Adam Teterus

In the light of day, Adam Teterus is a community director at Indy Hall, which is a Philadelphia-based, now-global coworking community. At night, he transforms into Flirt Vonnegut, a literally and figuratively sparkling burlesque emcee. Adam shares an absurd amount of common interests and experiences with me and is an excellent conversation partner. A year into lockdown, we stepped through an epic chat about Internet identity, names, the responsibilities of host roles, Kurt Vonnegut, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, living organ donation, Godzilla, and creating conditions that invite interesting people to be interesting.

Katie: You’re a pretty open book when it comes to your life as Adam as it intersects with burlesque performance as your Flirt Vonnegut persona. Burlesque wasn’t always safe for practitioners to speak about publicly. Did you always feel comfortable with those identities interacting in a public way? Or if not, how did you get there?

Adam: Did I always feel comfortable with my personal and burlesque persona and participating in burlesque in general? Or was I always comfortable with the idea of burlesque itself even before I approached it?

Katie: With your performance engagement specifically.

Adam: I think the answer to the question is a gradient. If I have to give it an absolute, did I always feel comfortable? No, but I became increasingly more comfortable over time and likely still do so in anecdotal terms. I was always comfortable as a recipient/reviewer. I always liked it. As I’ve become an adult, I’ve been somebody who appreciates the art form and the entertainment in burlesque in general.

I think I’ve always been pretty sex positive, but even that changes over time as I became more involved in it. There are different gradients of comfort and I’m sure some of them make sense to you and resonate with you as an entertainer yourself. Comfort being on the stage or being in front of a big group of people in front of an audience that comforts itself.

And then comfort of my participation, contribution, and participating specifically in burlesque tropes – nudity or semi-nudity on stage in a public space, or a certain kind of humor or vulgarity, or being in an environment that I think has changed over time. I remember the very first show that I ever did.

The very first show that I ever got hired for, I didn’t have a stage name. It takes a lot of time to come up with a stage name and I wanted the gig first. It was a burlesque show tribute to They Might Be Giants and Weird Al. And to my great shame, I was not a huge They Might Be Giants fan. I didn’t know very much about it. I was like a certain kind of nerd, but I wasn’t that kind of nerd, but I am a huge Weird Al fan. It is not even an apologist status. There’s no guilty pleasure here. I just love Weird Al.

I felt very well suited to it, but because I didn’t have a stage name, there was a certain part of me that was like – I don’t know how much I’m ready to do XYZ as Adam Teterus because Adam Teterus exists in Philadelphia and is in people’s minds. Adam has a reputation and there is an expectation of who Adam is and what he does.

The number one thing as far as I’m concerned is Adam makes people comfortable. And if I am in the context of doing a kind of sexy show, there’s the potential to make people uncomfortable, whether they’re in the audience or they’re seeing me through a new light or they discover that I do this and they weren’t present that evening.

There’s a part of me going into that specific show, knowing I’m going to be good at this, even though I’m nervous about doing it for the first time, but the prospect of making someone uncomfortable is terrifying to me. It’s antithetical to my goals in life. So, I didn’t, like, strip down. I didn’t do a bunch of different things.

I was unaware of certain tropes, such that I couldn’t even participate in them, but I stripped to my boxer briefs. It was a very modest performance. I wore an accordion in front of me. I never acknowledged the accordion. We just needed to not even say that it was there. It was just always there in front of me.

It was, in terms of burlesque, a very modest participation. And the development of my persona of Flirt Vonnegut has made me participate more and more increasingly. So, in burlesque, as an art form, I remember the very first time I ever wore a thong was also the first time I ever wore a thong in front of droves of people a lot happening at one time. Like, what is this feeling in my butt? And also, there are a couple of hundred people here. And that’s a lot to do in one time.

That was a Star Wars show in which I was hosting the show as a version of C3PO and it was definitely a lot to handle. But diving into it felt kind of cool, like doing something new and equal parts scary and rewarding. Looking back on that thing is fun; telling you about this story is fun. But at that moment, I was very nervous to share a backstage with a lot of beautiful naked people. I was very nervous to be one of them suddenly, and to go on stage in that state. I was very nervous, but that I feel like is a perfect anecdote because that is very normal for me now. Like those articles of clothing and the lack thereof, all that stuff is very normal to me now as a performer, but that is that’s Flirt that’s stuff that Flirt does.

Adam doesn’t do that. Not that he has a problem with it, but like I said, Adam’s number one concern in life is making other people comfortable in a certain context. Flirt as a whole, it’s a different animal together.

Katie: And tension is a necessary ingredient, right? If it’s a sexy show it’s going to ideally create a tension. And comedy is like the opposite. Comedy is, how do I remove the tension by making people laugh? Which as I understand that, that’s why comedy and burlesque alternate on certain shows. Like you’ll have a striptease, and then you’ll have a comedian, that tension and release.

Adam: You’re right. It is kind of antithetical to like that central mission of like, let me make people feel comfortable and cozy – kind of the exact opposite, but it sounds like a good challenge.

Katie: You had mentioned coming up with a stage name and if I remember correctly, you have a Kurt Vonnegut tattoo. You’re a legit fan; it’s not just a fun pun name. What drew you to his writing specifically?

Adam: I am a very big fan of Kurt Vonnegut. Growing up, Kurt Vonnegut is sort of an entry drug for a lot of people in terms of being interested in literature. He’s very accessible; it’s easy-going stuff.

Everybody has a Kurt Vonnegut phase. It feels like I never got out of that phase. I love Kurt Vonnegut largely because I think makes light of things that are very serious to me as a Capricorn. I’m not a big zodiac guy, but to me as a Capricorn, I feel like his writing is very tailored toward the way that I accept and process life in all events; morbid reality.

It’s making light of things that are really difficult. It’s treating things very seriously. It feels resonant. And I grew up with Slaughterhouse-Five as my entry point. I think it’s a popular entry point for a lot of people in a number of different ways. What’s funny is I have these really weird memories of how I first came across Slaughterhouse-Five.

I remember vividly that I talked to my dad about books that he liked. And I think at the time I was in like seventh grade, eighth grade maybe. And at that point in time, reading books felt like children’s books. There’s Goosebumps. There’s a bunch of different novels that I really liked reading on my own.

And then everything else, anything that had any weight to it was just school stuff. It was like, I have to read this. I have to read Henrik Ibsen. I have to read Herman Melville. I have to read F. Scott Fitzgerald stuff that I eventually really loved. But it felt like work. I remember reading Slaughterhouse-Five and learning that this is something that my dad likes. And then I learned that I really liked it and found it really funny and humanizing, and it didn’t feel like work.

It felt like I was elevating myself in my psyche. I was approaching a fun and funny but, but sincere, sincere philosophy that felt like it was a part of my life. And I can build on that. And also having an understanding of my father in a new light, because I was thinking my dad likes stuff like this, which makes him more complex than I’ve ever understood.

I guess I’m a chip off the old block because we both appreciate this thing and it gave me a new dimensionality in which to understand my dad. And that was really special to me. And every page was very poetic, but very mundane. It was violent. Vonnegut doesn’t even have to try very hard in order to do things in an incredible way.

And that’s, for some reason, a theme in my life: I love artists who look like they don’t try hard and pull it off in incredible ways. One of my favorite bands is, that’s like their whole fucking schtick. They don’t care, but it’s also just so important. And I remember as an adult relaying this story to my dad and telling him now, I remember when you told me you loved Slaughterhouse-Five.

And I read Slaughterhouse-Five for the first time. And it was a book that I kept in my pocket. I loved it so much. I would read it and reread it. And every character is important to me. And I told my dad, that was one of the first times that I really acknowledged like you’re a human being who has had a past and interests and hobbies. You’re not just my dad who has a role and responsibilities and a job to take care of us and to go to work. And my dad said, “I’ve never read that book”.

Katie: Amazing!

