A Word In Edgewise: Come On-a My House!

This issue’s “Books” offers a slender but thought-provoking monograph by Cait McKinney, currently assistant professor of communications at Simon Fraser University, formerly a queer first-grader and fan of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” She’s still a fan and offers insights on how the show was “a portal for a lot of queer kids of my generation who grew up in the 1980s.”

Pee-wee Herman was, as you may remember, the nom-de-jeu of Paul Reubens, but in public, even when not in his Playhouse he presented as Pee-Wee; not-man, not-boy, smartly clad in an immaculate (two sizes too small) gray suit, crisp white shirt and red bow tie, with a stick-your-tongue-out and scream the day’s “secret” word hyperactivity.

Pee-wee’s 1950s-era house contained talking furniture and cobbled-together robotic gadgets, not of his present (1980s), but with intimations of today’s smart houses bound by monitoring devices and total connectivity. Pee-wee’s house offered random fun; none of his antics aimed to “groom” or change children — or adult viewers — but rather offered a spot that wasn’t adult-overseen. One could be silly, talk back to the armchair and feel, especially if you were a queer kid on the fringes, that there was a place you could go and be you, or that a door would be open on those Saturday mornings.

As AIDS rolled in, Pee-wee, McKinney notes, was “wacky, wild, and unapologetically himself” in his Playhouse. Until July 26, 1991, when Paul Reubens was arrested in a Florida porn house during a police sting, and once his identity was determined the media grabbed the news. They ran with it, often implying the character Pee-wee Herman had been nabbed in flagrante in a Cineplex. No. Reubens wasn’t Pee-wee that evening, and he was doing much what the other clients present were doing, in a place of business created for those activities. It of course had a devastating effect on the show and the performer’s livelihood.

Pee-wee did return later, made films and carried on before his death from acute myelogenous leukemia on July 30, 2023.

Pee-wee’s Playhouse may have been closed, but the need for Play and a safe House to Play in has always existed long before Pee-wee’s television gem. Marie Antoinette had her Petit Trianon; whether she actually dressed as a shepherdess or not, life in Versailles could be overwhelming. They’ve existed closer to home, as well.

Take Casa Susanna for one example. Years ago, flea-market aficionados Michel Hurst and Robert Swope bought a huge trove of snapshots, from the mid-‘50s to mid-‘60s. The images in their book, “Casa Susanna,” depict cis-gendered, cross-dressing men in a rented Victorian home in the Catskills who gathered to exist — play — as middle-aged women might, frolicking on a gals’ weekend away.

Simply quotidian; photos of card games and cooking, sewing, dress-up, modeling new outfits, tea parties and Christmas gaiety. Tips on makeup and hair from house owner Susanne Valenti who owned a wig shop in town. These were cis-gender men, it was later learned, many married, from all walks of life, who had other sides to their lives they needed to express.

Life is not — never has been — rigidly binary. That’s the way it is, and no declaration, fiat or ukase has the power to gainsay Nature.