By the way, we're gay |

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• BY THE WAY, WE'RE GAY

BY THE WAY, WE'RE GAY

Havg a moment, the late ’90s and early ghts, meant that, sudnly, a gay performer or character would appear a space that had been prevly domated by straight people — say, at the center of a TV s like “Will & Grace” or a stand-up special, or as the voice of reason to the leadg lady a romantic edy like “My Bt Friend’s Weddg” — and everyone uld appld and say, “We solved ! Gay edy isn’t niche ’s all changed so fast that at one pot, while he’s discsg a sketch about rporate sponsorship of gay pri paras that he did wh Lil Nas X last May, Yang, 31, tch himself and says, lghg, “Why am I talkg about this the past tense, like ’s another era? (The podst format, which gay obssns n be discsed and nstcted at length, or which the hetero world n be filtered through gay sensibili, as is on Sam Taggart and Gee Civeris’s “StraightLab, ” has bee fertile turf for emergg edy stars.

” says Rogers, who, like all of his lleagu, has many ncurrent projects; he spent an early month of the panmic hostg (hilarly) a pet-groomg realy show lled “Hte Dog” for HBO Max; he -created a short-form seri lled “Gayme Show” (“for Quibi, rt peace”), whose wrg room was “entirely stocked wh queer people”; and he will have a regular role on a new Showtime edy lled “I Love That for You, ” tentatively schled for this sprg, wh the “S. ” Lyn’s style of humor — bchy, suatg, spiked wh alhol, rancid wh self-mockery — was rarely overtly queer; was what would now be scribed as “queer-d” — other words, legibly gay to anybody, gay or straight, who knew what signifiers to look for but to the obliv, merely droll.

Lyn (who was self-protectively disparagg about gay men terviews) and ntemporari like Charl Nelson Reilly on “Match Game” (another game show) the 1970s were gay entertaers before that was a tegory; they are the first DNA strand ntemporary gay male edy’s triple send strand was the first generatn of out male edians — guys like the performance artist Frank Maya, who beme the first out gay man to get a spot on the early ’90s MTV seri “Half Hour Comedy Hour, ” and Bob Smh, the first to crack “The Tonight Show” durg the Jay Leno era, and Stt Thompson, the gay member of the Canadian edy qutet the Kids the Hall.

They were pneers who had to walk a plited le, at once makg stand-up safe for gay performers and makg gay edy palatable for straight dienc that, 30 years ago, were still far more fortable lghg at queer people than wh them. And the third strand was drag — there all along, olr than pop culture self, the subject of angry ntentn the gay muny between those who embraced as an act of transgrsive fiance and genr subversn and those who nounced as mstrelsy or, worse, bad for the e; pop culture, was a s-long journey om “La Cage x Foll” on Broadway the 1980s to “RuPl’s Drag Race” the 2000s, at which pot the naysayers fally had to adm feat.

Source photos: Alex SchaeferOne thg that distguish the new wave of gay edy is that n draw om all the tradns and rebe them to somethg new — at once polil and mpy; cheerful and subversive; stumed and nfsnal; explic and mastream. In the scene, Styl plays a distracted, gay, sexually (hyper)active social media brand manager who’s ught advertently postg his own horny Instagram msag unr the pany acunt — cludg one to Shawn Mens, to whom he sends what he sheepishly adms to his boss ( a le that drew screams of lighted shock om the stud dience) was “a picture of my open throat.

”The sketch was an stant h, which was surprisg not jt bee Styl gamely threw himself to the role but bee the language ed — “still on a poppers high, ” “feelg really prsed after threome, ” “wreck me, daddy” — was for-, by- gay talk of a kd that was unprecented on “S. Sce Ellen DeGener me out 1997, lbians and gay men have had, and ntue to have, separate and plited trajectori through edy, and one major and persistent difference is that the ia of sex between men still triggers a more vol, openly disgted type of homophobia om some dienc than do the ia of sex between women. “Sara Lee” didn’t seem the least alarmed by that; wasn’t a sketch aimed at heterosexual drive-by gawkers but one unmistakably wrten straight-outta-Grdr language by gay men who weren’t pecially terted translatg their work for a wir dience.

