A seemingly endless stream of suburbs streak by as the dulcet tones of My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult blast over the bassy speakers of my friend’s 2007 Hyundai Elantra Touring. It’s 4:33 PM, and myself and former Arthur staff writer David King are braving Toronto traffic. 

We’re on a pilgrimage of sorts.

In order to provide context, however, it’s perhaps best to jump several days into the past. It’s just before 5:00 PM EDT. I’m sitting in a sunny room at my parents’ house in Ottawa, ON, and April Clark and Grace Freud have agreed to talk to me for Arthur. 

The pair have agreed to sit down with me to discuss—amongst other things—their tour, which stopped in Toronto on August 21. As you might suspect, I was in attendance at that show. 

However, at this precise moment in our narrative, the show has yet to happen, and we have other things to discuss. I quickly do my Arthur spiel. It seems to go over well, considering Grace regales us with her own times working in student publication, and we all commiserate about our various experiences with pseudo-professional writing and in post-secondary education. I take this as an opportunity to bemoan Meta’s response to Bill C-18 to our guests, and explain the predicament we find ourselves in at this present moment. 

“Facebook has cancelled all newspapers,” I relay. “Us especially, because we’re gay.”

Grace pumps her fist triumphantly. “Thank God. I voted for that.”

Despite our not being able to see our own Instagram feed because of this most recent corporate debacle, I’m acutely aware that the last post on our masthead’s timeline prominently features me leaning towards the camera like a stripper on the cover of a Grand Theft Auto game.

“I didn’t even click on the profile,” April assures me.

“She just told me some Toronto people wanted to do a thing,” Grace adds. “I think we had a very rough understanding of what this interview was going to be like.”

As one might guess from their wry commentary, both women are comedians. You’ve probably seen screenshots of April’s tweets reposted on iFunny or @on_a_downward_spiral. You might not have seen one of Grace’s tweets, though she has also written for such television series as The Eric André Show and Rick and Morty. Maybe you’ve seen those.

The pair have branded themselves as “the world’s most famous trans comedy duo,” a title which they profess to have lifted directedly from Bud Abbot and Lou Costello. Girl God—the name under which the April and Grace tour—represents a synthesis of the duo’s comedic sensibilities, which manifest in both a one hour touring stage show, and a podcast dubbed The Girl God Experience.

“The way that we’ve chosen to title our various projects has led to some level of confusion,” April admits.

For instance, should one look up “Girl God” in Canada on a browser with no cookies enabled, the first hit is the Instagram account for a multi-level marketing firm with 160k followers called “Girl + God.” The second is a publishing company which seeks “the necessary unravelling of the patriarchal worldview of divinity.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of our side hustle,” Grace admits. “We do a lot of comedy stuff, but we also do a lot of Christian-based pyramid schemes.”

“It costs a lot of money to keep that page as the first Google result,” April nods sagely. “We spend most of the money we make doing the comedy stuff to keep the SEO working for our pyramids.”

While their multi-level marketing ventures may well be the thing for which they are most famous, Grace and April are also generating considerable buzz on the comedy circuit. However, their ever-growing reputation has led to a fair few misunderstandings, especially with the inception of their podcast, which has been a comparably new venture for the duo.

"We didn’t have a podcast until pretty recently,” Grace says. “People would just assume we had a podcast. People would have us on their podcasts and be like ‘Gotta listen to their podcast!’ when we just, you know, didn’t have one. We just kind of capitulated and we started one.”

“The live show it’s ... it’s just us,” April nods. “It’s very different from the podcast, because the podcast is essentially us being bored.”

“We’re vulnerable. We’re naked, at least metaphorically,” Grace adds. “We take you on an epic, beautiful journey. We don’t really just tell jokes. We’ve got a lot of big sponsors that we’re excited about. We’ve got a lot of cool shit, like side projects and stuff that we’re excited to spotlight.”

As April explains it, “the live show is like: ‘What if the podcast was good? What if we had practiced it?’ The podcast is called The Girl God Experience, because it’s a way to experience us, but Girl God the show is...” 

“... the same way to experience us,” Grace interjects.

“It’s a different kind of experience.”

“It’s a different kind of experience?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Are you sure it’s not the same?” Grace asks. 

“It’s not a podcast!”

“I guess it’s not a podcast. It’s a live show. We’ve toured around all of the U.S., and now we’re bringing it to you [REDACTED] disgusting Canucks in the north.”

Editor’s Note: Grace let loose a string of pointed profanity so impressive in the quote above we’re pretty sure the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms forbids us from publishing it. 

“Google ‘First Nations!’ It’s really fucked up what you guys did!” she exclaims.

The stories surrounding Girl God’s origins are numerous, and oftentimes apocryphal. I entered this interview under the misguided impression that the pair had met on Twitter dot com. Upon voicing this impression, both women gave exasperated sighs, and insisted on setting the record straight. 

