Jes Tom is a queer millennial comedian who defies expectations at just about every turn, and not just by announcing up top a preference for using they/them pronouns (“It makes me feel less lonely,” they quip). At first during their tightly structured new show, Less Lonely, you may think that Tom is yet another woker-than-thou queer artist, seeking to either shock or educate the audience about LGBTQ existence circa 2023. But Tom, looking much younger than their 33 years, wears their enlightenment as loosely as their origami-style white shirt and mid-calf black parachute pants.

And Tom proves willing to engage with the audience at Off Broadway’s Greenwich House Theater, warning one attendee who yelled “Stop” after one joke about Tom’s predilection for “stepmom porn” that there were seven more minutes of similar material ahead. Tom speaks frankly about modern queer dating, about the challenges of monogamy vs. polyamory, about strap-ons and glory holes and the allure of oral sex while driving. Tom also shares their genuine surprise that after four years of testosterone therapy that they no longer feel sexually attracted to women as they did pre-transition. Embracing twinkdom proved a revelation. “As a lesbian I never had to know how to slay,” Tom jokes. “Nobody ever called me ‘snatch’ at Smith College.”

Flicking their side-parted hair from their forehead for effect, Tom projects a boyish onstage presence — and an easygoing, approachable affect that softens material that can veer between risqué and cliché (after all these years, lesbians apparently still love flannel). The punchlines can land in wonderfully unexpected places, as when Tom laments how anticlimactic it was coming out as a queer teenager in San Francisco or twists the realization that receiving oral sex while driving is not in the cards in their case: “Dysphoria for me is knowing I will never get road head… because I can’t drive.”

Throughout the taut, topical 90-minute set (“presented by Elliot Page,” the poster proclaims), Tom emerges as a disarmingly innocent-seeming tour guide of a decidedly adult journey to personal and sexual fulfillment.