Last summer, tired of waiting around for opportunities that felt like they’d never come, Roz Hernandez decided to put pedal to the metal and go out to create them herself.
With her Comedy In A Gay Bar tour, Hernandez set out to perform across the country, one gay bar at a time, from historic haunts like the Stonewall Inn to hole-in-the-wall hideaways of the heartland. And she was doing it the old-fashioned way: racking up the mileage on her own car!
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Now, we don’t have to tell you how daunting it can be to do that kind of thing solo, especially as a trans woman in present-day America. Yet Hernandez was intent on blazing her own trail, while at the same time highlighting the many, many queer & trans folks who have blazed trails before her. So, along the way, she made a point to converse with other performers and venue owners, hoping to take their collected wisdoms and turn them into a road map—both metaphorical and literal—for the rest of us.
One year later, she’s sharing it with the world via Peeing In An Empty Bottle, a unique audio-memoir that combines travelogue, live comedy, and conversations with community members who’ve helped lead the way. Sure, it wasn’t always smooth sailing—she had to resort to the titular act on more than one occasion—but the project’s final destination is a hilarious, joyful snapshot of queer life in these otherwise dark times, a necessary antidote amid the doom & gloom.
With Peeing In An Empty Bottle available on June 23 via Simon & Schuster Audio (you can still pre-order right now!), we decided to invite Hernandez into the hot seat for our long-running Q&A series, Dishin’ It. In our conversation, the performer opens up about finding positive trans representation on TV in the unlikeliest of places, why she has so much more to offer than ghost stories (she doesn’t even like ghost-hunting all that much!), and her tips before you embark on your next cross-country road trip.
Is there a piece of media—whether a movie, TV series, book, album, theater, video game, etc…—that has played an important role in your understanding of queerness and the queer community, or your own identity? Why does it stand out to you?
Now, this is gonna start controversy, but I am of that belief that, especially growing up in the early 2000s, there was such little representation that you’d kind of cling on to what you can get. In hindsight. you look back at some and you go, “Oh my god, that was not good.” But, for me at the time, it was a possibility when I would see these images, [specifically] daytime talk shows when they would have trans ladies on.
A lot of times they weren’t super negative—of course, there was the famous, “Is that a man or is that a woman?,” and that’s not cute, looking back. But there were a lot of times where they would have trans women on—and I loved all of those shows, like Sally Jesse Raphael, Ricky Lake was my favorite. And they would have episodes where they weren’t so negative, and I do remember seeing those and being like, “Oh my god, that’s an interesting thing…”
And to relate it to my audio project, I was trying to meet different performers and just locals in all these different communities I went to, and I met a few iconic trans women that had done those shows back in the day, and I got to hear their side of it, which was really interesting to me. And it did make me process, “Oh, wow, those representations were really major for me at the time,” like I guess I didn’t really think of it too deeply, but talking to them and knowing they were on TV in my living room in Michigan when I was a child, making me realize that’s a possibility of something that I could be maybe one day.
That’s such a fascinating answer because, right, as you acknowledge, sometimes, depending on the context of the show, they were kind of being presented to be judged by an audience, one way or another. But at the same time, at the very least, they were given a platform, they were able to use their voices and speak for themselves.
Totally! Most of the time, they would go on, and people would have their opinions in the audience, or whatever, but they were always like, “Yeah, I’m fierce, I’m fabulous, I love my life.” And they would do the thing with the microphone in the audience—which I loved—and these people would have something sassy to say to them, but a lot of times these ladies would shut them down, and then the audience would go crazy for them! They had an opportunity to tell their story, what they are, what they aren’t, how everything works for them, how they feel about it. And I think people did leave those episodes being like, “Hey, that person’s happy!”
As you mentioned, you met with some of these woman on your tour, and they’re featured throughout the audiobook, but why did it feel important to reach out to them for the project, and where do you see the connection with who you are as a comedian, a performer?
I came from drag—I was a drag queen that did stand-up comedy in both comedy shows and drag club gigs. And then I sort of stopped with the drag, and really leaned into just focusing on being a trans comedian.
