- [Announcer] Dan Savage!
(audience cheering)
- Thanks.
When I was a kid and I was a little kid
and I was, like, 12, 13 years old
and I was realizing that,
there was something different about me,
and my dad was a Chicago homicide cop 20 years.
And he liked to watch shows with cops in them
to just to point out everything they got wrong.
(audience laughing)
And we would watch Barney Miller,
which was a particular favorite of his.
And there was a gay recurring character in Barney Miller,
who's this incredibly swishy guy with a poodle.
(audience laughing)
And I was sort of tormented by that guy, when I was a kid,
'cause my father thought he was hysterical.
And then there was this movie, we watched once
where it was about all these cops and they like, got drunk,
and they took one of them to the park
and handcuffed his hands around a tree
and pulled his pants down and left him there.
And a minute later, a gay guy came walking down the lane
in the park in the night with a poodle.
(audience laughing)
And looked at the poodle and said,
"Well, it's our lucky day."
(audience laughing)
And I actually, maybe it's a tricky memory,
I think it was the same actor and the same poodle.
(audience laughing)
But it couldn't be.
And I resolved that when I was a little kid
before I came out to my folks
that I wasn't going to be that kind of gay guy.
I wasn't going to be the kind of gay guy in lavender trousers
with a poodle in the cruisy park in the middle of the night,
looking for cops handcuffed to trees.
(audience laughing)
And then 30 years went by and I was 33 years old.
And I had this great boyfriend,
who I love very much is very swishy,
because I like swishy guys.
(audience laughing)
But I need to say this for
you do this thing when you're young and gay,
where everyone in your life hates gay people.
When I was 13, I'm 42. I was 13 a long time ago.
And there wasn't a lot of gay role models out there.
And so you do this weird thing that
I don't know if gay kids do today we go
I'm going to be a different kind of gay person.
I'm not going to be that gay person
that my family and friends all complain about all the time.
the swishy weirdo gay people
I'm going to be one of those normal gay people.
They'll like me when I'm gay.
(audience laughing)
So I won't be a poodle walking dress wearing
sucking dick by the railroad tracks kind of fag.
I'm going to be a new kind of fag without the poodle.
(audience laughing)
And without the park and the lavender trousers.
So anyway, 30 years go by and I have this boyfriend
and we we have a baby.
We have this kid and then suddenly he's four years old.
And he wants a dog.
(audience laughing)
And he has a friend who lives down the street
from us who has a dog.
And his friend's dog is a toy poodle.
(audience laughing)
So he goes to Santa at Nordstrom's
(audience laughing)
which is a very gay lifestyle sort of thing to do.
(audience laughing)
He goes to see Santa and sits on his lap
and tell Santa that he wants a chocolate toy poodle
(audience laughing)
for Christmas.
And I have a heart attack for two reasons.
One, I never wanted to be the kind of gay guy
who owned a poodle.
And two, he was like, he didn't realize it at four.
But really it was like,
cross enough to bear having fagged parents.
You don't want a poodle too.
(audience laughing)
And he wouldn't understand that for a few years.
But eventually he'd be angry at us
for letting him on impulse get a poodle.
(audience laughing)
And I'm looking at my boyfriend going.
We can't get him
and we got to get him like a Doberman pincher or something
(audience laughing)
if we're going to get them a dog at all.
We do a poodle
we might as well send him to school in a pinafore
and Mary Janes with a sign that says "kick me" on his back.
(audience laughing)
"These are my gay dads and my poodle."
(audience laughing)
And so we got a goddamn poodle.
(audience laughing)
And there's one crisis was averted
Christmas morning the poodle jumps out of the box
he turns inside out
he's so happy because he has a poodle like Carson
who's heterosexual parents are poodle breeders.
(audience laughing)
Which sounds filthy, doesn't it?
(audience laughing)
Sounds like something that happened in En club
if we had to outlaw.
(audience laughing)
Here comes Pam Roach
to take care of the poodle breeder problem.
(audience laughing)
So we get into poodle jumps out
we did reading this Maurice Sendak's story
about a little boy named Pierre who just doesn't care.
And he loved that story.
So he said I'm going to name the poodle Pierre.
(audience laughing)
And I had my second stroke of the morning
was like, and we like actually averted that.
So he named the poodle Stinker.
(audience laughing)
He's a chocolate brown toy poodle named Stinker.
(audience laughing)
And he's a little straight kid,
my parents knew when I was like three or four
that something was up, they didn't know what it was,
I know that something's up it's heterosexuality, that's up
with our kid.
So, the poodle was fine, it works out whatever my deal is,
I don't walk it, I don't touch it.
