Can laughter heal this country? Can it make us forget a senseless war for a moment or two? Can it help us forgive those who spew hatred at the gay community and beyond from church and political pulpits?
Maybe. Let me tell you my story.
I came out at the pathetic age of 35. I had been married for nine and a half years, had two young daughters and a successful writing career. But this Texas boy, this Southern Baptist preacher's kid was harboring a very big secret. I was gay.
Writing my fourth play, Sordid Lives was my own brand of therapy. I was fearless. I mean, after you come out to your controlling Texas mama, your Southern Baptist preacher daddy and Southern Baptist preacher brother, all else pales in comparison. I made a decision. I was going to write about my personal journey and expose how I got to this place. An actor friend of mine, William Edward Phipps, had once shared with me the following quote. He didn't know the source, but I wrote it down and taped it on my office wall where it lived, where it called to me daily -- "To be understood is to be exposed." So for the first time in my life, I wrote uncensored, not caring what my family would think, exposing who I really was, while striving to write the funniest play I had written to date. I would finally tell my truth and my pain, and I would do it through humor.
I remember watching the previews in the back of the tiny 64 seat theatre in Hollywood. I heard the laughter, I saw the tears and I watched the audiences stand and applaud at the end of each performance. At the time, I didn't realize it, but I had given myself a gift. The self loathing started to evaporate and I began to love the gay part of me because the audiences loved me, exposed and uncensored. I had put a face on gay and they loved me -- just as I am.
The play ran thirteen months, won a bunch of awards and I started stewing about making an independent film based on the play. The deal was sealed when a man approached me at Bookstar in Studio City and told me that my story was his story. I had heard it before, but he went further. He said that at the age of 44 that my play had inspired him to go home to Oklahoma and tell his Southern Baptist family that he was gay. He felt that if I could share my story with so much humor, that exposing this part of himself to his family wouldn't be so bad. He challenged me that day -- "Your play changed my life. You have to make the movie. The laughter will heal so many people... like it healed me and my family."
The movie was released in 2001, the DVD in 2003 and Sordid Lives became a cult phenomenon in the gay community and beyond. I can't go into any gay neighborhood without hearing one of my lines being quoted, followed by an eruption of laughter. Laughter that is genuine, deep and yes, possibly healing. I get letters every week from gay men and women who tell me they came out to their families by using Sordid Lives as the tool to do so. Why? Because of the humor. Because of the laughter. Because every family seems to identify with my crazy dysfunctional characters.
In the past eight years, President Bush has not given us very many reasons to laugh. Okay, well, most of us have enjoyed a laugh or two at his expense, mostly because of his dumb-ass, ignorant rhetoric. But laughing at him is rare these days as we focus on his senseless war, gas prices that are obscene and Bush inspired constitutional amendments that are unconstitutional. This president, the worst in the history of the United States, has single handedly made the U.S. the most hated country in the world -- when we were once the most loved.
So, we need to laugh, folks. Now more than in 1996 when my play came out, when Clinton was in office. More than when my movie was released in 2001 when Bush had just taken office. And that's one of the reasons I had to continue the saga of the Ingram clan by creating a television show -- "Sordid Lives: The Series," which premieres Wednesday, July 23 at 10:00PM on Logo, the LGBT cable channel from MTV Networks. I wanted a show that was for everybody -- gay and straight -- that would give us a reason to forget the outside world for thirty minutes a week and perhaps -- without sounding grand -- would start some healing.
Healing through laughter.