Bert and Ernie aren’t technically gay—the Sesame Workshop says that “puppets are puppets and do not have a sexual orientation,” and that “they were created to teach children that people can be friends with others who are different from them.” However, a controversy first consciously arose when former Sesame writer Mark Saltzman said he wrote the char-acters as a “loving couple” and that he based his writing on his relationship with his romantic partner Arnold Glassman.

As a kid, Bert and Ernie were by far my favorite char-acters; I would delightedly await their bits and had their puppets and paraphernalia around my room. When drawing this, I watch many of the classic sketches, and was struck by the true intimacy of the characters—not just that they live together (albeit separate matching beds, but in the same room as post-Code couples like Lucy and Desi, etc.) and that they have their painted couples portrait in their living room, but also by how close Jim Henson and Frank Oz are when performing the characters, and how they often “slip” into intimacy, touching each other, exclaiming their love for one another, and consciously having deep empathy and compassion for one another despite their differences. Also and importantly, I was thunderstruck by how much they seem to fit the personalities (and difference in race—or felt!) of my husband Andrew Madrid and myself—how the playful joy and free thinking of Ernie matched my husband’s tem-perament, and my more restrained and conservative nature was so like Bert—did we grow into the models of this classic comedy duo in our real lives and find one another?

This scene is an iconic Rubber Duckie routine, where at first Bert doesn’t accept Ernie’s fondness for his toy, but is able to fully embrace and enjoy what it ultimately man-ifests itself as being—a projection of play and good cheer, and animating feelings and joy through objects, much like the puppeteers Oz and Henson do as they “wiggled dolls” (as he categorized their performing) perhaps they too were able to exclaim their real love for one another in the eternal bromance of this classic couple.