Jes Tom Talks Less Lonely, the Joy of Change, and Gay Pirate Lube in Our Flag Means Death

There’s something uniquely galvanizing about hard times, and which time could be harder than the end of the world? In their new Off-Broadway comedy Less Lonely, Jes Tom tackles the hunt for apocalyptic love with the same unrestricted queer wit that has become a hallmark of their comedy. A trans elder of the Brooklyn comedy scene in all but age, Tom now gets the opportunity to take a show years in the making and give it a theater-quality upgrade. 

Less Lonely is presented by Elliot Page, and he’s been happy to tell anyone who will listen just how special it has become. When I had the opportunity to speak to Tom about the show before previews began at NYC’s Greenwich House Theater on November 28, change was the topic of the day. Also writing about gay pirates for Our Flag Means Death, but before we could get to that I took the opportunity to dive backwards in time to what Tom might have told their 2016 self after completing the two-year acting program at the Maggie Flanagan Studio. 

“Oh god, I’d be like ‘Buckle up.’ I’d be like, ‘You know everything you know? It’s gone. It’s gonna change’,” they say. And that change started with them: “I’d been going by they pronouns socially since 2011 or something. I was already long into that, but I wasn’t like… out, I guess? I didn’t ask anyone to use they pronouns or anything for me in my first year of Maggie, but I realized I wasn’t gonna be able to do my best work unless I was really honest about who I was.” 

“So, I guess I ‘came out’ for my second year. It was crazy, because it was really hard at that time. That just wasn’t as much in the mainstream consciousness as it is now. A lot of people, probably most everybody, had not really heard that in my acting class,” Tom explains. “It’s crazy to, especially in the context of acting because acting is so embodied, do one year being like ‘Yeah, it’s totally okay to see me one way,’ and then the next year kind of being like, ‘Actually, that has to change.’ In an acting class, you learn a lot about how other people perceive you. What kind of roles can you play? What kind of roles do you wanna play? What are people gonna cast you as over and over again? What’s the position other people are gonna put you in? It was very illuminating.” 

In the same way that Jes Tom has evolved over the years, Less Lonely isn’t the same show it started as. Their longtime obsession with love at the end of the world, the kernel at Less Lonely’s core, has been there for more than a decade to be molded and influenced by their own experiences. 

“I think Less Lonely is largely about change and largely about me thinking I knew myself really well, and then suddenly finding out I have to learn all this new stuff in a lot of different ways, and over and over and over again,” they say. “Less Lonely is a feel-good story that doesn’t seem like it’s gonna be a feel-good story a lot of the way through, but it is. And I want people to leave feeling good and feeling hopeful and happy while facing these kind of dark subjects. I talk a lot about death. I talk about the end of the world. I talk about grief. There’s a lot of weird sex stuff in it.”

“It’s neither like, ‘Oh I’m queer and I came out to my family and they all accepted me and they all understand it exactly.’ Nor is it like, ‘I’ve been rejected for my identity and I’ve experienced all this trauma.’ Which I feel like sort of are the two narratives that queer people are allowed to have in the mainstream… And [Less Lonely is] more about going through hard stuff and feeling hard feelings and being all the better for it,” Tom says before highlighting the message they hope sticks with each audience member: “Be open to change. Be open to constantly changing. You don’t have to think that just because you hold this or that identity right now, even if it’s really important to you right now—like that’s precious, and that’s good—but it’s okay also if that changes. There is great joy in change and growth.” 

For this Off-Broadway version of Less Lonely, Tom is joined by producers Mike Lavoie and Carlee Briglia (Kate Berlant’s Kate, Jacqueline Novak’s Get On Your Knees), director Em Weinstein (The L Word: Generation Q, A League of Their Own), and production designer Claire DeLiso (Let Liv, Hangdog). While the pressure of the performance itself will rest solely on Tom, they explained the team has “been really trying to balance the stand-up and theater vibe, because the ethos of these two performing arts are actually almost total opposite.” 

“As a stand-up comic, my concept of the show is literally like: I get on stage, I talk into a microphone, I say the show, then I walk off. But now, we’re really able to create. What is the world of Less Lonely?… It’s gonna be a fully realized show,” they say. “At the same time, I made it super clear with the team that I want to be as close to just a live stand-up comedy show that you would see in a club, but enhanced by the resources of the theater. Nothing super crazy’s gonna happen.” 

While they have the benefit of final say in decisions about Less Lonely, working in the writers’ room on Our Flag Means Death meant trying to help creator David Jenkins realize his vision of where that story is headed. That show, like Less Lonely, continued to change throughout development. Collaborative discussions in the Zoom writers’ room, writers’ draft scripts, the showrunner’s script edits, improvisation on-set, and final edits to fit runtime constraints all change those initial concepts into the show fans get to see.

