FONDANT FANCY

“I started out writing bad poetry in eighth grade”, jokes writer/actor Ingrid Jungermann, star and creator of Brooklyn-based lesbian web series F to 7th. I meet her in Gorilla Coffee, one of Brooklyn’s major dyke hubs, where we sip the brown stuff and discuss how she went from cranking out adolescent verse to penning comedy that prompted Buzzfeed to call her the “lesbian Louis CK”.

While studying journalism at uni, Ingrid, 35, got involved in theatre and started to write plays. In her mid-20s, she moved onto screenplays. The concept for F to 7th, a spin-off of The Slope, was born out of her feelings of isolation within the LGBT community. “In my early 20s the gay scene was kind of like my family. But as I got older I started to feel like I didn’t fit in.”

For Ingrid, a big part of not fitting in was her lack of understanding for the T in LGBT.  “I used to be transphobic”, she admits, “Until I talked to people.” And F to 7th is partly an exploration of the prejudices that exist amongst lesbians. These feelings are neatly summed up by a line of Ingrid’s, from the show: “Just because I’m a lesbian doesn’t mean I’m evolved.”

Now far more accepting of trans people, Ingrid has come to recognise a disturbing amount of transphobia within the LGBT community. “And that’s why I never understand why we’re putting those letters together. I guess it’s like a family. You complain about them all the time, but when it comes down to it, they’ve got your back.”

“Part of the show is my constant battle with myself,” Ingrid says. And having been raised a Jehovah’s Witness in Palm Bay, Florida, she knows few things about battles. Not surprisingly, she had a hard time coming out to her family. Her mother took it particularly badly. “She doesn’t really know what gay is, or why I’d be that. I had to come out to her three times, because she’s so good at denial.” But she got there eventually, and although the gay thing is still an issue, Ingrid can think of one very significant time her mother was there for her: “I had a really bad break up and she finally compared it to her and my father. So when things get really terrible, she suddenly becomes how I wish she was all the time.” Suffering, it seems, can bring us together with those who usually understand us the least.

In F to 7th, Ingrid manages to turn all the sadness that so often comes with being gay into comedy. Nowhere is this more visible that in the episode ‘Family’, in which Amy Sedaris plays her loud-mouthed and homophobic – yet weirdly likeable and clearly closeted – aunt. Ingrid admits that she partly based Sedaris’s character on her own sister: “The character became that person who’s in everyone’s family – that person who’s so gay, but not.”

“Its funny that we do the thing that we don’t want people to do to us, all the time,” Ingrid says of our constant questioning of other people’s sexuality. But Sedaris’s character is definitely gay, right? After a thoughtful pause, Ingrid gives a definitive yes. “But I don’t know if she’s ever going to know it,” she adds. Don’t we all know, deep down though? “Not all gay people knew about it when they were kids. Some of them don’t even know about it until they’re 40, and that doesn’t mean they’re less gay.”

Growing up, Ingrid had a load of crushes on boys and still thinks about what it might be like to have a relationship with a man. I ask her if she considers herself to be 100% gay.  “No, I’d say I’m like 90%. No, maybe like 95. OK, let’s say 99%”. While I’m starting to feel like I’m watching her download gay, Ingrid thinks some more about percentages.  “For women, if there’s one per cent of you that could possibly be straight – you’re straight. For men, if there’s one per cent that could possibly be gay – they’re gay. What is that?”

Clearly, Ingrid is reluctant to pin down her sexuality and identify as just one thing. She explores this ambiguity in the surreal final episode of F to 7th where we see her wake up in bed with… herself. Ingrid plays two different people – her masculine side and her feminine side. And they have sex with each other. “I feel like both genders”, she says, “I just wanted to put it in a funny setting.”

In an earlier episode, gender roles are hilariously satirised in a misunderstanding involving strap-ons. There are a fair few kids in the vicinity of this interview, so I try and keep my voice down when I ask Ingrid about her relationship with fake dicks. “I’ve never had an experience [with a strap-on] where I haven’t been like – I can’t even get this thing on,” she says, laughing. “I suppose it’s like a guy putting on a condom, but it takes a lot more time.” So why bother with it? “It’s sometimes cool to be in a different position. But it doesn’t compare to sex with a woman outside of that.”

So, to what extent did Ingrid base the ‘homoneurotic’ F to 7th protagonist on herself? “She’s me, but the more interesting versions of me.” In creating a caricature of herself, she wanted the bad parts of her personality to stand out just as much as the good ones. “I think that’s why people like the show – I’m kind of an idiot sometimes.”

Can we look forward to a fresh batch of episodes? Absolutely. Ingrid has already written an outline for a second season in which she has a job as a personal trainer. “Basically I’ll be surrounded by a bunch of huge dudes,” she says, laughing. And who wouldn’t want to see, as Ingrid puts it, “a lesbian stumbling around a gym”?

You can see the whole series here on Fto7th.com