Fauxmo-sexual

Straight Up With a Twist at the Gascon Center Theatre
by Elana Roston

Heteromos' like Paul Stroili burn candles even when they're not trying to get laid.

Ancient Hindu literature divides humans into three, rather than two, genders: male, female and tritiya-prakriti, or the third sex, which combines both male and female characteristics. Comedian Paul Stroili has another term -- "renaissance geeks" -- for men of this ilk, swish hitters who know how to fold a fitted sheet but not how to rewire a table lamp. "Don't call my house during Monday Night Football...that's when I vacuum!" he admonishes.

Stroili's wife suggested that he turn his fastidiousness and epicureanism into a show: "She says, "You know, you're kind of like the gay best friend that I can have sex with,' a kind of backhanded compliment by which she meant that I'm a straight guy but my demeanor has all of the affectations of an arrogant gay guy." After Home Improvement, The X Show and The Man Show, Stroili wanted to break down the stereotype of the knuckle-dragging straight man by exaggerating the traits of men that Sex and the City defined as "gay-straight." The level of recognition registered by Straight Up With a Twist audiences suggests that he's not exaggerating much. "It's astonishing how many guys out there fit this category," Stroili reports.

Couples bring the most return business, followed by gay men and women who bring a succession of their male friends who qualify as renaissance geeks. "Gay audiences go nuts over it because it's probably the first show to kind of bridge that gap and in effect say that my life would've been easier if I were homosexual. The character of my mom starts a group called MAPHO [Mothers Who Would Actually Prefer Homosexual Offspring]. She says, "If my son was gay, I'd get a support group and a parade, but since he's not I get a lot of questions, is he or isn't he, so I have to say no and then they all think that I'm lying anyway.'" His psychiatrist, in the play, attributes Stroili's status to his conflicted German-Italian heritage, which makes him deeply passionate about his need to control the world, while his father speculates that his low self-esteem derives from the fact that all of his ancestors lost World War II.

Stroili himself offers another explanation: He originally studied and followed the women's movement as a means of seducing women, inadvertently overdeveloping his feminine side in the process. The show, he says, pokes fun at people's need to immediately label others according to what they can or cannot do well, the kind of reductionist thinking that explains why an original artist like Tom Waits gets saddled with so many "Best Alternative Rock" Grammy nominations. "One of the comparisons people throw at me is Niles and Frasier from the television show Frasier, but I immediately say no, because those guys are pompous and arrogant and wear their renaissance geek abilities on their sleeves. We, on the other hand, see it as a curse because for so long it got in the way of getting laid -- until it more recently became appealing to women."