Adam: Yeah. And it’s not the first time there’s been other things that I feel like were important to my dad that I think I’ve just ascribed in my own life. And I don’t know how these things occurred. I think maybe I was just looking for some meaning and perhaps it just glimpsed through my brain like that, wouldn’t it be so special if this were a thing and because it was such a mundane and unimportant part of, of the world, I had just decided that it was true. Unless of course my dad has some early onset dementia, which I don’t think is the case, but anything is possible.

Katie: Does that remain your favorite Vonnegut book of the ones that you’ve read?

Adam: It remains my favorite Vonnegut book, largely because it’s the one that I’m most comfortable with. And well-versed in the story of Billy Pilgrim is significant to me because he’s just a boring everyman who goes on a really important adventure and learns something special about life. And I think that’s really wonderful, all the characters that are introduced through it that end up coming back in, in other books, Kilgore Trout, and the dog Kazak.

A lot of them became motifs throughout the rest of Vonnegut’s work, whether or not they first appeared in Slaughterhouse. And that meant that Slaughterhouse-Five, for me, was sort of a skeleton key to higher learning – higher art. It becomes important to me because it was it was the thing that created a palette that did not exist prior to it.

I don’t think it’s his best work of art of all time. I think there are others that are extremely notable and wonderful in their own way. And I’m a lover of all of his work and his artwork as well. But yeah, it, it was, it was the first one that made an indelible mark, so I can’t deny its impact.

Staying with that, have you seen my tattoo? You’ve seen my tattoo, right?

Katie: I have: that quote, “everything is beautiful and nothing hurt”.

Adam: Yeah. It’s funny because when I first got, I saw this in the book and I loved it and I thought, I love this because it’s a really shitty drawing and it’s also extremely sincere at the same time. And for me, that’s so Vonnegut. It’s not refined. It doesn’t look beautiful. It’s a terrible drawing of a tombstone. I can do a better drawing of a tombstone. The lettering is insane.

It’s like a sketch on a napkin, but it contains a sentiment that I think is more important than any other ambition or hope or philosophy or theology in my life. Like the idea of, a dream that you can look backward and say “it was worth it. It was good”. Not just that it was worth it, but it was good. Every single part of it helped me get through pain. It helps me boost the good stuff. When I first considered getting this a tattoo, I thought the trick here is it’s a shitty drawing and getting a tattoo of something that looks deliberately shitty is like, well, what a funny thing to do.

But I felt as though I had to do it, I had to honor the original look. The whole package is important to me, right? That reckless, who cares what it looks like. It’s an important sentiment thing; it’s not trying too hard. And then as I got older, I realized like, everybody’s got that fucking tattoo.

I’ve met 20, 30, a hundred people who all have the exact same tattoo. And the first time you meet somebody, you’re like, that’s so cool. I understand you better. And you understand me? And then later you’re like, yeah, you have it too. Cool.

Katie: I am entrenched in tattoo culture and I’ve never met anybody that has that. Maybe you run in different circles than I do. I’ve never seen that tattoo before. I love Vonnegut too and Adam is to Slaughterhouse-Five as Katie is to Cat’s Cradle. That book made me feel insane.

Adam: Yeah, I couldn’t get my head around. It’s really important to me as science fiction and physiology. I think the idea of Bokononism was a, I don’t know if you recall certain aspects of it, but the poet and spiritual leader in that book is so important to me. And it’s all BS, it’s just made up for nothing, but all of those ideas were really special to me.

I loved it. There’s a poem inside of it that I’ve always thought of in relation to my name because Bokonon writes about the creation of Adam. And I’ve never really had a lot of love for my name, but that made me appreciate it because Bokonon writes something about like, I hope I’m remembering this correctly:

Adam was created, God forged him from clay or whatever. And the first words that he speaks are “lucky me, lucky mud”. I love how beautiful, and again, mundane that is. There’s something special about what Vonnegut is able to do. He points out like just some hunk of mud. Like there’s nothing special about that at all, but he’s lucky. The lucky mud that got turned into a guy. How cool is that? And it feels special, profound. Yeah. Lucky me, lucky mud.

Katie: To stay with the name motif, you and I are the two of the only people I know personally that use their full first and last name as our social media handles, like on Instagram, on Twitter, and elsewhere. Is that what made you decide to do that and not use a pseudonym, or like a concealing misspelling or a nickname?

Adam: This question is more prescient, more relevant to me now than ever, more than you can even know. Because I’ve been thinking a lot about identity and my identities. When I first joined Twitter, I don’t remember what my username was, but I don’t think it was my real name because at the time, the Internet was a separate place from the real world. And I had grown up with usernames for forums and gamer tags for video games and so on.

For me, those were important ideas because growing up as someone named Adam, I felt as though I always drew the short stick for getting a nickname or a cool name within my group. I never had a cool nickname. Nobody had a special name for me. You can’t abbreviate Adam into being like Nicholas to Nick or something along those lines.

I always felt a sort of bummed out that I was stuck with this name. It felt formal and it was shared by everyone. And that didn’t feel special to me, with the exception of my family calling me J, which is the first letter of my middle name. Joseph is my father’s name and his father’s name. So, my family calls me, J, I think I’ve told you the story about how in grade school I told people to call me J.

That’s when I learned that that’s just a family name. It was a real trial by fire thing, where I realized when people who don’t have a strong tie to you call you that it diminishes it. And it’s also strange-sounding. I didn’t like that. And I retreated from that instantly, but I have always had a thing with screen names, usernames, nicknames, where I have this huge desire to have one, but I’ve never been able to pick one or like find one that feels like it is representative of me all the time.

Within my friend group, when we would play video games, you have a nickname that you name your character in the video game, or logon to a forum and your screen name is how everybody knows you. I notoriously changed mine all the time because I can never settle on one. It was an embarrassing reference to a song I liked, and I could just never settle on it.

At some point in time, I think I realized that Twitter specifically was an opportunity for me to leverage my professional identity, probably around the same time that I became a part of Indy Hall. And maybe before that, when I was realizing I can network, I can put my real name out there, my videos, my voiceover, whatever.

I would meet people who might grant me opportunities or want to do so. And around that time, I think maybe as I was graduating from college, I might’ve still been at Temple at the time. It suddenly made sense to me to use my full name on Twitter because Twitter was no longer a separate thing from the real world; it was an extension of the real world.

I was trying to create options, using Twitter. And I have been @AdamTeterus on Twitter for a long time. And that’s been like me in every version which is good and bad. The good thing is I have allowed myself to say, Adam contains multitudes. I can be a professional coworking guy here, but I also retweet fan art of Godzilla movies.

And I mentioned, shows that are coming up for Flirt Vonnegut. And I do it all on Twitter. Cool. Good enough. But! The past year, even just the past couple of months, have had me reflecting on that a little bit and addressing it differently. In fact, just about a month ago, I created a new Twitter screen name because I realized there are a lot of parts of me that I like a lot, but I don’t want to put into Adam’s world anymore.

I did two things. I deleted all tweets that I’ve ever tweeted since the beginning of joining the website, because it occurred to me that I just don’t need that as an archive or a library of my development as a person. Yeah. Wasn’t useful to me, so I deleted them all. And after that I thought I want to have a new lane.

I want to bring back a new identity. That is just my online identity. And what that means for content is like, I follow burlesque girls who are sex workers and they gas themselves up, and each other, and they post pictures of themselves. And these are my friends. I love these people, but I don’t need to put it in Adam’s timeline because I have my co-working buds.

And it all goes back to the same thing that I said at the start of our conversation. I can’t sit well with the idea of making friends of mine uncomfortable, which means I have to curate versions of myself. I’m comfortable with doing so – people stay comfortable in the understanding of who I am, but I don’t want to censor myself.

So, I have to create a lane or an opportunity for me to express those interests and versions and friendships and community ties. So, I created a new Twitter account where I can post whatever: retweet anime pictures, or my friends who are on OnlyFans or talk about the video game that I’m playing right now.