“When I was laying down the part at the beginning [of Season 2, Episode 7 of Our Flag Means Death] where Blackbeard wraps up his leathers and throws them into the ocean, of course that was something that David wanted. But for me, as I was putting it down I didn’t totally get that moment until I realized, ‘Oh, it’s a trans allegory.’ He’s taking his stuff and he doesn’t need it anymore. He drops it, and he feels lighter, and the weight comes off his shoulders,” they say. “In the script, I had him catch a glance of himself… And he says ‘bye bye.’ That was one of my lines that made it in. He says ‘bye bye,’ and I loved it.” 

For as much as things change from initial concept to final product, the influence of queer writers in the room, including but thankfully not limited to Tom, has undoubtedly impacted what Our Flag Means Death became. Not unlike Less Lonely, polyamory and relationship dynamics are integral to Our Flag Means Death and the world that it has created. 

“There’s a lot of either up-front or implied polyamory on Our Flag Means Death. It’s just in there. And I assume if you were a bunch of gay pirates on a ship, that’s kind of how it would be. What’re you gonna do, police our love lives?” Tom tells me. 

When I suggest that existing polycules at the end of Season 2 could start to merge, Tom takes that a step further: “Well, I think that they are one big polycule. That’s what a crew is. I mean, if you’re on a pirate ship, c’mon. There was just a lot of kissing and a lot of not totally monogamous stuff happening all over the place.”

“We thought a lot about what we were gonna do with Olu, Zheng, Jim, and Archie. We were following this new storyline with Olu and Zheng together, but also we love Olu and Jim. Everybody loves Olu and Jim,” they say. “There was a lot of back and forth about what’s gonna happen when Jim and Olu get reunited. Are there hurt feelings there? But I think that one of the big things about Our Flag Means Death, and one of the reasons people are so drawn to it, is that it’s utopic in a lot of ways. These characters are gay. They’re openly gay. They’re being really gay. All the time. In public.” 

“And at the same time, we’re sort of discussing colonial England, but we’re not dealing with homophobia or anything. I would love if there was just more time to see that explored. Like, I wanna know more about that world. I wanna know, like is that happening where Stede’s wife is? Is that happening there in that circle?” Jes explains before revealing one Season 2 storyline that didn’t make it into the show: “There’s just simply not enough time for this, but there was one moment where it was gonna be that Lucius had picked up another boyfriend. And then when he and Black Pete got together, they were gonna have to figure out what they were gonna do with this other existing relationship also.”

That desire to see more aspects of the show explored is one the Our Flag Means Death fandom has already taken the reins on by crafting some of the most magnificent and explicit fanfiction and fanart imaginable. The fandom has been called “wonderfully rabid” and “impressively ferocious,” but Tom had their own perspective. 

“Oh my god, you guys have some disgusting imaginations. I mean that in a pure positive way. I love it,” they say before recalling a particular piece of fanart that came to mind featuring Stede Bonnet and Izzy Hands: “It was one of them tied up, and the other one with his socked foot in the other one’s face. And I was like ‘Oh my god! That doesn’t happen on this show!’ I was like, wow, people are really going there. This is really inspiring something very perverted in all of these people, which I love.” 

“I don’t read the fanfic, but I know it’s out there. I love how much of a universe people have built out of this, and that’s what I think is really cool about a show like this is people being able to imagine what else is happening with these characters and in this world,” they explain. For the record, we locate some similar fanart but ultimately conclude Tom has seen so many they can’t be certain which one was coming to mind. They are, however, able to recall a detail that didn’t make it into the show that will change the Our Flag Means Death fanfiction landscape forever, and it might give you an idea of the comedy that can be expected from Less Lonely. 

“I really pitched hard for a second that it should be known that everyone uses whale blubber as lube. I had this idea that they, you know how before [modern] candles they would burn oil? I was like, ‘Oh yeah, they have all this like, liquid whale fat that they use as candles on the ship, then they keep running out of it because people keep using it as lube.’ And I think that idea was a little too gross for the [writers’] room,” they say before I insist it wasn’t too gross for the fandom. “Yeah, I love that. I think that’s so funny. And I’m like, that’s what they would be doing. Come on. Don’t turn away. You can’t be saying here’s a ship full of gay men, they have anal sex suddenly, like they’re on a ship. Where can they get lube?” 

Less Lonely began previews at the Greenwich House Theater in New York City on November 28 with an opening night set for December 11. Until the run concludes on January 6, Mondays through Fridays will be at 7pm and Saturday shows at 5:30pm and 8pm. Tickets are available now at jestomshow.com or TodayTix. Our Flag Means Death is currently streaming on Max.

Patches Chance is a freelance writer for Paste Magazine covering tech and entertainment. Her work has also been featured at Heavy, Fanbyte, The Loadout, Daily DDT, and Ginx. You can follow him @patcheschance on Twitter and Instagram.