“When people think security doorman at a club, they probably don’t think comedian with Tourette’s,” laughed Louis Centanni.
But Centanni embraces all of those titles.
The doorman gig is relatively new for the 31-year-old South Jersey native — he started working at ICandy in the Gayborhood in June — but he’s been doing stand-up comedy nearly half his life.
Centanni said he got in touch with his comedic prowess after childhood challenges, primarily stemming from his diagnosis with Tourette’s Syndrome at age 7.
“My mom told me she first noticed it when I was 5 or 6 and she was giving me a bath,” Centanni said. “I was making these grunting sounds, like clearing of the throat, and once I kept doing it, my mom and dad got concerned and took me to get checked out.”
Centanni said between 700,000 and 1-million people worldwide suffer from the neurological disorder.
“It mainly causes involuntary movements, physical tics, eye twitching, facial tics, neck jerking, arm flailing,” he explained. Many people incorrectly associate Tourette’s solely with involuntary cursing — coprolalia — though that aspect only affects about 10 percent of TS sufferers.
“With me, most of my vocal tics are more like grunts and sounds,” Centanni said. “There are good days and bad days. Tourette’s is an unpredictable disorder, and there’s no cure for it.”
Centanni was tried on a number of different medications a child, though they did little to alleviate the disorder and caused him to gain an extreme amount of weight.
“I was obese my whole childhood; I graduated high school at 320 pounds. And I was still suffering from TS. So I wasn’t just the kid with Tourette’s, now I was the fat kid with Tourette’s.”
Centanni said the bullying he faced helped him develop his quick wit, before he parlayed it into a career.
“I’m blessed humor has always been my number-one shield,” he said. “I believe God gave me a gift, and I’d be stupid not to use it.”
He got involved with community theater as a preteen, signed with his first agent at 14 and landed his first TV job in a music video at 15. He appeared on MTV’s “True Life” series that focused on living with TS and also on Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton’s “The Simple Life.”
After high school, Centanni broke into the stand-up comedy scene and has gone on to work with “Saturday Night Live” alum Colin Quinn and appear on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” He adopted the moniker “Twitchels” and became a regular on radio programs “Opie and Anthony” and “Preston & Steve.”
It was on the latter show last year that Centanni came out publicly. He came out to his family as a teen but had stayed closeted in his burgeoning comedy career.
“The ‘Preston & Steve’ show was about two weeks before I was doing another MTV special. So I told Preston and Steve, ‘Yes, I’m gay and I’m proud of it,’ and two weeks later the whole country knew. I was tired of hiding it. I’d do a show with MTV and they’d want to see me on a date so I’d call up a girlfriend and have to pretend. I just didn’t want to lie to myself and to everyone else anymore.”
Centanni sought to get more involved in the LGBT community this summer, prompted by the mass shooting at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando. He contacted ICandy and was hired for the front-door security position.
“I really wanted to work in the community after Orlando. I feel like, with me coming out last year, this is just a perfect fit for me right now. Immersing myself in the community is helping me come into my own and that’s why this show is so special to me,” Centanni said about his Sept. 28 comedy show at ICandy.
Hosted by Roxi Starr, the show also will feature comedian “Rev.” Bob Levy. The doors open at 9 p.m. and there will be drink specials and buy-one, get-one appetizers. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at http://icandycomedy.brownpapertickets.com. Centanni will preview his ICandy show during a “Preston & Steve” appearance around 9 a.m. Sept. 26 on 93.3 WMMR.
This is ICandy’s fitst venture into the comedy scene, Centanni said, and in a sense, it’s his own coming-out show.
“ICandy has become like a second home to me,” he said. “I’ve been preaching this message my whole life — I wrote a children’s book about it, I speak all over the country at colleges and high schools — about how you have to pursue your life without letting your disorder get in the way and you have to completely accept yourself. So I’m excited I get to do this at a place like ICandy, where they’ve really accepted me completely.”
Centanni’s stand-up centers on living with TS, but it’s a message that is both educational and relatable, he said.
“I pride myself on my self-deprecating humor. I make fun of myself but at the same time, I’m spreading awareness. You not only have a great time, you learn something. I’ve had many people come up to me after a show who tell me they didn’t know this or didn’t know that about Tourette’s. One compliment I’m most proud of is when people say it’s inspiring to see me not let a disorder like this get in the way of what I want to do. We all have our quirks and struggles but my philosophy is you have to embrace those struggles and just put it all out there. Life will be a lot easier that way.”