Openly Bob - Hardcover

Bob Smith writes about topics that are standard elements of almost any actor-humorist's repertoire: family visits, early jobs, auditions for parts, and the ups and downs of romantic relationships. The major difference between Bob and most other comedians, however, is that he's openly and unashamedly gay.

Openly Bob is not, however, a collection of gay jokes. When Bob's sexuality is relevant to the joke, it comes up, as in his thoughts on how to abate right-wing fears about homosexuals using sex education in public schools as "recruitment." "Our educational system has proved," he writes, "that if a subject is taught in a boring enough manner, Americans will make every effort to avoid it for the rest of their lives. If homosexuality was taught in the same manner as trigonometry, even most gay people would have no use for it after graduation." The rest of the time, however, Bob's gayness is not an issue, but simply a state of being. His jokes aren't funny because he's gay; his jokes are funny because they're funny. "How did Tom and I come to realize that we needed couples counseling?" he asks at one point. "We had sex less frequently. Then we had sex less frequently than people in full-body casts. We stopped having sex. Finally, our relationship stopped other people, gay or straight, from wanting to have sex." Bob Smith's wit and intelligence, which garnered Openly Bob a 1998 Lambda Literary Award, will make him an equally appealing humorist to both gay and straight readers.

In Openly Bob, Bob Smith offers his own original, whine-free perspective on being grown up and gay. From bringing your boyfriend home to your father's funeral, to being the only gay couple at a family wedding, to surviving couples counseling, Smith's unique point of view on the very ordinary events of our lives resonates with keen observation and hilarious truth. Sex education, meteor showers, lesbian ventriloquist dummies, flea-market shopping, body piercing, pot-smoking drag queens, environmental correctness, Judgment Day, Samuel Beckett, Newt Gingrich, Coco Chanel, Sigmund Freud - nothing and no one has been spared Bob Smith's incisive eye in this very human collection of comic essays - from a writer who knows how to serve up a truly fresh slice of American pie.