They’re really superfluous, nerdy, too horny for main. I realized this is a valuable expression for me. I may still want to use my Twitter for networking or opportunities. Not that that’s really why I’m there, but mostly I just want to have some clear lines of like, this is different versions of me and this is what they’re used for.

So, my new Twitter account is the online name that I’ve been using for virtually everything for a little while, which is wow_thanks. I think the Twitter one is @wow_thx, because they didn’t let me spell out. Thanks. Whatever. So, one of the things and “wow, thanks” is a thing that Adam says, oh, wow, thanks!

It’s a delight, surprise and gratitude. It’s just a very silly trivial thing. I love that phrase. And so, it’s become like my persona. The account has like six followers. Nobody really knows about it. And mostly I’m just posting. I don’t know. What if, what if a Godzilla’s King Ghidorah was a hot enemy girl and it’s a meme?

It’s entrenched in a certain kind of culture that I don’t want to have to explain to people, but I don’t want it to make people feel bothered. It’s just weird shit. It’s online. And I realized that my online version of me is not in the same version of me in real life. Always. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it’s not. And I needed to create a space for each of those things. I guess I’m still trying to figure it out. Like, I don’t know about you, Katie, but every day I feel like I have a different idea about who I really am and I’m still trying to figure that out. And this is just the latest version of that.

Katie: Sure. When you’re trying to sum up an entire identity in a username, right? Especially a short screen handle – I don’t know if you remember Ryan Lochte. He was this Olympic swimmer, and was kind of a bro who had a reputation for being sort of an idiot and a bad interview. But when you were talking about, how do I sum myself up? There was this clip of him that I really loved. The interviewer goes, “what defines you?” And he just goes, “what defines me? Ryan Lochte“. Well, yeah, to me that’s actually an excellent answer.

Adam: It feels very Yogi Berra.

Katie: I relate to what you were saying about that encapsulation of a person and that it’s like, well, I like tattoos. I like punk rock. I like drag and burlesque. I like Indy Hall. I like all these things. How do you figure out an umbrella term that’s under a certain character limit? Like, there are no other people with that name in the world, which is part of the reason I chose my current name when I changed it. I wanted to be Katie Francis because I love the name Francis, but there’s an NRA nut named Katie Francis. And my middle name is Lionheart. I wanted to be Katie Lionheart legally, but it turns out there’s a Katie Lionheart in the UK who’s a photographer.

Adam: Your middle name is Lionheart. That’s a sick name, but you have an affinity for Francis.

Katie: St. Francis of Assisi was always my favorite saint because of the animal thing. And when Pope Francis made his big debut, I was super-impressed with this guy that was actually Christ-like; I don’t ever remember seeing that in a pope figure. And I’ve been a little disappointed even though he came in so strong. But yeah, I always liked that name, but I didn’t want to have anybody else’s name. I just want my own name.

Adam: It’s so interesting. So, coincidentally, and this has nothing to do with anything. My brother’s middle name is Francis because my grandfather on my mom’s side, his name is Francis. We call him Frank. So, my pop-pop on my mom’s side, we say Pop-Pop M, his name is Francis. My brother’s middle name is Francis. It felt very delicate to me, and over time I’ve actually really loved the name Francis specifically. I liked the nickname for it. I love the name, Fran. It feels like a great name. I like that name a lot.

Katie: It’s special. I do too.

Adam: When you’re a kid, that’s probably why I had negative association with Francis, because I always imagine Francis chewing the prank bubble gum and just being like, ugh.

Katie: So, speaking of Francis and the bubble gum, we have a mutual favorite movie, which is Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. What do you think is the funniest gag in that whole movie? Every time I watch that, I laugh like it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it. There are so many funny parts.

Adam: Yeah. It changes. Oh, my gosh. What do I think is the funniest gag in that movie?

Katie: Let me qualify this too. When, when people say what’s your favorite song? And it’s like, “holy shit, how do I commit to that?” This is the funniest movie of all time. All the parts are funny. Your favorite part right now that is.

Adam: Okay. There are two parts that come to my mind instantly, and I feel like I’m 100% doing a disservice to the rest of the movie and every amazing gag in the movie. The two that come to my mind that always stand out are part of Pee-Wee’s morning routine of taping his face and like making an insane face. And I thought that was hysterical. Like while his Rube Goldberg machine is making him breakfast and he’s pouring tons of food for Speck. For some reason, he was in the bathroom getting ready for the day by putting scotch tape on his face. I love that it’s so inane and dumb and silly.

I guess the thing ultimately that I think is the best gag in the whole movie is just the existence of Pee-wee Herman. Like he is so such an unexplained entity who is a child, but not in a creepy way. I feel like it’s really difficult to do again, the entire balancing act of how that is so hysterically funny to me, but not scary; it’s wonderful. He’s a man-child, but that’s not pathetic. And it’s also not weird or scary. I don’t know if anybody can do this again, but Paul Reubens did something so special. He nailed it.

Katie: And he’s got this sick house, but he, like, doesn’t have a job. What is going on? Does he have a big inheritance somewhere?

Adam: Where is his income? I’m glad I’m not the only person that thinks really deeply about this movie. I also think, when he goes to the magic store to find new tricks and gags, it’s a regular part of his day. Some people wake up in the morning and they read the paper, but he goes to the magic shop and buys new gags. And one of the things that I love is, that the dude at the store is showing him new stuff. And I love when Pee-wee Herman gets scared because he does this like, “AAH!”, and then he immediately starts laughing. And I just think like that reaction is immediately funny to me. I think of that all the time.

The other thing that I always think about is I lived in Texas for three years and I had to go to the Alamo because Pee-Wee did. One of my favorite scenes in that movie is when he’s on the Alamo tour. And the tour guide says, “there are over a thousand uses for corn, and all of them I will tell you right now”.

I went on that tour and that is how it goes. And it’s so funny to me that they were saying arousing this idea of just how boring it felt, like what a slog. I’ll tell you this; this will probably hurt your soul. I saw somebody who was working at the Alamo. She was one of the tour guides or works of facility or something.

Of course, I asked, “can we see the basement of the Alamo?” I was waiting for her to respond and be like, “there’s no basement in the Alamo”. You know what her response was? She’s like, “well, you can, but there’s just like brooms in there”. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I thought that was such a funny discovery. It’s like the anti-Vonnegut, TOO mundane, but in a fun way – it almost feels like it comes right back around. Because she had managed to surprise me. I felt like there was no surprise here. She was going to respond with the line from the movie, but she did surprise me.

Yeah, I think she was too young. Maybe she had never seen the movie. So somehow, she had been spared the tomfoolery that I was causing her to endure at the time.

Katie: That makes you reckon with your own mortality, like maybe she was born 10 years after this amazing movie came out. But yeah, that doesn’t surprise me that you went to the Alamo. Because I think we’re probably at a similar level of fandom. I backpacked in Los Angeles about 10 years ago. I did all the Big Adventure shit. I went to Pee-Wee’s house. I went to Francis Buckman’s house. I did the Santa Monica strip mall where Chuck’s Bike Shop was and the dinosaurs out in the desert. It turns out that Tyrannosaurus is not as big as it looks, the one that he sits inside with Simone, right? You can go up and look, it’s just big enough for your head. The teeth have a little bit of chicken wire around it, because I guess people were trying to do weird stuff. I got the Large Marge tattoo in Orange County. And I did this trip on like a shoestring budget. If it cost money to do, I just didn’t do it.

But right on the last night of that trip, I was walking on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which is very depressing and I don’t recommend it. Hollywood is like the Jersey shore. I was just walking and I was like, Oh, there’s Pee-wee Herman’s star right there on the Walk of Fame. But that’s not an interview question; I’m just trying to impress you.

Adam: No, I am impressed. I want to do that. I remember there are so many ways in things that I love a lot. Independently, they fold into one another and I will never forget, my fandom for Godzilla started when I was a baby and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure has always been one of my favorite movies of all time.

