Lucky 7: Chris Wellman
“I didn’t like being told that I was deviant, dirty, or shameful for who and how I love, so I made comedy shows that exemplified the opposite. It has become a middle finger to that shame I was taught.”
Just about every Friday night, you’ll find Chris Wellman on stage somewhere in Denver hosting a comedy show. These shows aren’t particularly mainstream. Sure, there will be stand-up, but on some of those nights, Wellman is totally naked. On others, he’s being set on fire or pierced with needles all in the name of bringing kink and comedy to his audiences.
I loved getting to meet Chris at The Knotty Show (part stand-up comedy show, part rope demonstration) and look forward to seeing the other shows he produces around the city.
Enjoy this look into Chris’ personal and artistic journey, each of the erotic comedy shows that he produces, and how he hopes to influence erotic art, comedy, and storytelling in Denver.
1. What’s your name? - Where are you from? - Where are you now? Who are you—philosophically, ethically, artistically, and sexually?
My name is Chris Wellman. I go by my real name on all platforms, including FetLife. Just out here raw dogging it with my real name on FetLife, so, technically, my dick pics are google-ible. Sorry mom.
I’m not from anywhere. I’m a bit of a “nowhere man,” if you will. I grew up a military brat, so I moved to a new state every 2-3 years regularly until I was 18. Most of my time has been spent in Florida and Colorado, but I don’t tie any one geographical location to any part of my identity.
I’m a hobo (I prefer to spell it Ho Beau). I live in a van I converted into a camper and have been doing the whole #VanLife thing for almost 2 years now. So wherever I park it is home. Sometimes it’s down by the river, but usually not. I spend most of my free time bumming around in my van in Colorado but claim Denver as my primary residence since I am there regularly for comedy shows.
Philosophically, I’m an Optimistic Nihilist. I think we are all tiny little insignificant miracles, made up of dead stars, and find ourselves looking for meaning and purpose in a cold, indifferent universe after billions of years of unguided evolution. Which is hilariously absurd.
There is no meaning and searching for it, rather than creating it, will leave you wanting. To quote Tim Minchin on meaning, “... there is none. Don’t go looking for it. Searching for meaning is like searching for a rhyme scheme in a cookbook. You won’t find it and it’ll bugger up your souffle.”
Artistically, I am a comedian first and foremost. Storytelling is my wheelhouse and most of my stand-up comedy is just me telling stories about my misadventures in kink and sex, rather than non-sequitur joke writing.
Most of the time, my stories start off sounding like a fun and sexy story about me partaking in a wild sexual adventure but usually end with me being the idiot and learning a lesson about myself, my boundaries, limits, etc.
I am not the cool guy, nor the hero in anything I do on stage for comedy. I like sharing my mistakes, and misfortunes to get at some kernel of truth or wisdom that I can get an audience to relate to.
Sexually, I identify as queer/pansexual, nonbinary as far as gender goes (any pronouns work for me), polyamorous, demisexual, and a very switchy sadomasochistic.
2. How did your household/groups outside of your home treat the topic of sex and eroticism when you were growing up? How do you think that informed your view on sexuality and your interest in erotic subcultures/art now?
Terribly. It was quite a sex-negative environment to grow up in. I grew up in a very conservative and very religious military household. My family was mega church-style Southern Baptists.
Sex was always treated as something extremely dirty and shameful, but also God’s greatest gift (if you’re monogamously married to someone of the opposite sex).
I grew up feeling anyone who wasn’t a virgin is worthless in the eyes of the church and God. It is a very damaging and demeaning thing to start indoctrinating a child into believing about themselves, especially if that child had experienced sexual assault several times by the time they started preaching that bullshit.
I was very much that kid who, from way too young of an age, started begging God to forgive him for being raped.
