Give It Back
AXM Magazine
September 2005

The reason I have sex in the third-floor men’s room at Liberty, the idiosyncratic department store at the top of Carnaby Street, is because I’m a giver. There, dick in hand, near the carpet section, is where I met my soldier, a Nigerian serving in the British army that shows up every so often, when he’s on leave, and fucks me in a toilet stall to remind me that I’m a lady, and more importantly, that he’s a man. I like returning his sexuality to him. He’s closeted, he has no friends really, and the only chance he gets to be passionate is when he’s bending a wet white guy over porcelain, an intermittent spritz of Evergreen room freshener wafting his way. His big hands make me more limber, and my sinewy spine makes him harder.

Of course, when prematurely planning my Christmas gift-giving list (my moon is in eager Gemini), I become my most religious, working at a jaw-breaking pace to give upright strangers the Liberty gift they’ve been waiting for all year long. It’s the least I can offer my hungry public. And there’s always more I can do.

Perhaps I should personally repay those loyal queers who’ve spent their evenings watching me growl and roll my eyes on British television. I seemed amusing, but I could have been funnier. I might train it to dreary Cardiff, brightening their grim days by yelling jokes at doors adorned with rainbow flags. They still do that in the provinces, don’t they?

“There are very few car accidents in China. I think it’s because they kill all the girl babies.”

Clearly, despite my recent appearances on reality television, I can actually be funny. Unfortunately, Cardiff isn’t in my current game plan. I’m too busy in London pitching television ideas about cottaging that will never be made. The most I can offer my few fans in recompense for my disastrous TV exposure is a cup of herbal, at my place, next Thursday between 2 and 4 pm, but do call first. Although if I had won any one of the myriad of British comedy awards, a statuette I could hold high, of which I’m obviously worthy, I’d gladly bludgeon Blair, if that would make a poor Welsh queer happy.

Wouldn’t it be great if all performers, especially those less talented, like Madonna, were as generous as me? And not only when that grizzled, hard-of-hearing housewife has a few spare moments between ‘mixing’ her new album (yikes!) and torturing her offspring to screech atop an over-heated mound of grass near Bayswater. Live 8 was sweet, but real celebrities with live-in chefs and common husbands owe their fans heaps more respect. After all, thirteen year-old bulimics have funded Madonna’s yoga arms. Such devotion would be healthy if it were repaid.

While sucking the Nigerian, I’ve imagined a Grammy Awards show where Madonna admits she is tone deaf and clumsy. The moment is breathtakingly improvised. A host is making a brief speech. Which host? I have no idea. I’m completely out of touch with contemporary music. Let’s say Celine Dion, since she’s the Nigerian’s favorite singer. She is a singer, isn’t she? It’s so hard to tell with Canadians, they’re always smiling. Anyway, Celine tells a brief story that’s meant to be droll, but is completely banal. She blinks, then breaths deeply before introducing the next category. It’s important, like Best Album, or CD, or whatever they call them now, and the entire world is watching.

Celine looks at her cue cards to make sure she can pronounce each artist, and while she takes one moment to gather herself, Madonna, in a hooded cape, like Death, rises. A hush grips the crowd as the most famous clit in the world leaves a chair and strolls down the red carpet toward the stage.

Still lost in the world of pronunciation, Celine suddenly notices the haunting figure, and sure she’s seen this white bitch somewhere before, backs away from the dais, following the order of the show’s producer, who’s yelling into her ear piece: “Back away from the dais, Celine!” After all, the producer is no fool. Madonna, oddly cloaked but always an eye-catcher, is about to increase his ratings.

Madge walks up the glass stairs, stumbling once, because she’s a spaz, and when reaching the podium, she exposes her scary veiny hands, which, mightily, hold five Grammies, or however many she’s stolen. She plunks them down on the plastic pulpit, their banging making a disappointingly tinny sound, not unlike her singing voice, and utters, in Yiddish, “You know what? I suck. But thanks anyway.”

As the Cabala indicates, such a star-studded event requires a sacrifice, and Madonna, a Cabala connoisseur, responds by bursting into a ball of dust, then floating away. All that is left is her Gap-inspired shroud, which sells for three million pounds on e-bay, the proceeds of which are donated to the Nigerian Relief Fund, to which, as the fantasy drippily ends, I am an obvious contributor.

