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Written by Kay Warren for Never Satisfied News
February 15, 2017
For the past half-decade, John Laurens has been making America laugh on the regular along with his ragtag handful of comedians on The Story of Tonight and on Twitter and Instagram, where he regularly posts about the shenanigans of his boyfriend, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. However, last night, he made America cry for the first time. There were about a dozen Never Satisfied News employees in the office last night with me when I watched Closet Case: The Story of My Life, and by the end, not one of them had a dry eye, myself included. This eighty-two-minute short broadcast on CNN was a heartrendingly, unflinchingly honest autobiographical narrative brilliantly crafted by Laurens, Anderson Cooper, and Story of Tonight second-in-command Peggy Schuyler. Not only does it completely flip one’s view on John Laurens as a man, but it makes their respect for him increase dramatically.
The short begins with a voiceover from Laurens himself. He introduces himself, then lists his place and time of birth, as well as his weight: standard baby details. As he speaks, the screen fills with several grainy, faded pictures clearly from decades’ past. The first is a woman holding a baby, then shots of just the baby or it and the woman again. The screen fills, fades back to black, and then a single image shows up. The baby is sitting on a man’s lap, grinning ecstatically, holding his hands up in the air. The man’s face is not shown. Just as the lone image begins to fade, Laurens’ voice reappears and says, “This is my story.”
In classic documentary style, the film begins out in the countryside. Laurens is sitting out on the lawn at Mount Vernon, President Washington’s family home, and he’s playing with Philip, the adopted son of Eliza and Alexander Hamilton. The baby is clearly working on standing up straight on his own, and Laurens has his hands at the ready on either side of him, prepared to catch if need be. Laurens looks at the child with the utmost adoration and affection. The sight, as imaginable, is heartwarming and endearing beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
“The youngest of my siblings was his age when my mom died,” Laurens says. “Younger, actually. My mom got sick when I was fifteen, died right before my sixteenth. Ellie wasn’t even a year. She was hardly a toddler when I left home. She’ll be almost twenty now.”
The image then shifts to Laurens carrying a sleeping Philip across the lawn, one of the Washingtons’ dogs trotting at his heels.
“Sometimes I feel kinda guilty thinking of this place as a second home,” Laurens’ voice admits as he climbs the steps to the porch of Mount Vernon. “But there’s just something about these people that’s the perfect mix of Northern and Southern for me, and the Washingtons are just inherently parents. There’s no other way to describe them.”
“Let’s start at the very beginning,” says Anderson Cooper. He and Laurens are sitting on rocking chairs on the porch of Mount Vernon, looking out on a field where a number of sheep, cows, and goats are grazing in separate pastures.
“A very good place to start,” Laurens replies in singsong - a terrible impression of Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music, but a comedian’s reflex cannot be helped. At the very least, Anderson Cooper liked it.
Over the next ten to twelve minutes, Laurens tells the story of the first decade of his life, from being a young senator’s son to being the eldest of an ever-growing horde of children to his childhood hijinks. Apparently, comedy was not Laurens’ first calling, as he explains in the story of how he would go out into the woods in search of bird’s nests, squirrel caches, rabbit holes, and more. His favorite, however, was going out to ponds to look for salamanders, frogs, and - most importantly, as far as he’s concerned - turtles. In fact, he spends the better part of two minutes (yes, we timed it) talking about his childhood adoration of turtles and how it has carried on into his adulthood. This love of his, however, came much to the dismay of his father.
“He was your standard kind of manly-man, you know?” Laurens asks rhetorically. He and Cooper are walking along a Mount Vernon pasture, a different dog a few yards ahead. “He went to law school, of course, so he wasn’t a redneck, so to speak, but he was very firmly masculine. I would fix leaks and help with barbecue and play in the mud, but god forbid I wash a dish. Whenever I did something he didn’t quite like, he’d say: ‘Jacky, you’re a man. Men don’t do that.’ The earliest I can remember hearing that is at five years old. I was upset about having to share my mom with a baby sister. Anyway, my dad would have been fine with my roaming had it not been for the fact that I wasn’t trying to catch anything. Apparently, it’s a crime to observe frogs going about doing their thing. Same goes for leaving bird’s nests alone.”
Henry Laurens, to his credit, did not discourage his son from going outside, exploring, and being curious. He just wouldn’t have minded if little John brought back the odd frog or two. “Normal kid stuff”, as Laurens remarked with a chuckle.
“Which, really, I find hilarious given that my dad hated frogs. One jumped into his sandwich once when he was a kid and he’s been traumatized ever since,” Laurens says with a laugh. “He just thought it woulda taken my boy-ness up a couple notches!” Cooper and Laurens share a laugh.