And as an adult, it is my favorite movie. And I’ll always remember when Pee-Wee’s riding through the movie lot and he sees Godzilla fighting King Ghidora. And for some reason it just kind of felt emotionally resonant to me. These are two things that I like separately and their worlds are here together.

Vonnegut actually works the same way, where Vonnegut was friends with a science fiction author whose name was Theodore Sturgeon. Theodore Sturgeon wrote a story called It in the 1930s about a swamp monster. And many years later, in the 1970s, when Marvel was creating the Man Thing, they named him Ted after Ted Sturgeon.

And so, Vonnegut Man Thing, all kind of like combined into one weird world. And it’s like the world sort of winking at me and saying, “all the things that you like are aligned in some way; they are representative of different parts of you, but they all belong in the same space”. I like that.

Katie: Right? It’s like they’re Lego blocks snapped together. And speaking of the scene at the end, with the Godzilla movie-in-the-Pee-Wee-movie, with all the characters together – if you were a Big Adventure character, who would you go with? I would be Simone, but I don’t really care about going to Paris. I have no ambition to go to France, but I just resonated with Simone because she had a dream to do something – she just needed a little encouragement and then she charged after it. She was just like, “YOLO, I’m going to Paris“. And she did. She came back and she was like, “Peewee. I went to Paris”.

Adam: I love that about Simone’s little character. She’s such a little speck in that movie. I always loved that. If I was a character in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, who would I be? It feels so hard to say. There’s a lot of characters. Here’s Chuck from Chuck’s Bike Shop, the magic store guy. Amazing Larry.

Honestly – I’m probably Dottie. I feel like I’m somebody who really likes someone, but has a weird, coy way of getting it across. There’s like a tight little romance there. I love Dottie for that reason. She didn’t do anything wrong. She was just adorable and wonderful and loved.

Katie: E.G. Daily grew up to be so beautiful. She was an adult in that movie, sure, and she’s a voice actress now. She’s a cartoon character.

Adam: I had no idea. I bet I’m familiar with stuff that she’s done, but it never occurred to me. Oh, I’m looking at her stuff right now and yeah, she’s done like all the voices for the Powerpuff Girls.

Katie: She was a singer for a while too. Her voice is just how she stayed relevant.

I think I had told you before, it occurred to me, Adam is an enthusiasm doula. Making people comfortable and getting people stoked. To engage with, whether it’s the Indy Hall community, whether it’s a burlesque show, what do you think the overlap is there broadly? Do you think that there is a skill set that translates both ways that you find yourself using in both of those, between Indy Hall and the burlesque world?

Maybe there are two people that are not getting along. They’re either clashing in the moment or they absolutely outright hate each other – managing different personalities, managing safety concerns in some contexts. But if you saw a bridge to those two, what qualities do you see yourself using the most or skills?

Adam: Yes. Like 100%. I guess for as long as I can remember, I have been the go-to person, friend, sibling, whomever, for listening to problems, offering encouragement and affirmation.

I wouldn’t even say offering advice because, in my view, it is usually encouragement and affirmation, like telling people that they’re doing well. They’re okay. They’re capable of doing something. I don’t think that I’m a person who can dispense advice. I don’t even have the lived experience. Most folks have to tell them what they should do.

It’s just to remind them of what they’re capable of. That’s a philosophy that I have. And I’m sure there’s something to this read into it that you’d like. I’m a middle child. I’m a Capricorn. I think at some point in time, I learned that those things mean that I am the placating person in a lot of situations and that works for me.

I’ve always been comfortable in that role for my friends, for my family members, my partner, strangers, whomever. The common piece between Indy Hall and being an emcee for burlesque shows is I’m a facilitator who prides himself on creating an invitation for the experience that you deserve, whether or not you have ever been a part of this before, you belong here, you are in the right place right now.

I will give you as much as I can to support your existence in this space and teach you how to have the best experience, the best time, whether it’s the best time at a show at night at a bar where the best time exists as an Indy Hall member in this community. I love that, you calling me an enthusiasm doula; it means a lot to me because I’ve always struggled to figure out what the moniker is for what that role is in a way that feels important.

I don’t want to just be a concierge. I don’t want it to be transactional. I want to help invigorate people and remind them of what they can do. I love that idea. So yeah, Indy Hall and burlesque, it’s the same. It’s just that the context and content changed dramatically.

I pride myself in being the type of person who understands on a deep level, what people are here for and how to help them get it. It’s about creating places of comfort.

Katie: If you’re driving a conversation, whether it’s on a coffee chat for Indy Hall, whether it’s trying to manage a crowd when something might be a little bit off, if you were like not feeling well, or if you are having a hard day – how do you strap in some positive energy? Does that philosophy have some kind of influence on, how do you maintain that energetic level without dropping the ball on that experience?

Adam: It’s hard to do when I’m not feeling well, but the stakes immediately increase when someone else’s experiences on the line. I want them to have a better day than I’m having, if possible. And I know that I subscribed to the notion that fake it till you make it is a thing that happens prior to actually making it, you fake it for as long as you can.

And then eventually at some point in time, without you noticing you’re doing, it it’s not faking anymore. I also subscribe to the belief that honesty is always the most interesting thing available. I believe vulnerability helps unlock people and make them feel emotionally in tune with one another.

As a facilitator or a leader of an experience, I won’t shy away from letting people know how I’m feeling or where I’m coming from as a means of giving them the permission to feel the same way and to dispel the idea that anyone has to perform for one another, or pretend at any certain level to be something that they are not.

I know well enough, and I think I am skilled enough to avoid dwelling on negative or turning it into a sob story or a pity party, or like asking people for too much. If I tell them like, you know what, I’m not having a very good day. It’s not because I want attention from them, it’s because I want them to feel permission to be however they’re feeling. I don’t offer that information unless I think that it is functional to help unlock someone else, because I think vulnerability goes really long to make other people feel comfortable in your presence.

I use it frequently when there is a conflict when there is some dynamic that is a little misaligned. If someone is upset, if someone is mad at me or just mad at circumstances in the world, I find it is one of the easiest ways to disarm them and make them come back to earth a little bit and realize like, everybody is doing their best.

Katie: Does that change at all? When I think about being specifically a burlesque emcee, if you are charged with managing a crowd – to keep the performers safe, and also keep the crowd on your side. Does that vulnerability change the approach if you’re on stage and something bad starts happening?

Adam: Yeah, it does exist. I think being an emcee, and this is something that I teach in my workshops for people who want to learn more about being a show host. It is a tightrope act of balancing being the ultimate authority and being extremely trustworthy on the experience. You are safe with me. I’m going to teach you how this works. I promise that you’re going to have the best time ever. The person you’re about to watch perform is the most incredible!

I need you to trust all of that and for you to believe that I’m telling you the truth. The counterbalance is being the first person to take a fall for something. Let’s say the tech is not working. The music’s not playing. Somebody fucks up during their number. It doesn’t work the same way or their bra won’t come off.

There is some expectation that has been busted and you’ll have to reassemble people’s faith. In my experience as a host, I need to be the ultimate authority. Also need to be the person who hops on a grenade because no one in the show is doing it wrong. It’s my fault. I gotta own it and eat it and make sure that everybody knows it’s on me, because if I can do that, I can do it in an entertaining and self-effacing way that maintains in absolute respect for the performers and people who come on and dazzle with a choreo and they sing and they do something incredible.

My job is to protect them first and to make them look like they are untouchable, which means I need to be. The thing in the way I need, I need to you now slip on a banana peel and own a mistake if something happens, even if it has nothing to do with me, but where that is never compromised is anyone’s safety, period.

Whether you’re an audience member, or you’re a staff member working behind the bar, or the performers, and it’s part of creating a space of trust and comfort and safety and making sure that everybody knows and acknowledges that. We have principles here for how this works and there’s just no compromise on the principles.

These are not rules. I’m not telling anyone how to live. I am, as a facilitator, telling them how to have the best time and violation of those things is unacceptable, but it also means like you came here to have a great time, right? You definitely did. Therefore, you will do these things and you will maximize the experience that you have.

