Treehab

by Bob Smith

  Our close friendship developed slowly. At first, Jaffe annoyed me. In restaurants he’d pester our waiter to change his order, bring him more water, or ask if the chef could chew his food because he was tired. Meanwhile, Danny cursed with a vehemence that I found poetic and shocking. One time, when we were discussing the “God Hates Fags” reverend, Fred Phelps, Danny burst out, “With all his bad karma do you know what he’s coming back as? He’s coming back as a turd dropping from a fucking rat’s ass. No. You know what? He’s going to come back as a crab crawling on the balls of a cockroach! No, wait a minute. This is better. No, for his next one thousand incarnations that sick fuck will come back as a fucking dingleberry piece of shit, hanging from a crab’s ass, while the crab is sucking on a rat’s balls. That’s what he’s coming back as!” (This is a verbatim quote as it’s the one time I immediately wrote down one of Danny’s rants in my writing journal.)

  Later, Jaffe admitted that he didn’t know how to behave in restaurants since his family never ate in them, and Danny soon completely converted Jaffe and me into believing that his foulmouthed diatribes were actually the most courteous responses you could make to assholes like Reverend Phelps.

  It soon became apparent the three of us shared an identical comic sensibility and also shared the same values. One time at a sketch comedy show, we quickly discovered the group wasn’t funny except for one woman who was hysterical. Watching in the dark, I noticed she made all three of us laugh out loud at exactly the same times.

  One of the benefits of being among the first dozen or so openly gay stand-ups was that our lives were virgin territory; it was like discovering that you were the first person to tell a mother-in-law joke. Eventually we all developed material about being gay kids: Jaffe performed a brilliant bit about how to be a sissy in gym class; I did jokes about gay boys playing with dolls. “Bobby, don’t play with Barbie. I want you to play with blond, rippling, muscular Hercules!” And Danny did a hilarious book report bit about being a fifth-grade queen reading a biography of Judy Garland: “They gave her pills to wake up and pills to sleep! What they did to her!”

  We always went out to dinner after our shows, and while eating we frequently said something funny. There was a mutual competitiveness, aligned with a shared drive to make a good show better.

  One night, Danny told us how he’d witnessed a fan approach Lauren Bacall, who was starring on Broadway. “Oh, Miss Bacall, I’d love to see more of you!” To which she barked, “Come to the show!” Then Danny ad-libbed, “Can you imagine her answering machine? ‘Hello, this is Lauren Bacall. how the hell did you get my number?’”

  That was the first of many times when I said, “Put it in the act.” We repeatedly proved Picasso’s maxim: “Good artists copy. Great artists steal,” which means that great stand-ups gladly accept a better punch line for a joke.

  We also ran new bits by each other, and when something got two thumbs-up, it usually worked. We each had our strengths. Jaffe was a genius in using his body to sell a joke. His sissy-in-gym-class routine included a reenactment of a bored gay nerd staring at his fingernails during a volleyball game, momentarily distracted as the ball sailed over his head. I especially loved the joke about a friend who was so gay that his driver’s license picture was taken over the shoulder. Jaffe would sharply twist his head to illustrate the hilarious posture of the big queen. Danny was brilliant at bringing comic characters to life. He had worked at a deli counter as a teenager, and his portrayal of an imperious New York City harridan demanding that he slice her ham order thinner was Lily Tomlin sharp. “I’m next! I’m next! I’M NEXT!” she shouted viciously, elbowing her way to the counter, before muttering, “Now what do I want?”

  Danny was also gifted in mimicking vomiting cats, squeaky clotheslines, and vacuum cleaners. My strength was my ear for a punch line. I believe a joke should be subject to the same rules of all prose writing, no wasted or imprecise words. One example from my act: “In college, I experimented with heterosexuality. I slept with a straight guy. I was really drunk.” Setup, punch line, and tag. Jaffe and Danny played around with their punch lines, and I would browbeat them into doing what I regarded as the correct version.

