So, this is pretty amazing. Todd Glass - a brilliant, widely-respected journeyman comic - just trampled out of the closet.

This threw me for somewhat of a loop as I’ve been reasonably cut-in on who’s in the comedy closet, and had never even so much as heard his name whispered about… and given that his general demeanor and appearance is reminiscent of the father from “A Christmas Story”, I was never exactly onto his scent, as it were.

Anyway - I cannot offer enough congrats to him for doing so. It’s something that personally resonates to me as a gay man, as a comic and particularly as a gay comic.

[You:] “I get your need to obey the rule of the 3’s, but that was just redundant”.

If only it were. A gay comic is a comic that makes the choice to let their sexual orientation inform their comedy. I want to emphasize that this is a choice - when I started doing comedy, I can remember making a very cognizant choice that I was going to talk about this shit on stage, because I guess it occurred to me that “don’t ask, don’t tell” wasn’t the best policy for comedy and I was going to be ‘real’, whatever that means. I also entertained the choice of NOT doing that… or angling myself at more generalized material, to be clear…

My first few years, doing 7 minute spots in a cosmopolitan setting, it was a cakewalk - enough people in the audience had the point of reference to comprehend what I was talking about and be entirely comfortable with it. I’d even go so far to say it was an asset, if only because it set me apart from the 12 or so amorphous white dudes with interchangeable material who would have been on the same bill.

As I enter the thick of my sophomore term in comedy, it’s very apparent that is just not the reality at ALL. In the world of road standup comedy, the loudest, lowest common denominator rules, and about 99.9% of the time the long & short of it is that they’re not going to have an immediate enough point of reference to relate… and they’ll lose interest, sometimes actively. In other words - these suburban fire-breathing mongoloids don’t know any gays in real life, won’t have heard of GrindR, so if you’re planning on investigating the racist nuances thereof, they’re probably going to start talking to each other, and if you’re really lucky, heckle you.

Audiences aside, from an executive standpoint, you’re largely relegated to a novelty act. And if anyone ever tries to tell you that there’s a ‘gay slot’ that they need to fill, punch them in their retarded face and tell them it’s a myth. Quite simply, there aren’t enough of us to require any sort of affirmative action.

So what can Todd look forward to now that he’s out ‘da closet on the stage? Playing yearly all-gay shows called things like “OUTLaugh”, “Laughing Out Proud” and “Gay Guffaws” alongside drag queens and lesbian monologuists (not that there’s anything wrong with either of those, FYI)… being reduced to a homosexual archetype if his fellow comics ever need it for call-back filler… having a quotient of his audience desert him, not because they’re necessarily homophobic, but because “this isn’t what [they] signed up for”… and MORE!

That said, the few times I have had to muzzle myself and play neutral, I feel like I’m trying to smuggle heroin over the border, and no matter how disastrous a road gig has gone where maybe I should have slipped a toe back in the closet, I’ve slept soundly that night.

So I commend Todd Glass for providing another shade of grey in our ongoing evolution… and for being a generally awesome comic. See you at “OUTLaugh”!

—- Aj