Cameron Esposito
written by Ashlee Robison
“I got to eat warthog, kudu, and ostrich while I was in South Africa. I got to touch a Cheetah,” comedian Cameron Esposito tells me. “South Africa looks like Florida, but the people act like Californians.”
I am enthralled by South Africa through Cameron Esposito’s eyes. South Africa is my version of heaven. She has just returned from a month long stay in Cape Town where she visited her girlfriend and performed stand-up comedy. She is still recovering from the evils of jet lag. I’m excited that she agreed to meet with me despite her fogginess. This proves my theory that people who have many frequent flyer miles can still be genuinely nice.
The Mexican restaurant, before we arrive, has decided that Beyonce is an excellent choice for ambiance music, and the table we choose overlooks the busy hub of Logan Square, a mash of three streets that collide into an oval-shaped commons. The square, that’s actually an oval, accommodates a phallic marble statue designed by the same man who thought up the Lincoln Memorial. Genius. An eagle perches atop the 70-foot marble column that symbolizes the identity of Cameron’s local hood.
“In South Africa they describe everything as hectic, even in situations where it’s clearly not the word to describe the situation,” she says. “They don’t use modifiers. Every experience is the same level of hectic.” During this Mexican food adventure I discover we have a shared interest in chicken tacos, black coffee, and reminiscing about Catholic school. Outside the window, commuters are just returning from work and walk with their heads down. I believe the interview has been bumped up to hectic status.
She grew up in a conservative suburb of Chicago and attended a strict Catholic School where she just happened to date the captain of the football team, dress up as the mascot, and run the homecoming committee. Like all good students, Cameron went on to attend Boston College, a Catholic University, and studied theology and English. That’s when she began to shift focus.
“I was very religious at one point in my life,” Cameron recalls. “Like, I went to mass everyday and everyone in my Italian Catholic family had chest hair, even the women.”
But instead of preparing for the LSAT and marrying a boy who was getting a business degree, she began performing professionally in an improv troupe and discovered she was gay. She stayed in Boston for three more years before moving home to Chicago to try her luck on the improv scene.
“When I moved back to Chicago it was like moving to the city for the first time. In Boston, everyone hung out together, and we all lived in the same neighborhood. It was a family up there. I was a little too old and a little too female for the improv kids in Chicago who were really into the scene,” she admits. “Stand-up lets you have your own time on stage. I get to put my beliefs forward, and there’s a part of me that really likes that.”
She cites local comedians Hannibal Burress, John Logan, and Robert Buscemi as her biggest influences, people with whom she has shared stages and drinks. “That’s more meaningful to me than watching someone perform on television,” she says.
Cameron is now a cast member at the Lincoln Lodge, was nominated for Best Female Comic in 2007 by the Chicago comedy awards and won herself a spot at the 2009 Aspen Rooftop Comedy Festival. You could say she’s made it. You could say she was able to quit one of her day jobs, which is true. You could say she still works at another day job, which is also true.
It’s important to note that Cameron Esposito is a self-proclaimed dork. She’s not afraid to admit she looks like Stevie Nicks. During her set, along with wearing striped arm warmers, she jokes about how she could be a 1970’s heartthrob of either gender, and sings a tribute song to her side-swept bangs. She has good taste, but she also roller blades for exercise. “I love roller blading with all my heart,” she says. “I used to roller blade twenty-six miles a day in Boston, thirteen miles one way and thirteen miles back.”
She named the family cat Samurai Noodles and creates short webisodes about topics such as the philosophy behind stationary cycling. Along with her affinity for Star Wars she has a passion for modern dance. “I’m on modern dance boards,” she says, “and attend fund raisers to support it. My girlfriend is a dancer, but not the type that takes off their clothing.”
Yes, Cameron is gay, and she uses events in her life as material for her stand-up set. “I don’t consider anything off-limits,” she says, “but if I’m not dealing with an issue right now in my own life, then I won’t talk about it on stage. I’m pretty open about everything that’s going on with me. Once we get that out of the way we can continue on a new level and laugh together.” She follows the rule that every writer is given in school. Write about what you know. It just so happens that everything she knows is extremely funny.
To Cameron, cynicism is not a required ingredient to make it in the business. She still has a childlike belief in humanity that most well established comedians have lost through the daily grind of performing night after night in seedy bars for crowds who just don’t get it. Instead, after three years, Cameron is more upbeat after her performance than my mother on the day she realized shooting guns and drinking beer was a sport. I’m willing to bet that her optimism is connected to her other love, teaching special education. If she had another job besides pursuing stand-up it would be teaching in a special education department at a public school. In the past she has worked full-time with nonverbal middle school kids diagnosed with cerebral palsy.
One of Cameron’s unique powers stems from her education and her vast vocabulary and use of language. She studies the way people speak and adds humorous commentary to their dialogue, even during normal conversation. She dissects other’s speech patterns and unfurls them at her audiences as jokes, “I was riding my bike recently, past a gang of street toughs, and the girl in this group yells out ‘Slut’ as I pass. When I ride my bicycle I wear a red bulbous helmet and mesh cycling gloves. So, what I yelled back was, ‘What I’m offended by most is your inaccuracy’. It’s not a slutty look—it’s just not. If she had yelled out ‘Safe, with unhip accessories’, then I would have said, ‘correct!’”
She has mastered many of the unique intricacies of the English language, and she has comebacks for each audience member who finds it necessary to provide their own commentary during her set. This proves that majoring in English can increase your living wage.
“I believe studying other people’s beliefs is the best way to find our commonalities,” she says, “and it’s the same thing with a joke storm. We have more in common than people think. Comedy is all about commonality. I take people who are not connected to the gay community at all and say to them, come on a trip with me to gay town. It’s the same as this other town. It’s the exact same, we’re in the exact same town. People will follow you if you’re confident and you add a little helping hand. I’m most comfortable performing for crowds that listen to NPR during the day, but I can connect with a large number of people. I believe in creating your own positive reality. For instance, when I prayed to a God I didn’t get any money for telling jokes.”
The biggest difference between her current material and her older pieces is the surrealism. She tosses non-sequiturs at the audience like flying chickens and keeps a deadpan face while discussing a war between two vegan brownie vendors in London. Every joke doesn’t fall into the personal experience formula. Some scenarios just don’t happen in concrete reality no matter how badly you wish they were true. “I like jokes that are really wacky,” she says. “Really wacky is really fun. I should put that on a t-shirt.” I agree with her, but I’m secretly hoping that her version of South Africa didn’t only exist in her head.
Ashlee Robison is a writer from Chicago.
Photos were provided by Elizabeth McQuern of Chicago.
To see where Cameron is performing, visit cameronesposito.com.