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August 19, 2005
Inside With: Rachel Kramer Bussel, Writer
The city's busiest writer, Rachel Kramer Bussel, made her comedy debut on Wednesday at BRUTAL HONESTY, the monthly themed storytelling series produced by Lianne Stokes, Becky Yamamoto, and Guilia Rozzi. This month's theme was "I Have Food Issues." Although Rachel is no stranger to doing readings for her various books and erotica, this was her first time doing live comedy.
Rachel, could you tell us about your experience performing at Brutal Honesty?
I love that show and the hosts and the setting, and have plenty of food issues, so I was really excited to be asked to do it but doing a comedy show is totally different than the erotica readings I'm used to. I was really nervous but the crowd was awesome, and I knew at least half the people in the packed room, and sortof consoled myself that if I sucked, I had brought cookies from Mrs. Fields and other snacks so people could remember me as the girl who brought treats.
It was an interesting night because several of the performers - Michelle Collins, Giulia Rozzi and me - touched on kindof serious eating disorder/body image issues but managed to make them into something funny, yet you could tell underlying how fucked up we all are about food. I didn't want to get too morbid so I tried to find something funny about my food mania and hit on how I used to steal food from the grocery store when I was in college at Berkeley and eat it. It's one of those memories that feels almost like a dream, because I'd never do that now, and if I did, I'd surely get caught, but at the time I thought nothing of breaking into granola bar boxes and gobbling one or two hurriedly down.
That was the highlight of my set, where I tore into the box, broke open the wrapper and shoved a granola bar in my mouth in about five seconds. I hadn't quite factored in the time it would take me to chew it, and had to stand there for at least a minute chewing and swallowing, and Lianne was nice enough to bring me some water. I wrote out some notes and those helped me, but once I got into the story I was fine. I chickened out of what would've been the piece de resistance of my set, cramming a balled-up piece of bread into my mouth and swallowing.
And then I got to gush about my cupcake blog, a much healthier food obsession than anorexia or bulimia or stealing. Best parts of the night were watching everyone eat the Mrs. Fields cookies I'd brought and taking silly photos as we waited for the subway ride home, and the other performers were hilarious too. I think everyone has food issues to some extent so could relate to what we were talking about, whether it was Becky on her mom's awful school lunches or Giulia's love affair with pizza.
And can we expect to see more from you at comedy shows in the future?
No more comedy for me I don't think, I am already running this monthly erotic reading series starting in October. I am doing a Jewish trivia night on Tuesday with Jessica Coen of Gawker and Goddess Perlman, and SMUT on the 29th, but those aren't really comedy. We'll see, I might do Brutal Honesty again.
The indefatigueable Rachel Kramer Bussel is a regular contributor to The Village Voice, Gothamist, Metro, Penthouse, Mediabistro and countless more publications. Her most recent book, Naughty Spanking Stories from A-Z is available whereever finer books are sold. She's also an avid comedy fan.
Posted by The Apiary at August 19, 2005 12:18 PM
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