Stand-up comedy: Meet the ‘Ernest Hemingway of sexting’

January 12, 2024 Mimi Lamarre

Che Durena leans on the wall on stage at St. Marks Comedy Club in NYC on Oct. 31, 2023.

Che Durena performs to a small yet jovial crowd at St. Marks Comedy Club in NYC on Oct. 31, 2023. Photo: Mimi Lamarre

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“I am the Ernest Hemingway of sexting,” comic Che Durena tells a small yet animated audience at the St. Marks Comedy Club on Halloween night. Unlike the six opening comics, he skipped a costume and wears a pink sweatshirt and dark-wash jeans. He stands with one foot propped against the brick wall behind him, the mic stand in one hand.

Durena’s set centers mostly around sex, befitting his self-proclaimed identity: “f*** boy.” While the openers’ sets received a sprinkle of laughter, Durena sparks a deluge, even if some particularly raunchy jokes make some audience members eye their dates awkwardly.

Two hours before Durena’s set, the smell of weed and light, jovial Halloween music wafted through the low-ceiling club. “You’re here to talk to Che?” the bartender says excitedly. “He’s such a cool dude!”

Durena is a really cool dude, though his comedy career path is atypical. He started in high school in Vancouver, writing jokes for his older brother, who was trying his hand at stand-up. Soon, it became clear to the pair that Che had the talent. He moved to Toronto after trying out comedy in Mexico, where he also worked as a bartender and scuba instructor. His big break came during COVID, when he turned to TikTok to replace live performances. His social media propelled him from a run-of-the-mill comedian to a headliner, and he moved to New York earlier this year.

Today, Durena has almost eight million TikTok followers. The second part of his “Raw Dog Tour” wrapped last month in Madison, Wisconsin.

He frequents many comedy clubs around New York, in particular the Brooklyn Comedy Club. “He’s different. He’s got something special about him. I think he’s probably one of my favorite comics I’ve seen in New York,” says Mike Kospiah, the booker at Old Man Hustle/Brooklyn Comedy Club. Durena has frequented the club for two years, and Kospiah started officially booking him this Fall. Durena has now infiltrated just about every sector of content-creation comedy and he says he exists somewhere between anonymity and fame. “To some people, I am very important,” Durena says. “To most, I am nobody.” Kospiah disagrees: “If he’s not one of the top comedians in New York right now, then he will be.”

To see how Durena generates this quasi-fame, check his Instagram or TikTok. A split screen video on his Instagram from earlier this month shows a red-headed woman leaning over while her hand holds a spoon dipping into a bowl of cereal, ample breasts exposed in a cut-out red tank top. “Say ahhh,” she says seductively, bringing a spoonful close to the camera. In the adjacent panel, Durena opens his mouth wide, his eyes bulging comically as he blurts, “AHHHHH!”

The videos are typical of Durena’s feed. He largely reacts to women who use their seductiveness to attract clicks or views. “A lot of these videos, it’s like a woman doing carpentry in a bikini. And we all understand where this is going: it’s all driving traffic to a link-in-bio or something, which I think is fucking great. But I like to comment on the absurdity,” Durena said recently on the “Help! With Natalie Cuomo” podcast. Still, he makes sure to tag or comment on the women whose content he reacts to, so that they get traffic and, potentially, compensation.

Sitting on the steps outside of the club 30 minutes before he was to go on, Durena draws a line between himself and figures like Andrew Tate, the alt-right, conservative media personality and kickboxer who’s made millions through his misogynist commentary. His content, he argues, unlike Tate’s or other trollers’ whose sole motivation is money, is meant to bring traffic to his stand-up, his “bread-and-butter.” Reacting to others’ content is only bad if you do it purely for money, while “with comedy, my goal is just to make people laugh,” he says.

Yet, Durena has certainly used others’ platforms to gain fame. He appeared on the podcast “Bertcast,” hosted by Bert Kreischer, a member of Joe Rogan’s entourage. The pair talked about everything from Aperol Spritzes to boobs.

Could his sexually-explicit content be considered controversial, or even misogynistic? “Within any art form, you can’t control how people interpret it, “ he says. “Like, Charles Manson said ‘Helter Skelter’ made him commit those murders.” As for those who might find his content offensive: “Fuck you, you weren’t going to watch my shit anyway,” he shrugs.

That’s not to say that Durena only allies with white male comics, or is not conscientious about his comedy. He’s appeared on podcasts like “Ask Men Anything,” where he talked about sex and dating with gay comic Emily Willmann. On his own podcast, he and Melissa Ong dedicated a whole episode to mental health and another to “positive sex comedy” with YouTuber Cherdleys. In the words of booker Mike Kospiah, “His comedy is not PG content, but he delivers it with no crassness.”

As for mental health, Durena advocates meditation. “It created a buffer for me to understand that my thoughts aren’t real – how to return to a state of calm,” he says thoughtfully. “The fluidity of thought to execution is better when you remove anxiety.” Meditation is part of Durena’s daily four-step process. He wakes up in the East Village and meditates, walks while listening to podcasts, works out, writes for an hour, and then watches and films content on social media. Meditation was Durena’s key to overcoming self-doubt, anxiety and past trauma, like his parent’s tumultuous divorce.

Durena’s close friend, Matt Kilbourne, explained that he has been this regimented since the pair met as roommates in 2015 in Toronto. “He was always grinding,” says Kilbourne. “Every moment he could, he was out there doing sets.”
Just before he’s due onstage, a fellow comic approaches Durena wearing a sheer shirt, green lace bra and alien antennas. “Dude, you look like a skank, I love it,” he says approvingly. “Yeah, I farted on men on the subway to make them stay away,” she says, smiling. Durena nods, “A good defense tactic.”

Shortly thereafter, Durena lopes on stage to raucous applause. He’s instantly at ease. “What do we got?” He looks out at the costumed audience. “Dog, dog, magician, wizard, wizard, Kim Possible, an alien. Peanut butter and jelly – are you guys dating?”

Just like that: his bread and butter.

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