But as time went on I’m like, “wow, there is a long legacy of trans female performers”— who, by the way, are all hilarious—and they’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s this cross-section of transness and drag, and just honestly, glamor. And I’m like, “You know what? I want to be a part of this legacy! I don’t want to focus all the time on just being a stand-up comedian.” Like, I am a trans stand-up comedian, and I am a “glamor girl,” and I love drag, and I love the queer community & performing for the queer community.
And so, talking to these women [for the audio project], that was the representation, the opportunities that were given to these performers. And if I was doing this in the ’90s, that would be my opportunity to be on television! And it is weird, because a few years ago, if you’re trans and you’re like in show business, there were quite a few opportunities, really. And now I feel like they have dried up, and we’ve become so controversial just by our existence, that I’m trying to figure out: Where can I get opportunities? What can I do? How can I still perform? I’m not putting my dreams on hold because of the current cultural climate and administration. And I realized, “Oh, I want to be performing in the places that those trans women built, I want to be a part of that, and I want to lean into the glamor of it, and the queerness of it.
Just a few names that come to mind: Dena Cass, Mimi Marks, Mia Inez Adams, Vancie Vega—these are women that have been performing for decades as trans drag entertainers. They are all very funny, but not necessarily like stand-up comedians. And I’m kind of just making my own mishmash with it, taking what I can learn from them, as well as my comedian heroes and peers in the comedy world. I don’t know, it just feels right to me to be doing stand-up this way.
Last summer was your Comedy In A Gay Bar tour across the U.S., and now you’ve turned that experience into Peeing In An Empty Bottle, which blends memoir with stand-up & documentary-style storytelling. When initially sparked the idea to chronicle the tour, and how did you decide to tell it in such a unique ”audiobook” format?
Well, I was already talking to Simon & Schuster about possibly doing an audio book, and my original idea was to branch out into writing a fiction, like a spooky fiction. And my first instinct was—this was pre-Trump’s second term—this idea that I was ruminating on was a story like Get Out or Stepford Wives or one of these kinds of stories, but from a trans perspective. But then we started living that, and I was like, “okay, that’s not fun, that’s not escapism, I’m not doing that.”
And at the same time, I was noticing I had no work going on when the year started, there was just not a lot of opportunities, and so I decided to do this tour. So I said to Simon and Schuster, “Could this be something?” So then I took a recorder with me and started recording, just see what happens, and also I started keeping a diary and writing things down. Because, as it has continued, it’s like every day you wake up and there’s a new history-breaking news story, and a lot of them have been about trans women. Trying to maintain a sense of humor and a sense of positivity, optimism when being trans in America is so hard right now. But what I wanted to focus on was entertaining my community, and connecting with my community, and so that’s sort of how this whole thing started. And as part of that, I was already planning on meeting people on the road and having conversations and whatever, so I was like, “Oh, I’ll just record it!”
A road trip, while exciting, is still a scary prospect for queer folks in this country. Do you have any tips or advice for anyone who might want (or need) to make that journey for whatever reason?
I focus a lot in life—whether it’s my career, my mental health, whatever—on what can I control, what can I not control. I can control how I feel about myself, I can control what kind of work I can go out and find for myself. And my mindset when I would go to places that were unfamiliar for me was: I belong anywhere I want to be. Anywhere I am, I belong. And I just kept telling myself that.
I kept thinking about how predators can sense prey, and if you’re out in the wild and you’re a little bunny rabbit and you’re scared around a big mongoose, they’re going to be like, “Oh, that’s an easy one right there.” And I don’t necessarily know that I navigate the world on a daily basis as if I’m “taking up space”—I don’t necessarily think of it like that. I don’t think of it like, “I’m here, everyone!” as I would go to a gas station, but also I’m not crossing my arms, not looking with my head down, saying hi to people—not making them have any reason to go, “What’s going on with that person? Let’s sniff a little closer to that person!” I just really wanted to, for my own sense of self, be like, “I belong here, by the way. I pay taxes, okay?”
This is America. I am supposed to be here just as much as anyone else, so I feel like I’m not going to be convinced that I don’t belong in America. There are some situations that are dangerous for me that I don’t want to be in, of course. But I want to try to navigate the world feeling like it’s part of my world, too.
Along those lines, can you tell me about the audiobook’s title, Peeing In An Empty Bottle? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking, was that something you did on the road as a practicality? Or was it a matter of safety, of protecting yourself at times form hving to go into random roadside bathrooms?
