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[ihatejoelkim]

Sexual Failures of 2017.

A five-thousand word think piece promising a bold new take on the 2016 Democratic Primary race. I think that's the only thing I can think of that any of you would like to read less than some verbose exploration of my various successes and failures in 2017. The successes were all shared across platforms and you've already done your due diligence by liking and sharing (or not you stupid fucking bitch). I had a good year, professionally. To itemize all my failures against every accomplishment I've curated for you right here would be tantamount to telling you all how hard it is for me to gain weight (it is, and it's a problem, but I can read a room).

With all that in mind, I won't linger too long in this next part: I wasn't happy in 2017. In contrast, I can't say that I was terribly unhappy either, but trying to detail a mostly pleasant grey murk, punctuated by a handful of brief intermissions both low and manic (usually manifest as early morning text messages sent to various friends and sex partners), doesn't make for a compelling end-of-the-year post, I don't think.

Last year, I thanked all the gay men who saved my life (there were many, a handful even who don't strictly speaking identify as either gay or men, but that's part of the joke, you see). Many gay men both literal and honorary did their part to keep me afloat this year, and I do thank them, but as social media performances go, I wanted to go for something equally as sentimental and reflective but less exclusionary. Something the whole family could enjoy.

Let me walk you through all my sexual failures this year.

Now a quick disclaimer, I want to make this very clear up top: I happened to many of these men, not the other way around. To cast myself as the wide-eyed straight man next to a gallery of freaks seems very, well, 2015. I'm pretty sure I wrote that piece in 2015. I was the villain, sexually, in as many encounters as I was the hero (if you can call eating out a mean drummer in the waning moments of a molly high heroic).

Secondly there were plenty of failures this year that involved people I generally like or who otherwise might read this. I'm not including them, so if you're a friend who made the disastrous decision to roll around with me (a professional at making an exhibition of the personal) and it ended poorly, you won't find it below. I want to keep it all as broadly anonymous as possible, so that I can look back on it and convince myself, "this was okay, right?" Writing this paragraph has already halfway convinced me to that I'm a huge asshole and this is in fact not okay.

This list won't be chronologically correct but I would like to start at the beginning of the year. Almost 365 days ago exactly, I ended up at the home of a bobo Vincent Gallo character. A straight, married father of two in an open hetero relationship with his wife (though not an openly bisexual one, so the moral optics of the whole thing are still a little suspect). He's a music producer who looks like Mark Ruffalo and he won't kiss me on the mouth, but he does want me to spend an hour with my mouth on his asshole. He tells me he's never bottomed but would like to and it's all an embarrassing lie, so we do it and he comes alarmingly fast. We hadn't deleted Uber yet (#resist) and the surge that night to get home cost me nearly $70.

He hit on me on the water taxi on Fire Island. It's the night of the underwear party and we're both heading home alone. I enjoy the underwear party but I lost my phone beyond the veil (I'll offer no further explanation on that— you either know or you don't), and fingered and gotten fingered so much I lost faith that fingering was for the pleasure of anyone involved at all. Sexually, I’m not for Fire Island and that's all fine and well by me (it’s about so much more, etc.) . He is the hottest person that will have spoken to me in three years of visits and aggressively so. He walks me home and we dry hump on the beach. I was deeply attracted to the story we would get to tell if things worked out, but he was high on molly and I was the person you regret the morning after molly (I've been on both sides of this equation, we all have, so don't read this as entirely self deprecating). He ignores my texts for a while and is forced to acknowledge me once as our respective houses walk by one another on the boardwalk. I text him on the Fourth of July asking if he has plans. I don't hear from him again until September, a Saturday at 3AM. A victory.

