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Sex can be awkward. Like, really, really, really awkward. So awkward, in fact, that some might never want to share with friends, let alone perfect strangers, tales of awkward intercourse. But comedian Natalie Wall’s storytelling show, Awkward Sex…and the City, brings those dirty details out into the open. Instead of hiding from past fumbling encounters and creepy ex-hookups, Wall’s performers talk about them. Onstage. On purpose.
“I remember a lot of girls were uncomfortable with talking about sex, and I thought that was ridiculous,” says Wall, 25. “I started a blog called Awkward Sex and the City to have a creative outlet and not kill myself while I was working at Macy’s in Williamsburg, Va.” On the blog, Wall shared the sexy, uncensored stories that made her girlfriends laugh when she told them in person. “There’s such a double standard with women and men about how we’re supposed to treat sex,” she says. “Women are allowed to be sexual beings as well.”
The site’s audience grew when Wall quit her job and moved to New York to intern at People’s Improv Theater, and once the clicks really rolled in, she pitched the concept to the theater as a stage show. Soon after, she was onstage with her friends, telling candid tales of the hoops she’d jumped through in order to have sex. “Immediately, it was a hit,” she says.
Surprisingly, the show isn’t that graphic. “A lot of the awkwardness happens before and after, and not actually during sex,” Wall says. “We don’t really talk about the sex that much.”
So what do they talk about?
Awkward Sex…and the City performer Jamie LeeLo, 25, has an interesting story to tell: “One time a guy on Tinder was like, ‘Do you want a dick pic?’ and then he sent me a picture of Dick Cheney,” she says. “And then the next day he sent me an actual dick pic.”
Or take the curious case of Ginny Leise, who plans to talk about an instance when her not-so-secret obsession with Henry Clay interfered with her perception of a possible suitor. “One of the reasons I had such a huge boner for this guy is because he is a direct descendant of my all-time favorite figure in American history,” explains Leise. “If you say you’re related to Henry Clay, then I’m going to have sex with you, because he was the mastermind behind the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and 1850.”
Other sordid tales include storyteller Carly Ann Filbin, 29, finding a creepy note on her third-story apartment window from someone who wrote that they “saw her naked,” and a dude interrupting a sex session with 30-year-old Meghan O’Malley to confess that he had a gambling addiction. “I was like, ‘okay, great, are you asking for a loan?’” says O’Malley.
To hear all the juicy details, see “Awkward Sex…and the City” when it stops at Bier Baron Tavern on Thursday, Aug. 21 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 online, $20 at the door. The show also hits the stage at Wonderland Ballroom on Friday, Aug. 22 at 7:30 p.m.