It is my great joy as a reviewer to command you to see Lynee Breedlove’s One Freak Show before it closes on Oct. 29, before Breedlove becomes famous, and before this show opens on Broadway—which it deserves to do. You’ll have bragging rights for the rest of your life because you can say you saw One Freak Show way back when, at the delightfully seedy Dark Room on Mission. And if, by some chance, Breedlove does not achieve the renown to which she is entitled—and this is only too possible because life is unfair and art is even more so—you will still have spent an evening having your mind bent by a delightful, witty and profound spirit.

Breedlove is best known as lead singer of Tribe 8, the quintessential dyke punk rock band. She’s written Godspeed, a novel inspired by her wild years of drugs, sex, and bike messengering. Breedlove is co-host of K’vetsch queer open mic (for eight years voted Best of the Bay), and DJ on the Unka Lynnee and Aunty Cindy show, “bringing queer and trans music and opinionated opinions to the airwaves.” She is currently working on Godspeed, the movie. One Freak Show is her first venture into solo performance, and I’m sure it won’t be her last.

Before Breedlove came out, the Oakland Fejacks radical cheerleaders warmed up the audience with a wacky selection of transgressive cheers. These punky girls and boy in outrageous costumes set up the audience to expect the unlikely.

Then Breedlove saunters onstage, impossibly lanky, with a broad Cheshire cat grin to do her “queer homohop punkrock standup comedy on transgender bodies, feminism, family, and community.” These are all weighty issues, and Breedlove is adept at being serious and funny at the same time. She…

Wait a minute. I’ve gotten myself into trouble. It is clear to me that Breedlove is a butch lesbian. But she identifies primarily as a “tranny boy.” Which pronouns to use? The ones that seem natural to me or the ones she prefers? Fortunately, she has resolved my pronoun dilemma by inventing her own pronouns, “shim” and “herm.” Thus I shall proceed by using herm solution.

While Breedlove yearns to have a man’s body, shim rejects the option of chemically or surgically altering herm own. Shim claims the right to remain ambiguous, changeable: “Yep, even though I am reclaiming the boy I was at three, I’m still a feminist—but I won’t be coming to your benefit!”

Shim is a true gender revolutionary, claiming to encompass all genders without changing her body. This is a form of transgenderism that this reviewer, who has difficulty accepting the necessity of surgery and hormones, can embrace. Breedlove denies nothing in hermself. But (unlike this reviewer) shim also denies nothing in anyone else either. All things and all bodies are possible in Breedlove’s cosmos of mutable boundaries.

Breedlove delves into such intimate and twisted subjects as the distress shim creates whenever shim enters the ladies room, to the horror of the ladies already inside, who are extremely clear about their own gender. Shim hilariously outlines the evolution of the gay community, as indicated by the adding on of sexual categories throughout the years. Shim has even figured out how to pronounce LGBTIQQ as one word, an amazing feat to add to her already long list of accomplishments. (Don’t try this at home—you might break your lips.)

Breedlove tells about her childhood with her German Auntie Mame-like mom, who desperately tried to squelch Lynnee’s blossoming butchness: “There’s nothing sadder than a little boy named Johnny covered in pink bows with six lace petticoats sticking straight out.”

At one moment a baby butch agonized by pink bows, at another a mincing drag queen trying to convince the population of the ladies room that shim belongs, and then at another point the sophisticated European mom—These are a few of the characters that Breedlove plays. Shim portrays a whole gallery, each one outlined with a few well-chosen gestures and portrayed with tenderness and humor.

Breedlove moves with the comic grace of a butch ballerina—arms swinging to form an unexpected pose, body cantilevered at a strange angle, face expressing mixtures confusion, astonishment and joy. This performer is aptly named. Herm very presence does indeed breed love. There is something endearing, even sweet about herm. For all herm’s transgressive ideas and wild experiences, shim radiates a softness and openness that makes you want to cuddle herm.

We get to see a taste of Breedlove the singer when shim performs two dynamite rap songs with the Oakland Fejacks backing her up. One, “Breasticles,” explores the paradox of a self-defined transgender who won’t change herm body. The second, “Knuckle Sandwich,” is a powerful feminist anthem against domestic violence.

One of Breedlove’s unique traits is her ability to combine her astute political viewpoints with a childlike playfulness. She brings onstage two stuffed animals, Hello Kitty dressed as a pirate, and Piglet in biker fag drag. Using these two as puppets, Breedlove enacts short and very strange scenarios, usually ending up with the two characters yelling “You shut up!” at each other. There was a great childish joy in the yelling of “You shut up,” and by the end of the show many of us in the audience joined in with Breedlove.

How absolutely wonderful to go see a gender-bent and bending border-crossing whip-smart cutting-edge performer—who allows the audience to become children for a few moments.

Breedlove claims that, after the nuclear holocaust, only shim and the cockroaches will be left, because shim has built up her immune system by licking pay phones. I have a vision of a post-holocaust world, with laughing cockroaches yelling “You shut up!” at each other. Lucky cockroaches.
One Freak Show plays for three more Saturdays, Oct. 15, 22 and 29 at 10 pm. Admission is $10. The Dark Room is located at 2263 Mission between 18th and 19 Streets. For reservations, phone 401-7987. Don’t miss this show.