So with that, I just assumed that I was already ruined irreparably and started engaging in consensual sex in my very early teens (14). I even began experimenting with BDSM and “open” relationships (polyamory wasn’t part of the lexicon back then) around the age of 16. Eventually, I stopped believing in God but the shame that I had been indoctrinated with around my sexuality, kink, nonmonogamy, & sex in general persisted well into adulthood.
It wasn’t until after getting divorced at 29, that I chose to live more authentically and outwardly as a kinky, poly, queer on & off the stage.
And with that decision, I began to find my place in a community of fellow kinky, poly, queer weirdos.
3. What does kink mean to you? How and when does Kink intersect with art?
I think kink, in particular, is rather wholesome when you think about it. It brings this sense of “child-like play” and mixes it, in a consensual way, with adult sexual responsibility. Discovering that kink could be that way when I was raised to believe it was something dark and evil was extremely liberating. It’s adults just setting up their own rules and agreements to a sexy/erotic game they’ve agreed to play together.
I want my shows to be a positive, yet silly, example of how & why kink can be wholesome, safe, fun, and is for everyone (not just the sinners). I started my kinky comedy shows specifically out of spite for the way I was raised.
I didn’t like being told that I was deviant, dirty, or shameful for who and how I love, so I made comedy shows that exemplified the opposite. It has become a middle finger to that shame I was taught.
4. You bring a variety of erotic shows to Denver. Can you tell us about the shows you produce?
In late 2018, I found out that my local dungeon was looking for stage acts. I had already been attending kink events there for some time and had been performing comedy for about 2 years at this point. I approached the owner, Winnie Winglewick, with a pitch for starting a kink-specific comedy show where I would get all the comedians back on stage at the end of the show to learn a type of BDSM play.
I wanted to hire a local kink educator to be our “designated Dom” for the evening and teach them the safety and basics of whatever type of play we were demoing that night. I would be the demo bottom (the one that the comedians would be learning kink on) for that show. Granted, it is much more of a silly and playful way for comics to make jokes while electrocuting me, rather than a serious class you would normally see in a dungeon. Think of it more like a stunt you’d see on Jackass and less in any serious educational way.
Some of the types of play in the past have been fire play, needles, floggers, electro play, and face slapping (on the same week as the Chris Rock, Will Smith face slap fiasco). Thus “Comedy & Kink” was born and we had our first show in January of 2019.
A few months after starting Comedy & Kink the show began to grow a following, which led to it selling out regularly, which caught the eye of a reporter from Westword in August of 2019.
Somehow, my family found out about this article. And right as I was at work, reading the article over & over again, and riding that high, my phone started to blow up with angry texts and phone calls. Needless to say, they were not happy or proud in any way. When I answered the phone my dad went on to dump copious amounts of shame on me while expressing his disgust for my lifestyle and the kinky things I did on stage. He then demanded that I stop using the family’s last name, Wellman, together and suggested that I get it legally changed to anything else.
I spiraled because of this. Here I was so proud of who I am, living authentically, and of all the hard work that I had poured into this comedy show. And it was all shattered in an instant with my dad asking me to no longer use my name.
The very next day, I woke up with a new fire inside of me. I hated that shame he dumped on me. It was the same shame I was indoctrinated to feel about myself and my sexuality for most of my life until recently. So I decided to double down and create another comedy show that was anti-sex shaming and sex-positive at its core. I wanted comedians to proudly embrace their sexuality and lean into their inner sluttiness, whatever that may look like for them. I wanted to hear stories from all ends of the sexual and kink spectrums and wanted those stories to be told boldly and proudly.
The very next month I hosted the first of what would become known as “The Slut Down.” This wasn’t just a sexpositive storytelling show, but rather a pageant of sluttiness. Comics share their sluttiest and often hilariously bad real-life sex stories and at the end the audience votes for their favorite. The winner gets a tiara, a sash that reads “Proud Slut” on it, and most importantly extra cash.
