"I don’t really like saying that I’ve ‘come out of the closet,’" says comedian Todd Glass in THE TODD GLASS SITUATION: A Bunch of Lies About My Personal Life and a Bunch of True Stories About My 30-Year Career in Stand-Up Comedy (June 3, 2014/$25.00 hardcover). "Why couldn’t it be something a little more manly, like ‘stepping out of the garage’ or ‘busting out of the toolshed?’"
THE TODD GLASS SITUATION shares Todd’s unique perspective as a stand-up comedian who spent the first 47 years of his life living in the closet/garage/toolshed. He provides an inside look at a 30+ year career at the top of the comedy world, tracing its ups and downs as he shares the stage with everyone from Jay Leno to Sarah Silverman to Louis CK. It took a brush with death to cause him to rethink the way he was living his life, and a rash of suicides among gay teens to convince him that it was finally time for a change.
Growing up outside Philadelphia in the 1970s was easy, as long as you weren’t dyslexic. Or someone who struggled with ADD. Or a Jew. Todd Glass wasn’t any one of these things—he was all three. So there was absolutely no way he was going to let anyone know that he was also gay. He vowed to keep his "situation" hidden from the world, no matter how comic, tragic, or comically tragic the results.
This decision might have made Todd’s life easier, had his career path not placed him squarely in the public eye. By age eighteen, he was a professional stand-up comedian, opening for big musical acts like George Jones and Patti LaBelle. His career carried him through the Los Angeles comedy heyday in the 1980s, its decline in the 1990s, and its rebirth via the alternative comedy scene and the explosion in podcasting.
He worked hard at his craft, but that was nothing compared to the effort it took to manage his situation. There were years of abstinence and half-hearted attempts to “cure” himself. Fake girlfriends so that he could tell relationship jokes onstage. Staged sexual encounters to burnish his reputation offstage.
One night—onstage, during a performance—Todd suffered a serious heart attack. When the EMT asked if there was anyone they should notify, Todd hesitated to name his boyfriend. “Here I am, forty-five years old, possibly at death’s door, surrounded by friends—and I still can’t be honest about who I am,” he says. “How the f*** did I get here?” This was the beginning of the process that led to Todd’s decision to finally come clean about his sexuality.
Peppered with anecdotes from his life among comedy’s greatest headliners and tales of the occasionally insane lengths Todd went through to keep a secret that—let’s face it—he probably didn’t have to keep for as long as he did, THE TODD GLASS SITUATION is a front-row seat to the last thirty-plus years of comedy history and a deeply personal story about one man’s search for acceptance.
ABOUT TODD GLASS
Todd Glass is a stand-up comedian who has performed on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Chelsea Lately, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and The Jimmy Kimmel Show, among many other programs. He’s also the host of The Todd Glass Show, a popular podcast on the Nerdist Network. Visit www.ToddGlass.com and follow Todd on Twitter at @toddglass.