I mean, I think metaphorically it’s, to me, when you have to pee—which is something that all of us have
to do; it’s common ground, no matter what gender you are. And sometimes you’re in situations where what you need is a solution, and that for me had to be a solution a few times. Because I was performing at places that didn’t have bathrooms, like private bathrooms for performers backstage, but also sometimes because I was on the road and I’m like, “I don’t know where I’m going to pee.” It just so happens that there were two times in the audio book—or this “journey”—where I’ll just say it was peeing in an empty bottle gone wrong. And I see the humor in that!
I’m laughing at the way you said journey with air-quotes, because I think “journey” is a loaded word that many in our community have feelings about being over-used, or hyperbolized, like, “oh, my journey as a queer person…” And yet at the same time, you quite literally were on a journey with this comedy tour road trip.
No, I went on a voyage! [Laughs.] No, it really was a journey. And, honestly, I cannot wait to do it again. I loved it. This is how I hope to continue to tour, at queer places.You know, the gay bars are—broadly speaking—suffering. I mean, I think we all have seen different headlines of different places that are not doing great. Not all of them! Communities are different in different places. But it feels good to bring in an audience to those places, and sometimes I would have audience members that had never even been to that place, and they live in that city!
So I think it’s important to be supporting queer businesses. It’s just something that’s important to me, and from here on out, I think that one solution is just trying to bring joyous unique programming to different queer bars across America that might bring out an audience. I’m really trying to start our own circuit for national headlining queer comedians. Because we do comedy clubs and places like that, but we can do these gay bars as well—they really need us, and it’s more fun, in my opinion. And there’s no two-item minimum! There’s a lot of benefits to doing it this way, and I’ve been trying to tell any queer comedian that will listen: I will teach you what I did. Let’s do this!
And we should mention, between Living For The Dead and Ghosted, you’ve sort of cornered the market as our queer paranormal guru—
I want to shout out: I’ve been working really hard at—and I was doing this while doing the tour last year a little bit, too—my YouTube channel, where I go ghost-hunting with guys that I meet on Grindr. That’s called The Haunted Doll.
That’s a weird situation that I’m in—and I think I”m probably the first ever—where I’m kind of doing this “ghost thing,” but I’m also a stand-up comedian. And nine times out of ten, when people write an article about me, it’s like “Ghost-hunter goes on a comedy tour!,” or something like that. [Laughs.] And I’m like, “I’m a comedian!” I’m just doing the ghost thing because, I don’t know, dead people will not tell me to shut the f*ck up. [Laughs.] So it’s like I’m living these two lives at once, but they’re all queer and funny and fabulous. But I will be completely honest with you: I don’t love ghost-hunting! I’m a scaredy-cat, and I find it sometimes very boring waiting for a ghost to show up. I love the immediate response of stand-up, and so with ghost-hunting, it’s like, I’ll do it, but if I’m gonna do it, it’s gonna be with guys from Grindr, I’m going to be wearing heels and it’s going to be cute!
And, in closing: Who is an LGBTQ+ artist/performer/creator that you think is doing really cool work right now? Why are they someone we should all be paying attention to?
Ooh! Well, I love trans women—I mean, I love trans people, period—but I do think that trans women are so funny and so fabulous and so strong, so I’m a big fan of trans female comedians. I mean, there’s not a lot of us, but we’re all sort of on our own journeys, and we all have very different perspectives, which I love. I love to see the diversity of trans people. So, I get nervous to share a list, because I’m like, “oh, I’ll forget that person!” But just some names that come to mind would be Mx. Dahlia Belle, Nori Reed, Hayden Johnson, Robin Tran.
And also there’s a documentary that’s been doing festivals called We Are Pat, which is based on the idea of the character Pat from SNL in the ’90s, and the director of that film, Ro Haber. That’s an example of a really cool piece of work that I would like to shout out, because that was a big trans comedy explosion—like, all of us together, being trans and being funny. And it has a huge list of trans comedians that were involved in it.
Roz Hernandez’s Peeing In An Empty Bottle is available now via Simon & Schuster on Audible, Apple Books, Google Play, Spotify, and other audiobook apps & retailers.
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