Oh, and there’s this. Wrote it a while back, but the sentiment still rings true…

Out In Africa
Index on Censorship
Jan. 29, 2000

Good stand up comedy isn’t meant for everybody. A provocative comic, one that can change minds and alter perceptions, is excluded from television, so he or she’s an artist, and sorry, but art ISN’T universal. Like any expertise, adroit satire is secular at best, and elitist. And lonely. Less than 1 percent of the population go to live performance, and only a fraction of that tiny number attend comedy. Yet, because everyone sees CNN, everyone surfs the net, and everyone watches American sitcoms, I figured everyone would understand the humor behind Jesus being a gay icon. And everyone does, in San Francisco and London, where I spend most of my stage time.
But thinking that neophyte comedy producers in South Africa, where alternative comedy has existed for maybe 5 minutes, would respond passively to the haranguing of some out, obnoxious faggot is more than merely sophomoric. It’s not even as charming as the idea that laughter breaks down boundaries. It’s actually a narcissistic streak, the double yellow line of middle class privilege travelling down our backs, that pushes some performers to drag our tired asses to a police state and slap those “former” Fascists in their Aryan faces with our hard, throbbing comedy cocks.
The flight to Cape Town from San Francisco takes something like 42 weeks, so I missed the opening night speech/warning from a producer of the Cape Town International Comedy Festival. A speech that, when repeated days later by another comic, sounded more like an omen from a creepy cult member than an appropriate “Break a leg!” kind of pre-show rouser. Apparently the 12 comics present – 6 from the UK, 4 from South Africa, one Australian, and one other American – were told to stay away from the Muslims. “The Quran,” he said, “isn’t considered a comic book, it’s not like the Bible, you can’t write catchy show tunes about it or sell it on QVC.” They were counseled to abstain from any jokes about the Muslims’ sacred text. The previous year, a local (closeted, sad, overwrought) comic had made a mosque reference, and wound up with 3 rifles pointed toward his head during performance! So back off clowns, don’t go near the mosque. Stay away from the mosque. Avoid the mosque.
With all those warnings, the only place I would’ve wanted to be on opening night was in the face of some Muslim fundamentalists, making fun of female circumcision. Unfortunately I was changing planes somewhere. When I arrived the next night, I barely had poo time before I had to be on stage, closing a 2 and a half-hour show. I went over time, only because the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves. Especially when I said, “Muslims will fuck anything. I mean, a hole’s a hole, right? I’m only quoting the Quran when I say that.”
I heard laughter. Maybe it was my ears still ringing from the flight. I heard applause. Maybe it was the sound of rifles being loaded. I was so sleep deprived and dehydrated and delusional after being at the mercy of Virgin Economy, that, while exiting, I stumbled backstage, slipped on a stair and banged my left shoulder, still sure that my set had gone well. I felt like a clumsy comedy God!
Until I saw the faces of the event’s producers backstage. They stared at me, the 2 of them, whose names I couldn’t remember, still can’t, so let’s call the producers Blond and Brunette. B and B for short. The pretty one, the Blonde, drove a convertible Volvo, dressed very smartly, and spent a great majority of his time in the company of men, whilst having a “wife” that no one had ever met. But that’s another article. His eyes – all 3 of them – were about to jump out of their sockets. They weren’t just bulging. They were leaving his head animatedly. Because, I suppose, he was shocked and angry, and they, the eyes, wanted to escape before his entire cranium exploded.
He spat out something about the discomfort I’d caused some of the audience by mentioning religion in my act.
“But” I explained, drowsily, “that’s exactly the response I hope for. I mean, isn’t this an ‘edgy’ show?”
“Sure,” he said, “it is edgy, we were performing in the edgy theatre after all.” The ‘edgy theatre’ was the smaller of the 2 huge theatres that made up the Baxter Theatre complex, which had been the proud home of classical music during Apartheid. In the green room, the walls still imposingly displayed the photos of nigger-hating beret wearers from countries like East Germany and Argentina who had graced the stages of the Baxter for 30 years, filling the white listeners’ ears with stoic, stilted staccato. Now, to represent perhaps the drastic changes in South African Constitution, if not the consciousness, the Baxter was home to this festival, the big stage saved for the ‘mainstream’ comics, most of whom talked about puppies and daisies I suppose. And the smaller stage, which the technical crew persisted in calling the ‘edgy’ room, like they could think of no other name for it. That was the platform from which I, just a few minutes before, had changed the face of, well, the producers’ faces. They’d been happy with the show until I mentioned that Jesus was a vain Capricorn homo.
Their audience were, the Blond spouted, wealthy, conservative suburbanites, was I aware of that?
“But those are my people!” I claimed. “I’m like their naughty friend.”
That brought a resounding response of silence. Suddenly I felt like a large ruler was about to wack my back. Producers’ fists curled, wry smiles remained on their faces. I was clearly being reprimanded. It was like being caught having sex when you’re 10. I knew that, in their eyes, what I’d done was wrong, but it didn’t feel wrong. It felt so good. Someone shifted. Then coughed. I’m sure it was me. I considered tap dancing, which always wows a crowd, no matter how sinister their mood.
We’ve had bomb threats, I was told. I wasn’t sure if that was meant to discourage me.
“But I make fun of everyone.” My voice spoke. I was sleeping. “Including myself, to balance the whole thing.”
