by Bob Smith
When Judy gave birth to her son Ben in 2001, I was living in LA, and she left a message so suffused with radiant happiness that I didn’t erase it for months. A week later she invited me to visit. “If you don’t fucking come, I’ll fucking kill you!” It was right after 9/11, and Judy was working at Rockefeller Center as a producer on The Rosie O’Donnell Show. I visited the same week an NBC News worker tested positive for anthrax and they closed several floors of the building. The following week, Judy was returning to work and she asked if she should be worried. Her question wasn’t a joke, and I could see she was anxious.
A few hours later her neighbor knocked on the door and handed me Judy’s mail. Judy was changing Ben, and I shouted, “Margery brought the mail. There’s an envelope with white powder in it.”
Without missing a beat, Judy shouted, “Would you mind opening it?”
“No problem,” I replied.
We’ve been through terrorist attacks, the deaths of our fathers, breakups for both of us, a suicide, and the loss of beloved pets. Judy once called and told me her cat had cancer, and my response was “Was she a smoker?” She laughed and then called me an asshole. She liked my joke so much that she repeated it to all our friends. It would be inappropriate to make such a comment to anyone else, but comedians are artists who intimately face pain in their work. We try out jokes that bomb and know immediately that we’ve failed.
One thing I admire about Judy is that I’ve never seen her give a lousy performance. She gives it her all, no matter how bad the audience seems. Emulating her perseverance is how I got my HBO special. In 1993, Madonna’s production company flew Funny Gay Males to LA to audition for an HBO gay-and-lesbian comedy special.
The audition was at Igby’s, a shabby comedy club, on a rainy Tuesday night. The room was nearly empty, with fifteen customers and a row of HBO big shots sitting in the back. By then, we were friends with several wonderful gay and lesbian comics who weren’t part of the lineup, but some of the worst comics I’d ever seen auditioning were there. Several of them had no gay material, clearly they weren’t out yet, but they apparently would come out for HBO. One guy did hacky airport jokes that caused Danny, Jaffe, and me to wince during his set. I watched in horror as every comic bombed—including, unfortunately, Danny and Jaffe. For big shows, I always planned my set order in advance, but watching this dreadful train wreck inspired me to open with a different joke and basically wing it. I was incredibly nervous, but from my first joke I got huge laughs and kept making the audience roar. After my set, Danny and Jaffe were incredulous. “Where the fuck did that come from?” Jaffe asked.
I had no idea, but I was thirty-five, had been working as an out comic for seven years, and was impatient for some sign of mainstream success. I had also worked diligently on my act over the past three years in Provincetown, adding signature bits such as declaring why the Catholic Church shouldn’t be homophobic: “They should give us credit. We started the Renaissance. It was probably two gay men talking during a party: ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to sell paintings of hot, muscular, naked guys to churches?’ ‘Oh, that would be a hoot!’”
After the show, Chris Albrecht, the head of HBO, came over to say how much he enjoyed my set while pointedly ignoring everyone else.
The next day, I got a phone call saying HBO didn’t want to do a group show, but they did want to give me my own half-hour special. Then, they gave a lesbian comedian—Suzanne Westenhoefer, a good friend of mine—her own special.
Our HBO specials were favorably reviewed by the television critic of the New York Times. It was strange and gratifying to see my name in the paper I’d been reading every day for almost ten years.
After my move to Los Angeles in 1996, Eddie Sarfaty assumed my spot in Funny Gay Males with my blessing. Eddie’s ten years younger than the rest of us, muscular, and handsome, and I joked with Danny and Jaffe that people would see the Funny Gay Males poster and say, “The other two have aged horribly, but Bob looks great!”
All four of us eventually performed together, and Eddie became part of our brotherhood. We bonded with him because he’s smart and funny, but also because he’s an unhappy hunk, prone to depression, and so possesses a great heart and a genuine sense of empathy for others, qualities often lacking in more self-contented hotties.
I also fondly remember a party where a gay Republican defended George W. Bush in front of Danny, Jaffe, Eddie, and me, days after the House Republicans voted to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
I was furious. “You’re gay and support Republicans?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “They’re in favor of small government.”
“And in favor of big corporations,” I said. “Like oil companies that want to drill in wildlife refuges.”
“That’s free enterprise,” he said.
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “It’s greed.”
“They’re against protecting the environment,” Jaffe said.
“It’s a refuge!” said Danny. “Not a national refinery.”
“And they deny global warming!” said Jaffe.
“People who deny global warming should be fed to polar bears,” I said.
“Every time a Republican opens his mouth, he farts!” said Danny.
“And they hate gay people,” said Jaffe. “You’re like a Jew inviting Hitler to his Bar Mitzvah.”
“It’s okay to be a bottom in bed,” said Eddie, “not in a voting booth.”
The host came running out of the kitchen shouting “No politics!” because the four of us had ganged up on the Republican. It’s the only time in my life when I’ve been proud to be a horrible guest.
In 2005, I decided to move back to New York and became Eddie’s roommate in his two-bedroom apartment. My return to New York as a stand-up after nine years away was a revelation. There were queer comedy shows all over Manhattan and dozens of gay and lesbian comics. I loved being back in New York, and also fell in love with someone I’d known for twenty years, a sexy writer named Michael Zam, an old friend of Jaffe’s. Michael eventually introduced me to the other crazy love of our lives, our dog Bozzie.
New York also seemed happy to have me back. I was thrilled when Backstage magazine awarded me their best comedian of the year award in 2006. I also auditioned for the reality show Last Comic Standing and made the cut. But I had foolishly stopped dyeing my hair—I went gray in my early thirties—and was eliminated before the show taped, I’m sure due to my looking forty-nine when their prized demographic was eighteen to forty-eight.
One of my proudest moments being back in New York was after Proposition 8 passed in California. The vote to deny marriage equality was heavily backed by the Mormon Church. I was furious that this church had the gall to claim the marriage between two consenting gay or lesbian adults was immoral. Judy called me up and said a demonstration was going to be held in front of the Mormon Temple at 66th and Columbus. She really wanted to go since her two sons, Henry and Ben, were old enough to understand that this bigotry was directed against their family. Eddie and I made signs for Ben and Henry to carry. We all marched, and seven-year-old Ben carried the sign with my joke, “My Two Moms Can Beat Up Your 14 Wives!”
The next day on The View, Whoopi Goldberg quoted my joke, and Salon magazine also mentioned it. Ben giggled as he marched, and I felt a sense of solidarity with Eddie and Judy, knowing we all understood that sometimes a breezy joke conceals furious contempt.
I was working on my Alaska novel at my desk in Eddie’s apartment in May 2006 when Eddie noticed a muscle twitching on the back of my left arm. It turned out to be an early symptom of my ALS. The twitching didn’t go away, and I began a long series of medical tests.
That autumn, after I performed for the Human Rights Campaign in Boston, I received a phone call from my agent. She first told me she heard the show went well, then she asked, “Did you drink before the show? Because they said you sounded drunk.”
I was horrified and assured her that I never drank or smoked a joint b
efore any performance. Stand-up requires my complete focus and has always been too important to me. My slurring was due to the ALS. I hadn’t noticed any problems with my voice, but other people obviously had. I began to start my sets by explaining I wasn’t drunk but had a neurological problem.
My explanation worked for a long time, but I have the bulbar variant of ALS that first preys upon the muscles of the tongue and throat. I could still do stand-up and even appeared in 2009 on a Canadian gay comedy special, broadcast from the Winnipeg Comedy Festival. I killed but have never watched that performance. It would be too painful to hear my jokes delivered sloppily.
It was fittingly in a small East Village comedy club in 2010 that I decided to stop performing. There were only ten people in the audience, but I had lost my fear of small audiences back when I auditioned for HBO.