“We met in the early 2000s on the circuit.” Grace says, her face more sober than the myriad cans of sparkling water in our office. “We were training to be jockeys. We both grew up in Kentucky, you know, grew up on the big Triple Crown. April was training to be a jockey. I started training to be a jockey, but then I was so large and muscular that I started training to be a horse, so we got matched up."

“I rode that bitch to three World Championships,” April declares, this fit of nostalgia having led to her thick natal Kentucky accent spilling through. The two exchange sage glances, wistfully reflecting on their humble origins. 

“Things changed a lot when Obama got elected,” Grace sighs. “What was counted as a horse changed a ton.

It's odd to me that the transgenders are so loud about how anyone can be a woman or man or whatever, but they do not talk at all about how the definition of a horse is now just biological, when it used to be anyone who could run fast on four legs. 

Basically my entire income got taken away from me when Obama changed the legal definition of a horse.”

“You know, Grace obviously was pushed out of her career. But me, I still had a promising career as a jockey,” April explains. “I gave it all up, though—to do comedy with my friend Grace. I gave up my future. You know, I had $1,000,000 in the bank, maybe.”

“And all I had to do was threaten to kill myself,” Grace nods.

This tour represents a third iteration of sorts for the comedy duo, being as this is far from their first horse race. The pair’s first stand-up tour was titled “Girl God Presents: How to be a Comedian,” and was fully interactive, with people brought up on stage to participate with and play the victim to the pair’s routine.

The content of their second touring production, “Girl God Plays Chess,” pretty well speaks for itself. 

“That show was just us playing chess for an hour,” April tells me. 

I point out that this is something they’d be likely unable to do in this day and age, seeing as FIDE, the Chess world regulatory body, has recently opted to ban trans women from competition.

“That’s true,” April shrugs. “They have a natural biological advantage because they’re manipulative.”

“My pheromones drive them crazy, is the thing. I actually understand why I can’t play chess against women, because I’m just too much of a catch,” Grace concurs.

Reflecting on the contemporary phenomenon of “trans bans,” I ask if there’s any particular professions from which they’d like to see trans women excised. 

“I think we both agree on this,” Grace ventures, and April nods confirmation. 

“Honestly, it's got to be swimming, but for totally different reasons than American conservatives have been obsessed with banning trans women.”

“My thing is that the chlorine is bad for fake pussy,” Grace explains. “I don’t think we should be forcing trans women who’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on these beautiful fleshy urns to have their pussies get poisoned and dried out by all of that chlorine.”

“Men swimmers have actually started getting bottom surgery to become more aerodynamic,” April informs me.

“I do not think trans men should be allowed to swim because they don’t have to get bottom surgery to get the aerodynamic effects, which to me is cheating,” Grace adds. 

Having momentarily lost the thread of the conversation, we return to our discussion of the pair’s current act, a continuation of their third tour, which started earlier this year. 

“I would say it's our signature show,” April says. “It's a show that we've built out of some of our favorite bits and segments and it’s—it's who we are, it's our favorite thing to do. We’ve done the show like 30+ times and it’s insane. I think it’s really good.”

“This is also the first time that we’ve gone on tour while I’ve been in the middle of a divorce,” Grace adds. “I think that’s really gonna cause me to say some cool shit on stage.”

“You know who else is going through a divorce?” April intones. “Essentially the entire nation of Canada.”

Indeed, this tour is significant for seeing the duo’s second and third shows in Canada. Not only that, this tour also marks their first ever show in Toronto, having left their mark on the country during a Vancouver stop on a previous tour. While things are decidedly rough in the States right now—especially for two trans women—as April alluded to, Canada is equally suffering its own series of contemporary cultural crises.

“We tried to save it by the way, we really tried,” Grace assures me, of their earlier visit.

While their previous attempt to “Save Canada,” may not have panned out as hoped, the duo’s first show in Toronto gave them another kick at the can. Not ones to take defeat lying down, the Canadian Prime Minister’s recent announcement of his separation from his wife has presented the Girl Gods with a goal for this leg of their tour. 

“We’re going to get Justin his bitch back!” Grace declares. “We’re gonna do a kind of reverse How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and by that I mean we’re going to put him back into a bad marriage.”

I ask if this means we can expect our newly-single Prime Minister to be opening the Toronto show.

“No, because he fucking sucks! Justin’s like, really bad at stand up,” Grace confides. “Yeah he’s our guy, and he’s done a lot of other funny stuff if you like, Google costumes and stuff.”

While we’re on the topic of what may just be my least favourite Canadian city, Grace makes mention of something which leads me to invoke perhaps its most notorious mayor.

“Did you know there’s smokeable cocaine?” she says, without warning.

“Funny story, the mayor of Toronto used to partake of that,” I reply.

“That was like, one of the only cool things he did,” she laments. “The reason that guy wasn’t cool was because of his political opinions. The smoking crack part, to me, is fine.”

I relay that said mayor’s brother is now the Premier of Ontario, much to her surprise and delight. I further add that said mayor’s brother is similarly infamous for being a mid-level hashish dealer in the 1980s.

“I think more drug dealers should be in politics,” Grace replies. “A lot of plugs are good people. If you can be a plug and a good person, or be a plug and a bad person, I think it shows there’s nothing inherently wrong about selling crack cocaine.”

