Later that night in an unmarked Brooklyn venue called The Vino Theater, hidden atop a narrow flight of stairs, Drescher got to work setting up the show with friends Shane Duffner and Asad Bokhari, who both work in New York as production assistants. But this was like, ‘Wow, it’s a real community.’ The diversity of age and race and gender was super cool to me.” The Gecko Goes Live “When you’re a streamer, you make your living by obsessing about the numbers. “It was actually really beautiful,” he says. Drescher says the form received over 400 submissions. Inspired by shows like “Podcast but Outside” and “Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People,” Drescher viewed the Brooklyn show as his next step - a testing ground for an upcoming live show in Chicago that would be part of a documentary he was getting ready to shoot called “Geck Across America.” Viewers had filled out a form offering to host Drescher and do something with him, like letting him officiate a wedding or practice with their women’s rugby team. “I know it’s a gimmick, but if I just got up there and was like, ‘it’s the Lyle Show, starring me, Lyle!’ everyone would be like, ‘who is this guy?’” “I’m helped by the fact that I’m wearing a giant green gecko costume, which makes people stop and go, “what is this?” Drescher says.
Drescher streams as the Gecko full-time, and produces his own TikToks, YouTube videos, and a podcast edit of his VODs. Guests have included romance ghost writers, warring roommates, and someone who exclusively pees in showers and tubs. I told Drescher he might be able to do my job better than I can: he’s an expert interviewer, always knowing when to ask questions and when to sit there in silence to create an awkward moment. Others are looking to vent and share a vulnerable moment, or to simply shoot the shit with a gecko. Callers are frequently stoned and shocked when he picks up. There’s really no telling what to expect when someone calls into Drescher’s show. It’s a talk show, except the host is a 23-year-old Baltimorian in a gecko getup and the backdrop is stock footage set to smooth jazz. A $60 GoFundMe campaign to buy the suit that only raised $40, an AdultSwim internship that had him cutting clips for social media, and a few streams on the Reddit Public Access Network in June 2020 that made the site’s front page, all led Drescher to where he was one year later: sitting in Brooklyn during a July heatwave with over 600,000 followers on TikTok and tens of thousands on Twitch, getting ready to do his first-ever live show as the Therapy Gecko.ĭrescher’s streams are simple. That, Drescher says, is partly how his Therapy Gecko streams came to be. “But he had nothing in his heart but lust!” ” In it, Drescher wears a gecko costume and dark green face paint, and runs away from his owner “Curtis” after learning of his true intentions. There, leaning over the table, Drescher showed me a video on his phone called “ HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP. But after a few minutes of waiting for him to arrive, I got a text asking if I could meet him at the McDonald’s across the street instead.
It would have been perfect - interviewing a man known for dressing up as a gecko in a restaurant named for its natural habitat. Lyle Drescher and I were supposed to meet at a vegan restaurant called the Jungle Cafe in Brooklyn.
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