Coming out wasn’t fun till I discovered Bob Smith.

Then it was hil-fucking-larious.

Smith was a trailblazer in LGBTQ comedy. He was the first out gay man to perform stand-up on The Tonight Show, and the first to get an HBO special.¹

Making history is impressive. Making people laugh their asses off while you’re doing it is even more so.²

One of my favorite jokes:

It wasn’t easy telling my family that I’m gay. I made my carefully worded announcement at Thanksgiving. It was very Norman Rockwell. I said, “Mom, would you please pass the gravy to a homosexual?” She passed it to my father. A terrible scene followed.

Bob Smith

A Good Laugh

I can’t remember how I found Smith—it was either the HBO special or his book of essays, Openly Bob—but it was a revelation.³

He never made being gay the punchline. His humor came from his anecdotes about and observations as a gay man trying to navigate life, just like anyone else.

Some clips:

Remembering Bob

Smith died of ALS in 2018. He continued performing and writing for as long as he could; his last book, Treehab, was published in 2016.

S. Chris Shirley, author of Playing By the Book and former president of Lambda Literary,⁵ told me this:

What I remember most is his sheer zest for life.

I met him after his ALS diagnosis, when our writing group still met weekly. Despite everything, Bob was the most optimistic among us—always laughing, always trying out new material.

He published two more books during that time, taped his Metrocard to his hand when he could no longer fish it out of his wallet, and just kept going.

Bob didn’t just break barriers. He showed us how to live with joy, defiance, and style. And through it all, he remained hilarious.

S. Chris Shirley

All Joking Aside

Smith came into my life at the moment I needed him the most. I had just come out to a world that laughed at LGBTQ people, but he showed that there were also people who wanted to laugh with us.

Thanks for helping me laugh out loud, Bob.

This post is part of my Gayskool project.

Footnotes

1. I’m singling out Smith for today’s Gayskool post, but he certainly wasn’t the only out LGBTQ comedian making a mark with mainstream audiences at that time. His contemporaries included Scott Thompson, Lea DeLaria, Sandra Bernhardt, Judy Gold, Margaret Cho, and Suzanne Westenhoefer (who we’ll look at in an upcoming footnote). ↩︎
2. Remember, this was in the late ’90s, not long after Congress slammed the door on marriage equality, the military said we couldn’t ask nor tell, and Newt Gingrich compared homosexuality to alcoholism. Ah, the good ol’ days! ↩︎
3. There’s a chapter in Openly Bob about the challenges of coming up with a name for the book. I can relate. I went through about 20 titles for this blog post before settling on the one above. Some of the rejects became subheads. Others, like “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way From the Bookstore” and “Mr. Smith Goes to the Comedy Club,” are so embarrassing that I already regret sharing them. ↩︎
4. Westenhoeffer is as much a trailblazer as Smith. She was the first out lesbian with an HBO special, and the first to perform on Late Night With David Letterman. Hmmm, I’m getting an idea for a future Gayskool post! ↩︎
5. And my brother-in-law. ↩︎