Even Elliot Barlow had cautioned Nora not to make fun of gay and lesbian self-doubt or self-loathing in Two Dykes, One Who Talks. “The Gallows isn’t ready for political comedy or satire on that subject,” the snowshoer said. “I’m all for putting down ex-gay Christians in conversion therapy, or satirizing ex-gay converts to Roman Catholicism, but I’ll bet the Gallows won’t go for it—it’ll look like Catholic-bashing to the Gallows,” the little English teacher told Nora and Em.

Nora, naturally, was in favor of full-scale Catholic-bashing, but Em knew what it was like to be completely misunderstood by an audience. We were all in Nora and Em’s rat’s-ass apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, over the bad restaurant that kept changing. It had once been a bad Greek place, and although the Greeks were gone, Nora still said the bad smell was probably octopus. Mr. Barlow and Nora and I were watching Em, who appeared to be performing hari-kari in slow motion on the couch. “For Christ’s sake, Em—you look like you’re trying to change a tampon with bread tongs,” Nora told her, but Em kept trying.

The snowshoer took a stab at what Em was pantomiming. “If Catholics and other Christians are sacred cows, even at the Gallows, it won’t be funny if we make fun of mothers and fathers—it’ll look like mother-and-father-bashing,” Elliot guessed. Em nodded, stopping her suicide in progress on the couch. Mr. Barlow believed the end of the 1970s and the start of the 1980s was the beginning of hard times for political comedy and satire.

“We’re at the Whale Ship now,” the snowshoer inexplicably said, while we were enduring the smell that was probably octopus. We’d complained to the little English teacher about her idea of the Whale Ship. She never said what happened at the Whale Ship, once you and your perfect penis or your perfect vagina were admitted, once you were let in the door. “What could possibly be as big a deal as getting into the Whale Ship—what could ever happen inside the place that means as much as getting in?” Mr. Barlow asked us. “It’s getting harder to tell jokes about hatred,” the little English teacher told us, but she could see she’d lost us.

To begin with, Nora and Em didn’t go to the memorial service for Coach Dearborn—they’d not met “our marine,” as Elliot Barlow and I called him. And what Elliot meant about jokes and hatred went over my head, too. I was as lost as Nora and Em by what the snowshoer had said. In the years ahead, there were hard times coming for comedy of any kind. For Em and me as writers, for Nora and Em onstage at the Gallows, it was going to get harder to be funny—about anything. Just imagine trying to call yourselves Two Dykes, One Who Talks today. You can’t tell jokes about hatred today. I can tell you when today’s hatred was just beginning—at the end of the 1970s and the start of the 1980s, the pushback was already there.