24 Ju s t out • february 6.2004
Getting real w ith Sandra Please don’t kill yourself
Comedy’s baddest bad girl on hot dates,
Howard Dean, momhood and more
And other tips for Valentine’s Day and beyond
from America’s favorite sex columnist
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andra Bernhard has a reputation, and it isn’t pretty.
People don’t know quite how to categorize the
actress/vocalist/comedian/provocateur/mom who will
perform live at the Roseland on Feh. 12 and 13. She
is an outspoken, independent, tell-it-like-it-is woman— which
is to say she’s a big threat to anyone hugging tightly to the sta
tus quo. She says her goal is not to shock, but rather to wake
people up to some of the uncomfortable realities around us.
And what some may not realize is that what drives her is a
deep compassion for the world and a huge generosity of spirit.
I spoke to Bernhard on the phone recently while she was in
New York. She was warm and, of course, funny— not at all
the intimidating diva I imagined her to he. Though she’s hap
pily in love right now, she wouldn’t say a peep about her part
ner, not even to name a gender. Here she offers some succinct
Valentine s Day advice, as well as thoughts on President Bush,
Howard Dean, The L Word , being a working mom and more.
isten to Dan Savage. He knows what he’s talking about.
The Seattle-based gay sexpert’s “Savage Love’’
column runs Thursdays in The Portland Mercury} and an
all-queer version, “Savage Love 2.0,” can be found at
PlanetOut.com. He also has written the books The Kid, a
touching account of how he and his partner adopted a baby
boy born to a Portland street youth, and Skipping Towards
Gomorrah, a salute to sin that established him as the
counterculture Ann Coulter. He’s now a frequent fixture as a
talking head on V H l’s I Love the ’ 80s series.
Savage is also a notorious mischief maker. In 2000 he went
undercover as a volunteer for Bible banger Gary Bauer’s
presidential campaign and got in trouble for joking that, while sick
with the flu, he licked staplers and other objects in the office so
the candidate would fall ill.
His new nemesis is U .S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who
has equated homosexuality with bestiality. In an effective
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