Sex Files Story Slam
w/ Dixie De La Tour
First Person Arts
World Cafe Live
Sept. 10, 2024
“When I lost my virginity freshman year of high school, the last thing on my mind was sex,” Che Guerrero told a curious crowd convened for “bawdy” storytelling night.
“The first thing on my mind was that my family was undocumented. I didn’t want people to know about me.”
Over seven minutes and 42 seconds, Guerrero revealed how his first sexual experience helped him learn how to live an honest life. His performance was part of a monthly sex-themed story slam put forward in different venues around town by the nonprofit First Person Arts, which convened this time at World Cafe Live Tuesday night. The mission: utilize a revealing topic to speak truth to power.
Under the eyes of “sexual folklorist” and out-and-proud DD-sized host Dixie De La Tour, seven individuals took to the stage to spin their most sensitive moments into five-minute storylines.
The audience, in turn, was tasked with secretly grading each performer so a winner could be crowned — and paid $100 plus a pass to receive coaching from De La Tour in advance of a grand slam competition to be held later this year.
“Public speaking’s the biggest fear there is,” De La Tour stated at the show’s start. “After doing this, you can run for president or whatever.”
What stood out to me from my sideline seat was not the technique of the speakers, but the array of personalities included in the hour-long set. There was the former asexual who realized her polyamorous potential — aka her self-declared “scheduling kink” — at 35 years old after combatting three decades of unrealized depression. There was the dude who successfully plotted to hook up with a German “Sydney Sweeney” lookalike in front of her ex-boyfriend while on the “craziest party place” he’d ever been (Thailand), only to end up with the karmic punishment of having his wallet stolen while he was doing it. There was the woman who accidentally shit the bed (literally) while having the best sex of her life with an “Idris Elba”-esque sex therapist she met that same day on Black Singles. And Dixie De La Tour topped it all off with recollections of Craigslist casual encounters, through which she realized: “I can create an antic and people will do it just to have sex with me.” Those antics included, for example, fucking in clown costumes or with paper bags over their heads all for the sake “of naked improv, of creating a story together.”
The genius of the event lay in how less experienced performers’ stumbles, filler words, humble brags and awkward pauses only served to amplify the meaning behind the prompt. The real power of sex, just like successful storytelling, is the inevitable honesty that comes along with its construction.
Each retelling displayed how deeply and differently sex touches us — a truth in and of itself that is rarely relayed through prime time depictions of romance.
Still, it was the story of Guerrero, a professional stand-up comedian, that hit me the hardest. It wasn’t because of the cohesion of his conclusion — that honesty is the best policy — but because of the impossible clarity with which he remembered the sexual sobriety of his youth. His tale was both the American Dream of love stories and an existential nightmare about living as an outsider in society.
It all started the day he spotted Brenda, “who was so fine, she looked just like Cardi B,” in his high school hallway and couldn’t bear to turn his typically downcast eyes away. Samantha, his grade’s gossip or “chismosa,” took notice and spread the news, incidentally launching Guerrero and Brenda into a baby relationship that took the form of late night pizza slices, cutting classes and, ultimately, confessionalism. Guerrero, who had never told anyone about his immigration status, confided in Brenda that he was not only undocumented, but also a virgin.
She hadn’t had sex before either, she said. They made a plan to lose their virginity together.
“Missy Elliott’s song ‘One Minute Man’ had just come out,” Guerrero recalled. He was nervous. But after it all went down, “I was just surprised at how much I felt loved … I did chin-ups on the train the whole way home.”
The next day, that same “chismosa” showed up with some more news: “Two people walked into that room, but only one person was losing their virginity,” she said. “Also, Brenda’s cheating on you.”
“I’m a comedian. I’ve gotten laughs, but never like this,” Guerrero recalled of his peers leering at him all day. After some thinking, he turned around and told Samantha a different story: “Between you and me, I’m not a virgin either. I was just using her.”
He played his cards right and earned some respect back. Years later, however, he said he reconnected with Brenda on social media and confessed once more that he had lied to Samantha in order to regain some status. Brenda had the same message to send back to Guerrero: The guy she’d been accused of cheating was the one spreading lies — Guerrero really was her first.
“I really loved you and wished I could be honest,” she said. But she didn’t know how.
After an evening of encouraging folks to go home with one another post-show, hostess De La Tour had a different ask for her audience.
“I wanna go watch the presidential debate,” she said, which was scheduled to air on ABC in just a few minutes. Anyone have a suggestion for bars where she, who was on the road from her home in San Francisco, could tune in?
“I wanna masturbate to the debate!” the timekeeper — comedian Lamarr Todd — shouted from backstage.
I ran home to my own roommates, who were waiting on my unlimited Wifi Hotspot to connect to the ABC-CNN-HBO, shit-show spectacular through our makeshift monitor of a TV.
As I listened to Donald Trump brag about his relationship with Victor Orban and Kamala Harris recount how she protected her high school friend from sexual abuse, I realized I was watching a rerun. It was the same show — with some major script changes about the human quest for power.
NEXT:
First Person Arts hosts thematic story slams every month at locations around Philly. Check out their website here to see what they’ve got going on next, including related theme nights like “online dating,” “ghosted,” and “home for the holidays,” scheduled throughout the fall.