Every sexual experience I had with a college student this year was in its own special way a failure. I know how that sentence reads, but straight comedians on the college circuit have been fucking their audiences since way back when a JFL set meant you were getting a television show, so I like to look at this as my way of queering yet another perilously heterosexual institution. Plus, I always ID, because I saw a character on How to Get Away With Murder do it. I'm sure there are three twenty-year-olds in the country who know how to fuck. You are probably twenty and reading this and think you are one of the three, but you are also probably wrong. You see, all three went to high school abroad, currently live in Manhattan and it's actually really sad that they're this good at sex by now. If you're twenty and you think the sex you're having is great, I'll take you at your word but privately I'll write you off as either a precious lil' thing or a liar.

There was of course the self-styled dom in the midwest. I love touring especially for the hotels. Every time I walk into my hotel room I immediately wonder if this is the place where I'll finally be strangled to death in the nude. I wondered if the dom would be the one to do it, until he arrived at my door and I almost considered not going through with it. I'm not an especially kinky person naturally, but by god am I an actor, and I love the costumes. He suggested we try and I was staying at a Hilton in a mid-sized midwestern city so why the hell not. Unfortunately he is not hot, nor very, um, authoritative and as it turns out I'm not a very good actor. He spits in my mouth and I gingerly remove the loogey intact and wipe it on the hotel bed, killing the mood. He jerks off sullenly next to me and then blocks me on Scruff.

In Nevada, one of the comedy agents gave me an adderall so I could stay up long enough after my shows to have sex. We were in old Vegas, and I wasn't testing well on the apps. But just about the time I became truly ridiculous, a parody of self-destructive horniness, I set off for a stranger's hotel to have a threesome with a nice looking couple who had driven in from Utah. By the time I arrive, the hot one has fallen asleep and the lucky one sheepishly meets me outside the hotel to inform me that, if I still wanted to hook-up, we'll have to do it in the car. I am twenty-nine and yet I follow him to his Toyota Corolla where I can't get hard so instead we watch the sun rise with our shirts on and our pants pulled down just below the ass, our soft, shrunken genitalia observing an adderall-fueled conversation about the the LDS.

There was the Korean who was staying on a friend’s couch but assured me no one would notice. I could hear the bright, jaunty theme song of Parks and Recreation through her bedroom door, and I wonder the whole time if she voluntarily sequestered herself or we are in danger at any moment of being interrupted by a rabid Amy Poehler fan. He refuses to bottom and is not a good top, so the long term prospects aren't great. A few weeks ago I saw that he is dating a self-identified rice queen I went on a few dates with back in 2014. I didn’t want to learn about my culture from a rich, white hobbyist and he only ever wanted to bottom. Seeing them together felt like reading the end of some distorted version of The Gift of the Magi.

I engaged in sex with only two people more than once and I'm perfectly content with that number. I made it through without collecting any STI's (yet). I didn't have my heart truly broken (yet). I haven't fallen in love.

I think I might get a dog when I turn thirty, or possibly a therapist.

[ihatejoelkim]

A lil amuse bouche to tide you over before my full special arrives on 10/20. They said I couldn't tense every muscle in my body for a full thirty-three minutes but I proved them all wrong! Please set your DVRs and tell your pals, otherwise I've decimated my familial relations for nothing.

[ihatejoelkim]

