April 2012

They've been using the word "icon" about Kate Clinton for some years now. Now that Don't Get Me Started and What the L, her writings from the nineties and noughties, are available as e-books for the first time, it's worth asking, "What makes an icon?"

Maybe it's that she tells the truth — and has done so from the start. She did her first show in 1981, at a time when "my more commercially minded friends" advised her to keep her jokes straight. Kate, though, believed that "What is funniest is what is truest and I was interested in telling the truth about my life."

Maybe it's that she's not afraid to change her mind. When the freedom to marry became the hot issue, she struggled to work up some enthusiasm. "I think we should try to talk straight people out of getting married. It's not going well for them." Some while later, she's urging us, "Get your licenses. Celebrate your friends. We'll make this marriage thing ours yet."

Maybe it's that she knows that being "funny" and being "serious" isn't a case of either/or; it's both. Of the final full display of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, she wrote, "The Park Service police felt compelled to measure it in terms of football fields, hardly a proper unit of measurement for so many drag queens."

That she can move effortlessly from serious to funny and back is skill she works hard to perfect. On tour, her show evolves as she learns from each audience. "After a show, I review my printed routine for things I missed. Often they are things that should be forgotten. Often a throwaway line, based on what I hear of audience response, becomes three pages. And after a few performances, three brilliant pages can quickly become a throwaway line. It's natural selection at its finest."

And it has impressive results: "After a show in Lexington, Kentucky, I was having dinner with the producers and a young woman came up to me and clapped me a good one on the back, and exclaimed, 'Kate Clinton! You made me want to fuck again!'"

Perhaps the ultimate description of an icon.

But we'll leave it to Kate to have the final word. Ask her what makes a lesbian icon, and she tells you: "I have had great success with a silver and titanium blend. The icon does not scratch, is lightweight, and retains its luster over time. Audiences love to rub their hands over its smooth curves."

by Caroline Curtis

The Lambda Literary Awards were the first awards established to celebrate LGBT fiction, and they remain the most prestigious. This year, Sally Bellerose is a finalist in the Lesbian Debut Fiction category and Val McDermid is a finalist in the Lesbian Mystery category.