She’s named after her Great Grandmother, Fortune. One of her brothers is called Price so I ask if there was an intentional monetary theme. She laughs. “They’re all family names. They just happen to have a money association which is funny because when we grew up we didn’t have much of that.”
Her most celebrated story is about her mother denying she ever took Feimster and her two brothers to Hooters Restaurant when they were growing up. Feimster was 18 and her mother had a new, super-religious boyfriend and was pretending she’d never eaten there. “Hooters was so normal to us. We’d gone there since I was 10 years old and she denied it. It’s such a funny story for me when she’s saying she’s never eaten at Hooters and I have all these examples of it.”
Hooters also played a part in Fortune coming out.
She realised she was gay at college—watching a Lifetime movie—and decided to tell her family. Her brothers were not surprised but she was unsure how her mother would react. When Feimster was young, her mother wanted her to be a debutante. “I spent the entire summer after my senior year in high school learning how to become a lady, talk like a lady, talk to suitors. I envisioned the rest of my life as a handmaid. Then I was presented to society in what they call a coming out party. It just happened to be the wrong coming out party,” she explains on Sweet and Salty.
So she took her mother to her favourite Chinese restaurant and during the meal announced she was gay. There was silence. “She’s looking at me with a stern face and all these things were going through my mind,” says Feimster. “The biggest fear you have when you come out is that your family is going to disown you. For my mom, she was quickly trying to adjust her vision of what my life was going to look like - all in this 10-minute period.” Then, once her mother got her head around it, she declared, “We’re going to Hooters!” (the religious first boyfriend was no longer around). “It’s a funny way of having your parent say ‘I accept you. I love you no matter what.”
Her mother’s now an enthusiastic Pride fan and sometimes comes out on stage at the end of Feimster’s shows.
Growing up in the religious, conservative South of the US, there weren’t queer role models in her community. She jokes, in Sweet and Salty, that she was considered to be a tomboy “which was a more appropriate term for Future Lesbian. I grew up methodist and all we cared about was that the preacher was done by noon so we could beat the Baptists to Chillies (restaurant).”
She likes to talk about her upbringing as she hasn’t seen many gay people talk about church experiences. “I know all the hymns and Bible stories. That doesn’t end because I’m gay. I don’t actively go to church anymore, I tour most weekends. I am more spiritual than I am a churchgoer. There are probably a number of gay people who believe in God and want to continue to express their faith and do it where they’re accepted. Where people aren’t telling them they’re going to hell for being who they are. But the problem is sometimes the church doesn’t want them to be part of the church.”
Comedy can engage the most challenging of people to shift their thinking. LGBTQ+ visibility and representation is important says Feimster. “Even though you’re seeing yourself represented a lot more, it’s still not what it could be. Considering I didn’t have that kind of representation growing up, to be that mouth for other people is really a cool full circle for me.”
Humour has always been a part of Feimster’s life. Her family used to joke around and tease each other. “We especially found laughter in hard times. Anytime we went through something difficult, experienced tragedy, or lost someone, we found a way to laugh and release that sadness or tension. Because of that, I’ve always had a comedic perspective on things.”
Young Feimster never thought she would become a stand-up comedian. “I’ve trained myself to be on stage — be big, silly — but I’m kind of shy, I can be a little quieter than people might anticipate. I’m an extroverted introvert.”
Her shows aren’t written with a specific narrative in mind. She starts with what’s funny. “I go story first. I’m not looking too deep in the beginning, merely from a comedy perspective. Once I’ve written that story and I’ve been working it for a bit - that’s when I go ‘What’s the deeper thing? What am I trying to say’.”
In Good Fortune, which is about when things don’t always go to plan, she subverts gendered assumptions about appearances, including the Jason Momoa story (she stresses over Zoom he had other people to help him). “I found out during the pandemic that I’m not butch. My shoulders are broad and my favourite colour is plaid but the carpet does not match the drapes - two things I do not know how to install.”
Her wife, Jacquelyn Smith, whom she married in 2018, is the handy one she says. They met at Gay Pride in Chicago. Smith is a kindergarten teacher and producer and is the one to fix things. “I wonder if I should learn some more skills but I didn’t get that handy gene,” says Feimster. “So I focus on what I am good at, how I can be of service and provide in this relationship. I’m fun at karaoke!”
She self-identifies as a Cancer (star sign). “That fits my personality. I’m sensitive — not in the way that I get my feelings hurt a lot — but through empathy. I feel deeply about things and about people. I’ll be on a plane and watch a documentary and that’s when I’ll start crying like a baby, I feel that thing they’re talking about so deeply.” She’s also a homebody, another Cancerian trait. “I’m a weird stand-up because I travel all over the place but really I love being home with my wife and dog on our couch. That’s my happy place.”
This not-handy, empathetic, Hooters-raised, Cancerian’s first priority is to make people laugh. “That’s part of a comedian’s job but because I’m telling real stories, I’m talking about my life, I’m sharing a lot of personal information, I try to have those things mean something and have heart at different points. I want people from different walks of life to find something in it that they relate to.”
Feimster’s never done a show in Aotearoa and if people want the Hooters story she’ll do it on request, she says. But if anyone’s car’s broken down on the way to the venue, call someone else.
Fortune Feimster plays for one night only at the Auckland Town Hall, Friday July 14. Tickets at Ticketmaster.co.nz