Here's the deal: You're sitting at home right now, it's a Monday night, you're flipping through Tinder and boy is it rough. Just an unending parade of guy after guy, floating in a pool somewhere, kissing dolphin after dolphin and it's like, to paraphrase 1997's poet laureate Shania Twain— that don't impress YOU much! But then low and behold he stumbles onto your screen and your thumb pauses. This man has a job. He has eight photos, each giving you face, hair, body, angles and most important of all, no dolphins in sight. His profile, it's witty but succinct. Three sentences, the perfect length. He lists his height, because it does matter, it always matters, even just so you can put the person in context a bit. You see you have no mutual friends and sing out in happiness. Immediately you swipe right and fuck yeah, you match. It's always nice to be the second one to swipe. You decide to be a thirsty lil bish and send the first message. You wait, you try to convince yourself that this means nothing to you, when it actually means everything to you. What if he doesn't respond? What if he's a collector and just likes the thrill of the match. What if you're just another trophy on his wall. You know, like the Jimmy Johns man you read about? Fuck. It's the Jimmy Johns guy, I bet. You're seconds away from deleting the app, when he responds within minutes which seems a little crazy to you and you are actually halfway turned off now, which is definitely a problem with you not him, maybe take a moment and confront yourself about that. So you plow ahead. Your conversation is easy breezy and you quickly reach the point where you gotta do something. You want to seem cool but cultured. Fun loving but not basic. Hip but not hipster. You ask him if he wants to see your very good friend's (or just a person you follow on insta's) album recording show. You tell him there will be games and music and laughter. It's low key. It's really important to your friend/Instagram boy. You go. It's magical. You fall in love. And now you're married!!! Wow anyway TL;DR, this is the last time I'll plug this fucking thing please come it would mean the world. Link in the bio. Tickets are 2-for-1. Thx. (at Ars Nova)

[ihatejoelkim]

Twitter deleted her thread. Reblog to save it. #Love it!

[ihatejoelkim]

These people had to improvise a set based on a five minute story about my dick getting shit on, and for that I apologize. I also apologize for mistaking the other monologist, Alan Aisenberg (Co Bailey from OITNB) for Ben Platt (the magician kid from Pitch Perfect) That was humiliating for both of us. I am NOT sorry for frenching that piece of pizza during this pic. Thanks for having me ASSSCAT!!

[ihatejoelkim]

@rheabutcher and I, perfectly summed up by t-shirts. #penistheband #nocryinginbaseball #meltdownseason3 please ignore my tummy.

[ihatejoelkim]

First off, thank you (again) to everyone who has posted the set or reached out to say all those nice things about my set, my arms and/or my skin (the latter of which is now completely destroyed, btw). It was a completely amazing, surreal experience and one I have not quite convinced myself I deserved. Since I found out I'd be doing it, I've cried several places (bunk beds, hotel rooms, airports) not out of happiness, but out of complete and utter fear. Fear that I wasn't ready, fear that everyone would be mad at me and most of all fear that I did not deserve this immense five minute honor. What a fucking idiot.

I hate to use that sticky internet phrase "imposter syndrome," because it's the kind of reference I would normally invoke ironically in that sort of post-comedy, new-Millennial way that is so pervasive on my social media accounts. But this whole week, I did truly feel like an imposter.

And of course I work my ass off. I've worked my ass off to get where I am, I'm a funny boy whose charisma on stage makes up for those few holes in my set that are more about personality than joke writing and I know all that, I don't need any back patting here to assure me that all those thoughts are insane. But my lizard brain keeps whispering, "you are not white, you are not straight, you were not forged in the fires of Chicago open mics for ten years before the industry took notice of you, in fact they only want you because you're a minority, not because you're funny or original or groundbreaking or alt or cool."

(as though any of those things are mutually exclusive, but whatever).

It's not as though those dark thoughts sprung up out of nowhere either, versions of that little subconscious speech have been spoken aloud by plenty of people to or around me, sometimes even by people I respect! But you know, like everyone else who's heard a different version of the "you only got that because you're [gay]" speech, you either quit or say "fuck you I'm here, I'm [queer], not a single person is owed anything by this industry, no one 'deserves' shit, we all just work and work and fucking work and if it works out it does and if not you decide if you want to keep working, it's all random and meaningless and the only thing that matters is the work, get used to it."

That's the funny thing too. I've spent my entire career trying to prove that I'm funny despite being gay. Running full speed away from the "gay comic" label because I was afraid if people said that about me it somehow ghettoized me away from the regular comics and the kinds of opportunities they got. That it would always hang over accomplishments like this.

