Kiki, Herb and Grilled Cheezus

In the past few weeks, with the allegations being made against Bishop Eddie Long and the spate of gay teen suicides, the attention of many Americans has been drawn to questions of homosexuality and religion, specifically Christianity. While productions schedules suggest that the Fox network’s show Glee could not have planned the recent “Grilled Cheesus” episode as a response to these issues, the episode does reflect the current climate. In this episode, the Glee club is interested in celebrating their faiths. Kurt, a young gay man, expresses a sentiment shared by many LGBTQ individuals: “"Sorry, but if I wanted to sing about Jesus, I'd go to church. And the reason I don't go to church is because most churches don't think very much of gay people. Or women. Or science." After making his views clear, Kurt’s father suffers a serious heart attack. While his friends turn to faith for comfort and want him to do the same, Kurt is resolute in his stance. At one point, Kurt’s friend Mercedes pleads with him to believe in something. Kurt’s sadness and pain is visible in his every move, yet the expressions of the divine offered to Kurt by his friends is simply not sufficient to meet his pain. Finally, in tears by his father’s bedside, Kurt proclaims his belief in their relationship, their family. His comatose father lightly grabs Kurt’s hand, as the rest of the cast sings Joan Osborne’s “What if God Were One of Us.” The message being that the queer divine, that queer religiosity, is found in relationship.

The conclusion to Kurt’s spiritual struggle is one that many LGBTQ individuals reach: The divine is not for us; our church is in the community we create with one another. While this is a perfectly legitimate position, for some LGBTQ individuals within the Christian tradition there is a desire for a queer Christology that plumbs the depths of our experiences and even pain. In a less well known, yet critically acclaimed, drag act, Kiki and Herb’s “Year of Magical Drinking Tour” (recorded at the Knitting Factory in 2007), we are presented a theological reflection that pushes us to think about the figure of Christ in relation to queer experience.

Kiki, the drag persona created by artist and actor Justin Bond, and Herb, played by pianist Kenny Mellman, have been performing together since the late 1980’s/ early 1990’s. Kiki is the weathered and often drunk lounge singer, while Herb is her long-suffering, gay accompanist. As Kiki explains in this performance, she is the “hag” to Herb’s “fag.” Biblical or religious references comprise a recurring theme in their shows: Their off Broadway Christmas show, which won an Obie award in 2001, was entitled “Jesus Wept.” Their more recent comeback tour was called “The Second Coming” and in “Kiki and Herb Would Die For You” Kiki describes Jesus as the ultimate showbiz martyr. While the duo has toured internationally and received critical attention, their work is certainly not as mainstream Glee.

This particular show opens with Kiki dressed in a black cocktail dress covered with red-glitter explosions and a large black bow in her teased blonde hair. Kenny wears a lamé tuxedo jacket. Both of their faces are lined with “wrinkles,” obviously drawn with stage makeup. Kiki, drink in hand, explains that the “Year of Magical Drinking” celebrates their Tony nomination and the death of Jerry Fallwell. The costumes, the dramatic atmosphere, the biting humor are pure camp.

In all of their performances, Kiki offers extended monologues, seemingly alcohol infused prattle, which spin a fantastic narrative about their fictional lives. In this particular show, she explains her and Herb’s connection to Jesus. Present in the stable at Christ’s birth and a little hungry, since they were poor little Jewish urchins, they drink milk from a cow that has eaten Jesus’ afterbirth. The milk grants the duo eternal life and they grow up alongside of Jesus. Continuing the story as she drinks her cocktail, Kiki offers that both she and Herb have a “hot nut” for younger men and, consequently, have known Jesus in the “biblical sense.” In fact, Kiki had quite an affair with Jesus, who she describes as a tender lover. She then tells of Jesus’ true character, as the “first hippie,” who drove people like Fallwell out of the Temple. People today have gotten the story turned around, Kiki intones: If Jesus was still in the grave, than he’d be rolling over in it. Jesus was just coming into his sexuality when he died and had he lived he would have likely gone in “Herb’s direction.” The singer wistfully proclaims that Jesus “was bisexual, spiritual and beautiful . . . and they killed him.” It’s a cautionary tale not to “challenge the man.” She then describes how both she and Mary Magdalene plead, upon seeing Jesus on the cross, “Bring him down!” Kiki ends this monologue by explaining that she is looking forward to Christ’s supposed return and she dedicates a song, a poignant rendition of Emmylou Harris’ “From Boulder to Birmingham,” to the only man she ever loved--Jesus Christ.

