By Tardsie

You Wouldn’t Normally Expect To See A Lot Of Gay People At An Erasure Show, But Life Is Stranger Than Fiction Sometimes.

Several years ago I was at an Erasure concert in Southern California. After the opening act, a painfully unfunny set by comedienne Margaret Cho which mainly consisted of mocking her immigrant mother’s English¹, I headed to the bathroom before Erasure took the stage.

“It Not Racism. It Edgy Comedy. Me So Funny!”

Unusual for a guy’s restroom, the toilets were abuzz with conversation. The topic was Margaret Cho.

“I didn’t think she was very funny,” somebody said.

“Give her a break,” somebody else said. “She was all right.”

Then one guy asked, “Didn’t she used to have a really big crystal meth problem?”

To which a disembodied voice replied from the depths of one of the stalls, “Oh, honey–didn’t we all?”

I’ve Been *Mostly* Successful In Avoiding These Activities.

¹Don’t get me wrong, folks–I enjoy making fun of non-English speaking people as much as the next guy–and probably a whole lot more–but there seemed no point to this, no examination of cultural differences, no clever interplay on Old-World vs. New-World customs, just “my mom is such a dumb foreigner.” ∞ T.