I think I was trying to explain irony, the cornerstone of contemporary comedy, to people who’d only recently learned to laugh at something other than black-face and drag. I’d never really defended myself to my bosses, who, I realized, B and B sort of were. A London promoter had offered me this job, after a nice, ethnic Australian had backed out at the last minute. The Londoner convinced B squared by fax and email that I’d do just fine, that I’d played all over the world with little friction. B and B had neglected to watch my tape, I don’t even think they knew I was gay until I deep-throated the mic during my set.
I felt set up. I wondered why I wasn’t back at my hotel hiring a hooker, which are cheap in South Africa. While the promoter, a guy who likes my work and felt bad I was being lashed, sat silently, arms crossed, eyes closed, pretending he was back in London with people who read for pleasure.
I was ordered to cut all the religious stuff out of my act. All of it. Even the stuff about face-fucking Jesus. And though it wasn’t my favorite joke before I was asked to discard it, once asked, it became the crux of my act.
I told them, not only will I not cut it out, but I’ll show you how it will work. Again.
They threatened to turn off my microphone.
I wondered if I could punch them without breaking my hand. I have such lovely hands.
Instead, I got rid of the Muslim jokes, and I toned down Christ.
I wanted to fly home, but my flight ticket was restricted. Like the atmosphere. Blondie’s uptight, tight-lipped demeanor chilled me. He’d pass me in the hallway, between lobby and green room, right before my set started, and he’d smile contemptuously. My toes curled. I wondered if he’d hired a firing squad, which was in the audience waiting for me to open my atheist mouth. Once dead, he could claim he’d warned me. And he’d have been right.
But nothing died, including my act. No matter where they moved me in the bill, buffering me with local comics so that my set might sort of disappear into a long evening, the audience responded well. Well enough for me, which means a few walkouts, but no one gets hurt. But I didn’t storm, like the producers had hoped. Although it wouldn’t have swayed their opinion, no matter how well I’d done. They were concerned about the bomb threats, or the death threats to me, which I would’ve – have before, always will have to – put up with. They wanted the edge to be soft, the festival to be nice, and the audience to come back next year.
I felt hostility everywhere. I felt ashamed, and since the other comics were more concerned with go-cart racing in the daytime than defending my tender sensibilities at night, I also felt shunned.
I wanted to corner the blond in the lobby, the ‘70’s British Home Show-style lobby, complete with overworked wood finishes and low-hanging, somber lighting, and say, “Don’t fly me 8 billion miles and then tell me what I can and cannot do.” Then I wanted to triple snap and roll my head, like those attempting to retrieve their dignity do on Jerry Springer.
Instead I drank beer and cruised straight guys in the lobby.
Then the Blond cut me from the Sunday show, because it’s God’s day. I wondered, what the fuck are God’s worshippers doing at an ‘edgy’ comedy show on a Sunday? I tried to talk my way into the show, only because I hate being excluded, although I adore seeming exclusive.
I cornered the blond near the woody grains. “You’ve got an ‘edgy’ show, and you’ve cut the edgiest comic off the list?”
“Unfortunately, this is not about you, Mr. Capurro.” I was Scott when I’d arrived, Mr. Capurro after my first set. “The theatre must close earlier on Sunday. We’re under time constraints.”
Then he dashed, with one of the ‘straight’ comics in his front seat, laughing and wearing sunglasses at night. They flew off, like a blistering insult, looking like 2 characters in a Spanish soap opera, up to no good, leaving me standing near the Baxter, in Cape Town, thousands of miles from home.
Sunday nights are so quiet when there’s no show to do. I wondered if one could commit suicide by smoking too much pot. Anything was better than going to a gay bar in Cape Town. Oh yes, the gay scene there is that bad. Not that you’d know that from travel brochures. Cape Town is promoted as an open-minded, friendly city of the future. That might be, if the future is Muslim bombings – over 140 in 2000 – making it, in part, the most violent per capita city in the world.
In South Africa, darkie wants whitey out and the Muslims hate everybody. Our driver, a progressive Muslim, carried a 9-millimeter. Not a happy place to raise a minority family, but a furtive ground in which to plant and grow political comedy material. And the local comics, with ‘zany’ comedy names that sounded like children’s candy, and loose ties and perpetual hangovers, kind of mopped the floor with us foreigners. Usually, the American and the British comics shine above all others, but these Dutch/English hybrids stormed every show, because they dealt with local issues, which tend to be political, which embarrass the English and went right over the head of the Australian.
I found them amusing, but the screaming and sweating and ‘70’s dress code that went along with it were distracting. As well as were the queer jokes. All 4 South Africans males had queer jokes. Or 5 of them actually. The foreigners weren’t pulling their weight, so another local male was added to the ‘edgy’ line-up. The show’s pedagogical tone became that much more piercing. Yet, amidst all their moralizing, or maybe because of it, large sections of the South African’s acts were devoted to gay chickens. Just hilarious, if you’re 12. The audience loved it, but they liked all the comedy, which just goes to show that, like children, they just wanted to laugh, whereas the producers wanted to kill individuality and make money, like their ancestors.
Usually I’d seduce the local comics back at my hotel, but their queer-hating material stifled my erection. And my memory. Because somehow, after that first Sunday, all the religious stuff was back in my act, louder than before. I figured, if they’re gonna make fun of fags, then why isn’t this ok? Why does the censorship start and end with me?