Scene: A Conversation about Mike Pence
Setting: My bedroom, or any of my other personal spaces in my family’s home that I don’t want permeated by any political discourse.
Time: Minutes after a video of Mike Pence running and clapping enthusiastically to the stage for a rally of Trump supporters. If memory serves me correctly, it was around election day at the end of October. See below.
If you ask most people about the trajectory that comedy took during the Trump era, they’re likely to tell you that it plateaued or totally ceased to exist. Saturday Night Live’s joke writers became virtually nonexistent after adopting the technique of “Remember what Donald Trump or Mike Pence said at an event and then put it into the script verbatim.” When the political landscape of the White House becomes farcical, it becomes difficult to create meaningful satire about the figureheads without giving an exact play-by-play of a major news story of the week. My dad however, revelled in anything that poked fun at Republican politicians.
Personally, I differed, I didn’t think those jokes were funny or structurally sound at all, so I liked to interrogate him and dissect his sense of humor every chance I got in hopes of putting an end to the jokes about “President Cheeto.” I am a little bit of a smart ass with a need to lord an aspect of my intelligence over my lawyer father. You break down the big guys like a stomach enzyme on a piece of bacon. It takes a while to slowly break away parts of it, but by God you feel shitty and greasy once it’s been digested.
My Dad enters my room and stands in the doorway holding his phone so I can see. Twitter is pulled up.
Dad: Did you see the new video of Mike Pence?
Me: No.
Dad: It’s on my phone. It’s pulled up.
He is not going to leave on the basis of my apathy alone. I have to be vicious in trying to maintain privacy.
Dad: Watch the video.
I watch the video.
It’s a video of Mike Pence running and clapping at what is essentially an overinflated high school spirit rally. There’s nothing abnormal about a politician hyping up his crowd before speaking to his supporters about why everyone on the margins of society should be personally electrocuted by him. In a way, it’s smart of him to try to get a clap going because it is difficult to sell a dead crowd on pseudo genocide.
I look at my Dad. I don’t know what to say about the very normal C-SPAN b-roll he just showed me, much less why it’s viral. After a moment, the silence is broken to give purpose to his interrupting my me-time.
Dad: So Mike Pence in that video, huh?
Me: What about it?
Dad: He looks a little bit…
He came to my room to make a joke about Mike Pence being gay. The genre of joke made about homophobic politicians where straight people who don’t agree with their politics just call them gay reached a fever pitch during the Trump era. This was a deeply nuanced issue for myself as an individual of the homosexual persuasion. On the one hand, I was thrilled to have more representation in comedy, but on the other hand the jokes didn’t make much sense structurally. After all, people aren’t calling the CEOs of clothing brands that use sweatshop labor “exploited children” as a punchline.
I also need to butt in and say that my dad is not homophobic. But I imagine that he boils over with rage any time he thinks about the totality of Mike Pence’s political history and since he’s in a position that excludes the coping mechanism of sending anthrax to a notable politician’s home address, he just throws every single brick that he can. Oftentimes they have a not written “haha you’re gay” tied to them.
Me: A little bit what?
Dad: The way that he’s running.
I was offended by this. Not all gay people run light of foot, lisping for breath, limp wrists doing little to break the air in front of them. In fact hardly any of them do. I walked my way through my high school PE requirement. How far can I push this man?
Me: What about it?
Dad: Nevermind, nevermind. But look how “enthusiastic” he looks.
That’s one I haven’t heard before.
I stare at him, daring him to try to clarify the joke. He stares back, hoping that I will laugh and put an end to the standoff he’s stuck in with his gay son. It’s clear that the ball is in my court. Now the scene could end in a few different ways.
Me: Why are you showing this to me?
Dad: I thought you might find it funny.
I was hoping he would say “So you could use your gaydar on him.”
Me: Oh.
Dad: Isn’t it funny?
Me: He’s running.
Pause. I’m not giving an inch.
Dad: In a way that suggests —
Me: Suggests what?
Dad: I’ll go show someone else actually.
I came on far too strong. Need to go for a softer approach. Reset scene.
Me: Enthusiastic how?
Dad pauses.
At this point I think that he’s playing into my hand. He can either dig himself further into the hole of trying to drop hints to lead me to hitting the punchline he so desperately wants to say but can’t for fear of dropping a Stonewall sized bombshell squarely onto my bedroom floor. He can’t just say “Enthusiastic about sucking dick,” no he expected me to say that.
Dad: Well when I saw this video, the first thing I thought was camp counselor…
Well that’s an unexpected choice. Personally, I don’t conflate camp counselors with stereotypical homosexuality. The two are pretty removed from each other, actually. It’s like how a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn’t a square. Sure, a camp counselor could easily lifeguard, or chop wood, or sing campfire songs and not be impeded at all by the fact that he might leave that campfire a little early to go cruise for some men of the woods. But not all camp counselors are inherently gay. In fact, any sleepaway camp movie from the 80s is loaded with overt heterosexual horniness. There should be more gay camp counselors proudly fucking in the Redwood forests of our great wilderness.
I worked as a camp counselor for a few summers and he knew it. Was that a loaded statement directed at me? Maybe in his mind I have the gay Midas touch, everything I touch turns into a campy, queeny, feather boa wearing, brassily feminine, pitchy voiced, sissy walking siren.
I have been silent for a while with truly no idea as to how to proceed with the conversation. After a moment, Dad decides that he needs to rip off the bandaid.
Dad: A conversion camp counselor…
Absolutely not.
Using my powers of perception, I would warrant a guess that conversion camp counselors don’t use that environment for speed dating the other men there in some weird long con to seek out the most possible internalized homophobia you could cram into one relationship.
Reset scene. I make direct eye contact with my dad and narrow my eyes as threateningly as possible. Sometimes actors like to use animal movements to inform their performance. In this moment I am a giant python about to slowly suffocate a helpless little creature from the rainforest ground floor. After the initial shock of being grabbed, the small animal has no choice but to feel the life drained out of it, as in the following scene.
Me: Enthusiastic about what Dad? Sucking dick? Taking it up the ass from other men?
Dad: Well, yes. In a less pejorative sense. Doesn’t he look gay doing skipping over to that crowd?
Me: Probably salivating over all of the bulges he can make out in the crowd.
This leads to a moment of free improvisation for the actors. The dialogue continues to snowball about Mike Pence’s depraved sex acts with other men until the reality of his homophobic policy is lost on the audience. They are enraptured with the world being created by the actors. After a moment…
Dad: I am so glad you also find this funny. He’s so gay!
Me: Yeah dad, he definitely looks like a FAGGOT.
My dad is practically catatonic after the neural overload he experienced in this moment. Should he be excited that someone called someone he didn’t like a faggot? A gay person, no less? Or should he try to support his gay son by expressing his distain of that slur being thrown around? Even if that means admitting that gay jokes about Mike Pence are homophobic and unfunny. A very difficult choice
Dad is silent. I look at him expectantly. He takes stock of the items within my arm’s length. Suggested props: a cell phone to call the ACLU with, some hefty, throwable shoes, a baseball bat (I slept with a baseball bat next to me after I watched the Scream series too young). And who knows what else the room might be hiding? It’s not his home turf.
This is not a hill worth dying on today. He leaves my bedroom, and I can be gay in peace again. Lights fade to black.
End of scene.