One of the most striking aspects of this show is the way Kiki, or Justin Bond, appropriates the tradition of a lounge act monologue in order to collapse time, subvert the conventions of history and construct a queer history. This a-historicity, an ability to exist in the present, past, and future, is characteristic of camp: A camp queen can live in the 30’s and 40’s as the incomparable Marlene Dietrich, while drag king Murray Hill stylistically inhabits the late 60’s, early 70’s. By retelling their history into the history of Jesus’ life, Kiki and Herb point to the fact that all history, including Gospel accounts of Jesus, is story, is constructed. In some way, Kiki is a modern day Albert Schweitzer as her story reveals how interpreters weave their historical and cultural perspectives into the life of Jesus. She reminds us that even things such as Jesus’ gender and sexual identity are constructed in the stories of his life as they are told and re-told. Furthermore, Bond collapses history, taking Kiki and Herb back and time, in order to weave Jesus into queer history or the shared cultural memory of the queer community. This is arguably one of the functions of camp for queer communities, whose histories have been erased and assaulted by heteronormative constructions of history.

In her re-telling of Jesus’ life, Kiki offers a portrait of Jesus quite unlike the seemingly straight Jesus depicted in so many popular contexts (e.g. the Jesus played by Jack Black in “Prop 8: The Musical). In terms of sexuality, Jesus’ identity is fluid, having had affairs with Mary Magdalene, according to Kiki, Kiki herself, Herb, and moving in the direction of being gay. Likewise, Jesus embraces a queer gender identity, embodying characteristics typically associated with the feminine, such as tenderness, beauty, spirituality. Kiki even feminizies Jesus through her re-reading of biblical events, describing the wonderful pedicures that Jesus gave at the Last Supper. While spiked with humor, Kiki offers her audience a thoroughly queer and emphatically incarnational theology. As Marcella Althaus-Reid argued in a 2007 article, Queer Theology assumes, “God dwells in flesh and when this happens all our myopic earth-bound ideas are subject to change, the dynamic life force which is the divine erupts in diversity and the energy of it will not be inhibited by laws and statues.” (“Thinking Theology and Queer Theory.” Feminist Theology 15.3 (2007): 302-214). In this incarnational vein, Bond interprets Jesus’ death as a point of connection with those in the queer and LGBT communities who have challenged the dominant culture’s construction of gender and sexuality. It is a powerful move when you consider the violence, emotional, social, and physically, experienced by so many.

Toward the end of the show, Kiki becomes drunk and angry. No holds are barred as she explains how she was unable to protect Herb from being raped when they were both institutionalized in the ‘50s. In response, she launches into a medley of “Heroin” by Lou Reed, comparing the rush of the drug to being like Jesus’ son, “Wild Side” also by Lou Reed, highlighting the drag aspect of the song, and Radiohead’s “Creep.” Kiki screams, “But I'm a creep/ I'm a weirdo/ What the hell am I doing here?/ I don't belong here.” This medley ends and Kiki and Herb break into a frenzied rendition of “Jesus Loves Me” combined with “O Happy Day,” replete with evangelistic recitations of John 3:16 and Psalm 23. Finally, Kiki ends with the song, “Cunts Are Still Running the World” by Jarvis Cocker which offers a biting critique of social hierarchy. Interpreting this pastiche of religious allusions, queer images and raw emotion in light of Kiki’s earlier discussion of Jesus’ crucifixion, I am reminded of Mark’s depiction of Jesus on the cross. Could this be Kiki’s re-enactment of Jesus’ cry, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” Has she become the crucified Messiah who cannot save his close companions from the violence and social upheaval that he knows is to come, just as Kiki could not protect her beloved Herb? Is she giving voice to the sense of forsakenness felt by queers, gays, lesbians and trans-people, who have been rejected by their families, communities, governments and religions? As in the Markan narrative, it is in the midst of this forsakenness that Jesus’ identity is made known. In spite of the pain, or perhaps on account of the pain, Kiki asserts Jesus’ identity and love and proclaims the protection of the Good Shepherd: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and staff, they comfort me.” Even though the privileged and well-positioned, and we would add straight, people control the world, Kiki is comforted by a queer/ embodied Jesus . . . a Good Shepherd who has a “rod.”

Kiki’s Jesus, I would argue, is a Jesus of queer experience. It is a version of Jesus who shares the pain of Kurt as he sits by his father’s bedside, unable to take comfort in the churches that exclude him. It is also the Jesus who experiences the pain of bullying and violence and the despair of suicide. Behold, the Queer Jesus.

I presented a version of this paper at the 2009 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.