If anybody gets their boundaries crossed or anything like that, we have ways of dealing with that. Some of them are my responsibility as a host, and some of them are the responsibility of staff in the venue. But the best thing I can do is teach people that there’s a way to have the best time ever.
And then that’s it, violating that means violating your own good time. Quite frankly, and most people don’t want to play themselves, so they are on their best behavior for the most part.

Katie: Do you think there’s anything you’ve learned from Indy Hall @ Home [being exclusively online] from the last year that you think will inform this?

Adam: I am certain that I have. I’ve learned a lot in a lot of different ways, even apart from Indy Hall online, but performing online, doing online burlesque shows, being an emcee on the internet from my computer.

I’ve learned a lot. And a lot of it is going to inform the way in which I think I try to approach a sense of accessibility. Letting people have a first-grade experience, letting them have a quality experience regardless of where they are is something that I want to maintain. And Indy Hall is not presently in a physical space.

We’re all doing everything online, but it has been extraordinarily valuable for a lot of people. I know yourself included. You’ve had more exposure to this community and support systems and members, and that’s a big deal. And presently, when I do a show in physical space, I have no consideration, not even an iota of consideration of like making it accessible to people at home.

And I think, no, it’s not so simple saying, we just turn on a web feed or whatever and let people watch. But I should have consideration because there are a lot of people left out in the mix. To take that further, I love Philadelphia so much and I love our bars and our hangout spots, but almost none of them are ADA accessible.

If you are in a wheelchair, sorry, you don’t get to be here unless, like you suffer some indignity and people carry you places and you can’t get through door frames and all sorts of bullshit that I really despise that I don’t have a lot of control over. And if anything, I’ve learned from Indy Hall @ Home being so valuable that, with consideration and care and thoughtfulness, you can open up the experience for a ton of people who are desperate to be recognized.

Not just to come in and have a good time, but to be spoken to, regarded as, you deserve to have as good a time as anyone. And I would love to bring that with me into shows. The fine line there is, in the Indy Hall capacity is I’m a producer, I’m a creator, I’m a facilitator and an admin.

I’m staffing a very small team and in a burlesque world, Flirt Vonnegut produces some shows, but he’s mostly just a host. He’s kind of a hired gun. I try as hard as I can to stay out of the nitty-gritty admin stuff, because I’m like, nah, I just don’t have the bandwidth for it. Perhaps I should pay closer attention to that stuff going forward, because everybody deserves to have fun like this to have a special night, to have the opportunity to be included, regardless of whether or not you could hike up the stairs at some of my favorite bars.

Katie: Have you ever emceed a drag show? How are those the same and how are they different from burlesque?

Adam: Yes. In Philadelphia, drag and burlesque overlap a lot more than in other cities. Not every city is the same as Philadelphia. Our scenes overlap a lot. So, it stands to reason that some shows have drag and burlesque, which means I am recognized in those communities as being capable of doing the experience.

I love doing drag shows because I love drag performers. They’re my friends. They’re incredible. The work that they do is just so outsized and remarkable, and I’m a fan. That said, I am not the best candidate for a drag show emcee because I’m not a drag performer. I am an honorary citizen of the space, but not a participating one, if that makes sense.

Flirt Vonnegut exists in queer spaces, regardless of what variety they are. But I think having a drag emcee is so important because they speak to what the experience is. They speak a common language: the jokes, the references, watching Drag Race, knowing who performs, who’s hot in the country and in the world: all that stuff is really important because like I mentioned, you want to be trustworthy.

People need to believe that you’re there for a reason. And you were the best person for the job to conduct this experience. And I am capable of doing it because I’m good in that sense, but I’m not the best candidate for it because there are people who are way better.

Katie: You’re like a family friend. You’re invited to the holiday celebrations, but you live in a different house.

Adam: Yes. And I would have to do a lot more work to get people on my side immediately because I need them to trust me that I am supposed to be here. And I’ve done shows where I tell people, “I don’t know what I’m doing here. No idea”. And sometimes that’s enough to win people over it to be like, well, at least he recognizes this is an odd pairing, but yeah, I’m kind of a substitute teacher in those cases where I roll in the TV on the dolly and everybody’s like, all right, this is different, but sure.

Katie: Do you have something that you learned, either a skill, an attitude, or a lesson that you learned when you were working in restaurants that you still use?

Adam: Oh, absolutely. A ton of things. I’ve learned so much from being a server and working in the industry. The first time I was ever a server before a restaurant was a huge restaurant in Texas in Fort Worth where I lived. And it sat 800 people. It was four stories. It was huge. Everything is bigger in Texas, believe it. And it was quite a role to fill for your first time being in the service industry. What I learned being from Philadelphia, or from the northeast in Texas, as a server where I need to make people comfortable and serve them and give them their food and give them an experience.

Also, I’m a northeastern person with a different sensibility and I have to mold myself to be one of them. Or sell a completely different idea altogether, but I found myself having to mold myself to be one of them in order for them to have a good time. I can’t be a foreigner here when I’m at your table.

I may as well have been invited to be in your party tonight. But my role is actually to take care of you. You’re the most important people here. And it’s not a mistake that I’m taking care of you. It’s gotta be personal and brief; nobody wants it to be like too overt or sitting down with them.

I would adopt a little bit of a Southern drawl. I would just like to sound a little bit like I’m from here. You can trust me. We’ll take care of each other. Because when someone was in my restaurant, they wanted to have an experience where they felt at home and comfortable and taken care of. And it was harder for them to accept new information or jump through hurdles, or I could be distracting, right?

I don’t want to distract from your experience. So, I did the best that I could to mold myself into a person that you would want to spend time with. And all I’m going to do is take care of you. So, you can trust me that the job will get done and you will be a priority. And I brought that with me into a lot of different realms in Indy Hall.

If you walk through the door, I want to learn something about you really quick, so I can adapt myself to it and spend time there. So, you can trust me that I’m the person that’s supposed to spend time with you.

Katie: Maybe wasn’t calculated, or something that you consciously decided to do. It was probably that there was a talent. Did that chameleon type thing that you were just like, huh, this seems to work? I mean, if you’re anything like me, you kind of just stumble across something and it’s like, cool, that went over.

Adam: Yeah. I think growing up as a kid, it’s a survival technique. I learned that I was capable of being friends with every group of kids, the geeks and the jocks and the academic types. I can be a member of every group if I find a way to mold myself into that.

When I reflect on it, maybe that’s not a great thing because it means that I guess I censor some of my identity in order to be a part of other people to make them comfortable. But at the same time for me, that’s appropriate. I just want other people to be comfortable and I want to contribute to that.

That’s what works for me. So, I did that as somebody in middle school and high school and college, I do that in my family. I did that as a waiter. I do that as a burlesque host.

I guess it all kind of comes back to, I told you that I had always wanted to have a nickname that was just for me, a username or a screen name. That was just me, but I can never settle on one. I think it’s because I’ve always had a hard time figuring out who I am when I’m by myself, because I define myself when I’m with other people.

Katie: I totally get that.

Adam: I think context is a lot of that. It’s also those experiences that you’ve had, particularly in the restaurant industry, which to me is just like a crash course in how to be a person, a good person, ideally, right?

Katie: You have spread out your surface area for being able to connect with people. I don’t see it necessarily as like you’re adapting who you are. I mean, don’t let me define your experience for you, but it’s like, you’re increasing the chances that you can connect with somebody like, you’re from Texas. I lived in Texas for a while or, you love Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. That’s my favorite movie. Just that variety of experiences. There’s nothing disingenuous about it. It’s just those multitudes that you contain where it’s like the only screen name that’ll do is my real name. You have the opportunity to know different people on their terms and have it be a little bit more genuine than if you’re both trying to be the star, you know?

Adam: Yeah, I think so, because that’s fulfilling to me. I think that is my lot in life. I want to spend time with interesting people and you can’t do that unless you let them be interesting. And in order to let them be interesting, they need to be comfortable, which means you have to help them be comfortable being themselves.