“It’s morally good, I think,” April concurs.

This moment provides as good a segue as any to ask Grace about her experience competing in 2022’s Twinks vs. Dolls Olympics, at which her iconic finish during the cigarette race earned her a place in transgender history. 

“That day was in the middle of Pride, in New York, like 2022 ... I was dating this beautiful older dyke at the time, who didn’t come with me. And I was disappointed, so I think I really had something to prove to myself, because I knew that relationship wasn’t going well. I think I used that energy to smoke that cigarette.”

“I’ve always been pretty good at smoking cigarettes in pretty much any situation,” she admits. “Though I think the reason I won was because everybody else, when their lips started burning, they slowed down. But I—I just sped up, because my feelings have already been hurt by this older dyke, to the point where I was fine with getting burned.”

“Another thing I would like to say...” she adds. “I lube wrestled this guy, and then we made out a bit later and I got his phone number, but I did not save it. If he’s reading this—if you have my phone number you should text me because I’ll be in New York soon.”

“I’d like to add that with regards to the cigarette race, people often overlook Grace’s long history as a horse in terms of her lung capacity and ability to withstand pain,” April interjects.

In summation of the events, Grace offers a useful word of advice for any aspiring twink or doll Olympians.

“If you end up participating in a similar event, a big suggestion or tip that I have for you is to really do a lot of drugs. I was on a lot of different things and that helped.”

While Grace’s outstanding performance in such events has led to her having accrued a sort of generalized Twitter fame, it’s fair to say that both women are each big names in their own right, and arguably even more so together.

GLAAD once called Girl God “the number one threat to our community”—a pull quote which sees prolific use in their promotional material—though it’s a testimonial from their friend Eric André (yes, that Eric André) which Grace finds most touching. 

“He said we were, like, the next big thing in comedy.”

There is, however, like every tarot card, a reverse side to fame—even of the niche transgender variety.

“I posted on Lex the other week,” says Grace. “I’m usually a top, but once in a while I wanna get rammed, you know? I got a couple messages that were like ‘why are you trying to catfish?’ because my photo was there. So yeah, my life sucks.”

“To me, the interesting detail of the story is that Grace was vomiting all day,” April notes.

“Yeah, I was pretty sick, but I had a couple hours of lucidity and I was like ‘you know what’ll stop my diarrhoea? Having a dick shoved up my ass’.”

This inevitably devolves into a lengthy discussion of this most notorious of queer dating apps, which Grace insists was “not always horrible.”

“There’s a lot of doggirls on Toronto Lex,” I inform her. “Like—a disconcerting amount, if I’m being honest.”

“And I hope they all come to Girl God!” Grace said. The fact that I saw at least one person wearing dog ears at said show would certainly seem to validate her hopes. 

As we wind down our conversation, the pair appeal to me to do some networking on their behalf.

“If you know anyone in Montréal, tell them to come out,” Grace implores. “Tell the Québecois that we’re allies.” 

As we discuss the logistics of the Toronto–Montréal commute, we come the closest the interview has yet to my infodumping at the pair about Canadian train infrastructure. Sitting in the office as I write up this piece, I find myself staring at a block of text in the transcript which I’ll deign to not reproduce so as to best protect my reader’s sanity. 

We say our goodbyes, and as the pair disappear from the video call I’m left to mull over what just took place while I wait for the transcript to compile.

I seek not to editorialize where others have about the merit or appeal of Girl God. What renders them remarkable is, to me, self-evident. They are funny—so funny that to say they are funny doesn't truly do them justice. They are a joy to talk to, and even among the many memorable interviews I have had the pleasure of doing, they stand out. 

I hope this interview, then, serves to articulate how I could find it within me, days later, to fight my way through the 401 at rush hour to Toronto to see these two women perform in a venue seating maybe a hundred people.

On the night of, I find myself sitting in the third-from-front row at the Garrison, straining to fit my ungainly frame in the diminutive folding chair on offer. I’m tired from a near three-hour drive. I’m sweaty. My hair is slicked back with an amount of hairspray I myself despise.

I’m clutching a Diet Coke® and trying not to let the amount of sounds happening concurrently overwhelm my frazzled brain. 

When the show starts, however, it’s like I’m right back in that interview. Grace and April bounce off one another frenetically. The energy is infectious. Doing nothing more than clapping April is able to work the crowd over completely. There’s a joke for which no one but David and I laugh, and yet I think it’s the funniest one of the night. I leave the venue feeling a cathartic kind of sore, having laughed so hard that at one point I could’ve sworn I was about to throw up.

As David and I pile back into his bestickered beater of a car after the show, I resume the playlist I’d been playing on the drive in. The next song in the queue is one by our friend Garbageface. It’s called “Doppler Effect.”

The two of us lose our minds laughing.

Girl God are currently touring the United States and Canada.

You can find tickets at https://girlgodlive.com/ 

This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

The author would like to thank David King, who was instrumental in the facilitation of this interview.