A little over a month ago, we had the pleasure of seeing out comedian Mimi Gonzalez performing at a straight comedy club in Virginia. Her show was both raucous and educational.
Case in point: By the late show Saturday, she had attracted enough of a lesbian and female servicemember audience that she gave an impromptu seminar mid-show on the virtues of a pStyle (a device that allows women and trans men to pee standing up without undressing), which, by the way, she sells at her shows.
Offstage, she was every bit as funny as she was onstage. We left hoping she would be coming the area soon.
Lo and behold, we were delighted to find out that Gonzalez — who has appeared on Logo’s “One Night Stand Up,” “The Today Show” and “Ellen” and has performed for the U.S. armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Japan — is performing May 17 at Girls Night Out at Havana, as part of New Hope Celebrates.
Gonzalez said she has visited New Hope before and was looking forward to returning.
“I had a vacation in New Hope and that was a few years ago when I lived in New York and was seeing somebody that knew about New Hope,” she said. “They said, ‘Let’s go vacation in this little town that has once again been taken over by gay people and transformed into a destination.’ Considering the fact that Pennsylvania is known for its Amish and its clansmen, I was kind of surprised to see this cute little gay town, but not that surprised considering how many cities that little quaint gay town serves within a 100-mile radius. Can you imagine just how far the rainbow stretches? I’ve certainly driven through enough small towns in America that are forgotten and neglected, and that is one that people said, ‘Hey, there are some cute houses and businesses here.’ I have no idea what that town looked like 15 or 20 years ago, but I’m willing to say it was a lot quieter and possibly forgotten. Now it’s got really cute shops and great nightlife. What usually follows once queers take over an area and create a ‘gayborhood’ is families start coming. Straight families are not really afraid of gay people. It’s like, ‘This would be a great place to raise our kids.’ I think that’s really what we do.”
Gonzalez added that often the urban and suburban renewal fueled by the LGBT community works a little too well.
“Unfortunately, we’re so good at what we do that we end up pricing ourselves out of the market,” she said. “In Manhattan, they have been trying to rename Hell’s Kitchen to Clinton. When I moved to New York in the 1980s, you could live in Hell’s Kitchen for $700 a month. Now, you can live in Hell’s Kitchen for $2,000-$3,000 a month. I really think we should get a tax break for being gay, seeing as we do so much to refurbish anything we touch. Gay isn’t the new black. It’s the new Midas.”
Gonzalez performs at both gay and straight clubs and for mixed audiences in her extensive travels.
But, she did promise that the New Hope show will be of a gayer variety than the performance straight audiences usually get.
“There are things in my material that cross over to everybody,” she said. “But I’m definitely going to do a lot more gay material. I rarely show the pStyle to straight people, even though straight women and military women can use this. But I have definitely in the last year been demonstrating it and sharing it during my gay show because queer people can really accept and understand this. A lot of straight women can use the pStyle but are afraid to offend their boyfriends or husbands who might … as one older man who said to me in Provincetown last year: ‘If she gets that, we’ll have nothing to hold over you anymore.’ And I really love that this man said it because he really voiced what is an unspoken thing. If women stand to pee, then they are not down and squatting anymore. What would men have left? Now is the time to look eye-to-eye about equality, dude.”
Gonzalez noted she has more of a lesbian following than a gay-male following compared to some of her comedy peers, but she is looking to attract more gay men to her shows.
“I think it’s time for a female who is really gay to get in that mix,” she said. “I’m really queer-identified. I came out of the politics of San Francisco in the late 1980s, which is an activist political orientation driven toward inclusion and, while the trans issue may not be my personal issue, it’s still an issue about inclusion and I understand that politic and try to embrace everybody in my act. Does anybody in a straight show give a shit about trans inclusion? No. It’s not their topic. So I try to stay on topic and make my people laugh. It’s a good time for everybody, boys and girls. Having a gay sibling, a gay brother … I really think of all gay men as my brothers.”
If you can’t make it to New Hope for the Pride celebration, do not despair.
Gonzalez will probably be back in the area soon with “Lezborados,” a comedy show put together with fellow out comedian Sandra Valls.
“‘Lesborados’ is putting together our Northeast tour,” Gonzalez said. “Our Southwest tour was amazing and hysterical and really well-attended. Sandra Valls is my occasional comedy partner. We’re both obviously solo standup comics. She’s been on HBO and Showtime. I love working with Sandra because we bring Latin, butch and dyke lesbian sensibilities to our shows. She’s a great singer. I am not. But we love to write parodies and we do some singing, some improv, standup and audience inclusion in our show. It’s a blast of a romp. We’re getting a lot of attention from it.”
Mimi Gonzalez performs 8 p.m. May 17 as part of Girls Night Out at Havana, 105 S. Main St., New Hope. For more information or tickets, visit www.mimigonzalez.com or call 215-862-5501.