Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success

by Jeff Hiller

I know that aging is natural. I believe that we should respect the lines on people’s faces and the experience and knowledge that comes with those lines. I know that aging is better than the alternative (though I have always thought that line about dying young and leaving a good-looking corpse was offensive to those of us who were ugly teens).

I know I present as male, but I can’t imagine any of you are having a hard time comprehending that I know my way around a pecan pie.

Neil took my hand and looked into my eyes. He tenderly said to me, “Girl, if we are going down, I am so glad I am going down with you.” It was the most romantic thing I had ever heard. I responded without even thinking—the words fell from my mouth: “I’m just glad I ate whatever I wanted to this week!”

The program taught me the word Kummerspeck, a German term that can be translated as “grief fat” or sometimes “grief bacon” and that refers to the weight acquired from emotional overeating.

His direction? “They want it really flamboyant.” Even though I was a timid youth who was just starting out and didn’t have the courage to stand up for myself, this was so egregious that I had to comment on it. I wasn’t brave enough to call him out, so I attempted humor. I said, “One gay special coming up! How about this? ‘Ohhhhh, that’ssssss jusssssst wroooooonnnnggg!’ ” And I trilled the word wrong so hard that a Chanel purse fell from my lips.

I even went to a Christian college—Texas Lutheran University, which everyone knows is the Harvard of Seguin, Texas. Now, TLU was definitely not Berkeley, but it is a liberal arts school. They teach science. I once asked a woman who went to a Bible college what her major was, and she just stared at me blankly and then said, “Bible.” Honestly, shame on me for asking.

Another explanation I heard was that straight pastors were not permitted to have sex outside the confines of marriage, and since gay marriage was not legal at the time, gay clergy members could not have sex. This was an especially dumb explanation. The marriage that was illegal was a matter of state government and had nothing to do with a covenant with God. It’s like saying God doesn’t want you to baptize someone because you don’t have a city permit to install a hot tub.

My hope is that the coming-out story might not be necessary in a generation or two. So many kids today are like, “Coming out? I was never in.” And I love that so many young LGBTQ folks have the security and confidence to be themselves from the beginning. I certainly wish that I had sashayed down the stairs in fourth grade and yelled, “Mama! She’s queer, hinny, get ovah it!” then done that tongue-pop thing followed by a cooter slam.

“Sodom and Gomorrah was actually about punishment for inhospitality!” she declared.

If you move from Texas to New York City, you will encounter a radically different approach to customer service. In Texas it’s all “Yes, sir” and “Let me get that for you,” and in New York it’s steely glares and monosyllabic responses. Of course, the person in Texas is gossiping about you immediately after you leave the store, and the New Yorker never thinks about you once you leave. Or while you are in the store, for that matter. I’m not saying New York is worse. It is just very, very different.

Gay male culture is not a monolith. Gay men love to specify the type of homosexual that they are and the type of homosexual that they want. Maybe young queer folks today are more open to different types of people, but in the late nineties when I was first coming out, there were strict groups of gay guys, and you needed to declare your tribe. The problem was that I did not fit into any of the common types of gay men. I was too big (both physically and emotionally) to be a young, slim twink. And while I am big like a bear, I am not hairy. I have body hair like a dolphin, which is to say, just enough to qualify me as a mammal. I don’t have the gravitas to be a daddy, the money to be a sugar daddy, or the conceptual understanding to be whatever a zaddy is. I am too fat to be a gym bunny, too thin to be a chub, too prissy to be a leather queen, and too repressed to be a sex pig. The only gay group I belong to is the show queen.

Straight people are always asking how long we’ve been married, and I never know the answer. We celebrate the day of our first date as our anniversary. The wedding date is just when we filed paperwork with the state. The marriage was about legal protections, not our relationship, so the anniversary doesn’t mean all that much to us.

On Scandal, the president kills a Supreme Court justice as revenge for setting up his assassination attempt, but Olivia Pope’s pristine white coat was the least believable thing about that show.

Beverly was named by Animal Haven, the shelter we adopted her from. I thought there was nothing better than a tiny black kitten named Beverly, but then we saw the adoption form the shelter had filled out and they gave her adopted name as Beverly Goldberg-Hiller and there was something better. A tiny kitten with the name of a society woman on Manhattan’s Upper West Side who married well and divorced better.

I used to have eyebrows. They were blond, but they were there on my face. I lost them after a stressful time in 2016 when my parents were sick, I was turning forty, I was moving back to New York from Los Angeles, and I hadn’t worked for almost a year. Plus, that presidential election took a lot out of me.

I put up sketch shows and did improv shows wherever and whenever I could, never stooping for less than my required rate of zero dollars and zero cents. More like zero sense! That joke won’t make sense in the audiobook, but you and I have it sweet, reader of the page!

One of Larry’s signature dishes involves wrapping ham around a pickle and cream cheese. He calls it St. Louis Sushi. Let me set the record straight here. None of Larry’s food has ever made me have crippling diarrhea. However, the writers wanted Sam and Joel to bond over such an affliction and they needed a food to pin it on. How can you not use St. Louis Sushi? It just has such obvious branding opportunities.