The On Our Backs Interview by Suzanne Corson

Photography by David Rodgers

Kate Clinton is funny and has been for a long time. This year marks her twenty-fifth anniversary as a “fumerist”—or, a feminist humorist—and to celebrate, she’s hitting the road with her It’s Come to This tour, sponsored by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Advocate, PlanetOut, and Air America Radio.
       For the past quarter of a century, she’s made people laugh about subjects that also can make them squirm—sex, lesbians, menstruation, menopause, feminists—in comedy clubs, concert halls, and women’s festivals. She’s emceed pride events and benefits like the annual NCLR gala. And she’s been on TV. She hosts In the Life, has appeared as a guest on numerous talk shows and news programs, worked behind the scenes as a writer for Rosie O’Donnell’s talk show, and most recently she acted in the third season premiere of The L Word. She’s also performed on Broadway in The Rocky Horror Show and The Vagina Monologues; written two books, Don’t Get Me Started and the recent What the L?; recorded several CDs; and was one of the featured dyke comedians in Andrea Meyerson’s film Laughing Matters. Kate spoke with On Our Backs about her career, comedy, censorship, and sex.

On Our Backs: Congratulations on your twenty-fifth anniversary tour. How wonderful to have great sponsors, like the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Kate Clinton: Thank you. Yes, they’re a natural fit for this tour. It’s nice to be sponsored by a group who uses “lesbian” in their title. Many people aren’t ready to move on to “queer” yet. They’re still getting used to “lesbian”—sometimes it sounds like they’re going to spit when they say it. OOB: In your book What the L?, you talk about seeing the very first episode of The L Word, saying that you thought its heat potential would result in savings on your home heating bill. Has it lived up to your expectations? KC: Oh, yes. It has also proved to me how much my mother reappears in me. When watching The L Word, I sometimes look away from the screen. That’s definitely an indication of how hot the sex scenes are. I’m terrified that they’re going to get caught! Definitely a visceral reaction.

Bring Kate Home With You Books Don't Get Me Started What the L? DVD Laughing Matters Audio Collections Babes in Joyland Comedy You Can    Dance To Kate Clinton Live at the    Great American Music    Hall The Marrying Kind Read These Lips Website www.kateclinton.com

OOB: Tell us about your appearance on the show as a sex therapist in the third season premiere.
KC: For those who haven’t seen it yet, I just want to caution you that I come from the Keanu Reeves school of acting; there’s lots of nostril flaring.

OOB: Are there plans to bring your character back?
KC: Not at this time, but I would like to appear as an Irish Catholic dope dealer to Mary Louise Parker on Weeds.

OOB: Growing up as a Catholic girl, how did you learn about sex? Any crushes on nuns, or is that too cliché?
KC: When I was in high school, there was this gorgeous second grade teacher at our school, and she had a whole group of girls following around her. She was so cool. She was a surfer, looked like Julie Andrews, and each accidental brush of her arm against ours was quite a moment.
      You know, sex with recovering Catholics is much hotter because it’s so dirty. My mom taught me two things: sex is dirty, and you should save it for someone you love. I do have a lot of sadness about the fact that Catholics hammer sexuality and sensuality out of people.

OOB: Well, I suspect your shows are a great antidote for that.
KC: In Lexington, Kentucky, a woman in her late twenties came up to me in a restaurant after a show, banged me on the back, and said, “You made me want to fuck again.”

OOB: You’ve been appearing on Olivia cruises too.
KC: Doing the cruises is such a great pleasure. But one time I was in a room, and there was this couple next door—Lord love a duck! Can’t you take a break? Some of us are trying to get some sleep!
      On cruises, there’s a day life and there’s a night life. The daytime people go bird watching, eat a sensible breakfast, do exercises, go to lectures, and then they go lie in the sun. There they see the nighttime people, trashed, still there from the night before.

OOB: Any special Olivia memories you can share with us?
KC: On one Alaskan cruise, I was hijacked by a posse of twenty-year-old lesbians from San Francisco who wouldn’t let me go to bed. They were so hot! Dancing around me, they were like Slinkys going up and down my leg. Ahhh… Very hot.

OOB: Sales for What the L? have been hot, too. Congratulations on its fourth printing. Could you speak a bit about “cherished hilarious moments of women laughing together as coming from the same source as the erotic” from that afterword?
KC: There are moments in my show, like when I do the old menstrual standards, that the sound of women laughing is like the sound of women coming, all together, at the same time— there’s roaring, rocking, soft moans afterward, and if you’re lucky, your face hurts.
      It’s true that you can tell how loud a woman orgasms by how she laughs. When I hear a woman with a great big belly laugh, I think, “Um, hum…”

OOB: Do you have any tips for people who don’t seem to have a sense of humor about sex? Laughter in bed can be so fun, but some women are just so serious!
KC: They act is if the mood is going to be ruined if you laugh. I think it’s a holdover from sex with a guy, when you’d worry that if you laugh, his erection would disappear. Well, we don’t have to worry about that.
      You need to let moments of laughter and light into bed—if there’s no room for that, maybe you shouldn’t be there. Melt. Let yourself get silly.
      One time Urvashi (Ed: Urvashi Vaid, Kate’s partner since 1988) put on some Carole King, and it was the wrong music for sex. It’s lovely, of course, but all I wanted to do was sing along! We got hysterical about it.