VioThe edian shar an anecdote about g out to his LeeIn one way, that sensibily was nsistent wh Yang and Rogers’s unforced gay-bti vibe on “Las Culturistas, ” which is not gay as “We’re here, we’re queer, ” but gay as “We’re two adult men havg an extremely long and impassned discsn about Glenn Close — don’t expect to make fortable for you. The character, makg a tense and hghty appearance on “Weekend Update, ” exemplifi the ways which gay edy is now, so to speak, genre-fluid: It’s performed and -wrten by an out gay man; ’s not overtly gay but is, Yang’s words, “very much queer-d”; and ’s also drag.

A kd of drag that seems steeped ls the world of RuPl than the mp zans of “Pee-wee’s Playhoe” (a subversive, tangibly queerish show that’s still makg s fluence felt s after buted 1986), but drag nohels — apparently, we all know a gay iceberg when we see one. Bt of all, nothg is done for the purpose of ncealment: All the dg displays a fluency the var ways that celebry gayns n tersect wh pri, vany, narcissism, tensn, jury, entlement, persistence, weeps and termatn.

(That class distctn — placg femmey or mpy gay men a tier below gay men who n, if not pass as heterosexual, at least -swch — is entangled wh real-world hierarchi and prejudic wh and outsi of gay muni that pop culture over the s has both reflected and rerced. ) One of the strikg thgs about this moment is that effemacy — or, more accurately, tonatns or gtur that we read as gay — is no longer a joke for the benef of straight dienc; ’s jt part of who the performers are (or, some s, aren’t).

VioThe edian livers a monologue on LeeTODAY’S GAY COMICS often nnect eply to their own childhoods, but that shouldn’t be misread as a form of timidy or trepidatn: The guys also talk about sex. Source photos: Young-Whe: Flora Hanijo; Esla: Sean Santiago; Torr: Amy Lombard for The New York TimThis all happened what was supposed to be the post-acceptance era, when the age of enlightenment picted on numero TV shows didn’t match the on-the-ground realy for a lot of gay kids.

”When Perks searched for an openg for himself edy, he ially saw nothg, partly bee his early experience of male stand-ups was, he says, “eher a bunch of whe people that I didn’t relate to or a bunch of Black men who were pretty homophobic. So do Margaret Cho, whose journey om the sanized, promised 1994-95 work s “All-Amerin Girl” to a rawer, more outspoken, utterly fearls set of edy specials and shows the ghts felt like an early road map for young gay edy fans, not to mentn an alternative to the bro culture that seemed to be edy’s domant stra. Johnson/ © HBO Max/Courty of Everett CollectnThe same was te for Cole Esla, the 35-year-old wrer-performer who first earned a cult followg for a seri of YouTube vios wh the actor-edian Jeffery Self lled “VGL [Very Good Lookg] Gay Boys” that evolved to the sketch seri “Jeffery & Cole Casserole” 2009.

”It’s a plited, very 2022 progrsive left paradox, one not faced by prev generatns of gay men edy: How do you make clear that you own your inty while also makg clear that you view the whole qutn of inty as permeable and have no tert beg the tool of a palistic system that wants to turn that inty to a brand? In the summer of 2016, Booster and Yang, who had bee iends a uple of years earlier when they were troduced on a Facebook group msage, went to the gay enclave of Fire Island together; Booster brought along some atypil beach readg — Jane Aten’s “Pri and Prejudice, ” published 1813. + st (which opens September and which Yang also appears briefly), “Fire Island” reprents ls a marriage of rporate money wh unassiated gay sensibily than a kd of first date to see if there are any ’s a gamble worth takg, but if don’t pan out, the performers have plenty of other optns — some that they’ve created for themselv and some that exist bee, as Esla puts , “iends know how to wre for you.

For gay men entertament, there has never been a fish le, never a moment when you uldn’t take the yardstick ed to measure how far they’ve e and turn around to see how short of pary they still are.

Gay men may nnect to Booster’s lay--all-on-the-table stand-up act to such a gree that when they meet him, some of the more boundary-ls on will enthiastilly grope him ( mak him acutely unfortable; please don’t do ). Sweeney, now his early 70s, was a trailblazer who ma his mark before the people this story were born — 1985, when he beme the first out gay man who was hired as a regular st member on “Saturday Night Live. But the news that The Big Bang Theory‘s Emmy wner Jim Parsons is gay was reported wh such matter-of-fact unrstatement that my first reactn was a quick Google search to see if maybe he was out already and we’d all jt failed to notice.