The first thing you should know is that Girl God is hilarious.
The second thing you should know is that the tickets for their show at Bottlerocket Social Hall on November 12 are selling faster than quarter condoms in a gay bar bathroom. Seriously, get your tickets before they sell out.
And the third is that goddammit, their humor is hard to pin down on paper.
Girl God consists of trans comedy duo April Clark and Grace Freud.
To get a sense of their vibe, imagine you’re sitting in your living room with your best worst trash trans friends. You can’t stop earnestly rage-ranting about Alex Jones, when one of those assholes starts deadpanning about the great time they had summering with him in Montauk, so you should stop being such a dick about him.
That asshole is Girl God.
“I want people to leave the show wondering whether trans people should be allowed to do what we do.”
Grace Freud
They do in-community humor, the kind of jokes we make by ourselves and demand our friends never repeat in public so we never have to explain the time we jokingly shredded our “journey” of waltzing dramatically out of the closet with a new identity every 13 days for a year. Or why we think the Don’t-Say-Gay law is a great opportunity to go back to the old-school ways queers connected when we were all closeted, secret signal green carnations in our lapels, hankies in our pockets, the butch/femme wink at the grocery store – what a gift, thanks Ronnie DeSantis, you single-handedly brought romance back to The Gays™
“You may fall in love. With yourself. Or someone near you. Not with me though.”
April Clark
Sometimes it’s hard to give ourselves permission to let the wider world see us laugh at the worst things happening to our communities right now, or to say “F*ck it!”, ignore them completely and play around in the sandbox of comedy, joking about ourselves, giving absurdist takes on the history of fascism, saying “F*ck our reputations. F*ck what “The Public” thinks of us.”
But after spending some time with them, I recommend you give it a try.
[The following interview is DRIPPING with wit and sarcasm and has been edited for girth, clarity, and taste.]
Grace, April, thanks for sitting down with me. I hear you’re working at a streaming network now, Grace? Can you say what you’re working on?
April: Grace can’t, but I can. I build bombs for Netflix.
Grace: Right, and I take the orders.
Very cool. I’m wondering, how did you come together as a comedy duo?
Grace: I think we came together the same way a lot of queer comedians do – fighting together in 1920s Spain. We thought that Franco seemed like a good dude. Fascism wasn’t really what it is now. It was more like a shirts vs. skins kind of thing.
April: Right, and we weren’t trans yet, so it was no problem.
Grace: Yes, we were both cis women at the time, it was before we were trans women.
Did you have an easier time being accepted into their ranks, as cis women?
April: You’d think so, but actually do you know who has it really hard? Cis women. And I’m an ally to their cause. Cis women have it harder than, really, anyone.
Have you ever been to Pittsburgh before?
Grace: No, and I don’t know if I plan to.
April: No, and if anyone has ideas for what’s good to do in Pittsburgh, please write them in a letter and mail them to me.
Do you know much about Pittsburgh, the Steel City? Have you heard much about us? Anything you’re excited about or scared about?
Grace: I have no fear of Pittsburgh. In fact, I dare anyone to try it. Come right up to me and try to punch me. April’s excited about the vernacular, though.
Oh, like yinzer speak? Pittsburghese?
Grace: No, like –
April: Oh, I know what you’re talking about, funiculars. I love funiculars. There are only seven left in the U.S. and I want to ride all of them.
[Editor’s note: she means the inclines]
Yes! There are still two here. There used to be a lot more. They were a standard form of transportation here!
April: They’re all over the world too.
Grace: Bigger and longer ones, in more beautiful settings than in the U.S.
April: It may not be the wisest goal to want to ride all seven in the U.S. They’re probably the worst ones.
I looked at the other cities on the tour. You have your Bostons, your New Yorks, your L.A.’s, and then you have Pittsburgh. What brings you here?
Grace: I’d say it was mostly our manager booking us here.
April: Yes, our manager booked us. And, some people say, there *are* queers in Pittsburgh.
Grace: I hear there may be as many as three hot dykes in Pittsburgh.
I can confirm. What does your show offer for that handful of queers and the three hot dykes?
Grace: Well, we know there are other queer comedians. But they are bad. And we are good.
April: What we do may scare you, excite you –
Grace: Turn you on –
April: – inspire you –
Grace: – make you want to f*ck.
April: You may fall in love. With yourself. Or someone near you. Not me though. Don’t flirt with me. Don’t even think about it. If you flirt with me, I’ll have to kill myself.
Grace: I want people to leave the show wondering whether trans people should be allowed to do what we do. Thinking “Damn they were wonderful and hilarious and they should be put down like dogs.”
Is there anything as queer comedians that you’re sick of talking about? Are you tired of being asked about the intersections of trauma and humor, or being asked about the latest Chapelle or Rowling or –
Grace: Oh we love being asked about Chapelle.
April: Yeah, we’re good friends with Dave.
Grace: He has a beautiful yacht.
Grace: What we don’t like to be asked though is “Where are they?” And “they” would be the third member of our comedy group, a non-binary person named Pine Nut.
April: Right, you know how scientology has Shelly Miscavage? We have Pine Nut.
Grace: Pine Nut hasn’t been seen in what? Five years.
Did you want to reveal –
April: They’re actually in the woods.
Is there anything you wish we’d be talking more about at the intersection of queerness and comedy?
April: I wish we’d argue more about which sexual identities are valid, which shouldn’t be allowed. Which pronouns are better.
Grace: Which pronouns are worse.
April: Is asexuality ok? Is bisexuality just for college girls?
Grace: Is bi erasure good or bad? Is hormone therapy required to be trans?
April: Is dysphoria required to be trans? Should children be allowed to transition?
Grace: Should children be allowed to date?
April: What if they’re dating an older man who can keep them safe?
You know, you didn’t touch on conversion therapy.
Grace: Well that’s settled.
April: Right, it’s been settled that it’s good.
Grace: The science is there.
As a kinky queer, I really appreciated Grace’s groundbreaking video, “No Phones at Pride.” I think a lot of times right-wing talking points are so out there that comedy can be a good tool –
April: Definitely, comedians are truly modern day philosophers.
– but then that video put you in real-life danger. Does that affect the choices you make in your comedy?
Grace: For me, obviously not.
April: And for me, I am being hunted by a group of ten men wearing hoods. They follow me everywhere I go.
And do you change your comedy for them? Try not to enrage them? Try to lure them out?
April: No. I don’t think it’s the role of comedy to censor anything. I mean obviously, I wonder about these ten men. Who are they? What do they want? But otherwise, no.
Both of you have experience writing headlines. Grace, you worked at Clickhole, April, you wrote headlines on Twitter –
April: I shared the news. News headlines of news people didn’t know about yet.
You shared the news. If either of you were title-ing this article, what would you call it?
April: “Pittsburgh: Your Saviors Are On Their Way!”
Grace: “Two Trans Comedians Make Brave Decision to Travel to Pittsburgh Despite Recent Monkeypox Diagnosis.”