And I found a way in which I can attempt to do that to varying degrees of success. I think it’s mostly a good thing. But yeah, that’s a big, big thing for me. I just want to spend time with interesting people, but it’s not like a light switch. You can’t just switch on the light and someone is themselves.

Katie: Sure, you have to find a way to help them be that. It’s a situation that evolves all the time, too. There’s this writer on Twitter, Shea Serrano. He has said some iteration of, “all I want in this life is to make cool shit with people I like“. Wow, that really resonated with me. All I want to do is make cool things and collaborate with people that I think are nice and interesting. Speaking of collaborations, I’m trying to pick up transitions, which is inspired by your coffee-chat segues.

What do you think everyone should know about being a living kidney donor? What’s something that surprised you, whether it’s like a physical thing, how you engage with society differently, how it changed your relationship with [your friend] Octavius [who received the kidney]? What’s something that sticks out to you about that experience of donating your kidney to somebody else, especially someone you know?

Adam: Two things, two answers separately. One is, more people deserve to know what that even means, living organ donor. And that starts very plainly and this might sound foolish, but in my case, this is relevant.
Everyone deserves to know what your fucking kidney does. Like what do your kidneys do? Because I think, for the most part, you learn about your body and anatomy in school, maybe you spend more time in it in a medical field and you devote more time to it. But a lot of people just take that stuff for granted.

My mind works like, well, what do I need to know more than that for everyone deserves to know how their body works, what health looks like on an individual level, because being more aware of who you are and what makes you function is cool. The science of it is genuinely impressive and weird, and a miracle, quite frankly, that any of this stuff works.

It also means that you have a better understanding of what you’re capable of, including potentially helping someone else if they need a living organ donation. So that’s a good thing. And this is something that I take a lot of my cues from my partner, Timaree, because she teaches bodily awareness through fitness and, and sexuality education as a doctor.

More people, I think, ought to know we should have better science. We should remind more people. We should have better classes. When you get out of school yourself, you should still have the ability to constantly learn about yourself because a closer awareness for you with your own person is nothing but good. That’s such a good thing. That’s great.

The second thing I would say is on a personal level, I have a really difficult time with talking about being an organ donor, because it immediately becomes something that I’m not comfortable with, which is being regarded as doing something heroic or super, it is an incredible thing that you can do with someone else, for someone.

It is an amazing sacrifice. It’s a lot of these things, those things are true, but I have a difficult time with being treated special. I don’t, I can’t accept gifts. It’s hard for me to accept compliments. And so, the idea of being a hyperbolic version of myself, like I did something truly incredible, it doesn’t fly for me. It does make me uncomfortable. Probably because that would make it hard for me to chameleon into situations. Right? It draws too much attention, but that comes back to me in this way. I think there is an existing campaign unconsciously or deliberately in which organ donors are treated as extremely special people.

While I think that’s cool because they deserve recognition for this wonderful thing that they’ve done or been part of, I think that is extremely counterintuitive. I am not a hero. I’m not an Olympic medalist. I didn’t do something so extreme that other people can’t do it. And I would prefer – this is just my 2 cents – that more people see themselves as being able to do this. We have so many hundreds of thousands of people who need an organ donor, need someone to step up to this and who would, it would be better suited if we all just start thinking in terms of this being a more ordinary thing.

I don’t like when people talk about it, like “I’m an organ donor, I saved a life”. I’m not a fucking savior. I’m not an angel. I’m not God, I’m not any of those things. And the more that we make it out like that, as the case for organ donors – I can’t speak for other people, but just for me, the more we make it out like that, I find the more exclusive it makes it.

And the less a regular ordinary person can realize like, oh yeah, I can do that. Because if you talk about an organ donor, like they’re an unbelievable force for good. I don’t wake up in the morning and say, “I’m going to win a gold medal. Someone’s going to make a statue out of me.” I don’t have those aspirations or ambitions.

If I think of the only people who do this sort of thing as being incredible heroes, like, well, I’m not an incredible hero. I’m just a regular dude. More regular dudes, more regular people need to do this stuff because I can. And live really happy, wonderful lives, but all of this is baked into a system and where, like, I can only do it because I work with Indy Hall as a company that cares for me that supports me. I can only do it within this community because members like yourself and people like you helped me when I was recovering, allowed me to take time off and not pay for it. My health insurance was okay. There are so many things that people don’t have as a given that they should all have.

Maybe if they had the support systems in environments and they would realize that they can do more than they do. But I really have a difficult time with this whole like aggrandizing campaign of organ donors are heroes. It’s not that I disagree with this. I just think it precludes people from taking part too far out of reach. I could never do that. That’s probably the number one response that people have if they learn that I’m an organ donor: I could never do that. And what you personally could or could not do, it’s moot. Physically you can actually do that. If you were in a certain class if you are taken care of in certain ways, but you really can.

The more that you believe that it’s special, the more people are going to die waiting for an organ. That’s just the bottom line. It’s the reality. And that sucks. I don’t want that to be the case. So, when I decided to become an organ donor, I learned a lot of stuff. I felt like I was catching up to a lot of common knowledge and I wish I didn’t have to play catch-up, that no one had to play catch-up.

So yeah, literally anyone can, provided you have two functional kidneys and a support system in medical coverage. Anybody can do this and the world would be better if more people did that. It wasn’t extraordinary. I have a friend who talks a lot about being an organ donor a lot and I can’t stand it. Where we have this thing in common is that we are both organ donors. We both gave a kidney and it’s like if he has a business card, it’s like the first thing on his business card. It drives me up a fucking wall. I could never be that. I just don’t think it’s that it is very important, but it’s not that important. It’s not a piece of my identity. It’s a thing I did. And I’m glad I did it. I have no regrets. I’m proud of it, but it’s not who I am.

The way this individual talks about it excludes people. And I recognize that he needs to do that because he has to feel good about it, and he should feel good about it. It’s good. But I find that it is actually counterintuitive. It’s like a certain kind of boasting that I think is keeping people away from doing it.

Katie: It’s not a productive approach because it makes people uncomfortable, which goes against your number one mission, because the best-case scenario, people are saying, “oh, this guy is so much more of a good person than I am”.

Adam: Even I have to calibrate that in my own life. I am proud of it. And it’s something that’s really significant and special to me. I love Octavius. He is my brother. And the fact that we got to do this together is really great. I’m not ashamed of it. And I like telling people that I did it cause it’s cool as shit, but it’s not everything. And it’s also like, not something that I want to protect or defend. I want more people to do it as normal as possible.

Katie: To go back to what Shea Serrano said, it was a cool thing that you got to do with someone you liked.

Adam: Octavius and I joked, and still do, for many years. It’s our best collaboration. And I would say so, but at the same time, we do a podcast together and who cares? But the organ donor thing was cool.

Katie: You two did the Comic Book Junto podcast. And you do the Man Thing Minute podcast. When you started these podcasts, what was the dream outcome? Was this something you were doing because it’s cool shit that you get to do with people you like? What I’m doing right now, in this interview, is when I was a kid, an adolescent, I would go through Playboy magazines and there were always those interviews, like the Robin Williams interview, the Hunter S. Thompson Q&A. And I remember being like, that would be so rad to be able to interview these people that you find interesting and get to know who they really are. With the podcasts, was there some vision for that activity outside of the Shea Serrano idea?

Adam: Selfishly, I’ve just always wanted to be on a talk show or host a show. I’ve always wanted to be the host of a late-night show. You’re Kimmel, you’re Conan O’Brien or whatever. I went to school at Temple for broadcasting, and in no uncertain terms, it was because I wanted to have a radio show.

I wanted to be a host, to meet people for a living, talk for a living, give people something to listen to in the morning or during the day, and some structure and levity. I always wanted to do that. So as podcasts became more commonplace, that seemed like a hack for me. Like, oh, I can just do that. I don’t actually need to wait for anyone to choose me. I can just do it. That’s why podcasts are so widespread, because you can just do it at home. And for Octavius and me, it came from that selfish desire. I always wanted to play that role.

