It was a warm day in late September of 2025, and the street outside of San Ignacio Hall was busy with students chatting and smoking before class. Among the faces, one student stood out in particular: SLU senior Alfonso ‘Fonsi’ Valdés. Despite the midday heat, Valdés was clad from head to toe in black, his shoulders covered by a thick leather jacket. But it wasn’t Valdés’ clothing that made him stand out from the crowd–it was his face, painted ghost-white, with thick black rings around his eyes. Valdés looked as though he’d just finished performing a black metal gig, stepped off stage, grabbed his backpack, and headed to class.
“I’m interested in the goth subculture and I wanted to try it out,” Valdés said casually. “Some teachers talked to me about [the face paint] and said that people had ‘expressed concern’. Which was weird, it’s just face paint.”
Valdés, who sometimes refers to himself endearingly in third-person as “The Fons,” showed up to campus in gothic facepaint, unaware that the fashion choice would inspire his first ever comedy routine.
“A lot of people told me that it looked like Kiss makeup,” said Valdés, referring to the signature facepaint worn by Gene Simmons, a member of the 1970s American rock band Kiss. “That inspired me to write my first skit.”
Several days later, SLU’s literary and visual arts club Convivium hosted an on-campus open-mic event, advertised as an opportunity for students to share their creative work to a live audience. Among those who went on stage that day was Valdés, who performed a stand-up routine critiquing the egregious amount of Kiss merchandise available on the internet.
“Can you believe,” Valdés asked the audience, pausing for dramatic effect; “Can you believe there’s a market out there for Kiss condoms?”
“After doing the goth makeup, because people kept saying it looked like Kiss, I did [the standup routine] about that,” Valdés said. “People brand everything. I found that stupid sense of consumerism really funny, and I thought other people would find it funny too.”
The Kiss skit was well-received by the open-mic audience, and after the event, Valdés and several other SLU students split an Uber to Malasaña to attend an amateur comedy show.
The show was hosted by the newly formed stand-up comedy troupe Don’t Throw Tomatoes at El Garage del Actor Teatro in Malasaña, a venue so small that once Valdés and his friends arrived, they filled over half of the available seats. The show began, and Valdés, though he was attending as an audience member and not as part of the performance, quickly took the spotlight. He laughed out of turn, he responded shamelessly to the comedian’s crowdwork, he heckled endlessly. And the crowd was obsessed.
“I remember Fonsi was at my opening show,” said Ulysses Gisclair, stand-up comedian and founder of the Don’t Throw Tomatoes comedy troupe. “He was the first heckler I’d ever heard in the theater. Someone told him he looked and sounded like the Spanish wolverine.”
Now, some months later, Valdés is working regularly with Don’t Throw Tomatoes. On Wednesday nights, the limited seating in the comedy venue is often filled with the faces of eager SLU students, ready to watch ‘The Fons’ in action.
Valdés’ success in the comedy scene has also inspired several of his peers, most notably SLU second-year Andrew Chitel who often performs alongside Valdés at the Don’t Throw Tomatoes’ ‘newbies’ comedy nights.
“The first day I met Fonsi he was wearing goth makeup and he told me that he didn’t eat fruit,” Chitel recalled. “I was sold.”
“His comedy is hectic,” said Chitel. “You never know what he’s going to say next. We’re like a tag team, like Rey Mysterio and whoever the other guy is.”
Many who know Valdés would likely agree with Chitel’s word choice; both in comedy and in conversation, Valdés brings a certain unabashed spontaneity to the table, which is indeed often “hectic.”
Gisclair described witnessing Valdes’ first Don’t Throw Tomatoes gig as something like “an acid trip, in the best way.”
“He told some story about Pit Bull dropping ‘mamacitas’ into a meat grinder to make ‘mamacita car fragrance’” Gisclair recalled.
“Sometimes when you entertain others it’s like you entertain yourself. It’s exciting to play a role,” said Valdes, leaning back on a stack of throw pillows, eyes closed in thought. “Comedy is exciting by nature. You know, each audience is different.”
Chitel, sitting on the other end of the sofa, nods solemnly in agreement. “That was great, dude,”
“Yeah,” Valdés shrugs. “I’m an interview machine.”
