Lust and Marriage - Exploring Sexuality with Sincerity, Humour, and Spread Legs

Eleanor O'Brien put on one hell of a show, if you'll pardon my French.

So let me start by explaining that I came to this performance exhausted. Physically, emotionally, mentally. I had to get up early for classes that day, I had been walking around trying to orient myself around my campus for most of the morning and afternoon, and I had a job interview just after all of that. My main preoccupation prior to entering the stage was a chemistry assignment I had to print off and finish after the show. 

I waited in line for fifteen minutes and climbed several flights of stairs to get to the theatre. Sitting down in the darkened room I settled in with my notepad, pencil and water bottle. The first blaring note of music penetrated my eardrums and made me shudder internally. I was still a modest wreck at this point.

The show began with Eleanor describing in the first person her thoughts and desires with regards to love and sex as a pubescent girl. She described the romance novels she read, as well as more candid literature including the phrase, "his penis, fat and inviting..." which Eleanor repeated multiple times to great effect. Her presentation in all its nervous, sweaty urgency drew me in instantly. I was in a different place, and my chemistry assignment went un-worried about for the duration.

She went on to portray her sexual experiences in college and abroad, in gruesome detail. She portrayed her anxiety at not finding real love and continuously searching while writing to Dan Savage for advice in the paper. Her experiences at Burning Man and the story of how she met her husband all acted out vividly. Her monogamish experiences with her husband. Her anxiety at meeting another man with whom she fell in love, while still loving her husband. Everything laid bare in just detail. 

The production was vigorous and passionate, and oily, and oh-so-lovable. Just Eleanor on the stage, showing what it was like to be nervous and afraid and still explore the world and experience it fully. Showing what it was like to be unraveled. What it was like to question oneself completely. 

Ironically, the first thought I had when leaving the theatre was, “this is why I want to study chemistry.” Thinking more deeply I realize why. Though Eleanor's primary focus in the play was sexuality and exploration and love, it ran very deeply on an emotional level. This really was her experience, a depiction of her life. A depiction of what she wanted, how she attempted to get it, and her uncertainty in herself and her choices. And in this I saw my own anxiety. My own uncertainty in whether I was good enough, whether I was putting the right time in the right places. Her production reminded me of how human that was. How connected I was to the world around me and to other people. It reminded me that I was doing this because it was what I wanted.

And I finished my chemistry assignment.