I hadn’t performed for several months and immediately noticed how difficult it was to pronounce my jokes, lines I’d done hundreds of times. Jokes that always killed were garnering looks of incomprehension. I apologized and repeated a few lines again. Something I’d never had to do before. After the show, I apologized to the host, who graciously said there was nothing to apologize for. I was in a state of shock.
I had always thought I would perform stand-up for my entire life. When Funny Gay Males performed in Montreal at the Just for Laughs comedy festival, one of the headliners was Milton Berle. He was eighty-three and had made thousands of people laugh, including us. We had followed Milton as we went through Canadian customs and overheard him cracking a joke about the cigar dangling from his lips. “It’s a Lawrence Welk cigar,” he said. “A piece of shit surrounded by a band.”
I envisioned myself cracking jokes at his age.
Of course, the one benefit of having ALS is that whenever my comedian friends vent about their problems—unemployment, relationships, possible eviction from their apartments—I can always trump them by saying “three to five years,” which is the Google life span of people with ALS. Now when they discuss their problems, they always jokingly preface them with “I know I don’t have ALS, but . . .”
I am proud to have achieved the two biggest goals of all stand-ups: appearing on The Tonight Show and having my own HBO special. I also don’t feel I’ve given up comedy since I can still write novels and essays. But it takes so long to become a good stand-up that giving it up was deeply painful; it’s even more agonizing when I watch comedians perform who aren’t nearly as funny as I am. I’m also incredibly proud of Funny Gay Males. We had the guts to be out when even Judy was afraid of coming out.
We performed at the first-ever gay and lesbian inaugural ball at President Clinton’s inauguration in 1993, along with Kate Clinton and Suzanne Westenhoefer. That year, we also performed at the LGBT March on Washington in front of half a million people. I wrote a new joke for the event: “I think we should have a gay agenda. It would be limited to two things: Number One—Full civil rights. Number Two— We want our national anthem to have a twenty-five-minute dance version.” It got the biggest laugh and most thunderous applause of my career. I’m also proud that on Ellen DeGeneres’s historic coming-out episode, someone on the show gave a nod to Funny Gay Males by featuring the immediately recognizable purple-and-yellow cover of our book Growing Up Gay in a bookstore scene.
My only regret in my stand-up career is that I wish Funny Gay Males hadn’t just mimicked the toughness of old showbiz pros like Lucille Ball and Lauren Bacall and had, instead, become as indomitable as they were.
In the midnineties, we were offered the chance to do a six-week Off Broadway run of Funny Gay Males by the prestigious Atlantic Theater Company.
We were eager to move beyond our loyal LGBT audience, but our manager at the time insisted we should turn down their offer and let him raise the money to produce us Off Broadway. He clearly implied he would be deeply hurt if we accepted the Atlantic’s offer. (Performers quickly learn that agents and managers have touchier egos than almost any entertainers.) Why we had to be nice guys and didn’t stand up for ourselves mystifies me still.
Well, we were nice guys, but we lacked Lucille’s balls. Show business produces tough cookies because performers have to make every mistake to learn anything. I know now that we made a colossal error, but it did teach me an invaluable lesson.
For the past ten years, the Angel of Death has become my stalker, following me around from gig to gig, scaring my friends, showing up at my apartment to pester me.
“Mr. Smith, I’m a big fan and wondered if I could hug the life out of you?”
“Absolutely not! Next question.”
WWJD
What Would Jackie Do?
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the most sensible thing anyone has ever said about religion: “The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” Unfortunately in our time, Emerson’s rhetorical question is frequently regarded as religious intolerance. It’s permissible to talk about God in general terms, but offensive to specifically question someone’s religious beliefs, no matter how ridiculous they are.
I now was blessed with a free pass to discuss all religions and beliefs after I was forced to confront the fact that my relation to the universe might expire. I had been unaware that my healthy life was a miracle until the day I was diagnosed with ALS. My doctor was understandably uncomfortable giving out his grim diagnosis, and to fill in my silence after his announcement he said nervously, “It’s a really rare disease.” I responded with “So it’s like winning the disease lottery?” A small part of me was surprised that I’d react with a joke, but most of me understood that my being funny was as intrinsic to my identity as my thick hair, lanky stature, and slowly dying motor neurons. The doctor didn’t laugh, but his lips moved quickly to cover his inadvertent smile.
