True stories of the Fringe

I FOUND OUT MY BOYFRIEND USED TO BE GAY

When Colleen Crabtree met Dan Rothenburg, they seemed to be meant for each other. But then one day Dan confessed that he had a secret…

Colleen: About seven years ago, when I was learning to be a stand-up, I walked into a bar, saw Dan on stage, and had the privilege of seeing him handle hecklers – he did a good job. I'm incredibly forward, so I approached him. I thought he was cute, but in my mind I was thinking he could give me some advice, so I gave him my business card, not my panties!

Dan: I'd just moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I'd seen her when she walked in and thought, 'Oh!', but I'm not very courageous with women. She approached me – she did all the heavy lifting.

Colleen: Dan and I both have a lot of little "isms". I come from a family with a lot of depression and agoraphobia. I was the chubby girl in high school who somehow got involved in theatre. I used to have panic attacks and I'm extremely ambitious. I'll work myself into a frenzy about some project, to the smallest detail.

Dan's got more bizarre phobias. He's afraid of small containers – anything small that he might eat with or eat around. I'd see that even if something small showed up on a restaurant table it would have to be removed. It's about inappropriate smallness – a coffee cup is okay if it's got coffee in it but it would be a problem if it held cola.

Dan: Whereas a raisin is fine. I know it's supposed to be that size. Another "ism" is that when I was in high school I gave up drinking. When most people are just starting to drink, I went into rehab. I was a jock, in the cool crowd, and partying was part of it. So I told her I was an alcoholic long before I told her I was gay – it comes up within about ten minutes on the first date.

Colleen: I was thrilled that he was an alcoholic! Every guy I'd dated up to that point was Mr I'm Going to Pretend I'm Perfect and Spring Some Crap on You Later. So you get to that age when you say, 'I'm done, I just want a man who's been through therapy.' I thought if this is it, no problem!

Dan: That was the difficult thing. She thought she was through the woods. We were together for three months before I told her. Suddenly I realised, 'Shit, this could be tricky.' I'd just moved to LA. I was straight again at this point. The tricky part was that everyone I'd ever dated or known was from San Francisco at that point. They all knew the story, so I never had to tell them and it wasn't an issue. Suddenly I'm in LA, I'm dating this girl, and all my friends were like, 'So she's cool with it?' And I said she doesn't know. How would she?

Colleen: I didn't Google him.

Dan: From 23 to 25, I was gay, experimenting. Instead of realising that a little bisexuality happens, I decided I was GAY and that was that. I told my parents and everything. I was curious and open-minded enough to try and the more I got into it, the more fun I had. It was San Francisco! I decided to ignore the little voice in my head that said, 'You know you really love women.' I kept insisting I was gay, talked about it my act, and became very successful as a gay comic. I built my life around this identity and then I had to go back in the closet and announce to people that no, I'm not.

Colleen: What Dan didn't know was that my first love – high school romance, together five years, first long term relationship – turned out to be gay. It was devastating to me. You start thinking it has to do with not being feminine enough. I'd had a lot of long term relationships but Dan was far and away the only guy I could be fragile with and he'd still respect me. So when he said he was gay, it felt like a serial situation. It tipped me over. I was out the door, leaving him forever.

Dan: There was a moment where she looked at me with a little bit of disdain. She got a little angry and judgemental. I'd never had a blow-out scene in a restaurant before. It hadn't occurred to me that it might be a bad place for this conversation. She stormed out and I was like, holy shit, this is a scene! Like the movies! People staring! I chased her out into the street and pleaded with her to listen. There was all this frustration – I knew in my heart that it shouldn't end, but could I convince her.

Colleen: Thank God he followed me across the street. It turned out I locked my keys in the car and he waited with me. If he hadn't, I don't know what would have happened to us.

Regretrosexual – The Love Story, written by and starring Dan Rothenburg and Colleen Crabtree, is at Sweet Grassmarket, 2:20pm, until 25 August

I BECAME A RABBI TO ESCAPE MY OVERBEARING BUDDHIST MOTHER

Josh Howie was brought up as a Buddhist by his eccentric mother. He wanted to rebel, and found a very unconventional way to do it...

WHEN I was seven my mom came home one day and saw me playing with GI Joe. "We're Buddhists now," she declared, "you can't play with GI Joe any more. It's against our principles."

I had no frame of reference, so meetings with 100 people chanting at a scroll, it was just my reality. There was a lot of talk about cause and effect, past lives – and it was quite a young age to be wrestling with philosophical concepts.

We went macrobiotic. That was probably the worst aspect of it! I'd go around to people's houses just so I could have a proper meal. At home it was brown rice, steamed vegetables, fish. Disgusting. To this day I feel nauseated if I see brown rice.

Even though my mom was Jewish, I didn't know what Jews were. Her family were also healers – the whole 'laying on of hands' thing. Whenever I'd scrape my knee my grandmother would come over and heal it. My father has Catholic, Scottish roots, though eventually his family started following Sai Baba.

When I was ten or 11 I started chanting in earnest. I went to public school and had fantasies that I was "The Buddhist" and would wander the playground dissolving arguments. That the other kids would say, 'You know who we need? The Buddhist.' Like the A-Team without any DIY skills. Instead I got beaten up. So in a way I did bring people together, through their hatred of me.

