There are few better ways to begin a story than the Midwest, a mountain cult, academia, success, and a queer comedienne — for all of these are true Americanisms: the Bible Belt, strange peripheral groups practicing varying forms of puritanism, the pursuit of knowledge, professional happiness, and sexual freedom.
And TJ Huberg knows this.
In fact, she’s so well aware of the incredible nature of her story that she, rather rightfully so, insisted that she tell me it — beyond an article or otherwise. She has been contacted by the folks at Ellen. Chris Tucker possibly wants her to open for him on his upcoming tour (“Black men love me,” she says, her eyebrows lifting as if confirming the shock that a white lesbian could be loved by such a crowd. “My stand-up persona is very much a gay gangsta.”). She is, for lack of a better term, legit. And as we sat, sipping our coffees at Portfolio, I was captivated by this Long Beacher who hails from Iowa. She has a natural exuberance about her — and a confidence in that what she is doing and the story that is intimately attached to her endeavor is what she has been waiting for her whole life.
Before her move here to Long Beach in 2001, TJ — known as Trina to those for the first half of her life (“I’ve NEVER met a white girl names Trina. And my name is country: Trina Joe. Straight up.”) — came from what she acknowledged as a stifling area. In a town of 650 and graduating with 23 in 1989, she thought she was going to “be the star. I was gonna break outta this town and just blow up.”
But soon she was outed and the people she grew up with (20 of those 23 were children she started school with since kindergarten) shunned her, leaving her homeless for almost a year. Feeling the societal pressure to conform, she attended a fundamental Christian group hidden in the mountains, where ex-gay therapy was part of their curriculum, and she attempted to “convert” herself back to heterosexuality.
“It wasn’t just a place for gays,” she explains. “It was more like a place where they felt, ‘We don’t know what to do with these people so we’re gonna shove ’em all up on a mountain.’ And I’m 19, y’know? Everyone is 36 and dealing with a ton of other shit — OCD, autism, drug addicts, AIDS. Land of the misfit toys.”
And for two years, she stayed there. Chopping wood. Tending land. Raising animals. And singing “Hallelujah.” She even learned how to be a “good woman,” as she puts it, learning skills like cooking and laundering.
Upon graduation — “From what?” she asked sarcastically — she moved to Ann Harbor, Michigan, a “place you don’t go if you’re trying to be straight. And I live in this a house for women, which is basically a house full of dykes in denial for a year. They all drove trucks, wore hats, and had prayer meetings.”
After kissing one of the girls and being considered a sex addict, she opted to leave for many reasons. And her identification as queer is key to it. She, like many youths who are dealing with sexuality, was also simultaneously dealing with gender. Tomboy-ish in nature, she admits she wasn’t quite sure where she fit in at all: boy, girl, gay, straight — all were confusing. And the term queer — an somewhat all-encompassing identity which (ironically) rejects given identities — befits her well.
She then moved to California, beginning her love-hate relationship with academia and fiddling around in performance. After her second masters and a mid-life crisis when she hit 40 — “My life fell apart and then I had to rebuild it” — she realized that after all this brouhaha of bouncing around the country, attempting to conform, attempting to breakaway, attempting to cement her own identity, like many, she harked back to childhood and realized that she had always wanted to be a comedienne — and that she was always rather funny.
Slowly but surely, she gives up more and more of her professional life in pursuit of stand-up and during the process begins building a reputation… So much so that Cedar Falls gets wind and calls her to ask, at least for her, the craziest question ever: “Would you come do a show?”
That’s right: the state that left her homeless and drove her into the mountains (not a metaphor, remember) wants her to do two nights June 29 and 30 (and wanting her to do a third thanks to the sell-out crowds of the first two). Even the people who directly shunned her — teachers, 4th grade classmates, P.E. coach — are flying to go see her.
Iowa wasn’t the only one paying attention. In San Francisco, one of TJ’s former students at Cal State Long Beach and aspiring filmmaker, Bridget Najour, contacted her with a documentary idea: “The Artist Formerly Known as Trina.” And it had finally come at the right moment: after feeling the timing wasn’t right with her previous work on a sitcom on HBO and a documentary with the Logo Channel, Majour had hit her up at a pinnacle moment, when she had become so comfortable with her story that she had, by this point, told it myriad times — and yet, was about to tell that story for the very first time to the folks that are characters in the narrative’s beginning.
Filming of the documentary will go through July where they hope to get it edited and complete in time for the autumn film festival circuit. “I’m at the point in my life where I’m myself,” she states comfortably, “and it’s great to have these people from my past want to know what I’m doing now. It’s a respectable fuck you show. How awesome is that?”
Awesome indeed. You can find out more below: