My First Time spills the beans on relationship stories
"It was like taking my mom's car up and down the driveway ... while no one was looking." Thus begins the slew of awkward sex analogies that pepper the script of My First Time, directed by Wiess College junior Tiffany Kim, who is putting on this unusual Off-Broadway show with the help of eight fellow students and funding from the Dr. Bill Wilson Student Initiative Grant.The overall presentation of the show is sharp, beginning in darkness as an awkward tune plays in the background. In between periods of snappy one-liners ("I lost my hymen in a bike accident") and longer monologues, the stage projector serves to intersperse random fun facts about sex. Did you know that the average French person loses their V-status at 16.8 years? Germany is 16.2! And the United States is ... well, you can just ponder on that for a while.
Although the show does not quite live up to its promise of telling 40,000 stories in the one-and-a-half-hour time span, all submitted to the Web site www.myfirsttime.com, the stories cover an impressive range of topics. Packed with a dizzying array of searingly honest and occasionally explicit vignettes, the play runs the gamut from a wheelchair-bound lover to an unforgettable Valentine's Day in a radio station.
Wiess freshman Alice Fa is featured in a snippet about one girl's first time with her best friend that is definitely not for the faint of sexually-pure heart. But don't worry - for all you innocently-minded viewers, most of the scenes cut off at the PG mark.
Some scenes are reminiscent of high school sex-ed skits, such as the snapshots about abstinence. However, there are great words of wisdom for those virgin teen boys praying for some action: "Even if you don't consider yourself to be a virgin by choice, in some ways, you are. And that's something to be proud of." Other stories venture into daring territory - watch for Story No. 1058, a story about sacrifice and incest, about which we will not go into detail here.
With the premise of sharing thousands of people's first sexual experiences, it is no wonder that My First Time sparked controversy. Wiess freshman Dustin Tannahill displays convincing passion and energy as an outraged, born-again Christian who spurns the play's Web site, saying, "Sex is a gift from God. ... Lust and fornication is wrong." It is an unusual scene compared to the rest of the vignettes describing their first time in some form or another, but the comic relief is always welcome. "You guys need JESUS!" Tannahill bellows in a touching farewell.
Wiess junior Allison Elliott's delivery of her lines is especially impressive. An acute sense of simmering rage emanates from her form as she rants about being deflowered by one of the "assholes" whose goal is to conquer everything in life. "So listen, asshole, I might be one of those girls who you seduced the other night ... but I want you to know the first moment you achieve your first big success, I am going to come forward and tell all. You son of a bitch." Hanszen junior Pam Zelnick also has excellent control over her lines, and is one of the more natural-sounding actors in the production.
Amid the amusing anecdotes and thought-provoking statistics, however, lie some rough patches. There is some distracting stumbling over lines, and there are a few that are delivered flatly and without conviction. "A 30-second commercial lasted longer than I did," moans Tannahill about his first sexual performance, and that is how long some of the scenes should last. Several scenes, including an extremely detailed account of one guy's first time with his crush, extend for longer than necessary, breaking up the usually crisp pace of the play.
Yet the play is redeemed by the perfect dialogue that will reflect many college students' worst nightmares ... or realities. The rapid-fire confessions of: "I was drunk," "Drunk and stoned," "I was SO drunk. It was hilarious," "Baked as fuck" and "I threw up all over her" are all phrases that will likely pass your lips at some point.
My First Time has all you could imagine from any first time. Discussion about date rape, fizzing coke douches, and a male unit "as stiff as Al Gore" make it worth the free admission. You are guaranteed to come away with awesome life lessons. As Fa says, "The moral of this story is: Don't fuck your friends.
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