Octavius’s and my friendship is weird. We met while we were working together at the Apple store in Philly. He was one of the guys who trained me. He had been there long before I had joined. We sparked a friendship because I bought a comic book from a comic shop nearby. I went to the break room and I put it down on the table and he recognized the brown bag that comics come in, and instantly we’re talking.

The comic that we became friends over was when Miles Morales became Spider-Man back in like 2011 or something like that, it was his first appearance. And I had never bought single-issue comics. I just wanted to check it out for the first time. And now it is my thing.

I became friends with Octavius. He’s a really peculiar dude who loves talking on the phone, which is unlike any other human my age. And he would call me up during the week as we would work together. Long after I left, we would have really long, intense conversations as friends about all kinds of different things, hot topics and spicy stuff, and also trivial comic-book-related stuff.

We grew a friendship of talking to one another for long periods of time over the phone. And at a certain point in time, I don’t know if it was him or me, probably him. He’s the self-starter of the two of us who said we should just record these; we’re having the conversations anyway. If we recorded these, we could let other people in on the conversation. So we started doing that.

I was living in South Philly. We started doing that over Skype, showing us ourselves how to do it. It was horrible. It was unlistenable. It was the worst thing. No one wanted to hear that, I guess. And then we like to put it down for a while and then we were trying it again.

At one point I said, “you should come to Indy Hall. We have mics. We can mess around here and do it at Indy Hall”. We started to do it consistently from Indy Hall. We would put the episodes out. We got a small but really loyal listener base or people like the in-jokes. And they would send us reviews and write us letters or whatever and send us merch. It was this cool little family of people who listened to our opinions.

I thought it was fun. And from Octavius, in my standpoint, I’m this young, white guy who is spending time with a somewhat older, five or six years my senior, Black dude who was raised in Florida. And he’s a devout Christian, he’s married. He presently has a child and we have a ton of stuff that we don’t have in common. Geek culture, and specifically comic books, created a vessel for us to peek into each other’s lives and just share. And we wanted to do that with other people and other people listened to the show and talked about how I should feel as a white guy reading about Luke Cage or why it’s special to learn that Wakanda was an unconquered nation, and how that made just reading those words made Octavius cry.

Understanding those aspects from each other’s perspective was cool. Comics were always just a vehicle. Our friendship was going to endure, but comics let us level with each other where we may not have had common ground. And it turns out other people wanted to listen to that too, as I say all of this, I’m thinking, we really need to record the show again.

Quarantining super-duper sucked the wind out of our sails. Life got hard. I imagine that’s something you can look forward to that when things are a little bit more stable and a little more normal and some of these basic-need concerns have been met. That’s a fun thing that we’re going to get to do again.

That’s valuable because you’re not going to feel quite as disoriented and weird about going back out into the world because I think we’re all off-balance. Well, speaking from my experience, I’m dreading going back out in public.

Katie: Yeah, I get it. Me too.

Adam: I think, to answer your question, we both wanted to do this full-time. I wanted to do this as a job. I wanted to get paid comfortably to do my podcasts, to have fun, to have these conversations. Octavius definitely wanted that. Octavius is a bigger dreamer than I am; he has bigger ambitions and relies more on his ambitions than I do. I’m more of a fatalist where I’m like, that’s not going to happen. So, I have no problem saying don’t put too many eggs in this basket. OC is the dreamer. I am this sad guy who’s like, give up on your dreams.

Katie: Well, and what you were saying, I can relate to, he has this different host of experiences and these different cultural backgrounds and personality differences and stuff. I don’t know if this is true for you, but the most productive, creative relationships I’ve ever had have had those points of tension, not unpleasant tension, but just a little bit of friction. That hasn’t been my experience or you’re from somewhere else, or your disposition and approach to stuff is so different from mine.

I tend to be attracted to people as friends that think they’re very boring people. I don’t know why they think that: I’m just a guy. And they say, “I don’t know why you get excited to make stuff with me”.

Adam: I am boring. But yeah, I think you’re right there, there is a healthy amount of tension that exists in a lot of those really great collaborations. It makes sense. We got to learn from each other. We have to have the opportunity to learn.

I’m glad that that tension exists, but this is my brother and that’s in all the good and bad ways. Like he drives me up a fucking wall. I love him so much, and I constantly am raining on his parade, but he cares about me deeply. We have that tension that sometimes is more painful than it needs to be, but for the most part, it’s complimentary.

Katie: Another comic book question. If you were going to write a Man Thing comic book, who would be your dream illustrator?

Adam: It’s interesting that you asked on the basis that I’m writing it. I’ve definitely thought about who I want to write it, but I don’t think as much about who I would want to illustrate it. There are a lot of artists that I really like a lot that have a certain kind of style that I think is befitting the Man Thing.

Francesco Francavilla is an artist that I really like a lot who does cool noir stuff. He’s done really colorful things. He’s also done some kind of like monotone-looking stuff, but it has a certain kind of look to it that I think would be really cool for a Man Thing comic.

I think Francesco Francavilla would kind of be my go-to guy to do a Man Thing comic. It’s crazy to me that he’s not done one before. But illustrating Man Thing – it’s funny, I have very particular -isms about what should and should not go into an illustration of Man Thing. Plenty of people always like to violate my idea of what the Man Thing should be drawn.

If you give the Man Thing muscles and he’s got a toned body, it drives me insane. He shouldn’t be a desirable lifeform. I don’t want to look at him and think he’s got a regimen that I should learn from.

Katie: The Smith machine in the swamp.

Adam: Yeah. I just hate that. It’s an instant signal to me that the person doesn’t really understand the essence, but I’m one of those crabby super-fans who says nobody’s doing it. So yeah, I would say Francesco Francavilla – he’s a super-cool guy.

Katie: I have a lighthearted question and two reasonably serious questions left. Lighthearted first. When you were a kid, which celebrity cartoon or comic book character was your first crush?

Adam: Okay. It’s probably Jessica Rabbit. I feel like that’s so uninteresting because, in my mind, if everyone has that answer, it’s Jessica Rabbit.

Katie: That’s a time capsule. If you were exactly the right age in 1988, she was a fun character to look at.

Adam: She was a stunner and I think maybe more “tailored to who I am” answer is, in 1997, Final Fantasy VII came out. Tifa Lockhart is one of the main characters in the video game. She was a video game babe that I totally had a crush on, like a real crush. Because the video game operates in a way that you can talk to certain characters more than you talk to others, I wanted to spend more time with Tifa Lockhart than anyone else. I prioritized the ability to walk around and talk to characters. I had to spend time with Tifa, because I need to know that I’m here for her when she needs me.

Tifa Lockhart was a real crush that I had on a fictional character that I honestly don’t think it ever went away. The Final Fantasy VII remake came out in the beginning of the pandemic. The game was remade, which is something that I’ve always wanted to happen. As soon as Tifa was on the scene, I was like, I still got it bad for this video game character. I’m right back there in ‘97.

Katie: What’s the first thing that you’re going to do after all you and your friends are fully vaccinated? What’s number one on the to-do list?

Adam: I really miss Franky Bradley’s, specifically the way that that place smells. The way that I feel at home. There’s a certain kind of feeling of making it within your city where you can walk into a bar and everyone there knows you, the people who work there, the staff, the owner, your friends.

It’s not a perfect place, but it is a headquarters for the version of myself that I’m very happy with. I love being there. It’s one of the first places that I want to go. I am definitely afraid that it won’t come back. I believe that it will, but there’s this part of me that wonders, maybe it could go away, and then what? But I want to go back there because it’s where Flirt Vonnegut lives. It’s where Flirt’s friends are.

No one knows who Adam is there. It’s Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, but it’s Flirt’s Playhouse. And I haven’t been there in over a year. That means that there’s a part of my identity that has been totally malnourished and separated from me. That’s the first place I want to go.

