.
Me: Absolutely. I felt that way about PIEFOLK. I had been doing comedy for more than 10 years. East Village Boys asked me to pose apron only. I thought, all these straight, white hetero-normative comics are never going to let me live this down. Also, my Mom – she’s going to see this and go – I guess he’s not really a comedy person. I guess he’s just a porn star. Overcoming that shame. Overcoming the idea of ‘what will people think?’
(pause)
I always have to brush up that creeping voice inside me that says ‘No one will do your site and no one will take your seriously.’
Kevin: Oh, God, yeah…
Me: But then what I found is… Well, first of all prostitution, porn, all that stuff [that we talk about or traffic in, or tell stories about in our professions] – that’s in the Bible!
(laughter)
Kevin: Old testament!
Me: People have been bored of that for thousands of years!!
(laughter)
Them: Right right.
Dale: Sorry to interrupt. Speaking of RISK. That’s any internet exposure. People now with Facebook, Twitter, etc. – you’re in a constant state of managing risk. What photos [will I allow] to get out there? You have to constantly police your online identity because it has repercussions.
Kevin: That’s a great point. I feel like we’re on the avant guard – the people who are saying – you’re being so self conscious about what you’re choosing to put out there into the world, and you know what? We’re choosing to put it ALL out there.
Me: Not all of it. There are certain things.
Kevin: Yeah yeah yeah.
Me: I never show penis or sack on my site. I never want my grandmother – my mom and dad regularly read my site and I don’t want them to see my nut sack.
Dale: They’ve seen it before.
Me: They have. But it’s been 30-someodd years since they’ve seen it. And they don’t want to see it again.
Dale: That’s understandable.
Dale: (to Kevin) I was going to ask you because you brought up kink and whatnot. Does kink play – dom and sub – come into play in your everyday life as a performer? Does doing kink make your more true to yourself? Is it also just playacting?
Kevin: I have not been in enough serious ‘scenes’ with super serious kinksters where I have felt like I’ve taken the role play seriously enough to feel like I went into subspace, or to feel like there was a part of my psychology that I went into – It happened, once where I had an out of body experience where I sort of found myself being submissive in a way that I never thought I would enjoy. I was basically bowing at someone’s feet and worshiping him like an emperor. Smelling his shoes. Getting whipped. All that sort of stuff… [It put me] in touch with a part of my psychology that I didn’t know was there.
(pause)
Kevin: It was very early on into my getting into kink. I shared it immediately on the podcast.
Me: That was a touching story. The way that you tell it now is sort of matter of fact, but when I listened to it on the RISK podcast I was running in McCarren park and I literally had to stop so I could cry.
Dale: Wow.
Kevin: Yeah. It took me back to being a little boy, basically. It was very emotional.
(pause)
Kevin: Since then I’ve been asking when can I meet a kinkster who takes things seriously enough, and is into the psychological side of things enough that I can go back into that mysterious realm? It’s difficult to say. You can’t really force that type of thing. It’s kind of an adventure.
PIEFOLK 