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High hopes

Chris Azzopardi

Where's Amy Winehouse when you need her? That's what comedian Suzanne Westenhoefer's wondering as she stares at a pile of Christmas gifts, trying to figure out what the heck she'll do with them. She then focuses on the bathroom odds-and-ends temporarily moved into her office until the potty-place is redone.
She imagines snorting some cocaine – if it were non-addictive and non-illegal, she clarifies – to help her get a move on these house chores. Tabloid-whore and R&B singer Winehouse likely has a lifetime supply, and Westenhoefer jokes: "I have her on speed-dial."
Doesn't she wish. Not only would her and her partner's place look more like Martha Stewart moved into the Westenhoefer Inn, but it's also her fantasy to become a rock star – and, obviously, selecting a drug is just as important as picking your bandmates. Should she ever pursue that, blame Ani DiFranco and the Indigo Girls.
"That's why karaoke is popular. Everybody wants to be one (a rock star)," she insists. "It's not like there's some game where you go to a bar and get drunk and pretend to be a surgeon or a receptionist."

For now, though, she's sticking to her unscripted, personal-anecdote-style of comedy, which she'll unleash on a local audience Jan. 20 at The Ark in Ann Arbor. Can't go? Her live sold-out show at the Indiana Roof Ballroom in Indianapolis, "A Bottom on Top," (out on DVD March 5) features a menagerie of material: Dildos! Dogs! And, uh, triathlons? It's also currently looping on Logo.
Wait. Suzanne Westenhoefer, on the gay TV station? Sure, she's been out since 1990, when she was the first lesbian to appear on "Late Show with David Letterman" – but then she was performing for the hetero hordes. And they weren't too happy about it. At least at first.
"If I had 15 minutes I could get 'em," she insists. "Ya know, the first five minutes they would be a little quiet, like, 'Oh, no!' … It always went well at the end, probably 90 percent of the time. What was hard was always the first two (or) three minutes, when (I was like), 'Hi! I'm a lesbian comedian!' And they were like, 'Ah, what?'"
Not once did she pretend to be something she wasn't – "I was real lesbian," she admits, laughing. And though she'll never be like insult comic Lisa Lampanelli, with her bottomless vulgar vocab, Westenhoefer's content with only using words like "cunt" in her personal life.
"I'll say it later, if you want me to," she quips, "but I'm not gonna say it. I don't want to push an audience off of a cliff. Truth is: I'm a little vanilla – and if I'm talking about something that's a little out there, a little frisky, a little different, I'm going to sound like them (the audience). 'Cause I'm probably just as uncomfortable with it as they are."

One thing she is comfy with is New York Times crossword puzzles. She's so sure of herself that she does them in ink. This puzzle in particular, which she's still working on in the middle of the week, is mind-boggling her. Which means on Thursday night, she'll admit to herself, "Fuck it. You're not gonna get it," and then do some Web research.
She's obsessive-compulsive about them. Just not over which pen she'll use.
"I mean, if I'm on a ship or on a cruise or in some town on a Sunday and I get a puzzle, I'll use what they have. I'm not crazy."
She's also not a liar. She won't claim to have slept with every lesbian in Los Angeles, where she currently lives, when she's on-stage performing her shtick. "I don't get on stage with, 'I've slept with a bunch of girls' – 'cause I haven't. I haven't done all that." She laughs, "I'm just a regular lezzy."
A regular lezzy who never even intended to make people laugh. She tried acting. And failed. She wasn't a singer. Definitely not a dancer. She was just a long-time bartender in New York with regulars who would insist she pursue stand-up.
"People kept saying, 'Try comedy! Try comedy! Try comedy!' and I'm like, 'I'm not a comic!'" She pauses. "Uh, apparently I am."
Being a smartass helped. "I definitely knew I could make you laugh," she continues, and then stalls when trying to conjure an image of her life without a comedy career.
"God, that's a good question! Maybe, I think, if I had not stayed a bartender, I might have – if I ever had the money, 'cause I also didn't have any money, at all – I would say I would've gone back to school and tried to be a therapist.
"Which is just like a bartender. But instead of using Zoloft, you use gin."

Suzanne Westenhoefer
7:30 p.m. Jan 20
The Ark, Ann Arbor
http://www.theark.org

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