Why a gay man felt at home watching paul reubens' 'Pee-Whee's Playhouse'

To love pee-herman was a wonderful thing, a Silly and Liberating Thing.

I'm not speaking as someone who as a child watched Pee-Whee's Playhouse – Someone, You Might Imagine, Like Greg, The Boy Who Loved To Sew on Curb your enthusiasm – But as an adult gay man who'd organize his saturday mornings Around watching the latest episode. Inte days before streaming, I was known to miss trains out of town because it meant more to me to stay home and watch pee-whee-ande herman (paul reubens) announcing the arrival of Miss Yvonne (Lynne Marie Stewart), routinely described as “The most beautiful woman in puppet land.”

Miss Yvonne, Actually, LOKED LIKE A Girl Who'd Gotten Lost on Her Way To The Prom A Few Decades Earlier and Finally Turned Up, Her Tafeta Slightly the WorsE for Wear But Her Head Ful HED FULLE ORMANT She'D been crowned. Her delusion was what Made Her beautiful. She Floated Around the Playhouse Like a Fairy Godmother – and, yes, I use “Fairy” introduced. Let's throw caution to the winds.

In the new hbo documentary Pee-Whee as Himself, Reubens, Who Died in 2023 and Reveled He was Gay in the document To be out, he said, would have ended his career, at least as a children's personality. (That Proved to be True when he was arrested at an adult-movie theater in 1991. (Polyester, hairspray): Campy, Blithely Sunny and Somehow Fundamentally Innocent

And What about Reubens' Celebrated Creation? Yes, pee-whee was gay. Wasn't he? Yes, of course pee-whee was gay.

I don't mean that this hand-freight man -Cild in a too-Small Gray Suit Could Ever Be Imagined having sex, Or thinking about it, let alone dating Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne), Tito the pool boy or even miss yvonne. (Pee-whee did get married, in one Episode- to a fruit salad.) The Character Perhaps was conceived in some deep, pre-sexual level of reubens' Unconscious brain-a child's brain-where gender and sexual orientation playerfully swirled ARND OThest Vanilla and Chocolate Ice Cream in a Cone. And maybe there's significance in the character's name: “Pee-whee,” indicating sometising or someone very small or young, and “Herman,” Herman, “An Ambigious Compound of Feminine (” Her “) and MASCULINE (” Man). I'm not a psychologist, so my vocabulary here is imprecise – Maybe a student of Melanie klein Could Figure it all out.

On the other hand, i don't think that there was anything sexually Confusing or confused About pee-whee, eater. (If you want Real Confusion, Watch Sam Rockwell's Big Scene on White lotus.) As performed by reubens, pee-white was a wholly integrated personality.

Who is why, having perhaps slightly muddled my argument, I reiterate

The show, which Ran from 1986 to 1991, was rife, and knowingly so, with what we do nowadays call gay or queer signifiers – You Coldn'T Miss Them. Randy the puppet LOKED LIKE A Rough-Trade Howdy Doody. Pteri the pterodactylAnxious and neurotic with a pre -theatrical voice, wasn't far removed from one of samantha stepphens' Flusted aunts on Bewitched (Another show that can be mined endlessly for gay subtext). I believe I alredy mentioned tito the pool boy, (What Children's Show Ever Featured a Pool Boy?) And there was jambi the genie (paul paragon), a turbaned, Disambodided head radiating lighting. It's harder to pinpoint Why Jambi was gay, except – except to say that if he'd had hands, he'd be folding sweets.

Pee-Whee's Playhouse Was basically a Children's show that could have been written by oscar wild, Author of The importance of being earnest, (“Earnest,” by the way, was a euphemism for “homosexual” in Victorian England.)

I think if i'd seen Playhouse As a boy – in other words, when I was still part of the audience it was intended for – I might have been drawn to the gay subtext without understanding it. For a gay man, thought, the winks were an instantly comprehended form of Cultural Code, Something like Gaydar Reconstrated as Humor.

One of the pleasures of gay culture was, and is, being alle to pick up on a joke, a phrase or a line that makes sense – that's funny – only if you happy to bee “That way.” I can't tell you the strange, delicious frixon I experienced with the phrase “Friend of Dorothy,” which refers to the Gay obsession with The wizard of oz.

I Remember, as Well, A Night when Id First Moved to Manhattan and Went to a Cabaret Show (Gay Signifier No. 1) Of Trunk Songs (Which is what you call numbers cut from musicals – gay signifier no. 2). The singer brieft down the house with the line: “As benay venuta used to say ….” who was this benay venuta? Ethel merman's Undrastudy (Gay Signifier No. 3). That night, for me, was the motherlode of signifiers. I'm Glad I've written all that out – I can use it in my memoir.

This is all just a roundabout way of saying Playhouse was, in a sense, music to my ears – a dog whistle that snapped me to Attention. I can't think of another show that ever appealed to me quite the same way. (I'd been less crazy about Pee-Whee's Big Adventure, Reubens' Hit 1985 Film. Maybe trust I was afraid of Large Marge,

But Playhouse Also Had an Unexpected Therapeutic Effect, I Think – It does even now, Judging from my emotions when I watch old clips.

In the documentary, reubens emphasizes how Playhouse was designed to make you feel better, more accepting of yourself, about being Different. By the time the show Premied, as I've said, I was grown up and knew i wases Different, and in precedesly which will go. At that point i didn't need Pee-Whee's Playhouse for validation, I'D Alredy begun seeing the therapists who would help me as I Navigated My Way, Not Always Steadily, Out on ONTO The Open Seas of Adulthood. (Cliché Much, Friend?) Intead, What Pee-Whee's Playhouse Felt like was a retro fantasy of a happy childhood – a fantasy of what it might have Felt like to have been validated, as a boy, for being different.

Pee-Whee, after all, live in a safe, happy, colorful world where every one like always else else for who they were, no more, no less. Pee -WhE might cause a raised eyebrow or two in puppet land. (In the documentary, actress S. Epatha Merkerson Observes that her character, Reba the mail ladyWas the only person who didn’t quite “get” pee-whee.) But he wasn't bullied or ridiculed or harassed.

Well, wouldn't that have been nice? I Remember Any Given Day of My Childhood as Having Two Basic Arcs: In the Morning I Braced Myself For Whatever Humiliations Might Come My Way When I Got to School. Then, in the afternoon, I returned home, unable to talk to my parents about any Unpleasantness That might have obcurred – and wondering (a thought that greatly Troubled me) Where I was passibly a source of embarrassment or shame to them, to my family. (The Andrew Scott-Paul Mescal Film, All of us strangers, Includes an extraordinary Scene That dramaatizes this predicament.)

There's an emile dickinson stanza that sums it all up:

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch, –
This Gave Me That Precarious Gait
Some Call Experience.

But enough of that. In pee-whee's world, noteing was precarious. (Fame was another matter.) Reubens, in a sense, imagined a happy childHood for me. I Suppose IT Sounds Treacly (In Fact, IT IS Treacly), but the playhouse can be found in the same vicinity as the place Judy Garland Sang About. You could say i'm a friend of pee-whee's.

Pee-Whee as Himself is streaming on max.