(audience laughing)
I was asthmatic all my life,
a dog would get near me and I'd end up in the hospital
back when they had inhalers.
You'd develop this aversion to like
things that make you really, really sick when you're a kid.
And so I didn't want anything to do with the dog
I don't want to touch it.
I don't want to be licked by dogs like like dog germs.
I'm Lucy from Peanuts, get it away from me.
And then one day, I'm at work and I get a call.
We're in a meeting rising meetings.
And the receptionist pulls me out of the meeting,
because my boyfriend's on the phone and he's hysterical
like, how is this a different phone call from my boyfriend.
(audience laughing)
And I rushed to the phone.
And he's sobbing, which is different.
And he can't get it out. There's been an accident.
Something is hurt, and at the hospital,
and I think oh my God, what happened to the kid?
He's like, "No, it's the poodle."
(audience laughing)
And I thought, and I said, "Oh, it's just the dog?"
(audience laughing)
Which you don't say to like,
gay guy, like my boyfriend about his poodle.
The dog was sort of his too.
And so what happened, he'd been driving along
and the window was cracked, and the dog
who was a toy chocolate poodle,
and they have very tiny brains,
stuck his head out the window,
and then his chest out the window,
and then his front legs out the window.
And then he fell out of the car.
(audience laughing)
And landed on his little poodle skull.
(audience laughing)
And his eye popped out.
(audience laughing)
And there were no Kennedys' around to take the sting off.
(audience laughing)
But it didn't sink because it was attached
by the optical nerve.
(audience laughing)
And it's bleeding out of its ears.
And my boyfriend jumps out of the car
by the side of the road and is hysterical.
And then a van pulls up with three hippie chicks in it.
And they see this hysterical fag holding a bleeding poodle
by the side of the road, sobbing
and they throw him in their van and drive off to the vet,
with our car sitting by the side of the road
with the keys in it, running
and they get him to the vet he calls at the vet.
He's hysterical. And he's hysterical.
And the hippie chicks
God bless them wherever they are today.
They take him home, they offer to get him high.
They go get the car, they bring your car to the house.
He doesn't get high, unfortunately.
And I call, "I'm going to come home.
I'm coming home. I'm coming home, you're hysterical.
I'm coming home." And we lived on Vashon Island at the time.
So coming home from the stranger
was like a two hour ordeal right
to get to West Seattle on the bus
and wait for the ferry and walk up the hill.
And so I called the vet.
And I say to the vet, "How's the dog?"
to the receptionist I'm calling about Stinker
the grievously injured chocolatey poodle.
(audience laughing)
And she says, and then the receptionist says,
"Are you a member of the family?"
(audience laughing)
I was like I said, "What do you mean?"
"What's your relationship to Mr. Hecker,
we can only release information to spouses."
(audience laughing)
And I thought we knew at some point as a couple,
we'd encounter discrimination.
I didn't think
it would be during our poodle's medical crisis.
(audience laughing)
Like you think they just cut you a fucking break
on the injured poodle, like
(audience laughing)
Do that many straight couples have poodles,
much less injured poodles?
And who calls the vet
trying to find out secret confidential medical information
(audience laughing)
about animals that aren't theirs.
And I blew up with this woman
'cause I can I can blow up and people I blow up,
It's like "It's my goddamn dog too I paid
for the fucking dog." (audience laughing)
It's a poodle. I don't put out a press release.
I don't care who you tell.
And they wouldn't tell me anything
about the condition of the dog.
And my boyfriend is literally hysterical,
afraid the dog is going to die
that Santa just brought for our son,
whose then going to hate him forever
for letting the dog fall out of the car.
And he's hysterical.
And I'm an hour and a half away from being home
and said, "Look, just don't call him.
If the dog dies. Don't call him until I call you."
And say I'm there so you can hang himself before I'm there.
Because if he's going to hang himself, I want to watch.
(audience laughing)
And then cut him down because I'm a nice guy.
And so I get home and the dog lived
and I don't like the dog,
but we have to go get the dog
and get the dog to an animal hospital
off the island where you can spend the night
and they can try to pop his eye back in
and save him because he's really really, really, really,
really in a bad way and we go to pick up the dog
and I don't like dogs
and I've literally never touched the dog.
And I don't know how to drive.
So I have to hold the dog
and the dog has to be held firmly with its head up
and if we let it go let's head down
his brain is going to fill with blood
and it's going to explode and die.
(audience laughing)
And so this wounded dog who's wide awake
and looking at me with one eye is pressed into my chest.
And I have to sit in the car and lean way back
and the dog is bleeding out both ears
and drooling uncontrollably.
By the time we got to the animal hospital,
I had like the Virgin Mary stain on me from here to here,
I should auction myself on eBay
would have gotten a million dollars.