When the afterlife moves from an afterthought to a pressing matter, you feel free to take a Judgment Day on your life and all faiths. The obvious thing I first pondered is that there would probably be no religions at all if people didn’t die. The purpose of every religion is to tell a comforting bedtime story about our impending dirt nap. But I’m a writer and have found the narrative failure of almost every Good Book is also the failure of every bad novel, movie, or television show; they require the suspension of your intelligence before you’re able to suspend your sense of disbelief.
That afternoon, I investigated my illness by googling “ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease” and discovered it was a synonym for “hopeless.” But I didn’t feel hopeless.
Hope is another aspect of human consciousness that can probably be explained scientifically as neurons high-fiving each other, but science is still struggling to explain how life was created. The reason we need art is that science will always be inadequate at explaining how life is experienced. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not an antiscience dolt who refuses to believe in evolution, due to my observation that every right-wing bigoted belief is fixed and unchanging. Or a moron who believes climate change isn’t manmade; it’s God’s way of browning sinners before they’re slow-cooked in hell. But I will chalk up one for the faithful as science hasn’t yet adequately explained the profound impact love and hope have in our lives.
One of the insights my illness has granted to me is that most of the suffering in our lives can be alleviated more quickly by talking to our friends and family than by praying to God. (I’m sure believers would say God is answering my prayers through people, but you can’t have it both ways: either we have free will or we’re marionettes controlled by the puppet master in the sky.) Since my diagnosis, much of my stress has come from the numerous, unnecessary human-caused problems dealing with our corporate health care system, which seems designed as a form of euthanasia, since you’d rather die than deal with its pernicious complexities. What’s made it bearable is that friends and even a stranger (now a friend) helped me navigate the merciless paperwork.
I’ve been dealing with my ALS for ten years, a
nd I can honestly say that for the most part my life’s been very happy. First of all, I’m mental— certifiably optimistic—and I’ve spent my life believing I can do almost anything: move to New York, become a successful stand-up comic, write books, snag more than one handsome boyfriend. So surviving a devastating incurable disease seems like another daunting challenge that I have to overcome. I’m uneasy about my health, but I was also anxious about all those other hurdles.
My partner, Michael, has been heroically supportive. Part of his support has been that he can still get really angry with me when I disappoint him: for example, if I don’t clean up my papers that I promised to clear off the dining room table last Friday. He’ll still treat me like a living boyfriend and not a dying patient. My two brothers have been so generous toward me that I actually forgive them for voting for George W. Bush twice! (Even Jesus would find that tough to forgive.)
All of my friends have been amazingly helpful. They’ve offered to assist me when I need help, and they also treat me the same: mocking me when the occasion arises. (I’m a funny guy, but I’m starting to think my real talent is in making friends.)
A group of friends I’ve become especially close to are my New York drinking, talking, writing, and laughing buddies, Patrick Ryan, David McConnell, Don Weise, Michael Carroll, and Chris Shirley. We’re all writers or editors, and every Monday night for the past five years we’ve had a boys’ night out at Barracuda, a neighborhood gay bar in Chelsea. Chris’s former partner Chuck dubbed us A.S.S.: The Authors Secret Society, a moniker we eagerly adopted. While having cocktails, we enjoy discussing books, boys in general, boyfriends in particular, and then head out to dinner at one of the five restaurants we can all agree on.
I’ve only known these guys for a short time, but our rapport was instant, mutual, and easy as all good friendships are. We all write about different aspects of the same subject, gay men, in Alaska, Florida, Memphis, or in journalism school and pirate ships, and we have different styles—from high literary to my jokey vernacular—but among the common bonds we share is our seriousness about writing and our levity about almost everything else.