  Danny and Jaffe’s artistry changed my act. Danny’s characters made me add a quick one-paragraph portrayal of a gay priest, Father Mary Louise, hearing confession—“For your penance, watch The Ten Commandments ten times. Wasn’t Anne Baxter terrible?”—while Jaffe’s mugging inspired me to physically act out a punch line. I do a joke about how my partner, Michael, is Jewish, and we celebrate both holiday traditions. “At Christmas, we set up a Nativity scene, but all the figures look skeptical.” Then I mime Joseph and Mary’s manger postures of total disbelief.

  As a boy, Danny revered Lucille Ball, and I Love Lucy was his daily half-hour sanctuary. When Lucy was hospitalized in 1989, Danny shared his genuine concern with Jaffe and me and talked about her so much at the law firm where he temped that on the day she died, his supervisor called and told him not to come in, while assuring him that he’d still be paid. I believe that was the first and only case of gay bereavement leave in history where when your diva dies, you’re given time off from work.

  Danny especially loved tough, old gravelly voiced Lucille Ball, and he regaled Jaffe and me with stories about her later years. Lucy gave seminars about her career around the country, and she could be brutal during the Q&As. One woman reportedly asked, “Miss Ball, could I come up onstage and give you a big hug?”

  “Absolutely not! Next question.”

  Danny also recalled some young sitcom star was in the audience and kept interjecting her own performance anecdotes during Lucy’s seminar. Finally Lucy snapped, “Look, I’ve seen your show, you’re not that funny. Sit down! You might learn something.”

  These phrases became the first of many “Dannyisms” that became a private Funny Gay Male language. While we watched unfunny, aggressively annoying comics perform, Jaffe would whisper, “Sit down! You might learn something,” and I’d crack up. When someone suggested doing something we were vehemently opposed to—supporting Republicans, for instance—we replaced “No” with “Absolutely not! Next question.”

  Danny also told us about a woman from Queens who became angry with him after she said, “I got the call,” and Danny logically asked what the call was about. The woman snapped, “My Archie died!” Soon “I got the call” became our synonym for death, and after the loss of my father, Danny’s mother, and Jaffe’s father, one of us invariably used the phrase.

  In 1991, we became the first out stand-ups to appear on national television on The Joan Rivers Show. Before the taping, Joan turned to us and said, “All right, fellas: give me a few serious answers, then Funny, Funny, Funny!” This became a performing mantra that Danny often said to us in Joan’s voice before shows to calm our jitters. Danny did a brilliant impression of Joan in his act and after my sister’s suicide, he called and left me a serious condolence message followed by Joan referencing her husband’s suicide, “Edgar, Edgar, why? why?!” Danny added, “Mrs. Smith, that’s so wrong. But I think you’ll get it.” Danny made me laugh at a time when I never thought I’d laugh again.

  At the time we did Joan’s show, I made most of my income from stand-up, but still cater-waitered to pay my rent. Two months after our taping, a caterer asked if I was available to work Christmas Day. I had just purchased a Mac Classic computer and wanted to buy Microsoft Word. Since working holidays meant double pay, I agreed. “Before you say yes,” the caterer warned, “the party’s at Joan Rivers’s house.” We discussed the possible embarrassment at being recognized, but I decided to forgo wearing my usual contact lenses in favor of my glasses, delusionally thinking my Clark Kent “disguise” would work.

  Before the party began at Joan’s palatial Fifth Avenue condo, which was part of a converted 1903 mansion, she gave the staff a short pep talk. I was relieved when she didn’t seem to recognize me.

  Later, as I passed a tray of champagne, a guest asked me, �
�Hey, weren’t you on Joan’s show?” I nodded yes. “Does Joan know?” I shook my head no. A half hour later, while serving hors d’oeuvres in the library, I felt a hand on my elbow. “Excuse me, everyone!” Joan shouted to the entire room. Conversation stopped. “This is a wonderful comedian. He was a guest on my show!” Joan then said in a low voice, “Isn’t this horrifying?” which made me laugh. “Don’t let it bother you. You’re just starting out. One time, I did a show with Jack Lemmon; then two weeks later I waited on him.”

  Her gentle mocking reinforced my belief that making a joke in a difficult situation can be an extraordinary act of kindness.

