Ren Q. Dawe wasn’t expecting to be harassed in the bathroom when he returned home to Boulder. Fresh off the first leg of last year’s Pretty Witty Gay Show tour — where the comedian performed in 40 cities across 16 states — Dawe was glad to be back in familiar territory.
But then, while at a friend’s show, he was confronted in a public restroom by a group of hostile college students.
“My anxious brain was like, ‘Oh no, they’ve clocked me as trans; I’m in trouble,’” Dawe recalls. He managed to slip away, but the experience stayed with him.
“I later realized they probably didn’t know I was trans,” Dawe says. “They just thought I was gay and wanted to do some gay bashing, but it was alarming to have that happen in a place that’s perceived to be so progressive. I really was just there to pee, and I kept spiraling around that concept. It’s real and tragic, but it’s also absurd, so I wanted to make jokes.”
That moment of fear was the catalyst for Here to Pee, a one-of-a-kind national standup tour featuring mostly trans comedians confronting discriminatory bathroom laws with wit and defiance.
“We are saying, ‘We are here, and we’re going to be over there, too, even in places that say they don’t want us,’” Dawe says. “Originally, the idea was just to [perform in] places that were implementing anti-trans bathroom legislation. Then, as we kept digging, we were like, ‘It seems silly to only go to 42 out of the 50 states,’ so now we’re going to go to all 50.”
“There is no evidence that any out queer person that we know of has advertised that they have performed in all 50 states, and certainly no out trans person,” Dawe continues. “As sad as that fact is, it’s also a motivating factor for us.”
‘Laugh in their faces’
Launching March 1 at Boulder’s Junkyard Social Club, the tour will travel to a range of venues across the country. The idea is to bring some much-needed laughs to queer communities under threat, from Alaska to Florida and points in between.
“It’s important that the tour is not forgetting about trans communities that are more impacted by anti-trans rhetoric than those of us who have the luxury of living in sanctuary states,” says tour performer Mx. Dahlia Belle. “Oftentimes, when we’re talking about queer culture, we’re focused on these major metropolitan areas. Politicians profit off of that misconception, so actually going to these places is huge.”
The tour’s proceeds benefit homegrown grassroots LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, like the Boulder-based Rocky Mountain Equality, and the rotating lineup includes Carlos Kareem Windham, Juno Men and special local performers in each state. Windham’s bold, in-your-face approach is especially aimed at shifting the conversation.
“I will be just spreading discomfort to the whites,” Windham says. “If I have to live under this orange bag of goo for the next 1,000 days, everyone’s going to be uncomfortable. I’m not going to do it alone. If we don’t laugh in their faces, I don’t know how we survive this.”
‘We’re going to pee wherever our heart desires’
Along the way, the tour is being documented by queer Denver-based filmmaker Jeff Stonic. Dawe hopes the documentary will capture trans life in full fidelity.
“There are not that many stories about trans joy,” Dawe says. “It is always about the trans struggle, and that is real, but we also need to show that being trans isn’t inherently awful. We are a part of this beautiful community that makes better jokes and laughs harder than almost any other.”
Of course, due to discriminatory laws in many states, Here to Pee performers are taking a bigger risk in certain parts of the country than others. That’s why Dawe’s built bail money into the tour’s operational budget, particularly for stops in Utah, Wyoming, Florida and Texas, where anti-trans legislation is particularly punitive.
“We’re going to pee wherever our heart desires,” Dawe says. “That’s not to say we are going out of our way to break the law, but it is more likely to happen in those places. This very much is the definition of civil disobedience, and that makes this really unique, a little bit edgier and a little bit scarier because I want to make sure my performers are kept safe.”
Despite the risks, the tour’s message is clear: In a world that so often seeks to erase trans people, they are here, they belong and they are laughing in the face of hate.
“For me, part of the hope of this tour is to humanize trans people,” Juno Men says. “Politicians aren’t just trying to roll back trans rights — they’re trying to say we don’t exist, which is ridiculous. By performing in so many states where there’s not a lot of understanding of trans people, that’s creating a point of accessibility for people that maybe feel the way they do and think the way they do because they just have never met a trans person.”
ON STAGE: Here to Pee. March 1, Junkyard Social Club, 2525 Frontier Ave. Suite A, Boulder. $20