Katie: Franky Bradley’s is also very special to me as well because I got into standup relatively soon before the pandemic. I only had like six or eight months at open mics under my belt before everything shut down. Franky Bradley’s, I think it was a Monday or Tuesday night mic, was the best open mic I ever did. I felt instantly comfortable in that space. I could play around with the bartender, Tommy. I kidded him from onstage and it went over like a house on fire. Franky Bradley’s rules. I can’t wait until they come back.

Adam: Nobody has any boundaries in the Gayborhood. I used to do a DJ at Toasted Walnut. As of recently it’s closed. It was the only lesbian bar in Philadelphia. Now we have none, we have zero. When I DJed at Toasted Walnut, it was really a weird time. But yeah, people all the time immediately upon sight, they would just be like, “are you gay? You want to go out?” I was just like, I’m not offended by this. There’s a group of people who, through the miserable culture that we have made them endure have not had the opportunity to go through puberty or be themselves or date, or do any of these things until way later in their life.

Fortunately, that’s changing. I think Gen Z is gay as shit, and that’s outstanding. But there are a lot of people who have to figure out how to do those things when they’re older. That means it’s awkward, weird, and not perfect, but it’s allowing people to go through their adolescence and awakening and being themselves decades earlier.

Katie: I think it’s refreshing. This is a dream that I had when I was a teenager. Being yourself and having freedom to be who anyone is without having to wait until they’re in their thirties. I have a few friends over this past year who came out as trans and I feel so dazzled by them. Like, I’m happy to be your friend. I’m very proud to know this thing about you, who you really are.

I just want to give those friends my respect and support, and to help in a way that’s useful and meaningful to them. They deserve to be themselves and feel safe. Still, in 2021, it requires such a leap of faith on their part because it’s so dangerous.

Adam: It would be so much easier to put on a mask. Yeah, I think about this stuff all the time. Growing up, if, if it was more common for my friends, when I was a child, my parents, my parents, friends, those role models, if it was more common and easier and less painful for people to be out and queer, or non-binary in those days, what would I grow up to be?

I think about it all the time. I am, this is a weird way to think about myself, but I think I am like, a pretty queer straight person. I have a lot of queer friends. I very much exist inside of that community in a lot of ways I feel at home with, with those folks. But I also don’t belong to that group, but I have friends who are male or male identifying who will kiss me on the lips when they say goodbye.

There’s like, I have friends who behave in a way that guys that I grew up with as a kid, as a young, straight white kid would just totally not understand, probably still wouldn’t understand. And this is an important part of my life. And sometimes I wonder, like if I had these role models and these friends growing up, would it tap into a sense of queerness for me?

What would I be like as an openly bi person? Maybe? There are a lot of dudes. Look, one of my favorite shows ever is The Leftovers. And I can’t tell you how much of it is because I love the show and how it tears me apart and rebuilds me and how much of it is just, I want to see Justin Theroux’s mostly naked body.

Katie: He’s gorgeous.

Adam: I constantly wonder, if I had these role models in these trends, in these people in my life forever, how would I be different now? What would change?

Katie: That all really resonates with me. And what you just said about being kind of like queer-adjacent, that goes back to being a drag emcee stand in its you’re like a family friend. I don’t live in this house. But you invite me over pretty often. My mailing address is different, but I’m at the Christmas party.

Adam: I’m constantly earning the trust and deservedness of being there. If being welcome and making sure that everything I do is to help people feel like they belong there too. And that is, that is my tax on being able to be a part of that community.

Katie: Sure, there’s so many overlapping circles in this conversation, going back to the central mission being to ensure people have a sense of comfort in the environment that they’re in, and that they have a good experience. And you’re a good friend.

All I care about in life is that people think I’m a good friend who tries hard to do the right thing. Nothing else matters. If they think I’m too fat, don’t like my clothes, don’t think I’m funny – so what? But if you think that I’m sneaky, or a bad friend, or that I’m acting in bad faith in some way, I care about that. I think I have character. Yeah. But I also think everything I do is brilliant.

Adam: I envy that. I want that. I know I’ve relayed this to you before, but in the past couple of years of my life, I think I came to this conclusion that I am now accepting the fact that I think I am an okay person. I’m okay at most things. Mario, in any video game where you can play as Mario characters, like Mario Golfer, Mario Tennis: Mario is the guy who is finding that everything, he doesn’t specialize in anything, he’s just kind of an all-around. He’s fine. And I’m like, oh shit, I’m Mario. I guess I’m fine.

I don’t specialize in anything. I’m not an expert anywhere. And I’ve come to terms with that and it’s cool with me. I’ll feel very average, but then I meet someone like you and you say “I think everything I do is brilliant”. I wonder what that would feel like. I feel like I want to be proud of stuff.

Katie: Well, part of that is facetious, right? I produce some total bullshit work. Not everything I do is good, but I think standup was a big turnaround in that where, of the 10 jokes that I write nine of them are going to suck, but that one that works hopefully is going to be awesome. I just take a bunch of shots of stuff and always say yes. I don’t say no to anything. That builds up a kind of confidence where it’s like, what if I wipe out? It doesn’t matter. Yeah, I think then when something succeeds, I think, my shit is awesome. Everything I do is amazing. So, like I said, part of that sentiment is just being silly. I do think I’m great. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

Adam: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Katie: My last question is, how do you think lockdown has changed you? And do you think it’s for the better?

Adam: I’ll answer the second half of that first. It’s for the better. It has to be, or I’m not comfortable with it. It must be for the better, or it can’t exist. If it was only a year of suffering and I don’t come out with something new and positive, that’s too dour for me to handle. So yes, it is for the better, because it must be.

It’s changed me in a couple of ways. Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve had to pay more attention to people who are not in the room. I need to make sure that I recognize that so that even people who can’t physically be present with me are valuable, and their time is valuable.

I think unintentionally, I have always just sort of ignored that, in Indy Hall’s case, if you are not physically here, then you’re not as much of a priority. Maybe because I think I’m ADD or something, but I can only pay attention to so much at a time. And I fear that I may go back to that being the case.

I hope that’s not true, because I’ve learned that there are a lot of people who are not here, figuratively and literally, are really important and should be considered even if they can’t be here. I’ve had to pay way more attention to what is outside of our immediate purview.

As a community leader, and a facilitator, as a show host, as a member of Indy Hall, as a white person, there’s a lot of responsibility for not paying attention to the people who are not in my space that I have to own up to and change. And the other thing is I’ve had to spend a lot more time either by myself or in such a consolidated state with my partner that I really get right with being alone or figuring out who I am and what I need when I’m by myself.

I’ve always thought of myself as an extrovert, or as an introvert who has a battery for extroversion that needs to recharge. I have these bursts of energy to give you, but I have to turtle up and tend to myself for a long time.

I’ve had all out of time to do that. Which is good, because it has allowed me to get comfortable with that time by myself and just me and my partner figuring out what we need. But it’s also bad, because I’ve had no balance. I’ve had a really difficult time figuring out what’s important at any given time.

It’s been really hard for me to delineate between tasks and people and how I’m supposed to be exerting energy. So, I like to think, between last March and this March I’ve started developing healthier habits of who needs what at a given time, myself included.

I think that will affect me going forward. I’ll have an easier time saying no to things – you say you never say no to stuff. I used to be that way for a long time. I overexerted myself and probably diluted my own sense of value because when somebody would say, you want to do X, Y, Z, I would just say, “yep, sure”.

It’s a privilege. But sometimes that would sort of cut short what my time is actually worth, what my presence is worth, what my skills are worth. Now I think I will have an easier time declining things and giving myself the opportunity to consolidate effort because I’ve had more time getting comfortable with doing that. It means, hopefully, that I will take myself a little more seriously, which ideally in turn will have other people take me more seriously and value my time more since it’s not always instantly available. That downtime, I really underestimated how rewarding that was going to be.

You can follow Adam on Twitter at @adamteterus. The Man Thing Minute and Comic Book Junto podcasts are available on Spotify, Soundcloud, and Apple Podcasts.