Suzanne Westenhoefer,

brought her  “Fearless, Bold, Unapologetic—and Freaking Hilarious"

show in her return visit to Cherry Grove some 30 years later.

 

"Why are gay resorts, like Provincetown and Fire Island, are so hard to get to?"

 

That she is not scripted is evident as she is lightly grasshoppers from topic to topic occasionally pausing to regain her footage  with miraculously few miss steps and only a few repetitions as would be expected from this veteran advocate of ACT-UP, Queer Nation, Lesbian Avengers, and many fundraisers . She was one of the first openly lesbian comedians on Letterman and the first openly lesbian comedian to have an HBO special - 

 

Her complaint these days, after all their work, to young lesbians “Can’t you just suffer a little?”

 

She worked with and admired Joan Rivers—“She was a wonderful person", who taught her that greeting the fans, signing autographs, and posing for pictures was as much part of her job as performing onstage.

 

 

Amused by how universally Gay Pride is celebrated, enthusiastically by young 20 something's  then less and less as the decades mount 'till  at 50 Gay Pride is simply not as exciting "we have to parade again?!!"

(Suzanne has been 50 for 8 years).

 

As age "creeps up" her increasingly frequent loss of "one syllable words" finds her doing charades to communicate them.

 

Ever the innovator,  she is not fond of easy terms to describe lesbians. She prefers the term "Sodomites" which is "harder for  the Right to usurp".

 

Her resentment of cell phones - "You cant slam a phone down anymore".

 

Noticing the gays in the audience  she remarks on similarities between gays and lesbians - "Absolutely nothing" - as illustrated by her lesbian cruise experiences on which she has performed.

 

Gay men will arrive with tons of luggage, lesbians are more likely to share a duffel bag; lesbians will line up 6AM for excursions like hiking and climbing aware of the need to return to the ship before 2 o’clock bingo; their gay counterparts seldom peek out from beneath their sleep masks before noon often deciding it’s not worth the effort.

 

Though her family was supportive of her they were surprisingly myopic about her sister though all the lesbian signs were there (she never dated, played basketball). "So we were 2 dykes and a virgin Christian".

 

She will fearlessly jump into the alphabet soup that specifies “the letters”—first an L added to the G, and then BT, but more recently, confusingly, a Q or two, I, A, "it’s too much!"

meticulously evaluating each additional letter before she rebels against any letter that implies indecision - like Asexual!

 

Diminutive in stature but broad in scope, this unique evening was worth the trip (even if she arrived on a primitive cart).