The two shows that followed also trace their roots back to Comedy & Kink. Each month on C&K, I would change up the theme of the show. Some months it was a spanking demo, followed by a Stomp & Grind demo, etc. My favorite monthly theme was one I did in November called, “Naked November.”
I started doing Naked November in 2019, just two months after starting The Slut Down. Originally, I was terrified of being naked on stage and decided that I wanted to challenge that fear. Kink and BDSM are often avenues to challenge those fears and kink spaces are safe places in which to do that. So, for no other reason other than to challenge that fear myself, I started “Naked November” which would later become its separate show called “BARE”.
BARE is a body-positive, full-nude comedy show and is my most popular show by a mile. It has always sold out weeks in advance since the very first one. That probably has everything to do with the fact this show fully embraces nudity, and body-positivity, and even allows the audience to be as naked as they wish once they are past the front doors. Nudists pack this show out every time and are some of the most respectful and eager-to-laugh audience members I’ve ever seen in my 8 years of comedy. I just wish they came out to the other shows that I produce. But hey, I get it. You have to wear pants to my other shows and pants are lame.'
Around the same time, I wanted to start doing a rope-themed month on Comedy & Kink. However, due to the time constraints of teaching rope, I realized that I would need to change up the formula since a demo at the very end of the show wasn’t feasible. So I opted to have a rope suspension happen on stage throughout the entire comedy show instead. While it was fun, I didn’t want to stray away from doing hands-on demos taught by a Dom for Comedy & Kink. That show had already proven successful and I didn’t want to start trying to fix what wasn’t broken. So I didn’t do it again for a couple of years but I always felt like rope deserved its separate show.
After the pandemic, I reached out to the rope-specific dungeon in Denver, Studio Friction, and pitched them the idea of starting a brand new, rope-focused comedy show with them. They loved the idea and in August of 2021 I started “The Knotty Show.” The Knotty Show features both professionally skilled comedians and ridiculously talented rope performers, performing alongside each other on the same stage.
Stand-up comedy can already be pretty nerve-wracking, but I’m a sadist and like torturing my friends. Having sexy rope tops and rope bottoms doing a sexy rope suspension right beside a comedian who is trying to perform makes me laugh.
Sometimes the comics roll with it and pull it off masterfully. Sometimes the comics get bashful and forget every single joke they've written in their career. Sometimes the comedians are invited by the rope performers to participate in the rope scene happening on stage. Either way, it’s hilarious and honestly kind of magical.
All four of those shows have been well received by audiences and regularly sell out. Luckily, there hasn’t been a shortage of comedians wanting to perform on those shows. Well, the naked one takes a little convincing but the rest of them are booked up months in advance. I think that other comedians enjoy performing on these shows so much because they are truly unique. I think that gets dull for both comedians and audience members. I wanted to create something truly different.
5. What are your thoughts on the erotic art and performance scene in Denver?
I am so proud of the various erotic artists and performers in Denver. I’m close with so many other producers and performers from other overlapping sex and kink-positive art forms like burlesque and drag.
There are lots of us actively challenging the norms and the shame in Denver. I just happen to be the only comedian.
6. What influence do you hope to have on erotic art, comedy, and storytelling in Denver?
I want more shows and more variety of shows. I hope other producers take chances and shoot for ideas that are really out there and haven’t been done before.
7. What do your personal and artistic futures look like for you?
I have some big things already in the works for 2024, including more shows, a podcast, and touring. But I did the scariest thing this year and quit my day job to pursue comedy full-time. It’s been utterly terrifying. Luckily, it is already starting to pay off, and my kinky shows are selling out like never before.
I would like to tour more and get booked outside of Colorado more this year. I’d like to perform at more BDSM conventions and comedy festivals. I’d also like to take these shows on the road and do them in other cities with a kink and comedy scene.
Anything to plug?
Check out my shows! (follow their IG’s to stay up to date)
Instagrams:
Facebook: Chris Wellman
FetLife: @ChrisWellman
