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| “Coming out as a lesbian on stage is still a very political act – if it weren’t, more women would do it.” |
This interview with Kate Clinton originally ran in the August 2015 issue of Fugues magazine.
I
was checking out trailblazing queer stand-up comic Kate Clinton’s website the
other day and came across some fabulous blurbs on her media page, by such LGBT
icons as Lily Tomlin and Tony Kushner.
“Kate,
you’re not showbiz – you’re show art!” Tomlin said, while Kushner observed,
“Kate Clinton cuts through ten thousand miles of badness with a single
brilliant insight, complete with punchline.”
Then,
tucked neatly between Tomlin and Kushner, I was surprised and delighted to read
one of my own Three Dollar Bill column quotes about Kate: “The woman is a
goddess.”
It’s
no secret I worship the ground Clinton walks on: The former elementary school
English teacher – with her always-reassuring voice – did stand-up for the first
time in 1981 on a dare, and has since headlined nightclubs and festivals around
the world, and always as a proudly out woman.
Without
Kate Clinton, there is no Rachel Maddow, no Rosie O’Donnell (whom Clinton also
used to write for on her old TV show), no out Lily Tomlin, no Ellen, no Gina
Yashere or DeAnne Smith. As Kate herself once said, “Lesbian humour isn’t
trying to sell anything, it doesn’t have to sell out. Coming out as a lesbian
on stage is still a very political act – if it weren’t, more women would do
it.”
I
first met Kate – who turns 68 on Nov. 9 – when I hosted a public Q&A with
her at Montreal’s downtown Chapters bookstore during her summer 1998 book tour
for her first collection of essays titled Don’t
Get Me Started. I was young and nervous and Kate – a personal hero of mine
– put me at my ease and made me feel like a million bucks. “Richard – don’t
stop!” Kate wrote in my copy of her book Don’t
Get Me Started.
For
nine years (until Montreal’s alt-weekly Hour magazine folded in 2011) I wrote
my annual Kate Clinton column, a tradition that has migrated here. Earlier this
month I caught up with Kate, who is headlining her all-new show Hello Katey! A One Woman Pussy Riot at
the Crown and Anchor in Provincetown until Sept. 12.
On
the eve of this summer’s Gay Pride parade in New York City, Kate, like other
Americans, was celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex
marriage across America, not to mention the Stonewall Inn being named a
historic landmark.
“Pride
this year was over-the-top!” Clinton says happily.
But
now Kate is looking to the future and is excited by the prospect of Hillary
Clinton becoming the next president of the United States.
“She
and I both share the same last name and are the same age and I can tell you I
am ready to kick some ass! She’s ready too,” says Kate. “In my lifetime I would
like a woman president. There are many women stars coming up, but we need to
get that first one in and I think Hillary can do it.”
Kate
met Hillary Clinton a few years ago when Hillary was Secretary of State. “It
was at a dinner and my dear partner [LGBT activist and author Urvashi Vaid] was
talking to Hillary about international stuff, I think about child trafficking.
And I sort of horned in and said, ‘Hey, this is what I’m worried about: I’m
really worried about your jet lag! Every time I look at a plane I think of
you!’ And she goes, ‘Tell me about it!’ In person she’s earthy and very real.”
Kate’s
spouse Urvashi Vaid – currently Director of the Engaging Tradition Project at
Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, and who also serves
on the Board of Directors of the Gill Foundation – won her recent battle with
breast cancer.
In
her June 2015 essay in the New York Times, Kate writes about the couple’s
recent move to their new home: “The decision to move was chemo-induced. My dear
partner had just finished a sabbatical from life-as-we-knew-it in Cancerland.
It had been a year of diagnoses, mastectomies, chemotherapy, radiation and
waiting rooms. Our large world had become small. As treatments ended and side
effects lessened, life began to expand again. We re-emerged but did not trust
our decision making: We who were adamantly for marriage equality for others,
but absolutely not for ourselves, got married.”
“It’s
now behind us, she finished the radiation two years ago,” says Kate. “Urvashi
told me six months ago she finally feels like her old self. Then two months
after that, I thought, ‘Wow, so do I!’ Many women go through it and I have a
new and knowledgeable respect for the sorority of women who are going through
breast cancer and how they take care of each other.”
Work
helped Clinton get through the darkest days.
“That
hour I was onstage was completely glorious because I knew what I was doing,”
says Clinton.
This
summer at the Crown and Anchor, Kate Clinton fans from across the country greet
Clinton after each show. But the days of signing autographs are mostly gone.
“It’s all different now because everybody does selfies,” Kate says. “The
days when they would just take photos of you were faster, but now they have to
be in the pictures! Young people can do it in a nanosecond, but older fans – Oh
my God!”
Kate
and Urvashi are P-Town regulars and have bumped into many familiar faces this
summer. “The wonderful John Waters flies by on his bike, Michael Cunningham is
in town, and lots of Broadway babies have come to town, like Bernadette
Peters,” says Kate.
Clinton
laughs when I jokingly ask her if gay hoteliers Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass
– widely-derided by the LGBT community for hosting a dinner for anti-gay
Republican Senator Ted Cruz earlier this year – have been spotted in P-Town.
After all, in June, the Sip-n-Twirl gay bar in Fire Island asked Weiderpass to
leave the premises, to the delight of the bar’s other patrons.
“I
was just thinking this morning, wow, how out of it are they that they thought
[hosting Cruz] wouldn’t be slightly offensive,” says Kate. “And their apology
[to the LGBT community] was one of those that managed to say fuck you!”
That
gay life is now widely accepted across North America has a lot to do with
trailblazers like Kate Clinton. She points to “all of the people who took that
step of coming out, then it just became a tipping point.”
But
Clinton helped lead the way. When I ask her what it’s like being a living
legend, Kate laughs, then says, “It’s always about the outfits, isn’t it?”
Then
she adds, “I am so grateful that I have been a part of it, and that it became
what we thought it could be.”
Kate Clinton
headlines her all-new show Hello Katey! A
One Woman Pussy Riot at the Crown and Anchor in Provincetown until Oct. 17. Surf to www.onlyatthecrown.com. Surf to http://kateclinton.com/ for
more Clinton.
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