Where We Belong (19 page)

W
hat lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when you bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.

MARGARET CHO

Comedienne Margaret Cho is a Superwoman of sorts to the people she champions: the bullied, the outliers, the eccentric. But when she was eight years old, Margaret was convinced she was Wonder Woman.

“There was no doubt in my mind. I would practice running and jumping off the steps. First one, then two, then three. When I worked up to five,” she says, laughing, “I knew I was Wonder Woman and that was my journey.”

It was not. By the time Margaret turned fourteen, she realized her true superpower was writing and delivering jokes. Her parents, immigrants from Korea, were encouraging but busy managing a bookstore in San Francisco.

“I think they thought I was odd, because I was. I was an extremely focused kid with goals, like becoming a comedienne. It’s what I really wanted to do.”

(Courtesy of Pixie Vision)

Margaret’s high school classmates considered her odd, as well, but for different reasons. They saw a shy, awkward freshman with few friends, cloaked in the dark garb of the Goth subculture. Her knack for humor was lost on her peers.

“They might have thought I was goofy,” she says, “but no one took the time to really know what kind of person I was.”

A self-described “tough cookie,” Margaret pushed through her feelings of isolation and focused instead on any opportunity to engage in comedy. She performed stand-up at events held at the local mall. She delivered comedy sketches in her high school drama class. Then, at age fifteen, the odd girl out in school was made to feel even more shunned. A group of girls exposed her bisexuality.

“Being queer as a kid is a big problem. You get bullied a lot in school because kids can recognize somebody who’s different among them, and often the first reactions are fear and anger.”

The sophomore arrived at school one day to find “Margaret Cho is a f*cking dyke” spray-painted on walls throughout the school. She was traumatized and confused. She’d not told anyone she was gay.

“These girls had fabricated instances where I kissed them. I was really insulted because I would never consider kissing them,” she says with sarcasm. “Gross. Maybe her, but not you!”

In her junior year of high school, Margaret transferred to the San Francisco School of the Arts, determined to hone her comedic skills. She was eager to develop a career in comedy and move into the adult world and away from her painful youth.

“It made me very resentful and very jaded among children; I was over children and over childhood. I didn’t grasp the innocence or wonder of it.”

One of Margaret’s teachers at the arts school recognized that her young student had a compellingly irreverent sense of humor. The woman wanted to expose Margaret to a higher level of talent, but at sixteen, she wasn’t allowed in comedy clubs. Somehow, the teacher finagled a walk-on for Margaret at one of the local laugh factories.

“She signed me up for an open-mike night at a comedy club in San Francisco. I wasn’t allowed to hang out in the bar and had to wait outside until I went on.”

The exhilarating experience bolstered her passion for comedy. That same year, her dream found its mentor. Margaret recalls the night in 1983 when she watched comedienne Joan Rivers host
Saturday Night Live
.

“It was really profound to me. We had one of those old VCRs and I remember taping it and watching it over and over, knowing that she was the person who I idolized and that comedy was my religion.”

Admitting now it wasn’t a wise choice, Margaret left high school late in her junior year to pursue comedy full-time. She says her parents were busy working and weren’t fully aware of her comings and goings.

“Their approach was, ‘We actually have to make money so we can eat and have a house, so we’ll see you later!’ ” she says, laughing. “They were very absent, but not in a way that was more than I could handle.”

Margaret performed in as many venues as possible, lying about her age and bunking with friends. Her gut feeling that she was headed toward where she belonged was confirmed at age seventeen.

“Jerry Seinfeld saw me because I had lied my way into a college comedy competition,” she explains. “The prize was to open for Jerry. When I won he said to me, ‘You’re so funny. You’re really, really good. You should be a comedienne.’ I took it and I ran with it.”

Over the next twenty years, Margaret’s pioneering approach to topics like sexuality, ethnicity, and nonconformity propelled her into the ranks of top-level talent and national celebrity. Her comedic range generated a prolific résumé—star of television, stage, and film; author; producer; musician; Grammy and Emmy nominee; competitive dancer. She continues to serve as an activist for causes ranging from anti-bullying to pro–gay rights.

Cho Dependent Tour, Atlanta, 2010
(Courtesy of Lindsey Byrnes)

“There are things I can improve and change, and that will always be the case. But I know that I’m living on the right side of my truth, and that’s a great comfort to me,” she says. “I feel very lucky that I knew right away what I should be doing and that I was the kind of person who was so devoted to it and who didn’t have anything in my life at that time to block my way.”

But what of those roadblocks? What’s the payoff for finding a way to bust through them?

“The fact is that you only have one life, and that can be taken from you at any moment. You can waste it on the desires and expectations of other people, or you can be willing to try and find out what that is for you,” she says. “Often, people who don’t know are just so afraid of knowing or admitting it to themselves because that would dismantle their lives entirely. People’s lives grow with obligation as they grow older, and those obligations can be a mighty weight and a prison—so much so that they don’t allow their mind to go where it wants to go.”

Margaret Cho’s mind ran straight to comedy and her heart followed, laughing all the way.

A
long marriage is two people trying to dance a duet and two solos at the same time.

LINDLEY DEGARMO AND SARAH FINLAYSON