  Danny, Jaffe, and I did go through a period where, when one of us was missing, the other two talked about him. I was an angry shrew about the always-late Danny and Jaffe when we traveled, and we performed all over the country, plus Canada and Australia. When we flyered the beaches in Provincetown, Jaffe thought nothing of plopping down on a fan’s blanket, leaving Danny and me to cover the rest of the beach, which pissed us off.

  But we grew to accept each other’s personal foibles, since our friendship had been tested by numerous professional ordeals. There was a manager who booked us for five grand but paid us three. (To get out of our contract with the scumbag, we had to pay him three grand.) We also had to contend with a continually drunken publicist whose press contacts seemed limited to wine magazines. The only benefit of these ordeals was laughing at Danny’s truly obscene, half-hour-long monologues about the manager and his dead-on impression of the tipsy publicist.

  In each city, we’d rent a car on our day off and take field trips during which we discovered that all three of us liked to smoke a joint, crack jokes, and appreciate nature. Danny and Jaffe were fellow Nature Boys. I saw my first redwoods with them at Muir Woods. In fact, as Danny lit his pot pipe, he joked about starting a fire destroying all the redwoods. We saw a meteor shower at the beach in Provincetown. I saw my first bald eagle with them on Whidbey Island in Washington. On the ferry to the island, we saw porpoises. One time we performed at Highways for two weeks; every day we would drive to Malibu Creek State Park. It was the perfect park for stand-ups since most of the land was donated by Bob Hope. I remember writing jokes under California oaks while my binoculars hung about my neck—in case I saw or heard an interesting bird.

  On that trip, I enjoyed my first earthquake—the Northridge quake. After the first violent tremor, Danny cracked from his bedroom that an overweight actress we all knew must have fallen out of her bed. We laughed until the equally violent aftershock scared the shit out of us.

  Yes, fat jokes are wrong, but anyone who knows comedians quickly learns that professional boundaries are not the same as our personal boundaries. I would never refer to any woman as a bitch or fat onstage, but I stood in an airport with a sign saying bitch because my audience was another comedian. It was wrong, but in context, I knew Judy would laugh.

  One of our field trips was to the Franklin Roosevelt estate along the Hudson River in Hyde Park. We were on a guided tour of the main house, and Roosevelt’s wheelchair was displayed. We stood in the back of the group and Danny said, “Oh, Eleanor, you wouldn’t treat me this way if I wasn’t in this wheelchair.” Then switching to Bette Davis’s voice in Baby Jane, he sneered. “But ya-cha in that wheelchair! But, ya-cha!” It was an example of perfect timing and the three of us became so hysterical we had to quit the tour.

  When I met Steve Moore, the first comedian to do jokes about being HIV positive, he mentioned being ten years older than me, and I cracked that he had “Model T cells.” Our friendship was confirmed by his almost spitting out his orange juice.

  AIDS and AIDS benefits were an unfunny, ever-present part of the Funny Gay Males’ careers. Several times after shows, guys told us, “I just found out I was HIV positive today, and I didn’t think I could laugh, but I did.” One night at the Duplex, a gaunt young man and his mother came to the show. He was in his early to midtwenties and used a cane. The young man laughed loudly and repeatedly, but his mother was inconsolable. Afterward, she told us that he had really wanted her to see our show, and she thanked us—although her pain was palpable. It wouldn’t be the last time real life entered a comedy club.

  The most harrowing show I ever worked was Frank Maya’s last performance at Caroline’s, a comedy club on Broadway, in 1995. It was a benefit with an all-gay-and-lesbian lineup. Jaffe and Danny were there, and I was asked to emcee. Frank had always been muscular, but his sunken cheeks told me he was sick. It was a moment that happened repeatedly in the eighties and nineties, but the social convention was to behave like nothing was wrong. We were all members of a gay men’s chorus whistling in the dark. There was also a manic gleam in his eyes I’d never seen before. Frank opened his set by declaring, “This is my farewell to comedy.”

  I’d first met Frank at one of our East Village shows. He was a well-known performance artist who talked to us about coming out in his work, and a short time later he did. (It still seems unbelievable that there was a time in New York when shoving yams in your cooch onstage was permissible, but admitting you were gay was going too far.)