I was covered in dog drool and blood.
It was and I didn't think to bring a change of clothes.
So I was going to be in dog drooly bloody clothes
for like five hours throughout the hospital
and I'm like covered dog drool and blood.
And sort of this baptism of fire in the whole time
the dog was looking at me with its one eye going
"Spend what you must. Save me."
(audience laughing)
And I felt bad because I was looking at the dog
going, "$1,000 tops $1,000 tops."
(audience laughing)
Another poodle's only 400, don't push it.
(audience laughing)
Get another chocolate toy swap him out
he'll never know he's only four.
But my boyfriend's a little more sentimental
about these things and he has a credit card of his own.
So $4,000 later we get our gold plated poodle back
with one eye.
This eye's gone they just stitched it shut and deaf.
So now on top of having like a gay dog
you have a gay deaf one-eyed dog that walks into things.
(audience laughing)
And I still had never really walked the dog
until like, be ready to cut me off yet?
(audience laughing)
Okay. Until we were in Billings, Montana.
(audience laughing)
I don't feel that like noticeably gay
like I can pass and a truck stop I can like
get in buy a soda get out without being killed.
My boyfriend insisted we drive to Michigan and back
for a family thing.
I'm like, red states, you fly over them.
(audience laughing)
But Terry's from Spokane,
so he's used to hanging with these people.
And he's not nervous. So we drive.
We end up in Billings and Terry and the kid fall instantly
asleep and the dog has to go.
And we're at the Sheraton right downtown.
So I have to walk it.
And well I thought about letting it shit in the hallway
but I feel bad for the maids and so I put the leash
on the dog and you really never taken
you really haven't been out on a limb
until you've walked a chocolate one-eyed deaf toy poodle
around Billings Montana at midnight.
(audience laughing)
And I didn't I didn't know quite what to how to comport
like I was suddenly the guy in the lavender trousers
flouncing around on the street.
I didn't know how to comport myself
with this fucking poodle.
I wanted to appear to be straight.
Walking a poodle in the middle of the night.
You can't look straight
walking a poodle in the middle of the night.
Halle Berry could be sitting on my shoulders facing that way
as I ate her out and I was walking the poodle.
(audience laughing)
And I would look like the biggest fag in Billings, Montana.
So we're walking the poodle
and there we come around a corner and there's a biker bar,
because there's really not a corner you can come around
in Billings, Montana without there being a biker bar there.
And it's not like a biker bar in Seattle,
which is pretty much going to be The Eagle or The Cuff.
(audience laughing)
These aren't pretend bikers who are
window dressers and Nordstrom's during the week.
These are real bikers.
And they look at me and they look at the poodle
and I don't know quite how to look at them
except to kind of go I thought
this instant narrative like popped into my head.
Okay, I have a girlfriend back at the hotel.
This is her fucking dog.
And I'm just doing this to get some pussy.
(audience laughing)
So I gave them a look like yeah, what to do for pussy huh?
(audience laughing)
And they didn't buy it.
(audience laughing)
I they kind of looked at me like,
why are you making any sort of facial expressions at us?
Facial expressions are gay.
(audience laughing)
'Cause they were giving you that straight small town
blank thing and then I moved my eyebrows and facial muscles
and that means I would like to suck your cock apparently
Billings, Montana 'cause they sort of like puffed up.
As Stinker walked into a parking meter
because he's is a poodle
(audience laughing)
and Stinker hits a parking meter
and sort of bounces off and walks into a wall
and I go back around the corner
and I pick up the goddamn dog
and I hurry back to the fucking hotel
because it's just like you know what shit in the hallway dog
(audience laughing) and the epilogue,
so I'm almost done to all of this because
we got we were done with Vashon Island
we couldn't live on Vashon Island
after I walked that dog once I walked the dog always
no one else will walk the dog son don't want the dog
DJ or Terry won't walk the dog.
I walked the dog.
And we were done with the island so we move back to town
so our kid could go to school we had to bring the poodle
we move to Capitol Hill
and we live a half a block from Volunteer Park.
(audience laughing)
So now in the middle of the night
when the dog has to go to the bathroom.
There I am in my lavender trousers.
(audience laughing)
Walking through the cruisiest Park on Capitol Hill
with my toy poodle.
Feeling like I am that person
I promised my father implicitly watching Barney Miller
that I would never be.
(audience laughing)
Sadly I have never encountered a cop
handcuffed to one of the trees
with his pants pulled down around his ankles.
But the night is young.
(audience laughing)
Thank you very much.
(audience cheering)
- [Announcer] Dan Savage.
(audience cheering) (audience clapping)