Just out., February 18, 2011, Page 37, Image 37

FEBRUARY 18. 2011
OREGON'S LGBTO NEWSMAGAZINE
“[O’Reilly] says,‘When I got out of prison,
do you think I ever fucking said, ‘You know
what I need? I need a trans guy in my life.Tm
like, ‘You think I fucking said I need an ex-
con in my life? No!’” Harvie says. “But what
binds us all and has really made us such a
great and interesting trio for a comedy show
is recovery.”
Harvie says the LWL tour has three essen­
tial messages: that there is power in honesty,
that life without substances can still be fun
and that “if these three fucking people can
stay sober, anybody can.”
The comedy tour also raises funds for local
recovery-related services. When they perform
in Portland on March 4, half the proceeds will
go to Gresham’s Garden of Hope recovery
house for women, which opened February 1.
W hat’s so funny about sobriety? It leaves
you with some pretty good stories to tell.
“In the [12-step] program there’s a saying
that you’re only as sick as your secrets, and so
we basically reveal all of our secrets to the
audience through humor,” Harvie explains.
Harvie had his first drink when he was 8 or
9 and says he was exhausted by the time he
turned 21. Not long after his birthday, a friend
asked if he wanted to go to an AA meeting.
“Apparently my drinking was that obvious
to others that she offered,” Harvie recalls. “I
went and it was definitely the right place for
me to go and the right thing for me to do to
stop drinking, because it cleared my head well
enough to recognize all the reasons why I
drank.”
He didn’t want to listen to the voices in his
head that said he was different, so he drank to
keep them quiet. Now, with 18 years of sobri­
ety under his belt, Harvie says the relation­
ship between addiction and fear of queerness
is clear.
“I can’t tell you how many people that I
know and that are still out there that picked up
and started using whatever their drug of choice
was—alcohol, heroin, or meth or whatever it
is—[because they] were trying to sort of
squelch or drown out the voices of their queer­
ness in some way,” Harvie says. “I started
drinking when I was a kid and I felt like it
helped quiet the voices inside me that told me
I was different. I felt like it helped make me
one of the boys in the neighborhood.”
W hile Harvie doesn’t consider himself a
“sober comic,” he considers his sobriety inex­
tricably linked with his primary mission, rais­
ing awareness about transgender issues.
“For me, getting sober was also about get­
ting honest,” Harvie says. And besides, “I
don’t think we’re over needing trans voices
and trans visibility.”
L aughs W ithout L iquor presents “W e
A re N ot S aints ,” Fri., March 4 7:30p.m.
,
;
,
doors 8 p.m. show; Q Center 4115 N. Missis­
sippi Ave.; $20 via brownpapertickets.com/
event/154046; laughswithoutliquor.com, ian-
harvie.com. For morefrom the three comics, visit
justout.com.
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