Closing out its three-Sunday romp this weekend, the end of Justin Bond’s temporary home at Joe’s Pub — aptly called Justin Bond is LIVING! (at Joe’s Pub, ha ha) — will leave the same gap in New York City’s queer, underground heart that we feel between every romp with Bond.

But gaps need to be filled and — say what you will about the current crisis of queer New York, you drama queens — filled this one will be, too.

Justin Bond, after all, is not alone. His camp, the new camp, includes the Dazzle Dancers, Squeezebox, Taylor Mac, Vaginal Davis, Bruce LaBruce (and maybe John Cameron Mitchell, Dr. Frankenfurter and Rufus Wainright, if we’re counting protos) and a host of other queer burlesquers, rock n rollers, gender-punkers and sex-pansies.

Old camp — gay camp — had its kitsch queens and drag divas. It had its Susan Sontags, pop- and arch-theories and its knock-offs. It had all the little commodifying clarifications and framing lines drawn around it that inhaled everything magic, umami, or subversive until it became a cheap husk of metro-hipster-sexual irony.

New camp wasn’t born yesterday, but it hasn’t been chloroformed, pinned down, labeled, and frozen with explanations yet. It is still LIVING!, at least at Joe’s Pub until Sunday.

Justin Bond is LIVING!
Joe’s Pub
Sunday, August 17th; 9:30 p.m.