Later on we stopped being Buddhists but my mother kept following the New Age path and things got a bit more out there. We went to New Mexico to live with Native Americans for three weeks. I built drums and did the sweat lodge and a vision quest – 24 hours on my own without food or water. By the end I'd decided my animal spirit was a black hawk and I thought I could see auras coming off trees. It might have been the dehydration.

I also think my mum wanted me to be gay. All her friends were gay and she'd dress me very camp. She was quite disappointed when I quite literally had to come out as straight, because all her male friends had been insisting, 'Oh, he'll definitely be gay.'

To escape my mom's influence, first I tried to be Black for a good couple of years when I was 16-17. Baggy pants, changing my accent, all my friends were Black, pretending I was street – god forbid anyone should find out my parents had money! Then I was watching the movie Exodus at my grandmother's and I realised I was Jewish. I merged the two and started a Jewish hip-hop group called Circumcised. I was Joshua X. My middle name is already Xavier because my mom wanted me to sign my name Joshua X. Pretentious!

And when I was 18 she wanted to get me a Holy Hooker to teach me the ways of Tantric sex so I'd be a good lover and know how to please women. Maybe if her friend had been attractive I would have been interested.

Basically I was just a miserable little shit in the corner making sniping comments. That's what I've done the last 15, 16 years, been miserable in the corner trying to ruin everyone's good time. Perfect training for a career in comedy!

I went to Israel to look for my Jewishness in a cultural and ethnic way, not as a religion. But there were no bloody Jews on my kibbutz! Out of 50 volunteers I was the only one. Then I got involved with a programme that took secular Jews and trained them about religion with a view to turning them into rabbis. The amount of books was staggering. I studied 12 hours a day but I loved it and they bigged my ego up, telling me I was special.

I lived in the old City of Jerusalem, until I got caught in bed with this girl. I'd gone to Tel Aviv for a weekend and met a Catholic girl from Rome and we had a little thing and when she came to Jerusalem we hooked up again. I snuck her into the dormitory and got caught. That was it, I was out of there! Maybe if she'd been Jewish …

I still go to synagogue and I even made my wife convert to marry me. As for my mom, she's still finding her path through things. She follows Brahma Kamari now.

Josh Howie's show, Chosen, is at the Pleasance Courtyard, 9:45pm, until 24 August

MY BEST FRIEND DIED AND LEFT ME HIS PUPPET

Marlena Shell's best friend Wayland Flowers was an award-winning puppeteer. When he died of Aids in 1988 he left his puppet Madame to her in his will – but what was heartbroken Marlena supposed to do with a puppet?

The first time I met Madame was at the back stage of the Copa Room in the Sands Hotel in 1980. I went backstage and the first thing Madame did was spray me with a spritz of First Perfume.

That was the beginning of my relationship with Madame and with Wayland Flowers.

A couple of years later we were both living in LA and he was doing Madame's Place, a television chat show which had people like Jay Leno and Debbie Reynolds, all the big stars as guests.

He was so busy and I would bring him his bowl of salad every day and we would spend a lot of time together. Whatever parties he was invited to he would ask me to come along.

He was gay, and he was openly gay, so it wasn't like I was in love with him but we had a magical friendship.

The difficulties started when he began doing the television show five days a week. He had so much money so quickly, he was working so hard and it was just too much for him. He was taking cocaine just to keep going.

In September 1987 he called me and asked if I would go to the doctor with him. I didn't realise he had taken an Aids test. We went there and the doctor told him he was positive.

I believe he was so worried and so scared by the diagnosis that he developed full-blown Aids within just a few months.

Wayland was ashamed and so we didn't tell anyone – even the piano accompanist who had been with him for years.

We were both in denial. I thought he was going to live forever.

In late 1988 I got a call from Lake Tahoe. The stage manager said he had fallen over. He thought he was drunk but I knew he wasn't.

I called an ambulance and flew him to Reno then I flew him home in a private jet. A month later he was gone.

Wayland left a trust and a will and he left the puppets to me. But for a long time I never thought of doing anything with them. I couldn't even look at the puppets for the first few years. Then in 2005 a friend of mine suggested: 'Why don't you bring Madame back?' and for the first time I started thinking seriously about it.

I went through two puppeteers who didn't get Madame – who didn't understand her flow. It's almost like a ballet dance – she flows like a human being – which is one of the reasons people react to her as if she's real.

By 2006 I had moved back to New York and someone introduced me to Joe Kovacs. For the first time I met someone who I thought could work with Madame.

At first I suggested he go around to some bars where older people hang out and interact with them and see how it went. After all Madame hasn't been out for 18 years.

It went well and he started playing at various places around the US.

Things have changed so much. Madame's Place was on at 11:30 at night because of the language – but these days you could get away with it at noon. Madame was never vulgar but she was camp – and that is one of the main reasons I have brought her to Edinburgh. People in the UK get camp in a way that people in the US don't.

At first it was hard for Joe because I couldn't sit through a performance without tears streaming down my face. But now I look at Madame the way people sometimes say they look at their children. I sit and watch her and I can't believe she belongs to me.

Some people were upset when I brought Madame back, but I told them: 'I don't think Wayland would be turning in his grave because I was there for him when he was alive.'

I will always give Wayland credit for what he created because I think it is incredible. He was a genius. This way people won't have to read a history book to appreciate his creation.

We credit him at the end of every show. He was a great friend, I loved him and I miss him every single day.

Madame with an 'E' is at Clubwest @ Quincentenary Hall, 10:15pm, until 25 August.