But, at the risk of sounding -very- self congratulatory here, I am a gay comic and being on late night television, doing my gay fucking bits was a big fucking deal to a lot of people who don't get to see faggots like me talk about faggoty shit on tv since Looking went off the air (oops there were no asian fags on that show, but I don't have time). People like Matteo and Guy and Solomon and Gabe and John and James (all of us VERY different I might add) and everyone else who's ever gotten on TV and had the chance to have an audience of thousands, that's fucking cool and important to kids like me who grew up in Plainfield IL and didn't see gay people on TV. So yeah, I'm going to own that and I'm going to take pride in that. And if you think I got there BECAUSE of that, well ok that's fine, I still got paid, I'm still on TV and I'm sure whatever you're doing is pretty cool too, but you sound like a miserable fuck.

This is already insanely long and like, how obnoxious of me to think anyone wants to hear me dump all the emotions I've been feeling over the last few days onto the internet, but at this point I feel like you know what you're getting by being here.

Anyway, I'm mostly posting this version of the clip because it has the intro and outro and all these fucking Youtube commenters (don't tell me not to read them like you wouldn't) are saying shit like "notice Conan didn't give him a handshake at the end... hmmmmm" like they've cracked some fucking code and realized jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams and not that they possibly had to edit it for time.

Ok bye!!

[ihatejoelkim]

There's a lot of lovely things about Portland, but for my money the best part is Powell's. It's massive and gorgeous and fucking dangerous if you forget you already over packed and are poor. I could talk to you for hours about how much books have shaped my life. Specifically gay books (sorry, everything will be gay for me from now on!) I can remember stealing Rainbow Boys from the library just before spending Thanksgiving in my car. I read it in one sitting and felt less shitty (and returned it too). Anyway, buy books. Go to the library and download them onto your phone if you aren't in an area with a good bookstore. But if you are in a city with a Powell's or a Strand or something smaller, please go and support them! I've been here for a little over an hour now and only fifteen minutes of that time was spent trying to snap this picture for Instagram. (at Powell's City of Books)

[ihatejoelkim]

BYE LA! Every other time I've been in this city, I've had various personal reasons for not wanting to be here— either because I was fucking someone I liked quite a bit in New York, or because I was heartbroken over that person not wanting to fuck me anymore, or more generally because New York is the greatest city in the world, etc.— but this trip was the first one I've made where I felt somewhat even, emotionally. So I had fun and enjoyed myself and worked my ass off. I slept in this bathtub because @hordie graciously let me stay in her vacated apartment (rent fucking free!) and all she had left was a comfy chair, a pillow and a comforter (she didn't have to leave shit). Anyway I was glad to be alone until of course I wasn't and wanted so desperately to be back in New York with my gay family and felt so so sad and alone here in LA. Then I went to pride and realized that I have family everywhere and suddenly LA looks very different to me now. Anyway, all this to say— I created a bed in a bathtub and it was great and fun and I felt like RENT and I like LA a little bit more than I did before.

[ihatejoelkim]

I popped up on Put Your Hands Together again. This time talking a lot about crying!

[ihatejoelkim]

Hi, hello. My internet friend Dan Savage asked me to dispense some advice to an Asian man who, quite frankly, doesn't sound like he needs it. But I never miss a chance to tell someone to sign up for a volleyball league!!

[ihatejoelkim]

Here I am not answering the question this nice reporter asks me!

[ihatejoelkim]

Back on RISK talking Christmas, shame and ponies!

[ihatejoelkim]

Coming to LA January 29-31 for Riot Fest! 

[ihatejoelkim]

I do a really offensive Jane Goodall and Debra Messing impression here. Truly, deeply offensive. 

73 - Joel Kim Booster and Bowen Yang

Today’s Episode: Butt Pads

Today’s Contestants Are:

Joel Kim Booster

Bowen Yang

In this episode! - We blow the lid off Bible Trivia scoring procedure! - Learn how to talk to a libertarian! - Jane Goodall is very upset!

Direct Link Subscribe on iTunes

[ihatejoelkim]

Comedian Joel Kim Booster would prefer you stop calling him an alt-comic

[ihatejoelkim]