  Frank was a pro and had a classic bit about how as a New Yorker he was envious of Anne Frank’s hiding place in Amsterdam: “It had a skylight . . .” But that night Frank rambled, and the audience wasn’t laughing. Comedy slang for bombing is “dying,” and the term had become literal. One asshole shouted, “Get off !” as Frank’s fifteen-minute set stretched to over a half hour. The comedians in the room knew he should wrap it up, but there was none of the usual whispered griping that he had gone over his allotted time, a comedy faux pas that is inexcusably rude to the other comedians on the bill. Everyone in the room was transfixed by the stand-up tragedy. For the comedians watching, he was also a piercing reminder that just because you’re funny, it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be happy. Finally, the manager of the club suggested I stand near the stage and signal to Frank that his time was up. In comedy clubs, there’s a small red light that goes on when your time is up, and until that moment I had never considered it to be a metaphor for death. Frank saw me and asked from the stage, “Bob, should I get off ?” I nodded my head. It was an agonizingly sad moment and, to this day, I regret not shouting, “no!” Within a short time, Frank was dead.

  One night, a major talent manager had seen me kill. Afterward, he took me aside and said, “You’re funny, but why do you have to do the gay stuff ? Why can’t you just be ‘Bob Smith from Buffalo’?” I replied, “Because I’m not ashamed of being gay, but I am embarrassed about being from Buffalo.” (That was a joke because I’m actually a booster of my hometown.) The manager added, “They’re never going to have anyone gay on The Tonight Show.”

  I immediately knew he was an idiot. There was no proof then that I was ever going to succeed on a big level, but I had worked around New York for over two years, and straight audiences liked my comedy. My first paying gig in New York had been for a Conservative synagogue’s singles night. The rabbi had told me how much he enjoyed my set. Of course, I didn’t know then that in 1994 I would become the first out gay stand-up on The Tonight Show.

  As Funny Gay Males’ reputation spread, we worked all around New York. At Dixon Place with the fledging Blue Man Group, back when Dixon Place was in an apartment, I suggested onstage that Funny Gay Males should be called Blow Men Group. At La MaMa, we met the legendary Ellen Stewart. We also did numerous benefits at places like the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center, hosted by people like Harvey Fierstein—who is as charming and friendly offstage as on. I also worked solo, including one night at the Pyramid Club, where the stage was made up to look like a vagina, and I passed through the birth canal at 1:00 a.m. to do my set.

  I knew Judy Gold from Comedy U, but we really became friends when she came to see Funny Gay Males perform in Provincetown. The next day we went to the beach, and Judy and I bonded comedically when the two of us spent several hours loudly repeating variations of the phrase “I make the muffins,” in
the most annoyingly nasal voices we could create. Judy and her partner, Sharon, were staying at a guesthouse owned by a wealthy gay guy whose penniless partner constantly claimed in his nasal voice that he put the Breakfast in their B&B because he made the lousy muffins (from a mix).

  We mined every possible comic twist on “I make the muffins,” mimicking his whiny honking endlessly: “I make the sand”; “I make the lesbians”; “I missed the Kadima ball.” It was an experience that was enjoyable for comedians but excruciating for anyone else. Finally, Sharon screamed, “Will you two shut the fuck up about the fucking muffins!” People we didn’t know on a nearby blanket applauded when they heard her, which only made Judy and me burst out laughing at our own obnoxiousness.

  The week after Judy and Sharon left Ptown, I received a call from Sharon telling me Judy’s father had died unexpectedly. I immediately called Judy to offer my condolences. She was understandably teary until she angrily mentioned that she had received a “condolence” call from a comedian acquaintance of ours, Jim David, a gay man who is one of what I call the Johnny-Come-Out-Latelys, as he came out onstage in 2000, long after the moment of courage had past. He had brazenly asked Sharon, “Has Judy had to cancel any gigs for the funeral? Because I’d be happy to fill in.”

  This became a reflexive joke Judy and I still share. Anytime a famous movie star or celebrity died, one of us would immediately call or e-mail, “You know Jim’s calling his widow.” In fact, when I told Judy that I was diagnosed with ALS, she immediately said this comic would soon call to say how sorry he was and ask if I had any gigs I needed to cancel. Part of my pleasure by then was how with every new twist on that joke, we celebrated our long friendship.