OOB: You and Urvashi are one of our country’s lesbian power couples. Is a vital sex life important to your power quotient?
KC: Absolutely. You know, she’s really hot.
      Our biggest problem is scheduling. She works weekdays; I work weekends. She works days; I work nights. So we deal with that and still try to be spontaneous, too.
      It’s important to have a willingness to talk about it and figure it out. It’s important not to take the situational stuff and treat it like a character flaw. One night she said, “I’m feeling some distance,” and I answered, “Well, I’m in San Francisco, and you’re in New York.” Sometimes there really is distance to deal with, but it’s situational.
      The brain is very sexy to me. I live with a conspiracy theorist. Every click on the phone, Urvashi thinks it’s John Ashcroft, and that excites her.
      We do make dates with each other, with varying degrees of success. Recently we went to see Patti Smith at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; she was performing the whole Horses album for its thirtieth anniversary. Urvashi has been a huge Patti Smith fan forever—she’s a bona fide groupie, knows everything about all the songs and the albums. Anyway, this anniversary concert was a major orgasmic experience for the entire audience. Afterward, I was saying, “God, I’d love a cigarette,” and I don’t smoke! Exciting events like that can be quite inspirational for a couple.

OOB: In one of your routines, you mention using On Our Backs as a way to do the opposite of de-dykeing an apartment. Do you read On Our Backs?
KC: We do. I come from an old feminist household. And we do leave it out.

OOB: Over these past twenty-five years, have you experienced a backlash about identifying yourself as a feminist?
KC: Interestingly, identifying myself as a feminist humorist was a bizarre entrée to media attention. It was a great gimmick. Who knew? Mainstream radio stations would have me on and be curious about what that means, so I did lots of radio interviews. One guy asked me, “Feminist and humor, isn’t that an oxymoron?” and I said, “You’re half right.” But my favorite was a seven a.m. interview with a clueless guy who said, “I really love your music,” and I replied, “You hear it too?”

OOB: What about from your audiences?
KC: In Ottawa, a woman came up to me after a show and said, “I heard you were a feminist comedian. I had to come hear you and make sure you weren’t going to make fun of us.”
      “How’d I do?”
      “Funny.”

OOB: How did you come up with the term “fumerist?”
KC: Back in the beginning, in the time before word processing and spell check—yes, girls, it’s true; there was such a time—it was a typo. I ran the two words together, and I really liked how it looked. At that point, I was heavily influenced by Mary Daly, who was always re-creating words. So it made sense to me.

OOB: Have you been affected by censorship in your act either by promoters, venues, or self-censorship?
KC: My second album, Making Waves, was banned in Texas. I’m darned proud of that. When I feel self-censorship coming on, I call it my triple Salchow moment, like in ice skating: (in a heavy stage whisper ) “She’s about to do the triple Salchow.” When I feel that, I know I have to be careful and just go through it.
      One time when I was doing a show in my hometown of Buffalo, my Uncle Harold and Aunt Marge read an announcement about the event and came to the show. I got up onstage and saw them out there, surrounded by lesbians. But I did my set as usual. Afterward, the only thing my uncle said was, “I’m ninety, you know.”
      I do quite a few shows with mixed gay/straight crowds. You know how theaters have a subscription series: for example, there will be the Kronos Quartet one week, the Flying Karamazov brothers the next, and then me. Well, you get these lovely white-haired ladies in their turquoise vests as ushers and fabulous mixed crowds. So what I do is say at the beginning, “If I say anything you don’t understand, come up to me in the lobby afterward and ask me.” And they do: “Can you tell me more about the cinnamon dildo?”

OOB: Is the censorship you’ve encountered more about political content or sexual?
KC: It’s changed over the years. I remember being in Palm Beach, Florida, in December 2000, after that election—actually it wasn’t really over yet at that point. I noticed that when I did political material, the audience was very quiet, but when I switched to the sexual stuff, the audience relaxed and laughed hilariously.
      There’s been a general clamping down over the last five years, after 9/11 and the war. People seemed so uptight at first, but they’re loosening up now. That time after 9/11 felt familiar, almost like being in a closet, but instead of sex, it was a peace closet. I was on a plane and the guy sitting next to me was saying, “You know, we need to go in there with our F-14’s and get them,” and I responded with “I’m for peace.” It really is like coming out all over again, making the decision to come out for peace to a random stranger on a plane.
      Lesbians and gays are good ones to lead the way out of the closet for peace, since we’re used to coming out.